big mistake

I just deleted all of the pictures from my Safari in South Africa..... I just thought you all should know.....

Good Morning Vietnam

For some reason every port we visit is my favorite port and vietnam was no different. It is a beautiful country with a very unique culture.
One of my good friends on the ship, Chi Chi, is from Vietnam and she took me as well as 15 other kids to her house on the first day. Her mom made us so much food it was insane how much we ate. Fruit is a big deal and just about everywhere we went including Chi Chi's house they had us try all of the unique fruits of the area, such as dragon fruit, jackfruit, rose apples, durian, and a very interesting fruit called breast milk. Food was an adventure here they serve dog and rat as well as many snakes, unfortunately I did not find a place to eat dog or rat, and I really wanted to eat a cobra heart, but Chi Chi said I had to go down a dark ally to find that so I thought it best to leave that for my return visit. I did however try the snake wine, this is a beverage that consists of rice wine, or rice moonshine that ferments for three years in a jar that is full of dead snakes. It wasn't terrible, someone else described it as a whiskey flavor, but I don't think I will be drinking a snake-and-coke any time soon.
I had no idea but apparently getting a suit is just a thing you do in Vietnam so while we were at Chi Chi's house they had their personal tailor stop by and all the guys got suits made for us, I got a navy blue suite, it's pretty awesome.
Before I get to far into what my trip was like I should describe how one crosses the road here so that you can picture how exciting it was to even walk down the street to go shopping. How it works is that the cars never stop, and the majority of vehicles are motorcycles and scooters. What you do is simply start to walk across the road slowly and never changing speed. The motorcycles and cars part around you as you cross and you find yourself in the middle of a four lane road during rush hour as vehicles fly past you and you are terrified hoping that everyone gives you enough room, it is actually really fun once you get the hang of it, and it is nice because you never have to wait for a light to change, you just cross when you want and where you want, very different from Singapore where there was a 1000 dollar fine for j-walking.
On the first night we decided to go to Karaoke, but half the group got caught up at Chi Chi's house so me and three friends decided to go do our own thing. We ended up having a very interesting night. First we stopped by the wedding reception of two students who got "married" really they just wanted the cheap open bar that accompanied a wedding ceremony, it was not exactly our crowd so we left rather quickly and went in search of another place, little did we know that we would be leaving the next place even quicker.
We were walking down the road and saw "billiards" outside this little bar, so we thought we would go in and see what it was like, we all liked to play pool. Well, funny how it works, because it turns out that we walked into a brothel. Ya, all we wanted to do was play a game of pool and have a beer, but this institution was designed for much more than that. Being the naive people we are we didn't get the hint until several girls asked us if we wanted them to go back to the hotel with us, and we quickly caught on. None of us were interested in what they had to offer but as we stood there I asked them about their life and how they got involved in this job, did they like it, were they happy, that kind of thing, but apparently one of the girls started answering to honestly about her "boss" and another girl started yelling at me, so we quickly made our way exit and avoided the three "bosses" that were at the door. Just so you know, Vietnam is one of the largest countries for human trafficking in the world. The rest of the night was much smoother and we all made it safely back to the ship.
I went on a trip to the Mekong Delta, There we stayed in a local house on the water and visited the worlds largest floating market. It was amazing to see how similar life was to the backwaters of India and the small tributaries of the Amazon. One night we had dinner on a river boat, there were professional singers entertaining the whole boat which was filed with not only our group but several other Vietnamese groups celebrating an occasion, somehow I ended up on stage singing "as long as you love me" by the Backstreet Boys, it was a pretty big hit, the funny part was that there was a piano player who didn't know the song, and he was the only accompaniment, so it sounded nothing like the song and I could not even think of the words or tune because he was just playing whatever he wanted on the synthesizer, nothing like embarrassing yourself in foreign countries. We visited a brick manufacturing facility and I helped put the mud into the machine that shaped the bricks, it was a good time, very messy and hard work, I could not imagine doing that for 10 hours straight.
We did a lot of shopping, Vietnam is a big place in the knock-off industry. You can buy anything you want there. One of my favorite stories happened on the last day. I had been looking for dress shoes for two days since I didn't have any to wear with my new suit. Shoes here are very European and come to a very odd point, shoes should be shaped like a foot in my opinion. I finally found the perfect shoe, I tried on a size 42 but needed a 43 (european sizes). As the woman was talking to us trying to distract us you could see in the back another worker stretching out the 42's with a piece of wood, really working the shoe to make it bigger, and then they brought out the same pair of shoes with a sticker over the original size that said 43. We all started laughing and even the workers laughed when they knew that we had caught onto their game. I almost bought them because of their ingenuity, but 40 dollars for a knock-off shoe that didn't fit was just to much.
The trip was not all fun however. One thing that caught me off guard was how prevalent the Vietnam, or as they call it the American war still was. Kids are still being born with birth defects from the agent orange and other chemicals we dropped over the land. Whole areas of farms are still toxic and the effects of the war can still be seen everywhere you look. Just a few years ago someone was killed by a land mine that was left over.
I visited the war remnants museum on the last day. I have never had a physical response to movies or sights, but I felt like I was going to throw up the entire time I was in this place. It was honestly sickening to see the images, the preserved fetuses and the rubble from the war. We dropped millions of gallons of toxic chemicals, the effects of which are still felt today. Seeing what happened from the other perspective was very emotional. Seeing language like American Imperialists, and other choice words used to describe the USA made me step back and think about everything in a new light. One thing I found interesting was that throughout the entire museum they made it very clear that it was not the American people, but the American government that was to blame, on ever wall was another example of how Americans protested the war and disliked the war. Generally we don't think of the government and the people as two separate entities, we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we are the government, at least that is how I generally see things, but from their perspective of their own relations between government and peoples, they could easily draw that distinction.
I learned a lot in this port and I will always remember what visiting here made me feel. One of the big things I have been trying to do is to make it count, in everything I do I want to make it count. Each experience and every moment can teach you something and make you realize something, it is very easy to let things flow over you and not think twice about them, but I have made it a point in my trip and now in my life to have all of my experiences flow through me not over me, and by doing that and by being present in the moment and paying attention to what every minute can teach me I am trying to make it count.
So I will write again after China and after I see Katie! ( I am so excited she has a lot of stuff planned), take care, and make it count.

