Archive for October, 2006

Namaste From India

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

Port #6. Chennai, India. I am sitting here at the Varanasi with a red clay dot (Tula) on my forehead and I honestly don’t know where to begin. India is not what I expected.

I arrived in Chennai and it gave me a horrible impression of what I was going to be experiencing for the next 4 days. The rickshaws (yellow, three-wheeled motor taxis) ripped us off in every way, the foul stench of body odor, musk and sulfur filled the air and none of the food looked edible. I saw women in beautiful sari’s and the children, however dirty, had an air of total innocence and naivety.

After my first day, I got onto a plane with a group and flew to New Delhi. From New Dehli we had a connecting flight to Varanasi. We checked into the Radison and it was so beautifully decorated. Rose petals were all over the floor and read “Welcome Semester At Sea.”

As we left the hotel, our first stop was the tree that the first Buddha sat under and gave his sermons. By this tree there are huge (VERY HUGE) ants that crawled around at lightning speed. Outside of all the tourist attractions there are women with children begging for food. Most of the children have severe deformities and often times even bugs in their eyes. There were several times I had to wipe tears from my eyes.

The temples in India are amazing; so peaceful and intimate. The cows are considered a deity so you see them laying in the middle of the road and people just let them be and drive around them. There are also goats everywhere, one was standing on top of a table with a dog underneath the table. Speaking of which, there are dogs everywhere and about one third of them are rabid. Scary!

Next we went shopping and I bought a pretty green and pink sari. I also bought a marble elephant and a lotus flower carved into sandalwood. I bought my mom a bell for her zen room and a marble elephant too.

The next morning I had a 4:30 AM wake up call and left for the Ganges River shortly thereafter. This is where I saw the most beautiful sunrise of my life. The Ganges River is where people bathe to ask for cleansing of their sins. It is also where they creamte freshly deceased bodies and set them afloat into the water. (The source of the Ganges river stems from the Himalayas). We saw a cremation ceremony taking place and the body was wrapped in bamboo and decorations. There are no women allowed near this proccess and we weren’t allowed to take pictures. This was the most intense moment of my life. The water had ashes in it and smelled, yet people bathed in it to ask for repentance . I also saw an entire dead cow floating upside down, it was very unsettling. People buy theres bowls made out of a leaf and inside the bowl is a candle surrounded by rose petals. With this, you make a wish and set it afloat in the river.

So now I am exhausted both physically and emotionally. I am at the airport now, getting ready to go back to Delhi for a day.

I really liked Varanasi. They call this city “the holy city” and is one of the oldest cities in the world. Monkeys climb atop the buildings and goats wander around with bells around their necks. I saw artifacts in a local museum from the First Century! It was amazing, they weren’t in glass cases or anything, and they were in perfect condition.

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Semester At Sea- First Stop…Hawaii

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

These Entries are backdated and I often give a retrospective point of view noted by (parentheses)
I decided not to RE-write my entries, I thought it would give some insight as to how much I have changed since Fall 2006.

Hawaii. We got onto the ship in Ensenada, Mexico and Alie and I went to the closest bar for some serious Margaritas before on-ship time. T minus 1 hour. These Margaritas were huge! There was an Australian bartender and futbol on a TV from the early 90′s. The ship’s horn blew and some grey-haired cranky woman drive her car around the town yelling for all the “SASers” to get back to the port.
( At this point, the term SASer had little to no meaning to me, however, as the month went by it quickly formed a place in my vocabulary)
By the time we got to port in Hawaii, I had just gotten to know my roommate, Briana S. Brie is an only child (a product of divorced parents) and has a horrible step-mom. Sound familiar at all?
Back to Hawaii. We went to the beach, did some last minute shopping for necessities we’d forgotten and ate at a Thai restaurant. It wasn’t that great, but then again how many Thai people do you see in Hawaii? Nothing beats aunt Tina’s Thai. It was Me, Roy, Zach (ugh) and this girl Kristine. She’s the most hilarious alcoholic from Indiana. We went to the International Marketplace in Waikiki and I got a pearl out of an oyster shell and set it on a silver band with two small diamonds. It was absolutely gorgeous and reminded me of the one grandma Bim gave Mom. (This was the first of all the expenses mom thought unnecessary!)
Next Port of Call: Kobe, Japan.

