Singapore

No a cruise ship didn't land on those poor buildings - it's actually a hotel

Singapore was a quick two-day journey from Vietnam and the transition was glaring. Saigon was frenetic and busy, with horns blaring and vendors assaulting us on all sides. Singapore, on the other hand was calm and organized. There is a great deal that you can't do in Singapore: chew gum, litter, jaywalk, spit on the sidewalk and many others. Don't even think about doing drugs - the penalty is death. Now I didn't want to do any of this of course, but all of the rules were a bit of a turnoff. Sure the city was clean and orderly, but I found myself missing the chaos of Vietnam. There just seemed to be a lot more life in the city.

We only had two days in the city and I spent the bulk of the first day visiting Singapore's water treatment and containment facilities - a class field trip. Singapore has historically purchased much of the city's water from Malaysia, country with which they have had a lot of rough history. Consequently, Singapore has made a goal for itself of becoming water-independent by 2060 and they are 80% of the way there already. One of the ways they have achieved this impressive result in such a short time is their "New Water" facility that treats all of the city's wastewater and returns it to the water supply. This is not as gross as it sounds - the facility is quite sophisticated and the water that comes out of it is incredibly clean. They have devoted an incredible amount of energy in the technological advancements to treat nearly all of the water in the city. Apparently communities in Texas are looking at the technology for solutions to their own water problems. We're likely to see more and more of this as water resources become more scarce. Pretty soon, "Dune" is going to look like a documentary…

After retuning to the ship, I got the chance to go out to Singapore's "Chinatown" and get a good meal of dumplings and green beens. Then we walked around the area, checking out their night market. The streets were calm and uncrowded and the merchants didn't follow us around trying to bargain for each item that we happened to look at. Much more civilized than Vietnam, but not at all as lively. We had a good time looking at overpriced wooden carvings and cheap clothing. The market started closing down before 11:00 and we were back to the ship by midnight.

The following day we had to be back onboard by 1800, so we set out early and explored the city's subway system. Getting around Singapore is pretty easy as the subway is efficient, clean and best of all in English. Just about every sign in the country has English and Chinese making it very easy to get around. Kind of like a really clean Firefly set…

A group of three of us took the subway across the city (across the Nation!) and got off within walking distance of the Botanical Gardens. The obsessive need for neatness and greenery comes to a glorious combination here. The gardens were extensive and beautiful including sections on rain forests, wetlands and other little sub-themes. There was even an area completely devoted to orchids with a "cold room" which contained carnivorous bog plants. Very cool. We walked around all morning into the afternoon and eventually found a cool little restaurant for a nice lunch. We just had time for a quick trip to the downtown region to see the Raffles Hotel (home of the original Singapore Sling) and then back to stand in line to get back on board the ship.

Next stop… Burma

Vung Tau or Visiting Giant Jesus

This is a bit of a late entry, finishing up our time in Vietnam. It's mid-term time on the ship and things are busy.

On our last full day in Vietnam, we took the opportunity to take a hydrofoil boat down the river to the coastal city of Vung Tau. The hydrofoil boats regularly run up and down the river, connecting Saigon with various coastal communities. The boats are apparently a Soviet design from the sixties, explaining why they look like something a James Bond villain would take to get to his secret island hideaway where he was plotting the destruction of Western civilization.

We boarded the boat after securing tickets from a scalper who somehow had five tickets for the boat that was leaving five minutes before we arrived at the river-side terminal. I don't understand the economics of the transaction since he charged us exactly the fare listed on the ticket after a bit of haggling. I can only figure that since we refused to pay more and the boat was about to depart, he ended up making no money on the transaction. Either way, we got a one-hour trip out the river and south to Vung Tau for a bit more than $11 U.S. The ride was uneventful and the windows were so caked with grime that we didn't get to see any sights along the way. We arrived to find all the return tickets to Saigon completely sold out, so it was clear that we were in for an adventure one way or another. We didn't have to be on board the Explorer till the next day, so we'd have to figure out some way to get home.

G.J.

