Japan

JAPAN – For a lot of different factors not directly relating to Japan this was probably one of the toughest stops on the trip. First, the factor of travel exhaustion started to set in and motivation to plan things was at an all-time low. Japan is ridiculously expensive and with it being the last stop that made things hard. Finally, the weather didn’t cooperate too much as it rained for two of the four days that I had there. That being said this will probably be the shortest entry on a port.

            This past week was a great time to be in Japan because it was peak time to view the Cherry Blossom trees. My first day in Kobe I had a trip for one of my classes to the American Consulate in Osaka. We spent the afternoon there learning about the foreign service, how consulates work, and U.S.-Japan relations. The American relationship with Japan is critical as they are our major Asian ally in the region. The best part of the day however, was dinner in the evening in Kobe as I went out to get a Kobe steak dinner. While quite expensive it was the best steak I have ever had. The meat pretty much melts in your mouth.

            The second day I took a day trip to Kyoto from Kobe. The rail system in Japan is one of the best on the world so it’s easy to travel places on them. It took about an hour to get there from the ship. Kyoto is seen as the cultural hub of Japan as it was the former capital city and wasn’t destroyed during World War II. My lunch here was pretty interesting as we ate noodle bowls Japanese style with Green Tea meaning that you sit on the floor to eat and take your shoes off when you enter. This was one of those days where it rained a lot especially in the afternoon. While braving the weather for a while it’s still hard to enjoy places when majority of the stuff you want to see is outside. We walked up the Philosopher’s Path, which is a prime spot to see the Cherry Blossoms, and stopped at a temple. The path is a small canal lined with Cherry Blossoms next to the mountains. Soaked to the bone after 4 hours in drenching rain, that was enough for me. It was disappointing not getting a chance to see more of Kyoto but I think we did well braving through the weather as much as we did. Also, we have become spoiled seeing a bunch of different historical sites and after a while you do get sick of seeing some of them and they seem to mix in with one another. I spent the rest of the afternoon eating sushi before heading back to Kobe on the train. Day three was spent on the ship transiting up to Yokohama. The day at sea was well needed catching up on some rest and work that needed to get done. It was also nice to have the ship pretty much to yourself as manypeople opted travel overland as I did in China.

            The fourth day I went into Tokyo from Yokohama. It took about an hour commute on the train as well. The first stop in Tokyo was to see the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest seafood market in the world. The best time to go there is in the early morning when auctions are occurring but it wasn’t possible for us to arrive that early. We got there around 11 a.m. and even though it was starting to close down we were still able to see different fish. Because it wasn’t as busy, it was easier to walk around and get a feel for how big the market is. The best part was seeing the huge tuna on display or being cut at the stalls. Of course, I had sushi for lunch in the area. For a little bit in the afternoon, we walked around the Ginza area of Tokyo. My small amount of time in Tokyo was prettyunderwhelming. It was mostly high end shopping and really not too exciting. Back in Yokohama, there was a baseball game starting at 6 p.m. that we wanted tosee. This was an interesting experience as there are bands, cheerleaders, and the fans get really into the game. I’m pretty sure they brought the pitcher in on a car when they made a pitching change too. Unfortunately, it started torain in the 4^th inning and it wasn’t too fun to watch the game in the rain much longer after that.

            The last day I stayed in Yokohama because it was pouring rain, windy, and quite chilly. So the best place to go was to find somewhere to be inside and that was an indoor shopping complex. My main objective of the day was to have more sushi for lunch. I braved a walk through the Chinatown part of town in the afternoon but that didn’t last long. The price of things in Japan after a while just gets comical and it makes it hard to do things if your not prepared for the prices. Just doing things like going on the subway for two stops costs a few dollars. And I found it nearly impossible to find a cheap meal. It’s clear that Japan is a very rich country. The way people serve you and the attention to detail in Japan is amazing too as service is to be expected. For example, you are notsupposed to tip in restaurants because the service is expected. But overall, I liked Japan a lot more than China because I found the people a lot more respectful and orderly. They were also extremely nice and helpful even if they didn’t know much English at all. The order of the people is amazing as people are pretty much silent on the subway and then line up to get on it. At times its quite bizarre yet amazing how orderly it is, something you would expect in a communist country that we were in the last three stops.

           

Food ~ Kobe Beef, Chicken Noodle Bowl, Lots of sushi.