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Burma/ Myanmar Close to My Heart

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Port Number 5. Myanmar. Myanmar, or Burma as it was called, was absolutely amazing! I arrived at Yangon Port and took a 45 minute bus ride into the city. Rangoon city was unlike any of the previous ports and to my surprise, Hong Kong now had competition for my favorite city on the itinerary.

The first night I stayed at the Traders Hotel and ate dinner. I hit the sack early as my intention was to be awake before sunrise. At 6 o’clock in the morning I got in the back of a pick-up truck covered by a tarp, and sat in the rain for nearly two hours to get to Inle Lake. Inle Lake, a village of floating gardens, floating temples, floating monestaries, floating houses and floating stores, is situated two hours inland from any major city. On the drive to Inle Lake our group was followed by the Military Junta on motorcycles with rifles slung behind their backs. Never before had I felt that I was a threat to anyone, however, I was starting to see that the Burmese government was skeptical of our intentions. My intentions were only to experience the Burmese culture.

Before each port we were briefed on the culture, language and political situations of each country and during the Myanmar Pre-port we were told that their government was a strict dictatorship in which the Burmese were extreme suppressed and stripped of what John Locke would argue to be Natural Rights. We were also told that we should not try to converse with the Burmese about their government because we would not only be risk. The citizens of Burma are not allowed to travel outside of the borders, not allowed to make phone calls to the United States and definitely not allowed to discuss politics. This was a hard concept for me to grasp. As an American I am given rights that are often taken for granted. I can speak my mind, assemble in protest, choose my religion, protect myself with a firearm and travel wherever my “insatiable case of wanderlust” may lead me.

To get back to my entry, I hopped out of the truck-bed and wiped a cakey layer of orange dirt from my face and grabbed a just-as-dirty taxi. The Taxi driver drove to the floating village and so conveniently told us that he also owned a boat we could tour in. As we got to the main town, the man informed me that they had just had a monsoon and had a downpour of the most rain on record in the last fifty years. As I hopped out of the taxi and found the drowning hotel, I looked down and murky orange water came up to my knees. Well, we checked in to the hotel and being as there were no banks nor ATMs in all of Burma, I had only what cash was left in my wallet from the last port. So, for five days I had $127 .00 Minus the $40 it cost per person for the long bus ride to Inle Lake and Minus the $50 each person pitched in for the 5 Night stay at the Hotel. So, I had 30-something Dollars to my name and somehow made do with what I had! One thing’s for sure, no one can say I’m high maintenance!

Trekking through rushing, murky water, we met the taxi driver at his boat and explored the floating villages. Mothers were bathing their naked young, men rowed boats carrying produce and rope, fishermen sat in the middle of the lake waiting to bring back the day’s catch and monks sat meditating in floating temples. The people seemed so serene and content, I admired them. It is amazing how much we take for granted. I can’t help but wonder what it would be like, how our values would change if we were less reliant on the material and technological aspects of life.

The people in Burma are so cut off from the rest of the world…I met a man whose sister recently moved to America and got married. He told me, in very broken burm-english, that he had not spoken to her in seven years because they are not allowed to call the United States and their letters were shredded. I can’t even begin to imagine the idea of not being able to speak to my family.

Burma has been great.

On another note, these Malarone pills for Malaria are giving me the weirdest dreams. I had a dream that Bob Marley was playing on the ship but the ship was on land. Zach Ransom didn’t have dreads and I was just very confused. Every morning when we go to breakfast, you can hear everyone talking about their vivid dreams and how weird they are.

I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed and relax, but for now, I’ll enjoy Burma.

Next stop, India.

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