We spent the day walking around the town exploring this quite pretty seaside community. Vung Tau seems to be a bit of a vacation spot for locals and there were plenty of Vietnamese tourists on the streets. The beaches were crowded on this beautiful Saturday and the local food sellers seemed to be doing quite a good business. We walked south along the waterfront on our way to a Catholic shrine where the Church has built a large statue of Jesus looking over the ocean - likely a legacy of the French although we didn't get the whole story of how the statue got to be built. The whole place was kind of Rio lite - there's about a thousand steps up the small mountain to get to a statue that stands some sixty feet or so. We climbed the hill with a gaggle of tourists. Most of them were Vietnamese although I heard French, Italian and Russian (I think) as well. Definitely a tourist attraction. The climb was well worth it as the top offered a beautiful view of the city on one side and the beautiful beaches on the other. From the top you could see another large statue on the far side of town. This statue was of Buddha, sitting on his own little mountain. It was nice to see that the Buddhists were getting equal time with the Catholics. It's nice when people get along.

Departing the shrine, we continued to tour around the peninsula soaking up the local flavor. We enjoyed an awesome lunch (fried rice with seafood for me!) and visited a local market that was very much local. It was along a dirty little back street with barely enough room for two people to walk abreast. This didn't stop motorcycles and scooters from pushing their way through, requiring pedestrians to step right into the booths and displays to let them pass. I kept expecting to get burnt by a passing tailpipe, but managed to step lively and make it through unscathed. At the end of the market street was a cool little harbor filled with the beautiful blue Vietnamese fishing boats. Most of the boats have continued to be in the harbor while the long Tet celebration was still going on throughout the country. It was a nice little slice of local life - we didn't see any tourists in this area and in fact we often got curious looks of the "what are YOU doing here" type.

We got out of that area and returned to the more upscale side of town. After a fabulous dinner (noodles and more fantastic seafood for me!) we set about finding a way back to Saigon. We had spoken with a cab driver who told us in his limited English that he would be available to get us back to the big city. We had the restaurant call him for us, and we negotiated a two-hour cab ride back to Saigon. The total price was one and a half million Dong. For the six of us that amounted to 250,000 Dong, or exactly the same price as our hydrofoil trip down! Perfect. When I took some money out of the ATM I checked my balance. with 22,000 Dong to the dollar I look quite wealthy when expressed in Vietnamese currency!

The cab ride was uneventful except for the car ferry we had to take to get into the city itself. The ferry dock was a hexagon, with ferries simultaneously landing on five sides and dumping us into the sixth side and the road to Saigon. As we drove off the ferry, there was a long line of cars waiting on the other side. I have no idea how they figured out which ferry to get on with five to choose from. I was glad I wasn't driving!

We got back to Saigon before ten p.m. allowing us to make a quick trip to the night market in town and get back to the ship before midnight. We departed the next day and I didn't leave the city. Instead I just walked around the port-side area, checking out the cathedral and all the cool French architecture left behind by the French after the war. By 1600 I was back on board ready to depart for Singapore, our next stop. Vietnam has been my favorite stop so far. This is an amazingly vibrant country and I can easily see trying to come back and explore some more.

Nha Trang

3:30 came early, and after a small breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee, our group was off to the airport. For what Semester at Sea calls an "overland trip" we were a small group. Myself, two other staff/faculty, eight students and an older couple who were traveling with SAS as "Life-long learners" - 13 in all. The trip to the airport and the one-hour flight was uneventful and soon we found ourselves in the coastal city of Nha Trang. The city is a fishing port that has over the last twenty years become a tourist destination. Thousands of Vietnamese crowd the city during Tet and the city gets its fair share of international tourists as well. It's popular with French and Russian tourists although we heard English and American accents from time to time.

We were met at the airport by our guide for the next three days, Liem. He was a jovial, upbeat native of Nha Trang who had some English, but was far from fluent. He was anxious to please and his default answer to any question was "yes", whether or not he understood the question. This took me a bit of confusion and laughter to figure out and I quickly learned to ask the same question two or three different ways until I was sure he understood what I was asking. Hard to be too critical, his English was a lot better than my Vietnamese.