This ship is awesome

Before I talk about Vietnam I just wanted to point out one of the reasons why this ship is awesome, I am sitting down in the piano bar attempting to write eloquently about Vietnam, and all around me there are people talking in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, a South African and a guy from New York are talking about chess, and other people are passed out on the couches, a kid from Texas is teaching a man with multiple Ph.D's to play cribbage and a Pulitzer Prize winning poet just agreed to be in my documentary. It is such an awesome experience just to be on the ship, not even considering the ports we stop at. I love this trip.

Singapore

Singapore is very clean. It is incredibly modern and developed. The big thing everyone knows about Singapore is the rules, $1000 fine for chewing gum, fines and caning for littering or jay walking. It is pretty strict country but you can easily see that it works. The roads and sidewalks are impeccable and the MRT or subway system is very clean, it is like the train in the Atlanta airport, but it goes all over the city. We were only in Singapore for a few hours, so we had to make our time count. We walked around the downtown area, we found the merlion after a long and hard trek around the city, it is a statue of a half lion half fish that spits water, it is a big spot for pictures. I had some amazing food, that was a fun experience too. The street vendors were all taken off the street and put into areas that look like food courts, called hawker centers, they are very cheap and very good. Each place has a letter grade given to it by the government that denotes its cleanliness, so you know what you're eating. While we were there we had the first thunder storm of the trip, it was a good one too, plenty of thunder crashes and lightning strikes. For dinner we went to an American bar, I had pizza and we played pool, it was nice to have a little shot of home in the middle of a major asian city. Vietnam tomorrow, as you can probably tell I am a little distracted while I write this. I will write again in a week when I'm back on the ship. Take care.