 

Drinks ~ Sake, Green Tea

 

Next stop: U.S.A.! Last night, the ship pulled out of chilly and rainy Yokohama and we said good-bye to Asia for the final time. Now it’s 10 days until we see land again in Hawaii and 17 days until we are in San Diego. Perhaps over the next couple weeks I will post some reflective pictures or essays but now it’s time to get down to business with classes and reflection of the past three months. It’s pretty sad; I’m not ready for this to be over!

China

CHINA – The final destinations of the voyage are starting to wind down and the long trek across the Pacific back to the motherland lies ahead. I’m coming to you off the east coast of Japan as we transit up to Yokohama arriving tomorrow morning for two days. China was the longest stop we had this trip with a whole week to explore the country. It’s also where I did my most independent travel and planning of exactly what I wanted to do. China was exhausting and being a culmination of by the time we depart Japan, 24 days in port over the last 34 days overall since we arrived in India. It’s been a wild ride and travel exhaustion is beginning to set in with two more days left in Tokyo.

            The ship arrived in Hong Kong on Apr. 1 and as always I made sure to wake up early as we pulled into another stunning city. Many years ago, I traveled to Hong Kong and it was very cool remembering being in spots. The skyline of Hong Kong is a spectacular sight and is quite different from the rest of China. I liked Hong Kong a lot more compared to other cities in China mainly because Hong Kong is a S.A.R. because up until 1997 the city was a British colony. Therefore, HongKong has avoided the communist Chinese rule. S.A.R. stands for “Special Administered Region” so Hong Kong remains its own country, but is in agreement to merge into China in the next 50 years.  I spent my only day in Hong Kong touring around the city going around the city center area, the SoHo district, and up to Victoria’s Peak. We also made a stop at a church, which actually was having Palm Sunday service when we arrived. It was a funny way to be reminded exactly what time of year it is as I’ve said having any concept of time on this trip is unheard of. I most enjoyed going up to Victoria’s Peak, which I remember doing the first time I was here. This is a mountain towering next to the Hong Kong skyscrapers offering great views of the city and surrounding harbor. At the peak they have restaurants, a shopping mall, and various walking paths that you can take. It is a very cool spot. In the evening, I headed out to Lan Kwai Fong, the best night district in the city to begin the 21^st birthday weeklong celebration in China. It is a street lined with many clubs and bars filled with tons of people even on a Sunday night. I enjoyed just people watching out on the street as HongKong is pretty well known for its nightlife.

            The second day was mainly making my way into the actual country of China and traveling up to Beijing, the capital city of China. I had a flight out of Shenzhen, which is located just across the border in mainland China. From Hong Kong, I took a bus that takes you across the border and to the Shenzhen airport. This was an interesting experience because I literally walked across the border into China. The bus takes you to a large building where you get out and walk through two sets of immigration, one for Hong Kong and the other for China. Then once finished a new bus picks you up on the other side and takes you to the airport. With an evening flight to Beijing, we arrived in Beijing around 11 p.m. andmade it to the hotel in downtown Beijing by midnight. The weather was quitedifferent in Beijing than what I’ve been used to this trip with a trip up to springtime weather. It was weird being somewhere where leaves were barely on trees and temperatures in the 50s and 60s.

            The third day, my birthday I spent touring around Beijing hitting the major landmarks. First thing in the mourning I headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square area. It’s amazing just how massive the Forbidden City is. In the afternoon, I took a subway to the Summer Palace, which was basically the vacation home for the emperor located on a lake on the outskirts of Beijing. Riding the subway in Beijing is quite the experience as most of the time it’s jammed with people and when you think another person can’t get on, four more do. For an interesting bit of information that I wasn’t aware of until I got there, it was a national holiday for the time we were in Beijing so it was especially busy. The holiday on April 4^th was National Grave Decorating Day where the Chinese go honor their ancestors a lot like Day of the Dead in Mexico. So nobody was working. That meant everyone was at the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, on the streets, and on the subway. It was just insane how busy it was and how many people there were. The line for tickets to get into the Forbidden City was hundreds deep but somehow they could get through to us in just 20 minutes. For my birthday that evening, I obviously headed out to the main nightspots in Beijing. Overall, it was lot of fun and will probably be a birthday I neverforget being spent outside of the U.S.A.