Giant Buddha looking over his temple

We spent the morning traveling to several local temples including one with a huge cement, whitewashed Buddha. While these temples were obviously tourist attractions, they were also actively in use and folks were lighting incense and kneeling in front of alters while we tourists walked around snapping pictures. It felt a bit irreverent, but the local worshipers seemed to take it in stride - kind of how I stopped noticing middle-aged women dressed up in long black dresses with too much silver jewelry when I lived in Salem Massachusetts. Just the price of living in a tourist town, no matter what part of the world…

Noon time brought us to a much-needed lunch. When you eat breakfast before 4 a.m. you start to get hungry by the time the regular lunch time rolls around. This meal, like every meal we've had off the ship was wonderful. Spicy beef and chicken dishes combined with fried noodles and lot's of crunchy vegetables. I'm starting to grab the chopsticks first whether or not a fork is available. Following lunch we visited a local market, half food stuff with locals buying their dinner and half stalls crammed with the same tourist crap we saw the previous day in Saigon. Somewhere in the middle of the country there is a warehouse filled with this stuff and they just resupply the little carved box or the jug of wine with the cobra in it as needed. We toured around a bit more and then Liem deposited us at our hotel in time for a shower, an internet check and the short ride to yet another fabulous meal.

Dinner was close enough that we were able to walk back to the hotel. We did this on purpose as the way took us by the city's "night market" - a closed-off street jam packed with stalls designed to separate the tourist from his dollar. We were packed shoulder-to-shoulder as we moved from stall to stall looking at tee shirts, jewelry and other such trinkets. Everyone held on to their valuables which was a good thing. Other groups from our ship had wallets, phones and passports stolen on trips, but our group was vigilant and we held on to all our stuff throughout our visit to Nha Trang. Most of the crowd seemed to be Vietnamese on holiday and the stalls were doing a steady business. Following the market we continued down the main drag along the beach admiring the bright lights and decorations for the Tet holiday. It was very festive and street vendors grilling meat and seafood cluttered the sidewalks. Making our way down the street was a challenge as you often had to step off the sidewalk, nearly into traffic to avoid little temporary restaurants set up serving ten or twenty people sitting right on the sidewalk. Very informal - I don't think the street vendor business permit is a concept that has made it here yet.

Our hotel was great - very modern and western. I had a great night's sleep and we awoke early for our adventure day. Following breakfast, we took our little bus to the dock and got aboard a small speedboat that barely held all of us. A quick half hour speeding across the bay brought us to a little float that supported a small scuba and snorkeling operation. We spent a couple of hours or so swimming and snorkeling in the disappointingly cloudy water. The reefs here are in pretty bad shape. The water is clouded from boat traffic and there are very few, pretty small fish. I imagine overfishing and boat traffic are working to really beat up the reef ecosystem. I saw a lot of bleached coral and algae - both signs of a stressed reef. Disappointing, but not unexpected from what I had read about Vietnam. It was nice to get in the water though and by the time lunch time rolled around we were all pretty hungry. A quick boat ride brought us around the island we were snorkeling on and to a little beach-side resort with a restaurant and beat up bamboo lounge chairs under a bit canvas rooftop. It was pleasant to sit by the water side in the shade and have a beer or three with our great lunch. Lunch was heavy on the seafood, including grilled fish, octopus, cooked oysters and some spicy fish and rice. Yum.

We got back in time for a siesta (for most of the students) and a long walk through town by yours truly. I was accompanied by one of the students and she and I ended up at the same market from the day before. She made some gift purchases while I mostly resisted spending money. I did pick up a thing or two, spending a total of about five dollars. The difference between cheap crap in the US and cheap crap in Vietnam, is the crap is REALLY cheap here. We walked back along the beach and I just enjoyed being near the water watching the crowds playing on the beach. We got back in time for yet another fantastic dinner. Our Life-long learner couple were celebrating their 32nd Anniversary, so we surprised them with a little cake following dinner, thanks to Liem. The pastries here are excellent, likely a legacy of the French occupation. Who said the French aren't good for anything?