India

Hey everyone, I am sorry you haven't heard from me in a while, I had a lot of school work all due at once again and I had to make sure I got all of it done before I did this.
India is an incredible place, honestly everyone should go and spend at least a few weeks there.  It was probably one of the most transformational places I have visited because it is so different.  All the other cities had western influences, the food, clothing, movies and music were all westernized.  India however was much different.  Bollywood, Indian music, Indian food and dress were everywhere.  It was fun and interesting to be in place so very different, especially at a time when one of the major things we were realizing is that a lot of the world is similar.  We docked in southern India in the port city of Kochi.  Here the backwaters are a major attraction.  Small canals and streams that connect lakes and estuaries along the south west coast of India.  Fishing was at one time the biggest business here, chinese dip nets and specialized boats were all over the place, but now very few people actually make a living fishing.  Now tourism is the major industry.  The area has been majorly effected by environmental degradation as well as overfishing.  They say that at one point the nets were used to make money, but now people coming to see the nets is what makes money.  I went on a river boat cruise down the slow canals of the "Venice of the east" and I didn't see a single fisherman, but I saw plenty of tourist boats.
I went on a big trip with SAS while in India.  I flew from the south all the way to the north to visit Delhi, Agra and Varanasi.  Delhi is a big city, it is the capitol and actually very similar to Washington D.C. in fact our guide had spent 6 months backpacking the U.S. and knew all about our major sites and related it all back to what we were seeing.  There actually is a lot of things that look identical to Washington.  the capitol and that white house, the washington monument complete with reflecting pool were all there, with different symbolic meaning and made out of red sandstone.  New and old Delhi are the same place and there is no real difference, it is just a way of explaining the city to tourists.  The old Delhi is the area that is within the ancient city walls, and new delhi is built around the wall, also the new one has a lot to do with the British.
We took a train from Delhi to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is.  The train was awesome,  We sat with a lady who happened to teach english in a university and knew all about storytelling and folklore, everything I was interested in.  Also the bathrooms on the train were labeled, Indian style and Western style.  The western style is the throne we are all used to, the Indian style toilet, which was very popular in every public place was a hole in the ground, it was a modern hole, that flushed, but it was in the ground and you squatted over it to use it.  Apparently this is healthier for your bowls and creates less pressure than the western style.  Another interesting bathroom feature was similar to a european style bidet, but it was just a hose next to the toilet.  I know many of you are thinking it, but no I did not use either of these bathroom features.
In Agra we visited several sites that were incredible.  We saw Fatehpur Sikri.  THis was a marvelously built palace constructed by Akbar (his grandson would build the Taj Mahal), the palace however was abandoned after several years of use and no one really know why, several reasons may be possible, for starters the water was not drinkable, and it was crazy hot.  All we know is that once Akbar left, he never returned.   We also swung by the Agra fort, a place that I would have sworn was impenetrable, until I was told that it had been taken over 6 times by various groups the last of which was the British with muskets and canons, I would call that cheating, but I guess imperialism doesn't play by the rules.  A fun fact about it, from one of the rooms you have a beautiful view of the Taj Mahal.  The man who built the Taj Mahal was over thrown by his son, and his son was not happy with all the resources his father put into building the Taj, so he had his father imprisoned in the fort (in extreme comfort) in the room that had a marvelous view of the Taj.  This kid had some daddy issues.
Our next stop in Agra was the Taj Mahal.  The Taj is a mausoleum for the wife of one of the rulers of India.  THe pictures of the place do not do it justice.  The size is immense, when we first walked in through the gates and saw it, I was taken aback by its beauty, but not by its size, until I realized that we were still really far away from it and I could only see dots that were people on its steps.  It is a massive structure, and at the same time it is so graceful that you do not feel threatened by it.  Inside the ornamentation is incredible.  There is not much inside, just the tomb of the builders wife, and he himself was laid there after his death.  The art work is incredible, millions of semi precious stones are laid into the marble.  We visited a workshop where they do work identically as how it was done in the Taj and the process is painstakingly difficult.  pieces of stone a tenth the size of your pinky nail being filed and shaped to be laid into the marble as part of a flower, it was really incredible.
The Taj was beautiful, but my favorite place by far was Varanasi.  Varanasi is the holy city of Shiva, the destroyer.  It is a city where thousands of pilgrims travel to each day.  We went to the Ganges early in the morning to witness the ritual bathing in the Ganges.  We lit candles and Placed them into the warm Ganges river as the sun began to rise.  people lined ever ghat, or staircase going into the river.  People meditating, washing, praying.  It was so interesting to see religion displayed so proudly and openly, especially coming from the U.S. where most people do not publicly display their beliefs.  In Varanasi however people paraded down the streets singing and beating drums to worship their god.  We also went to the most holy of the ghats and watched a ritual in which 7 brahmans pay homage to Shiva, it was a beautiful ceremony that happens every night, and 4,000 Hindu pilgrims traveled to see it as well.
Varanasi was very crowded.  People everywhere.  It seemed like you could do anything on the streets, get a hair cut, a shave, cook, eat, buy and sell, urinate or sleep.  It was as if you took Time Square and filled not just the sidewalks but the streets, and alleyways with people.  We took a rickshaw ride to the ghats the first night we were there and it was chaos.  The rules of the road are drive on the left...most times.  Some cars but an endless supply of motorcycles and bikes, rickshaws and people.  The horns never stop sounding and when you want someone to move you just grab their bike and move it.  Our rickshaw was hit by a motorcycle, smashed between two other rickshaws and nearly ran over a small child.  I'm just saying that I'm glade I wasn't driving.
Another shocking thing about Varanasi is that dogs are everywhere, hundreds of dogs everywhere, they are not seen as pets and they roam the streets, with plenty of food from garbage heaps.  Another animal reigns supreme in the area however, the cow is sacred.  No one eats beef.  The cows literally walk anywhere, they are allowed anywhere.  They walk down the streets, down sidewalks.  There was a cow in a store, a cow nearly ran me over  on the ghats, and we had to divert our route back to the rickshaws because cows were in the alleys.  It was insane to see so many cows just doing whatever they wanted, and no one thought twice about the cow in the store.  Over all India was amazing.  I'm sure there is more but I'm out of time.  Tomorrow I will be in Vietnam, so I still have to tell you all about Singapore which was awesome and really clean.  Take care.

