We’ve arrived in Hawaii, we’re waiting for the ship to clear. It is going to be faster than we expected. The day was glorious – I didn’t work much, the sea was smooth, the weather was perfect, we had a navy plane fly by the ship some three of four times, dipping its wing each time, and we even saw two whales as we approached the ship. Well, I didn’t, but most people did.
The funny thing was watching people activate their cell phones as we came into cell phone range. By the time we reached Honolulu, EVERYBODY had a cell phone outside, and even I talked to Becky from the Chaplin’s phone. I think the voyage will be psychologically over after this port.
Here’s a sample conversation, as suggested by Jason:
Yeah, I’m in Hawaii. What? No, I’m in Hawaii. The O.C.? They broke up? Really? Oh, I liked them all, but tell me… they really broke up?
Good times. A few housekeeping items. First, I wrote a guest blog entry on the most popular blog on SAS.
Second, I found out Amy has a bunch of pictures up from Brazil.
We’ll be off soon, we might have time for more.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Aloha means...just about everything, right?
We're docked in Hawaii on a gorgeous, gorgeous day. We're waiting for the ship to clear, and as usual, we'll be uploading short ramblings before we can leave the ship. Jason wrote the first of the ramblings
We're in Hawaii, docked and just waiting for immigration to get onto the ship and start processing us. It's supposed to take about three hours, so we have some time to blog. First off, I'm going to talk about the language barrier. We're in the US now, but there is a native language here other than English. That language is Hawaiian, and while not a lot of people speak it, a goodly number speak Pidgin. This is a language that has some parts of English and some of Hawaiian, and is also a lot like nothing else.
Aloha is about the only word of actual Hawaiian I know, excluding a few fish and bird names. It means hello. It means goodbye. I think it means I Love You, and probably also, The Bathroom Is That Way, Idiot. It's one of those words that takes up a lot of pages in the dictionary. In Pidgin, I know just a few words, and I'm not sure how they're spelled in some case. Da is The, which is pretty obvious. Haoli is a little less clear, but I know that it means foreigner, non-Islander and also more importantly, white person. It's used almost always by native Hawaiians, be they ethnically so or not, and it's not a good word. Usually it's paired with stupid. I expect we'll hear it a lot, and a lot of people will have no idea what it means. All I know is that when I do hear it, I'm going to get the hell out of the way, because it's trouble when it comes from a big Samoan.
So other than those two other languages, it should be pretty clear. Except for Chris, because he's Canadian, and they speak a funny language up there too, eh? Do Canadians speak other languages, anyway? I mean, besides French, which doesn't count. And poutin.
We're in Hawaii, docked and just waiting for immigration to get onto the ship and start processing us. It's supposed to take about three hours, so we have some time to blog. First off, I'm going to talk about the language barrier. We're in the US now, but there is a native language here other than English. That language is Hawaiian, and while not a lot of people speak it, a goodly number speak Pidgin. This is a language that has some parts of English and some of Hawaiian, and is also a lot like nothing else.
Aloha is about the only word of actual Hawaiian I know, excluding a few fish and bird names. It means hello. It means goodbye. I think it means I Love You, and probably also, The Bathroom Is That Way, Idiot. It's one of those words that takes up a lot of pages in the dictionary. In Pidgin, I know just a few words, and I'm not sure how they're spelled in some case. Da is The, which is pretty obvious. Haoli is a little less clear, but I know that it means foreigner, non-Islander and also more importantly, white person. It's used almost always by native Hawaiians, be they ethnically so or not, and it's not a good word. Usually it's paired with stupid. I expect we'll hear it a lot, and a lot of people will have no idea what it means. All I know is that when I do hear it, I'm going to get the hell out of the way, because it's trouble when it comes from a big Samoan.
So other than those two other languages, it should be pretty clear. Except for Chris, because he's Canadian, and they speak a funny language up there too, eh? Do Canadians speak other languages, anyway? I mean, besides French, which doesn't count. And poutin.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Groundhog Day
Welcome to Tuesday, November 29, 2005, for the second time! We just crossed the international date line, which looks just like the scrimmage line in a football game. A couple girls celebrated their 21st birthday twice, and we’re no longer 21 hours ahead of Cali, we’re two hours behind now. I already miss being in the future.
Sorry for the lack of original blogs – the Kunming and Japan blogs are in the works, as well as I’ll be guest blogging in the most popular SAS blog out there (Beth says she wrote about us in China and Japan… oh, to have cheap internet), but life got really busy lately with all sorts of end of year performances that keep an AV Coordinator busy. But I have a lot of good stories to upload, including how they’re getting us ready for the culture shock coming home.