Our last day in town was completely free. I had originally planned to try to get out snorkeling again, but after the previous day's disappointing conditions I opted instead to take a walk. I set out in the morning and headed down along the water towards the north, in the opposite direction from where we had previously explored. It was a great walk and I got some great pictures of the local fishing fleet tied up and not working this week with New Year's celebrating going on. I wandered along the waterfront and wandered inland checking out the non-touristy areas. It's a cute town and I feel like I really got to see how the locals live - at least the urban locals. I found a little restaurant that fortunately had a picture menu - no English. I ended up with a steaming beef and noodle dish and a blended coconut drink. With seconds on the drink the entire meal filled me up and set me back around three bucks. I was a bit worried about the ice in the drink, but my stomach survived the entire Vietnam trip unharmed.

I kept walking through the afternoon eventually making a huge loop around the north end of the town and ending back at our hotel. I figure I covered maybe eight or nine miles - not a huge distance for me, but I was wearing flip-flops, not the ideal hiking gear I fear. I ended up with a couple of small blisters, but really can't complain. It was a great day. By early evening we were back on the bus and heading back to the airport. There was a bit of a flight delay (the only real bump in the entire trip) but soon enough we were back in Saigon and we were back on the ship just before midnight. A good trip.

Saigon

The official name for the capital of Vietnam is of course Ho Chi Minh City, but just about everyone I met in the country called the capital by its pre-war name, Saigon. By whatever name it's a fun city. Getting there took a lot longer than I thought it would as the broad river delta that greeted us at sunrise turned into a narrow channel winding its way through lowland forest. We slowly made our way upriver against a considerable current from the river and a falling tide, passing small fishing craft and little huts on the river bank. We didn't start to spy the tall buildings of Saigon itself until mid-morning. By noon, we were alongside and the loudspeaker was calling classes to get to their busses for their Field Exercises. In every port, some subset of classes have activities associated with the course work that are carried out either in the first day of the visit or the last. Today's activities included temple visits for World Religion classes and visits to Vietnamese water puppet shows by Theater classes. Myself, I had nowhere I had to be, so I headed into downtown Saigon.

The city was bigger than I expected. I guess my mental image of Vietnam has been formed by bad Hollywood movies. The reality is that the central downtown is a combination of beautiful French Colonial architecture combined with the non-linear towers of steel and glass that we saw in every Asian port city we've seen so far. American cities like New York and San Francisco have very different skylines, more regular and straight. Asian cities have twisted and non-symmetrical looks that give them a more alien feel from my western point of view. The main streets are wide, often with medians of flowers or trees running down the center - a legacy of the French. Side streets are tight, with little shops and stands standing side by side.

A small group of us wandered around the downtown, looking at shop windows and dodging traffic. There was a LOT of traffic. Motorbikes dominate the scene, with entire waves of scooters and small motorcycles filling the streets, sometimes nine or ten wide. While there was the occasional streetlight, most of the intersections seemed to have very few rules. Bikes and cars entered, moved around each other and seemed to narrowly avoid hitting each other using some sort of psychic power. When a bus needs to make a left hand turn, it just pulls slowly into the traffic and the motor bikes just flow around it like a school of fish swimming around a coral head. Crossing the street requires slow movement forward and a lot of faith that the motor bikes will go around you. There is definitely an art to being a pedestrian here.

When the ship arrived, Vietnam was in the middle of Tet - the lunar new year celebration. Everywhere you look, yellow marigolds decorate storefronts and restaurants. Several of the larger streets were completely closed down to all but pedestrian traffic as the streets were flooded with colored lights, fancy displays, dioramas and lots of red flags. It was really quite pretty. A large group of us met at a rooftop restaurant and could look down at the sea of people and vehicles winding through the brightly lit streets. I called it an early night as I had to get up at 3:30 the following morning for our trip North. More about that next time...