The aftermath of Apartheid

For those of you who don't know and did not watch Invictius or Skin, South Africa has had a long and difficult struggle with race relations.  In 1950 the population registration act required all people to be classified by physical features into three categories; White, Coloured, and Bantu.  This system became more and more complex and confusing until there were over seven categories to be put into and how you were classified changed from what you looked like, to what your parents were, to what group accepted you.  It was quite a mess.  Anyway as I am sure many of you know this institution lead to extreme racism, those of Bantu or Coloured classification had to carry their passbooks around with them, in this book was their classification, police records, job history, and clearances to be in specific areas at specific times.  Inter marriage was strongly forbidden and any intermingling with another race was to be avoided at all costs.  This system also limited where people could live and what education and jobs they were allowed to have.  Apartheid policy carried on until it officially ended in 1989 which was the last year in which the South African population was classified in the register, but this did not end the long established relationships built between races. 

The aftermath of Apartheid is still very strong today.  Most lower level jobs are filled by those of color and higher positions are filled by white Afrikaners.  As you go around the city you can notice the huge disparity between the rich and the poor, and you can also see that for the majority that line follows racial lines.  Looking around it is only white people in the malls, and black people on the park benches.  In South Africa the term Black means something much different than in the US.  The term that would be equivalent of "black" in the US is "Non-white", but that is changing since there is a push to recognize that you cannot be a "non-person."  Being black in South Africa means that you were born speaking a Bantu language, since there are many other classifications for those who were not.  