We’ll arrive in Hawaii tomorrow, and after circling the globe, it is pretty clear that the U.S. is the hardest country to get into. Gosh, we make it complicated. Really. There’s a good chance it’ll take a few hours to get off the ship given all the paperwork and all the officials that need to come aboard. There’s no messing around here.
We’re waking up early to see the sunrise and the raising of the American flag for the first time this voyage (the ship always raises the flag of the country we’re arriving at). The choir sang America the Beautiful tonight, and as a very recent American citizen, it was a pretty sweet moment, I won’t lie to you.
This will be my fourth paradise island of the trip, along with the Bahamas, Fernando de Noronha, and Mauritius. I have some plans already, but I’ve never been to Hawaii, so if anyone has any good suggestions of what I should definitelydo, let me know.
On a side note, someone alerted me that the Cambodia entry made it on someone else’s blog.
On another side note, the lovely Yas wrote about Kunming, but I’m afraid to upload it because she misses some key stories. Everyone has a blog these days.
Screw it, here it is:
http://yasatsea.blogspot.com/2005/11/when-in-fresno-it-really-just-keeps.html
Sorry for the lack of original blogs – the Kunming and Japan blogs are in the works, as well as I’ll be guest blogging in the most popular SAS blog out there (Beth says she wrote about us in China and Japan… oh, to have cheap internet), but life got really busy lately with all sorts of end of year performances that keep an AV Coordinator busy. But I have a lot of good stories to upload, including how they’re getting us ready for the culture shock coming home.
We’ll arrive in Hawaii tomorrow, and after circling the globe, it is pretty clear that the U.S. is the hardest country to get into. Gosh, we make it complicated. Really. There’s a good chance it’ll take a few hours to get off the ship given all the paperwork and all the officials that need to come aboard. There’s no messing around here.
We’re waking up early to see the sunrise and the raising of the American flag for the first time this voyage (the ship always raises the flag of the country we’re arriving at). The choir sang America the Beautiful tonight, and as a very recent American citizen, it was a pretty sweet moment, I won’t lie to you.
This will be my fourth paradise island of the trip, along with the Bahamas, Fernando de Noronha, and Mauritius. I have some plans already, but I’ve never been to Hawaii, so if anyone has any good suggestions of what I should definitelydo, let me know.
On a side note, someone alerted me that the Cambodia entry made it on someone else’s blog.
On another side note, the lovely Yas wrote about Kunming, but I’m afraid to upload it because she misses some key stories. Everyone has a blog these days.
Screw it, here it is:
http://yasatsea.blogspot.com/2005/11/when-in-fresno-it-really-just-keeps.html
Tempus Fugit
Another Jason guest blurb. Changing the hours so many times is surreal.
Dawn is an hour late. Or an hour early. Night falls while you're having your afternoon nap. There aren't enough hours to work and sleep and socialize, so you drop the second. And one magical time, you repeat a day entirely.
This is the Pacific crossing.
Tempus fugit is Latin; its literally meaning is time flies. But as a phenomenon, it is applied to all manner of time distortions. Your line at the supermarket will always be the slowest one? That's an example. A movie seen the first time seems longer than the second time? That's another. Those five awkward minutes you spend waiting for your date to be ready? Yet another. And the crossing eastward of the world's largest ocean is the biggest of them all.
Westward is easy. Every couple days you gain an hour, so that you get more sleep, or take a long lunch, or spend that extra time looting other peoples' I-tunes. A day vanishes entirely, which would be odd, especially if (as is almost surely the case on a large ship) it was someone's birthday. But it's not such a big deal. A cakewalk.
We, instead, are a ship that's sleep deprived, aching and tired, wondering what the hell hit us. It can't be those little time changes, can it? Oh, and we get that extra day, but do we spend those lost hours, now regained, in rest? No, it's just another day. Great for the one girl whose birthday it is, but sucks for the rest of us.
So time flies, and we get carried along with it. Sometime, probably around the 10th or 12th of December, we'll start to feel a little more normal again. But feeling normal means going back to the real world, and if that's the case, I'm ready for a bigger ocean. But could we just sail north and south next time, please?
Dawn is an hour late. Or an hour early. Night falls while you're having your afternoon nap. There aren't enough hours to work and sleep and socialize, so you drop the second. And one magical time, you repeat a day entirely.
This is the Pacific crossing.