China, Part II - The Great Wall

Contemplating the entire semester I was going to spend on the ship, the one experience I was most looking forward to was hiking the Great Wall of China. This trip is one organized by the Institute for Shipboard Education, the "company" that operates the ship. This is separate and in partnership with the University of Virginia which operates the academic program. I signed up for this trip which was billed as a two-day hiking experience on the Wall itself and one-day tour of Beijing followed by a flight to Hong Kong to meet back up with the ship. Other trips offered a "visit" to the Wall, but this was the only one that spent extended time actually hiking and experiencing what it was like to be up on the wall for any length of time. I've seen the iconic photographs of the Wall with the sweeping majesty of the steep-sided mountains in the background and this was what I wanted to do.

The trip began with a morning bus ride to the Shanghai airport and a two-hour flight to Beijing. The Beijing airport is a model of efficiency, renovated and improved for the 2008 Olympics. We were a group of 36 students and faculty/staff and all were traveling with only a carryon, so we quickly exited the airport and got on a bus to Miyun, a city an hour and a half drive to the north. Our guide was a local man named "Raymond" (his English name) who spoke excellent English and gave us a non-stop commentary along the way. He was very upbeat, joking and laughing with the students. He had a great style and we all enjoyed him the entire time we were together.

By late afternoon, we had arrived in Miyun which was much larger than I expected. Miyun is not a tourist city. People who come to China to see the wall book day trips out of Beijing and never even pass through the city. We were the only non-Chinese we saw the entire two and a half days we were there. Signs were rarely in anything but Chinese and we spent our time pretty much at the mercy of smiling, nodding and saying Knee How (good day) and Shia shia (thank you) - the only Chinese I picked up with any hope of correct pronunciation. No, the spelling isn't correct.

We checked into a very nice hotel and had a group dinner just like the lunch I described in the last post - ten to a table and endless food. That evening we walked around town a bit, but the temperature was well below zero (around ten degrees F or so) so we didn't stop moving. We discovered the local department store/grocery called "Wu Mart" which caused many Wal Mart jokes. As we walked through the market, we got lots of stares and even points by little kids. It was pretty clear that white people don't come to town very often.

In the morning, we had a hotel breakfast and got back on the bus. It took us the better part of an hour to reach our starting point and we piled out of the bus. It was still bitter cold and some of the students were not all that pleased to be standing out in the cold waiting to start. People pretty much began to warm up as we began to walk down the broken pavement of the small town where we started. Soon we were climbing upward on a series of switchbacks which led us to the Wall.

This section of the Wall, had pretty much not seen renovation in a long time, perhaps since it had been constructed some seven hundred years ago. The walkway was crumbling, huge sections of brick completely missing and in some places we were walking on the rock the Wall was originally constructed upon. Other places showed the original construction in pretty good shape, but mostly you got the feel that you were walking on a very old structure, one that was well in place before Christopher Columbus got the crazy idea to head westward into the sunset himself. It was an amazing place to be and I was pleased to see the students appreciating the experience. The day started off cold and overcast with a bit of snow on the ground, but not enough to impede us from moving forward. Every so often, there was ice on the ground which made the footing slippery. You had to really watch your step in places as there were no handrails or other aids to navigation. You fall off the Wall, you go splat - there's no one to sue.

In places the way was pretty narrow and a couple of students had acrophobia - one so serious that she eventually after a couple of hours decided to go back down, led by one of the local guides who were accompanying us along the way. This was probably for the best as by late morning, there were several sections that were truly narrow and I doubt she would have made it. For me, I've always been an acrophile - the higher the better.

As lunchtime approached, we were urged forward by Raymond. He said that there were "burgers" waiting for us. I couldn't figure how we could actually be having hamburgers in so remote a place. I figured he meant sandwiches of some sort and was missing the translation. When we descended down to the guard tower, there were three local men with three large red coolers they had packed up from the valley floor. Inside? Boxes and boxes of MacDonald's Big Macs! They had put boiled towels inside the coolers to keep them warm and started handing them out. I haven't had a hamburger from MacDonald's since I was a little kid and here I was faced with Big Macs on the Great Wall. Well, I generally attempt to try local cuisine, and I was pretty hungry so I dug in with the hungry students and ate my lunch. I now have an answer to the question "what was the strangest food you ate on your trip around the world?".