            The fourth day I spent making my way to the Great Wall of China. It is about an hour drive outside of Beijing to make it there. I went to the Mutianyu section that typically has a lot less tourists than other spots while also being pretty close to Beijing. Interesting enough you can take a ski lift to the top of the wall so you don’t have to hike up. I choose that option to allow for more time actually on the wall. The Great Wall was just another spectacular site lining the mountain peaks and then darting steep straight down the mountainside and going on for miles into the distance. It’s hard to believe how they actually built it, as it’s also known as one of the largest gravesites in the world for all the people that died building it. The best part though was at the edge of the tourist section the wall turns into a worn down, overgrown section of the wall. This is what majority of the Great Wall looks like. Even with signs asking people not to go on this part many people still do and the best part was experiencing this authentic section. Actually, the best view of the day wasatop one of the watch posts on the worn down section overlooking the mountains and city of Beijing in the distance. The weather was great with a clear sunny sky and in the 60s making for a perfect afternoon.

            For my last day in Beijing, I really wanted to go see the Olympic Park with the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube made famous in the 2008 Olympics and the Beijing OpeningCeremonies. More than anything it was interesting to see how they have turned these venues into something that is functioning and can bring in money instead of just being an empty stadium sitting there, which is always an issue after a city hosts the Olympics. Inside both the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest, they have shops and restaurants while still being able to go inside and tour the Olympic facility that people know it for. The area is quite nice and you could probably spend a whole day there but I had to leave in the early afternoon in order to make my way to the Beijing South Train Station. I had a 4 p.m. high-speed train ride to Shanghai. I had never been on a high-speed train before so this wasactually a very cool experience. The train reaches speeds of 300 km/hr, which comes out to about 186 mi/hr. It almost feels like you are gliding over thecountryside. The ride was 4 hours and 45 minutes putting me in Shanghai by 9 p.m. and giving me two full days to explore Shanghai. Views of the countryside provided the contrast of China, a country with many very rich people in the cities but extreme poverty outside them.

            I definitely liked the ultra modern city of Shanghai a lot better than Beijing. It’s really just a cool city to look at with skyscrapers popping up everywhere and demonstrates the wealth that the city has. I toured around the city hitting the Yu Garden in the Old Shanghai part of town before making my way to the river area. Along the river is The Bund which stares across the river at the stereotypical skyline of the Pudong district. Pudong is the main business district of Shanghai filled with building after building. It’s amazing to here stories of how this area was all farm land in just 1990 and now it’s completely full. In Pudong, I went to the World Financial Center and went up to the Observation Deck on the 100^th floor, the highest observation deck in the world soon to be surpassed in 2014 by a building they’re building right next door that will be even taller. Up top it provides spectacular views of the massive city of Shanghai including the river where you could see our ship docked. In just 30 seconds the elevator in this building can take you up and down 100 floors.  The subway in Shanghai is super efficient, cheap, and not as busy as Beijing so it is a fun way to get around the city quickly.

            For my seventh and final day in China, I had a tour of the business area of Shanghai. We stopped at the Museum of Urban Planning, which is a museum solely dedicated to how Shanghai has transformed over time and its plans as a model city of thefuture. Plans for the future are laid out that will make the city even better over time.  I don’t know of any city in the States that has such a strategic vision as Shanghai does, as they are constantly looking to become larger and better. I’m sure it helps having a government to just say where a building is going to be built instead of oursystem where we have to debate where its going to be built and how we are going to raise funds for the project. Shanghai more than anything shows a lot of the wealth that we have given China in our trading. Next, we stopped by the spot where the World Expo was held in 2010. There at the Intercontinental Hotel, the CEO of the company hosted us to a lunch to eat some fantastic Chinese food but also learn about how the hotel business is expanding all over Asia. In the afternoon, I decided to take a long walk back to the ship through the city. I walked along the busy East Nanjing Street flooded with people on a Saturdayholiday weekend afternoon (Easter Weekend). This street is the main shopping district of Shanghai. I took this road up to The Bund where I stopped to have some drinks looking out at Pudong before making my way to the ship for the final time. Shanghai is another awesome sight at night with buildings flashing glitzy colors and changing designs every few minutes. So this departure from the dock was definitely one of the highlights leaving the very cool city ofShanghai.