Tempus fugit is Latin; its literally meaning is time flies. But as a phenomenon, it is applied to all manner of time distortions. Your line at the supermarket will always be the slowest one? That's an example. A movie seen the first time seems longer than the second time? That's another. Those five awkward minutes you spend waiting for your date to be ready? Yet another. And the crossing eastward of the world's largest ocean is the biggest of them all.
Westward is easy. Every couple days you gain an hour, so that you get more sleep, or take a long lunch, or spend that extra time looting other peoples' I-tunes. A day vanishes entirely, which would be odd, especially if (as is almost surely the case on a large ship) it was someone's birthday. But it's not such a big deal. A cakewalk.
We, instead, are a ship that's sleep deprived, aching and tired, wondering what the hell hit us. It can't be those little time changes, can it? Oh, and we get that extra day, but do we spend those lost hours, now regained, in rest? No, it's just another day. Great for the one girl whose birthday it is, but sucks for the rest of us.
So time flies, and we get carried along with it. Sometime, probably around the 10th or 12th of December, we'll start to feel a little more normal again. But feeling normal means going back to the real world, and if that's the case, I'm ready for a bigger ocean. But could we just sail north and south next time, please?
A Truly Japanese Experience
Jason had written this in Japan, I haven't gotten a chance to upload until now. Taking care of someone in a land you have zero understanding of the language is a great story that I am working hard to make sure hits the Cobosce before the end of the voyage.
I also realize that we might be giving the wrong impression of the trip, but I think there's enough other entries to show otherwise.
The first night in Japan provided me with an excellent opportunity for a truly local experience. You see, in Japan there's an entire group of people, sometimes called in English salarymen, who work their little hearts out and then, after they're done with work, go out and party. They drink shots, pound back beers, challenge each other to drinking games, and in general misbehave on a grand scale. They do this almost every night, because it's the only way they can vent. Late in the evening, it's considered socially okay for them to publicly urinate, vomit or just about anything else they need to do, so long as they're obviously drunk.
That was pretty much me. But without the good job or the public urination. And I didn't even get to karaoke.
Many thanks to Chris and Rico and Alex for making sure I got back to the ship in one piece. Smaller but still sincere thanks to the people who bought me drinks. I wish I could remember them all, but I can't.
I wonder if this would look good on a job application at the Japanese corporation?
I also realize that we might be giving the wrong impression of the trip, but I think there's enough other entries to show otherwise.
The first night in Japan provided me with an excellent opportunity for a truly local experience. You see, in Japan there's an entire group of people, sometimes called in English salarymen, who work their little hearts out and then, after they're done with work, go out and party. They drink shots, pound back beers, challenge each other to drinking games, and in general misbehave on a grand scale. They do this almost every night, because it's the only way they can vent. Late in the evening, it's considered socially okay for them to publicly urinate, vomit or just about anything else they need to do, so long as they're obviously drunk.
That was pretty much me. But without the good job or the public urination. And I didn't even get to karaoke.
Many thanks to Chris and Rico and Alex for making sure I got back to the ship in one piece. Smaller but still sincere thanks to the people who bought me drinks. I wish I could remember them all, but I can't.
I wonder if this would look good on a job application at the Japanese corporation?
The Life Emanuel
Welcome to Tuesday, November 29 #1! Little known fact outside of the ship: one of the first things I did getting on the ship was join the Salsa team, and in honor of our big performance tonight, I wanted to write a quick word about Emanuel Pleitez, who just happens to also be our main salsa instructor.
Remember that name - he's one of those people I just know we'll be reading about someday. Emanuel grew up in a poor neighborhood in Southern California, got himself into Stanford, and now on SAS comes up with some ingenious methods of financing his trips that he couldn't go to otherwise. Whenever we arrive in port, Emanuel works for the taxi drivers in exchange for rides, spending hours fraternizing with them right off the ship and serving as their salesman. Language doesn't seem to be an issue - he came back from Myanmar with a surprisingly extensive Burmese vocabulary - and often has some of the best stories from his trips to places money can't take you.
Janet Eastman wrote a short blurb on Emanuel for the LA times. The guy impresses me tremendously, on and off the ship, so I mention his name here as a favor. I think you'll hear his name again. So if someday you pick up a newspaper and see the picture of a guy who looks like a football-playing John Tuturo, remember that you heard of him here first.
(I just noticed our one-headlight incident in Mauritus also got a mention.)