Following lunch, we descended off the wall and traveled overland to bypass a section of the wall that was too degraded to travel upon. As we climbed back up to the ridge we could see the section we climbed trailing off into the mist. Quite the amazing sight. As we continued to hike, the weather began to improve with the clouds breaking and the sun shining through. By mid-afternoon it was still quite cold, but we had beautiful blue skies and sunshine. There was just enough snow on the ground to let you know it was wintertime - pretty much ideal hiking conditions. We continued for several hours on sections of the Wall that showed evidence of more recent repairs. We finished the day and climbed down to a small parking lot where the bus met us to drive us back to another fantastic meal and a night in the same hotel from the night before.

The following day, we reversed the direction and started from the same point we departed the day before. This section showed lots of improvements, likely done in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. The day was more beautiful than the last with brilliant blue skies and fantastic visibility. The wind had picked up a bit which made standing and admiring less fun than keep-moving-and-admiring. It was nice to contrast the renovated sections, with large guard towers and barracks with the more broken down sections from the day before. I suspect that the average tourist that gets to see the Wall only is shown the "nice" sections and doesn't realize that the 3000 plus length of the Wall isn't whole and complete. It was a privilege to see the older section - it's not something that many tourists get the chance to do.

Looking back at the Wall on Day 2 of the hike

This day's hike ended in mid-afternoon. Lunch was a bit more civilized with sandwiches and fruit carried by each hiker. Thank goodness, I don't think my digestive system could have handled another gut bomb. By 3:00, we were all back on board the bus and rolling towards Beijing. Just before dinner we were treated to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and souvenir shopping opportunity. Kind of touristy, but the students seemed to enjoy the opportunity to spend some money. I heard one complain that she was having trouble staying within the $900 per port stop limit her parents had subjected her to. I felt bad for her - what a burden.

We stayed in a Beijing Holiday Inn on our final evening in China where we met other Semester at Sea groups on other tours. The lobby was a sea of white people making me realize that I had already changed my mental search image. For the last two days, every white face (and a few black ones) belonged to our group. I wasn't used to seeing any non-Chinese who wasn't traveling with our group. One of our guides complained about the same thing. Apparently all those white people look the same. It makes you realize that your brain takes a lot of short cuts when it gets the chance. This hotel had somewhat reliable internet although it was quite overloaded with a hundred US college students all attempting to upload pictures to Facebook at the same time.

The following morning we checked out and took our bus for a short ride to Tiananmen Square. We got dropped off at one end of the square and we walked through the bitter cold and wind out into the square. This is a place full of history and tension. We actually stood right on the place where the iconic photograph of the students facing off a Chinese tank happened. Staring up at the portrait of Mao hanging on the gate to the Forbidden Palace was an amazing experience. It was a bit too cold to stand and talk, so I'm afraid the experience may have been a bit unappreciated by many of the students. I really enjoyed seeing the place I had read so much about.

We proceeded under the busy street and walked underneath the portrait of Mao into the Forbidden Palace itself. The palace is said to have 9,999 rooms because the Emperor in Heaven has a palace of 10,000. I believe it - the place is huge. We walked the entire length of the palace, stopping occasionally to peer into display spaces and look at the interesting statuary. It was so cold that we moved fast and after an hour or so made our way back to the bus. From there we headed to the airport and the four hour flight to Hong Kong. Everything went smoothly and we were looking at the lights of Hong Kong as the bus pulled up to the ship around 8:30 that evening. The ship was literally tied alongside a mall. You had to walk through the mall past glass-fronted clothing stores and shoe shops to get to the gangway to get aboard ship. An amazing day looking back. At nine a.m. we were on the top of the Great Wall of China - less than twelve hours later we are standing on the pier looking at the Hong Kong skyline. What a world.