            I really enjoyed China but one of the parts I didn’t like about China is that people are very rude there compared to our standards. People will cut you in line, bump into, spit in front of you, sneeze in front of you without covering their mouth, and just stare at you. So as much as I enjoyed China I was ready to go and probably the place where I felt most unwelcome. I’m not trying to put down the country but it’s probably the place that it felt most culturally different to me. It’s also the one place where I was approached by the most scammers. I counted five in one day as they come up to you trying to be friendly and want to take you to some “tea ceremony.” This is one of the main reasons I really liked Hong Kong because it didn’t really have any of this since it is not technically part of China.

            It will be a long 11 days to travel across the Pacific to Hawaii as the semester windsdown and crunch time begins. These 11 days are definitely needed though as it will be good to be at a relaxed pace after the craziness for the past month. I never thought I’d say this but I am getting quite used to ship life and it’s starting to feel like home. It’s going to be tough to leave. Stay tuned for the last main country update about Japan in the next week, hard to believe it’s already at that point!

Vietnam

VIETNAM – I didn’t know what to expect going into Vietnam. It’s a country I didn’t know much about except for the brief history that I was taught about the Vietnam War. The first day in Vietnam the ship made the scenic trip up the Saigon River to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). I honestly don’t know how this keeps happening but once again I was first off the ship because a day trip I was on had to get off quickly in order to go to our meeting. We headed to a porcelain factory and spoke with the CEO. It was very interesting seeing how this high-end tableware and various products are made. The best part though was the CEO hosted us to a lunch at one of his restaurants and it was delicious. After a while I lost track but it was like a seven-course meal or something. Back in town later in the day, I went into town and just explored the area before heading back to the ship for the night. There are market areas where you can go get your goods very cheap like backpacks, luggage, shoes, shirts, or pretty much anything. They are probably all knock offs though. Downtown Saigon is pretty modern and a very nice city area. Walking around and getting across streets is an adventure however. Pretty much all the Vietnamese havemotorbikes so there’s hundreds of them passing by at once and at many places there isn’t a traffic light. So how do you cross? Well you literally step out into traffic keep a steady pace and don’t stop and somehow everyone maneuvers around you. It really is a crazy experience and quite the adrenaline rush.

            The second day I had an early departure to head up to Hanoi in the northern part of Vietnam. It’s also the capital city of the country. Hanoi is quite different than Saigon with less city skyscrapers and less of a modern city feel. The Old Quarter though provides an interesting spunk to the city. Arriving in the city by noontime, I had read about a local place that maybe I could try for lunch. The dish I got was basically a noodle bowl with some meat in it. I don’t know exactly what the ingredients were because they didn’t speak English and they just brought us something to eat. It was delicious and the atmosphere was definitely interesting. We dined on tiny plastic stools in a run down open-air store front along the street. After lunch, I toured around the city in probably a way I shouldn’t be saying publicly but motorbike taxis are quite popular. So for a few hours in the afternoon I hoped on one of those and explored Hanoi. This was quite the experience being with all the other motorbikes and crazytraffic but it is really a quite efficient and fun way to get around. The first place I stopped at was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Around here they have a national park to commemorate the man. You can actually go inside and view his body but unfortunately it its closed on Monday’s. Ho Chi Minh is the leader who led Vietnam to independence against the French and Americans. I also made stops at the Temple of Literature and the Hanoi Hilton. The temple is just an interesting temple area in the city but the Hanoi Hilton is what the American POW’s called this prison in the middle of Hanoi. This is where Sen. John McCain was imprisoned during his capture in Vietnam. In the evening, I went to a water puppet show, which actually was quite interesting and bizarre at the same time.

            On the third day, I took a four-hour bus ride to get to Ha Long Bay on the coast east of Hanoi. This was a spot I was really looking forward to since it was named one of the seven natural wonders of the world. This was the third one I hadseen on this trip along with the Amazon River and Table Mountain being the other two. Ha Long Bay did not disappoint although the weather may have notbeen ideal. It was mostly overcast while we were there so I didn’t get a chance to see the bay when it was completely clear. The boat that we were on was modeled after an old looking junk boat but the interiors of these boats arevery luxurious. Our cruise on the bay was for about 24 hours. The bay is flooded with day trip boats and also the overnight ones. Because some of the boats actually have some character to them, it is a cool sight seeing them all on the bay. Late in the afternoon we stopped to go explore one of the caves and then kayak a little around the bay. Ha Long Bay has around 2,000 mountainous islands popping up around the bay anywhere you look providing an awesome sight or new pattern to see each minute I look a different direction. Lush green brush grows out of the rocky stone. At night on the boat they try to make it a fun night with music and dancing. It was also nice sitting out on the top deck surrounded by the dark shadows of the islands while finally experiencing a comfortable temperature around 70 degrees.