Remember that name - he's one of those people I just know we'll be reading about someday. Emanuel grew up in a poor neighborhood in Southern California, got himself into Stanford, and now on SAS comes up with some ingenious methods of financing his trips that he couldn't go to otherwise. Whenever we arrive in port, Emanuel works for the taxi drivers in exchange for rides, spending hours fraternizing with them right off the ship and serving as their salesman. Language doesn't seem to be an issue - he came back from Myanmar with a surprisingly extensive Burmese vocabulary - and often has some of the best stories from his trips to places money can't take you.
Janet Eastman wrote a short blurb on Emanuel for the LA times. The guy impresses me tremendously, on and off the ship, so I mention his name here as a favor. I think you'll hear his name again. So if someday you pick up a newspaper and see the picture of a guy who looks like a football-playing John Tuturo, remember that you heard of him here first.
(I just noticed our one-headlight incident in Mauritus also got a mention.)
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Hardy har har
For some reason, I'm unable to upload anything to the executiveranch.net servers (dang holidays...), but I wanted to upload the pictures of the state I found my cabin in after a five-course dinner with the captain and chief officers tonight. Yup, my room is covered in toilet paper.
I'm glad they did it... I already have my revenge planned out an everything. I've been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. I'd tell you what I would do, but I've been told Chris's girlfriend Nicolle-with-two-"L"s (hi Nicolle!) reads this so it might come back to him. Even though he probably had nothing to do with it. Unless you're willing to keep him in the dark, Nicolle.
(BTW, if you think I'm just putting the TP to waste, you're very wrong. It will be rolled up and be used as the good lord intended us to.)
In other great news, we're arriving in Hawaii a day early, so we actually get to spend a night there. A repeat of the last night in Kobe? Umm... it can happen.
In yet another great news, Danny and Becky are coming down to tour the ship in San Diego when we arrive. I might be more excited about that than going to Noronha. Did I already mention that? Am I still wearing pants?
We forward the time one hour some four times before Hawaii. I have stopped thinking that I'm eighteen hours in the future from you guys and started seeing it as being five hours back plus a day, and getting closer. We'll get two November 29s, aka "Groundhog Day." It is pretty funny because since we have two consecutive Tuesdays, we need calendars that can accommodate the extra week day. They can either end up looking like a periodic table, or November 29 is split into two sections. People tend to prefer using the latter calendar.
Anyway.
I was pretty excited about being able to upload a (bad) MP3 of Allan's song tonight, as part of an charity audio CD with original music by SAS students titled "No Silence Can Be Heard". The whole project was organized by a student named Adam Deutsch and the music is really good.
Um.
I just realized these entries aren't nearly as fun without pictures or videos or music, eh? Perhaps I shouldn't upload this...
[Trying to hold back the fingers...]
[...nooooooo....]
Whoops. There it goes.
I'm glad they did it... I already have my revenge planned out an everything. I've been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. I'd tell you what I would do, but I've been told Chris's girlfriend Nicolle-with-two-"L"s (hi Nicolle!) reads this so it might come back to him. Even though he probably had nothing to do with it. Unless you're willing to keep him in the dark, Nicolle.
(BTW, if you think I'm just putting the TP to waste, you're very wrong. It will be rolled up and be used as the good lord intended us to.)
In other great news, we're arriving in Hawaii a day early, so we actually get to spend a night there. A repeat of the last night in Kobe? Umm... it can happen.
In yet another great news, Danny and Becky are coming down to tour the ship in San Diego when we arrive. I might be more excited about that than going to Noronha. Did I already mention that? Am I still wearing pants?
We forward the time one hour some four times before Hawaii. I have stopped thinking that I'm eighteen hours in the future from you guys and started seeing it as being five hours back plus a day, and getting closer. We'll get two November 29s, aka "Groundhog Day." It is pretty funny because since we have two consecutive Tuesdays, we need calendars that can accommodate the extra week day. They can either end up looking like a periodic table, or November 29 is split into two sections. People tend to prefer using the latter calendar.
Anyway.
I was pretty excited about being able to upload a (bad) MP3 of Allan's song tonight, as part of an charity audio CD with original music by SAS students titled "No Silence Can Be Heard". The whole project was organized by a student named Adam Deutsch and the music is really good.
Um.
I just realized these entries aren't nearly as fun without pictures or videos or music, eh? Perhaps I shouldn't upload this...
[Trying to hold back the fingers...]
[...nooooooo....]