We were scheduled to depart Hong Kong the following afternoon, so this was our only evening in the city. I decided to walk out and take a look at the city a bit. I ended up wandering into the Night Market where pretty much every consumer item you could imagine was up for sale. In fact, all of Hong Kong seems to be a temple to buying crap you don't really need. I'm proud to say that while the cheap knock-off designer jeans and bootleg episodes of "Friends" were tempting, I didn't spend any money. I was back on board the ship by midnight, ready for our second market visit in the morning.

That visit went well. The market was pretty similar to the one we had visited in Shanghai, although more spread out. The students wandered through the crowded streets doing their assignment which involved planning a menu using the local nutritional offerings. It was an interesting exercise which required them to do more than just look at the "weird" foods, but to really think about what a local family might do to have a nutritionally-balanced diet. A challenge in many parts of the world.

We got back to the ship around 2:30 leaving me very little time to see any of Hong Kong in the daylight. I met Anne Marie, one of my traveling companions in Hawaii who was looking to take a short walk as well and we walked back through the mall and in five minutes we were at the dock for the Star Ferry. For the price of about $0.30 US, we got a trip across the harbor to stroll among the skyscrapers. The ferry gave us a nice view of the harbor and our own ship which was pretty cool. On the other side we walked around a bit and found one bank building that had an observation tower on the 76th floor. We took that opportunity and got a great view of the city and the harbor below. We could see our ship way across the harbor looking like a bathtub toy which was fun to see. We didn't have much time, so we took the express elevator back to the street and reversed our walk. We were back on board by 5:00, missing the "rush" of students who wait till the last minute to get back on board. If you are late boarding, you receive a penalty of "dock time" which is time you have to stay on board in the next port when everyone else gets to get off the ship. The penalty is something like an hour for every ten minutes late. This is a pretty effective method of having a lot of latecomers and keeping us on schedule.

We cleared out of Hong Kong customs and pulled away from the pier just as the "famous" skyscraper light show began. After Shanghai, this waterfront wasn't quite as impressive, but they do an interesting bit of coordinated lights and lasers to the time of music we couldn't hear over the ship's engines. It was fun to watch the pretty colored lights as we steamed out of the harbor, bound for Viet Nam. We have three days of classes (one has passed as I write this) before our next port call. We are steaming along under cloudy skies and relatively calm waters. Last night we were among a fleet of brightly lit fishing vessels. I imagine in this part of the world, they were fishing squid but we didn't get close enough to see. This morning I can see from my cabin window, two container ships moving opposite our course. We are likely in pretty busy waters for the immediate future. The port stops are going to be coming fast and furious in this part of the world and I'm afraid I'm not going to have time to process it all. So far it has been amazing and wonderful.

If you've read this far - thanks. I don't know how much internet connectivity we will have in Viet Nam, so don't be surprised if it's a while before I'm able to post again.

China, Day 1. Shanghai

We had a quick, two-day transition from Kobe to arrive in Shanghai, China. The city is a massive shipping port that lies some thirty miles up the Yangtze river. Since I was planning on leaving the ship in Shanghai and returning via plane to Hong Kong, I set my alarm to 0500 in order to watch our transition up the river. It was a cold, grey morning and as we slid slowly up the river. Massive apartment buildings share the river shoreline with commercial shipping ports, gigantic dry dock facilities and mored vessels of all types. It took us the better part of three hours to make our way upriver to the incredible downtown where we were set to dock. I've been told that Shanghai hosts ten of the fifteen tallest buildings in the world, including the third tallest tower which serves as a television transmission station for much of eastern China. These giant skyscrapers dominated both sides of the downtown as we slid alongside the breakwater.