I want to be clear that my observations are only representative of Cape Town.  You could walk around the city for days and never see the disparity.  You could drive all around the Cape Town area and never see a place below middle class.  The poverty is very well hidden.  Separated from the city by golf courses and freeways the Townships are where the poor are concentrated.  The Townships are shantytowns,  miles and miles of shacks.  Places run by ganges and thugs.  The largest one was recently known to have over one million people living within its ever growing borders.  Many people who live here do not work, unemployment is somewhere around 25%, and the population is almost exclusively "non-white".  

You may be thinking to yourself, "this is horrible" or "how sad" but I would ask that you remember, the recognition of equality only started some 23 years ago, they have come a long way in such a short time, even though there is much more work to be done.  I also urge you to look at the United States, 236 years ago we said that "all men are created equal."  it took 89 years for African Americans to be considered human, 94 years for them to get the right to vote, 144 years for women's suffrage, and 233 years for a non-white male to be elected to our highest office.  We are still not at a place of total equality but it has been said that the beauty of the United States is not where we are but at our constant struggle to reach the ideals set forth by our founders.  

I know that my experience in South Africa has made me take a closer look at my own country and my own life.  Let us remember that we are all alike, the differences between race are only skin deep.  I know that most people reading this already know and agree to this, but not everyone understands, so let's make it clear, all people are created equal.  Spread the word.  

Safari!

One of the coolest things I did in Africa was a Safari up in Kruger National Park. There were two trips to Kruger, they were the same safari, and the only difference was the accommodations, Explorer and Deluxe. I ended up in the Deluxe accommodations, and I learned that I am not a deluxe person, I am much more of an Explorer. One of the guys on my trip ordered a bottle of champaign with our gourmet lunch... that is not my kind of traveling, but it was good to experience that too, it made me realize that I like tents and campfires better then champaign and 18 hole golf courses. But anyway onto the cool part, the Safari.
We had a game driver named Happy, he was incredibly, well, happy. The head game driver was an amazing character, try to picture this man; a bushy grey beard, a strong South African / Australian accent, he wore a floppy wide brimmed hat and a khaki button-down and shorts. to top it all off he had a peg leg, a legit, pirate looking peg leg, and that is the leg he used for the gas and brakes! I was blown away by what stories this man must have, and I was even more amazed when he pulled out a pipe and started smoking it. Anyway we pulled into the park and the first thing we see is the most rare sight in the park, the Leopard. Not only did we see it in the first 10 minutes, but we saw it leap out of the bushes and attack a wild boor. It missed the boor but it was still amazing. After that we were pumped for the next two days. We saw everything we could want to see, the big five, which are the 5 most dangerous animals: the lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard. We saw giraffe, zebra, impalas, hippos, monkeys, baboons. Literally everything a zoo would have, but they were in their natural environment. I was is a game truck with a bunch of people who were avid birders, which was actually really good, because it gave us stuff to look at when we could not find any big game, I saw dozens of birds, my personal favorite was the lilac breasted roller. The way a safari works is pretty cool, anyone can actually drive through the park, and no one is allowed to drive off of the roads and paths, which at first I thought would make it not as cool as a private game reserve, but it was amazing because all the animals come right up to the road anyway. All the drivers have radios so that when one finds something cool they can call and make sure everyone gets there. It was just like the safari drive at Disney, seriously Disney does a great job.
One of the major issues in the park and in all of Africa right now is poaching, not of elephants but of rhinos, since their horns are thought to be an aphrodisiac and panacea in Asiatic countries. In fact while we were there they found two rhinos who were killed. It is a sad thing, but one rhino horn can bring in over 100,000 US dollars, and that makes it a very attractive option for many people. It is a very risky thing to do though because there is a shoot to kill policy when the army finds a poacher. Thats right, they brought in the army to patrol for poachers. The Safari was by far the coolest thing I did, but it is not the most important thing to talk about, tune in tomorrow-ish, same place, same-ish time for a commentary about post apartheid race relations. Take care.