Whoops. There it goes.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Stuck in a Cambodian Prison
What would you do? One of the students in the trip you lead gets a little silly and while running after a monkey, knocks down a pillar in an ancient Siem Reap temple. It starts a chain reaction that destroys several hundred years of civilization in a matter of seconds.
Poor Beau. Stuck in a Cambodian jail. All other 57 students made it back to Vietnam. Did the one thing you don’t do in a Buddhist country: mess around in a Buddhist temple. Bad things are bound to happen.
Or so the ship thought. You see, Beau lost his passport in Phnom Penh. He wasn’t sure where it was in the afternoon. He might have lost it in the morning at the hotel. Or he might have been pickpocketed the night before. Whatever, he was really stuck in Cambodia. It is one of the worst things you can do on Semester at Sea, losing your passport. Because you need a visa to enter Vietnam, and you need an exit visa to leave Cambodia, and because it takes a few days to get a new emergency American passport, and because it was a Cambodian holiday, Beau didn’t make it to the ship. It wasn’t that big of a deal, just an expensive pain in the arse. He’s an adult who can take care of himself; he would meet us in Hong Kong once the paperwork was straightened out.
But the ship didn’t know this. So we agreed as a trip to tell the story that Beau was arrested in Cambodia. We would be vague with the details, “I didn’t see it, but I think was climbing the temple to take a picture,” or, “I saw him pretending to be Sarah Croft earlier and next thing I know you hear this crashing sound.” But he had knocked something, and didn’t come back to the ship.
Boy, was that fun. As trip leader, I must have had dozens of incredulous students come up to me to confirm the rumor they had heard about our trip, and of course I played along with it. Not all the students in the joke could keep a straight face – one student told me I convinced her to lie to her best friends on the ship, whoops – but enough students believed the story that, now that he’s back aboard, Beau is still asked about his prison experience. It was worth it.
Besides, our story made him look cool. Losing your passport is careless and a pain. A very nice girl lost her passport in Venezuela and was unable to leave the ship until Cape Town three weeks later, missing Brazil as she couldn’t get issued a visa in time.
Such was HCM24. Somehow I managed to trip-lead one of the most popular SAS trips, to Phnom Penh and Angkot Wat. The four trips to Cambodia were so popular that one of them had 100 students sign up beyond the maximum number of 60 per trip, growing to the point they added another trip leader - Tina Trap on our medical staff.
I had been selected to trip-lead a small, four-day camping safari in Kenya, but as you probably know, we never made it to East Africa and all my efforts would have to wait until Cambodia. A week before the trip, I started building excitement amongst our group by announcing over the closed-circuit TV system that HCM24 would be the “Best Trip Ever”. As a result, the entire ship was aware of HCM24 a week before arriving in port, and as mentioned in previous entries, several members that didn’t make the trip articulated their concern that we (I) was rubbing on their faces. That wasn’t my intention, so I stopped the campaign immediately and apologized.
But it served its intended purpose, and everyone involved felt pretty good about going on the trip. My leadership style has completely relaxed since my days as an RA at Stanford, which means that basically anything goes as long as we’re respectful to the people and places that we were going. That also meant that we wouldn’t be doing head counts or really checking for people until flights, so if people missed the bus, they’re adult enough to take care of themselves. We just didn’t want to wait around for people.
Our group arrives in Phnom Penh, and we have two hours to waltz around before heading over to a boat ride up the Mekong River. Phnom Penh (which sounds like a drum beat at the end of a bad joke, as in “I just flew into Cambodia today. Boy, my arms are tired.” phnom-penh) is under construction, and is probably well on its way to becoming a big metropolis in the next few decades. The city is also underwater, which is normal during the rainy season.
Over the centuries, the country has changed back and forth between Buddhism and Hinduism depending on the emperor of the day, and the temples and artwork are a striking mix of what appears to be Indian and Burmese architecture. With monkeys all over the place.
After our a fun meal trying to that involved somewhat randomly picking items in a Cambodian menu, we hit the Mekong for the sunset. The timing of the ride was perfect, because as we watched the sun do down along the temples and stilt houses along the river, we could see, quite literally, a wall of water approach us. It was so precise and linear that we could predict the arrival of the monsoon to the second… five…four…three…two…
We all, needless to say, got soaked, but we were soon back on the bus, bonding to “Tiny Dancer” on our way to an over-the-top yet delicious Cambodian buffet. One of the problems with many SAS organized trips is that they pamper you too much, and this was one of those trips. The hotels they put us in were ridiculous, and perhaps a few hundred dollars could be shaved off the trip if only we were treated to something a little more modest.