            Waking up on Ha Long Bay was an awesome experience because you just open your door and you are in the middle of this marvelous natural wonder. The boat cruised around the bay a little more in the morning before heading back to the harbor so we could drive back to Hanoi. By time we reached Hanoi it was late afternoon so we had just a couple hours to kill before heading back to the airport for the flight back to Saigon.

            For my final day in Vietnam, I first headed to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. This also is referred to as the American War Crimes Museum. This experience probably was the most impactful emotionally for all of my five days in Vietnam. First off, in Vietnam the war is called the American War. The museum is quite biased in how it expresses it views but this is a perspective that Americans rarely if ever get to hear. As you enter the museum, outside there stands all of the junk that we left behind once we fled out of Saigon. Various planes, helicopters, tanks, and bombs are all out on display with the lettering “U.S. Army.” Three items really stuck out to me in the museum. First, was a small picture frame displaying awards that an American solider had earned during the war with the message, “To a United Vietnam. I was wrong. I am sorry.” Second, was a picture in the section about countries and people objecting to the war. The picturethat stuck out was the famous picture of the Kent State shooting with the young lady standing over the dead body and giving out a scream. Third, was the exhibit on Agent Orange. This really hits home because Agent Orange is something that is still affecting people today. Because of what we (Americans) decided to do people are still suffering. In the exhibit there was a letterwritten by a young lady aspiring to be a doctor who wrote a letter to President Obama asking for the Americans to provide some type of compensation for thedamages. Over the years some has come there way but not enough. The Agent Orange section of the museum is just brutal highlighting deformities and the horrifying effects of this toxic liquid. Agent Orange was used to basicallyclear the jungle because the Viet Cong (The people the U.S. was trying to fight) were fighting guerilla warfare and would use the jungle to hide.  Because of this Americans would end up killing thousands of innocent citizens in villages by bombing them hoping to kill Viet Cong. More bombs were dropped in Vietnam than any previous war.

            I could go on and on about the war because we had long discussions on the ship in seminars and in classes about the war. We are lucky enough to have President LBJ’s daughter on the ship and hearing her view from a perspective of a presidentduring the war and as a wife of someone who went to fight in Vietnam. I’ve learned that this was a war that the U.S. had no business fighting. If we had known the history of this country then we may have thought twice about stepping into Vietnam. The Vietnamese had been fighting for independence for over 2,000 years against the Chinese, French, and then the Americans. Once the Vietnamese gained independence from the French, that’s when the American stepped in trying to take that away again. That’s something you really can’t fight and contradictory of the values we hold in the Constitution. Those contradictions are boldly highlighted in the museum in large quotes from famous lines about what makes the U.S. great.

            The museum really set up a pondering question for myself as I left Vietnam. How in theheck are we allowed to still go in there and walk out alive?? The museum really made me pounder this because the brutality was displayed often throughout the museum. I never felt mistreated once while in Vietnam and found everyone to be very friendly and that’s something I just can’t quite wrap my head around yet.

           

Food ~ Pho, Bo Bun. There are a lot of things I tried that I don’t have the names of. A lot of seafood, rice, and noodles are what is included in the cuisine.

 

Drinks ~ Tiger Beer

 

I know it’s been quite a while since I posted but as I have said everything is starting to get really crazy and fast. Since I have last posted the Indians have had Opening Day, the Buckeyes were in the Final Four, and I had my 21^st birthday in Beijing. I was confident that the Buckeyes would win it all since I’m not there. It sure doesn’t feel like I’m 21 but thanks to everyone who sent cards my way. I promise you I had a good time and will try to update you sometime soon. It was really cool to still be able to get cards around my birthday. As I post this I’m looking out at the amazing city of Shanghai and its vast different glittering colors of the skyline.  It’s been quite chilly in China compared to the other ports as we head further north. I’ll try to update soon on the week in China but it may not happen until after Japan. The ship has left Shanghai and we’re heading to Japan where we arrive in two quick days on Tuesday morning.