Clearing customs went fairly quickly and we were in fact ushered off the vessel a full hour earlier than scheduled. This day I was joining a biology class that was set to tour a local food market. This has a very different meaning from going down to Smiths Market in Utah. A fifteen minute bus ride brought us into a commercial district not much-visited by any tourists. The market was crowded into a dark partly covered alleyway jam-packed on both sides with stalls selling just about any fresh foodstuff you can imagine, and quite a few you probably cannot. Citrus and green leafy vegetables shared spaces with bulbous purple fruit with green tufts. Bags of rice and other grains sat beside giant tubers and roots. Live fish and all sorts of marine invertebrates swam about in styrofoam coolers with aquarium bubblers keeping them alive. Prawns, crabs and other seafood was also available boiled on the spot and even in some cases in a dried form. Deeper into the market whole cows had been rendered into their component parts and there was even a station where you could watch a live clucking chicken reduced to its component breast, legs and wings. If you want to serve chicken wings, you are going to have to buy a lot of chickens… Coming from (mostly) the US, I don't think a lot of students had ever had to connect their meat to the actual animals they come from. This was an eye-opening experience for many of them and we may have created a couple of new vegetarians in the process.

Following our time in the market, we had a traditional Chinese lunch at a local restaurant. We sat ten to a table with a giant "lazy Susan" in the center. Dishes of steaming food were brought out and you just spun the wheel and took what you wanted. I learned that you use the big end of the chopsticks to serve yourself and then flip them over to eat. The food was delicious and seemed to never stop. In all of my restaurant dining experiences in China, I found that I was full far before they were done bringing food. Following lunch we returned to the vessel and I had the afternoon and evening free.

I hooked up with a small group of staff from the ship and we set out to do a bit of exploring by foot. I was scheduled to depart first thing the following morning for Beijing, so I wanted to see at least a little of Shanghai that didn't involve chickens losing their heads. We set out from the vessel and walked along the river waterfront admiring the tall buildings and crowds of people enjoying the day. This time of year is Chinese New Year and many people have time off from work and will travel, mostly to where family live. Shops were doing a brisk business and it felt a bit festival-like on the streets. We walked for quite a while until we found ourselves in a local market where we wandered around admiring the fantastic decorations for the New Year. We are in year of the Dragon about to enter the year of the Snake. There were lanterns and other lit displays everywhere. Loud music played as large dioramas of flying sword fighters battled above illuminated ships, flowers and animals floating in a large lagoon crisscrossed with boardwalks filled with people. It was very cool and we were shoulder-to-shoulder with the throngs admiring the displays. The entire evening we were the only white people I saw who weren't on our ship.

Eventually we got to the center of the display where there was a two-story traditional looking building that turned out to be a tea house. Most of the signs were in Chinese, but there was a small sign that stated that this tea house was "said to be the oldest in Shanghai". So, I don't know if it is the oldest, but it's said to be… At this point, our group was down to four and we went upstairs and found a table overlooking the bright lights of the New Year's display. After some smiling and pointing we eventually ordered tea. The names of the tea had English translations and we each ordered a different type. I think my favorite tea name was "Love Story between Flower and Butterfly". So much more pleasant than "Lipton" or "Green", don't you think? Each of us received a small teapot and then the table got a plate of steaming tofu, some small cookies/pastries and a whole plate of quail eggs. These are thin-shelled eggs that are boiled. You don't peal them, you just pop them into your mouth whole. They taste like a hard-boiled egg, with some sort of unidentified spice. They are a bit crunchy as the shell is thin, but still there.

After our tea experience, we wandered among the shops a bit and then found a cafeteria-style restaurant where the food is cooked right in front of you and you just pick what you want and pay. Very convenient where you can't speak the same language as your waiter and the menu isn't in English. We had to do some guessing, especially for the two vegetarians in our party, but everything we got was quite good. We ate and made our way back to the ship, admiring the bright lights on the tall buildings we had passed in the daylight earlier in the day. We sat for a while in the Glazier Lounge on the bow of the ship admiring the skyline and were treated to an interesting sight. At 10:00 p.m. in Shanghai, they turn off the lights. Entire blocks of gigantic skyscrapers went from brightly lit in neon colors that have never seen a rainbow, to just off - like turning a switch. In a matter of minutes, you could only see streetlights, the occasional office light with a late night worker and the small blinking white lights that warn off aircraft. It was kind of spooky. Guess they were trying to tell me it was time for bed…