We visited the concentration camps and Killing Fields on day 2. I’m not ready to talk about that. I had consciously not done any research on Cambodia before coming, in order to view everything for the first time and not put up an emotional shield. I’m not sure that ultimately was a good thing. It does hit you hard. The pictures and the stories of torture and the mass graves and the teeth and bones on the ground and the walls of skulls hits you hard. Everyone you talk to mentions they lost a parent or a sibling or a son during the Khmer Rouge. Everyone. Yet they talk about it so matter of factly. You leave with a terrible feeling, knowing that 2.5 million people were killed.
Moreover, there’s an academic reason I’m not ready to talk about it. I found out coming back to the ship that there is a serious academic debate on the history of the Khmer Rouge, and that perhaps the total number of people dead was more towards the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions. Not that this diminishes the gravity of the situation. It’s just that I want to do this story justice. It is important to too many people to do otherwise.
The second half of the trip was very happy. We traveled to Siem Reap, home of the temples that inspired the Jungle Book (and were also the set of Tomb Raider). These are magnificent temples, and watching the sunrise at Angkor Wat was the highlight of the trip to Cambodia for most people. The temple is huge, discovered by the west in the mid 19th century, but built about 1000 years earlier that as a Hindu temple. You think to yourself how amazing it must have been to be the first westerners to encounter the temple going through the jungle. One of the temples has been kept exactly as it was found, and the trees growing in the temple walls are breathtaking. They are more of an attraction than the temple itself, and ironically, as they grow, they destroy the temple even further. I’m not sure how they are going to deal with the problem, say, 100 years from now, as trees die down and grown in the places. Is it just going to be a pile of rubble someday?
I was wondering which would I rather visit, Bagan in Myanmar or Siem Reap in Cambodia. I decided a few massive temples was slightly cooler than thousands of smaller ones. The problem is that Angkor Wat is setting itself up to be a Vegas-like resort town, and they are over 20 massive new hotels being built around the temples. I’m not sure that is the way to go – I hated the area around the hotels. The sense of adventure was completely lost in them, and we you can see that soon that area will look like a “Angkor Wat Hotel and Casino” in Vegas. Actually, why doesn’t Vegas have a Cambodian Temple sort of casino yet? Hmmm…
That was just a blip on a fabulous port. Hanging out with the students was a lot of fun (though I was glad that it would be my last SAS-run trip), the sites are impressive, and the Killing Fields stay with you long after you leave them. It is an amazing place.
I can’t wait to come back.
Poor Beau. Stuck in a Cambodian jail. All other 57 students made it back to Vietnam. Did the one thing you don’t do in a Buddhist country: mess around in a Buddhist temple. Bad things are bound to happen.
Or so the ship thought. You see, Beau lost his passport in Phnom Penh. He wasn’t sure where it was in the afternoon. He might have lost it in the morning at the hotel. Or he might have been pickpocketed the night before. Whatever, he was really stuck in Cambodia. It is one of the worst things you can do on Semester at Sea, losing your passport. Because you need a visa to enter Vietnam, and you need an exit visa to leave Cambodia, and because it takes a few days to get a new emergency American passport, and because it was a Cambodian holiday, Beau didn’t make it to the ship. It wasn’t that big of a deal, just an expensive pain in the arse. He’s an adult who can take care of himself; he would meet us in Hong Kong once the paperwork was straightened out.
But the ship didn’t know this. So we agreed as a trip to tell the story that Beau was arrested in Cambodia. We would be vague with the details, “I didn’t see it, but I think was climbing the temple to take a picture,” or, “I saw him pretending to be Sarah Croft earlier and next thing I know you hear this crashing sound.” But he had knocked something, and didn’t come back to the ship.
Boy, was that fun. As trip leader, I must have had dozens of incredulous students come up to me to confirm the rumor they had heard about our trip, and of course I played along with it. Not all the students in the joke could keep a straight face – one student told me I convinced her to lie to her best friends on the ship, whoops – but enough students believed the story that, now that he’s back aboard, Beau is still asked about his prison experience. It was worth it.
Besides, our story made him look cool. Losing your passport is careless and a pain. A very nice girl lost her passport in Venezuela and was unable to leave the ship until Cape Town three weeks later, missing Brazil as she couldn’t get issued a visa in time.
Such was HCM24. Somehow I managed to trip-lead one of the most popular SAS trips, to Phnom Penh and Angkot Wat. The four trips to Cambodia were so popular that one of them had 100 students sign up beyond the maximum number of 60 per trip, growing to the point they added another trip leader - Tina Trap on our medical staff.
I had been selected to trip-lead a small, four-day camping safari in Kenya, but as you probably know, we never made it to East Africa and all my efforts would have to wait until Cambodia. A week before the trip, I started building excitement amongst our group by announcing over the closed-circuit TV system that HCM24 would be the “Best Trip Ever”. As a result, the entire ship was aware of HCM24 a week before arriving in port, and as mentioned in previous entries, several members that didn’t make the trip articulated their concern that we (I) was rubbing on their faces. That wasn’t my intention, so I stopped the campaign immediately and apologized.
But it served its intended purpose, and everyone involved felt pretty good about going on the trip. My leadership style has completely relaxed since my days as an RA at Stanford, which means that basically anything goes as long as we’re respectful to the people and places that we were going. That also meant that we wouldn’t be doing head counts or really checking for people until flights, so if people missed the bus, they’re adult enough to take care of themselves. We just didn’t want to wait around for people.
Our group arrives in Phnom Penh, and we have two hours to waltz around before heading over to a boat ride up the Mekong River. Phnom Penh (which sounds like a drum beat at the end of a bad joke, as in “I just flew into Cambodia today. Boy, my arms are tired.” phnom-penh) is under construction, and is probably well on its way to becoming a big metropolis in the next few decades. The city is also underwater, which is normal during the rainy season.
Over the centuries, the country has changed back and forth between Buddhism and Hinduism depending on the emperor of the day, and the temples and artwork are a striking mix of what appears to be Indian and Burmese architecture. With monkeys all over the place.
After our a fun meal trying to that involved somewhat randomly picking items in a Cambodian menu, we hit the Mekong for the sunset. The timing of the ride was perfect, because as we watched the sun do down along the temples and stilt houses along the river, we could see, quite literally, a wall of water approach us. It was so precise and linear that we could predict the arrival of the monsoon to the second… five…four…three…two…
We all, needless to say, got soaked, but we were soon back on the bus, bonding to “Tiny Dancer” on our way to an over-the-top yet delicious Cambodian buffet. One of the problems with many SAS organized trips is that they pamper you too much, and this was one of those trips. The hotels they put us in were ridiculous, and perhaps a few hundred dollars could be shaved off the trip if only we were treated to something a little more modest.
We visited the concentration camps and Killing Fields on day 2. I’m not ready to talk about that. I had consciously not done any research on Cambodia before coming, in order to view everything for the first time and not put up an emotional shield. I’m not sure that ultimately was a good thing. It does hit you hard. The pictures and the stories of torture and the mass graves and the teeth and bones on the ground and the walls of skulls hits you hard. Everyone you talk to mentions they lost a parent or a sibling or a son during the Khmer Rouge. Everyone. Yet they talk about it so matter of factly. You leave with a terrible feeling, knowing that 2.5 million people were killed.
Moreover, there’s an academic reason I’m not ready to talk about it. I found out coming back to the ship that there is a serious academic debate on the history of the Khmer Rouge, and that perhaps the total number of people dead was more towards the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions. Not that this diminishes the gravity of the situation. It’s just that I want to do this story justice. It is important to too many people to do otherwise.
The second half of the trip was very happy. We traveled to Siem Reap, home of the temples that inspired the Jungle Book (and were also the set of Tomb Raider). These are magnificent temples, and watching the sunrise at Angkor Wat was the highlight of the trip to Cambodia for most people. The temple is huge, discovered by the west in the mid 19th century, but built about 1000 years earlier that as a Hindu temple. You think to yourself how amazing it must have been to be the first westerners to encounter the temple going through the jungle. One of the temples has been kept exactly as it was found, and the trees growing in the temple walls are breathtaking. They are more of an attraction than the temple itself, and ironically, as they grow, they destroy the temple even further. I’m not sure how they are going to deal with the problem, say, 100 years from now, as trees die down and grown in the places. Is it just going to be a pile of rubble someday?
I was wondering which would I rather visit, Bagan in Myanmar or Siem Reap in Cambodia. I decided a few massive temples was slightly cooler than thousands of smaller ones. The problem is that Angkor Wat is setting itself up to be a Vegas-like resort town, and they are over 20 massive new hotels being built around the temples. I’m not sure that is the way to go – I hated the area around the hotels. The sense of adventure was completely lost in them, and we you can see that soon that area will look like a “Angkor Wat Hotel and Casino” in Vegas. Actually, why doesn’t Vegas have a Cambodian Temple sort of casino yet? Hmmm…
That was just a blip on a fabulous port. Hanging out with the students was a lot of fun (though I was glad that it would be my last SAS-run trip), the sites are impressive, and the Killing Fields stay with you long after you leave them. It is an amazing place.
I can’t wait to come back.
WeFightMS.com
Happy Turkey Day, all. SAS doesn’t operate on a normal calendar, so the concept of weekdays or holidays have become completely alien to us, but we did somehow manage to fit in a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and carved turkey, even though classes proceeded as they normally do.
So before I go to bed, I’ll place the first (but not last) mention of the MS150 bike ride that I participate every year with my great buddies Aden, Dunagan, Danny, and several other friends. This is an 180 mile bike ride from Houston to Austin that raises money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the experience is as amazing as anything that has happened on Semester at Sea. We definitely go all out every year and have raised some $17,000 in the last two years. Below you can see the annual videos we made for the last two rides. There are a lot of videos, so sit back and enjoy:
http://www.WeFightMS.com
Please don’t use last year’s donation link; if you’d like to donate this year, please use this link:
http://ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=180178
I’ll post a lot more about the ride towards the end of our trip. This is a really big big deal to the four of us and to the millions of people suffering of MS.
Check out our nine 2004 videos here.
I’ll also start posting the blogs from the arrival in Japan, starting with Amy’s first guest blog (below).
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
So before I go to bed, I’ll place the first (but not last) mention of the MS150 bike ride that I participate every year with my great buddies Aden, Dunagan, Danny, and several other friends. This is an 180 mile bike ride from Houston to Austin that raises money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the experience is as amazing as anything that has happened on Semester at Sea. We definitely go all out every year and have raised some $17,000 in the last two years. Below you can see the annual videos we made for the last two rides. There are a lot of videos, so sit back and enjoy:
http://www.WeFightMS.com
Please don’t use last year’s donation link; if you’d like to donate this year, please use this link:
http://ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=180178
I’ll post a lot more about the ride towards the end of our trip. This is a really big big deal to the four of us and to the millions of people suffering of MS.
Check out our nine 2004 videos here.
I’ll also start posting the blogs from the arrival in Japan, starting with Amy’s first guest blog (below).
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Rico hearts Me!
I do. I heart Amy. As IT Coordinator extraordinaire, she makes this blog possible. I heart her for that. She wrote this entry, the first of several guest blogs written as we approached Japan.
Amy is myscuba-diving buddy (on the right) and will be living in Santa Cruz later when she returns.
Here's the picture she took of me petting a huge morray eel.
Over the past 3 months we have become a close knit bunch and most of us have no shame in showing that love. Briana made a sign for Beth that said "I heart Beth," and the phrase stuck. This love was not felt all the way around however. Poor little Yas thought she was unloved because she'd tell Rico that she hearted him, but he'd just smile and not give his heart in return. While in Hong Kong we realized that it's not that Rico doesn't heart Yas, he doesn't heart ANYONE. Well, he might, but he won't admit it. We've been working on him, though, and finally got him to say "I heart y'all," and then...the miracle of all miracles happened. The other day after I gave Rico something that he really wanted, he showed his appreciation by saying "Amy, that's why we all heart you." That was the closest I'd heard him get to sharing all that love he has burning inside. Then I asked if HE hearts me, and indeed he does...I then became the first person that Rico outwardly hearts, when at last he told me "Amy, I heart you." It made me feel all warm and tingly inside.
Amy is myscuba-diving buddy (on the right) and will be living in Santa Cruz later when she returns.
Here's the picture she took of me petting a huge morray eel.
Over the past 3 months we have become a close knit bunch and most of us have no shame in showing that love. Briana made a sign for Beth that said "I heart Beth," and the phrase stuck. This love was not felt all the way around however. Poor little Yas thought she was unloved because she'd tell Rico that she hearted him, but he'd just smile and not give his heart in return. While in Hong Kong we realized that it's not that Rico doesn't heart Yas, he doesn't heart ANYONE. Well, he might, but he won't admit it. We've been working on him, though, and finally got him to say "I heart y'all," and then...the miracle of all miracles happened. The other day after I gave Rico something that he really wanted, he showed his appreciation by saying "Amy, that's why we all heart you." That was the closest I'd heard him get to sharing all that love he has burning inside. Then I asked if HE hearts me, and indeed he does...I then became the first person that Rico outwardly hearts, when at last he told me "Amy, I heart you." It made me feel all warm and tingly inside.
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