The trip from India to Vietnam was actually pretty eventful. Well as eventful as it can be on a ship in the middle of the ocean. The crew had their talent show, which was SO much fun. They were great and one of the cabin stewards is a cross dresser and man could he/she dance! It was one of my favorite nights on the ship so far. They asked us donate to the crew well being fund because they can’t get off the ship in a lot of the ports they are on for huge stretches at a time. So this fund goes to like musical instruments, gym equipment and other stuff to help their ship life. That night alone they raised almost $9,000. It was a very cool night.
We also had Halloween on the ship, which was very weird and different. At dinner the crew made a "halloween" menu and made stuff like borscht and called it blood stew and all that kind of stuff. This is just another example of how great the crew is. They try so hard and it was very cute. The little kids on the ship trick or treated through some of our cabins too. There was a halloween "dance" and there was NO beverage service. Having a few drinks makes it a lot more fun to be in a costume, so this was a different experience. They had the dance in the union and there was a costume contest and the student life workers did a thriller dance and stuff. It was fun and we all danced, but it was really weird not being at school. Halloween has become such a college holiday for me I was definitely homesick (school sick). My friend Sam and I had gotten these horribly tacky leopard print pashminas in India so we wore those and made ears and we were leopards. Gen and Corinne were dominoes and Drew was a ninja. People actually got really creative with the limited resources that we had. 3 boys won for best group costume because they dressed up like an Indian rickshaw. It was hilarious.
We also had to refuel in Singapore on the way to Vietnam. So we got to see the city from the ship and I was able to pick up enough cell service to call Emma Kate and Tim so that was really great.
Our preparation for Viet Nam was very interesting. We had a 5 minute DEMONSTRATION complete with re creation on how to cross a street in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). It was pretty funny, but made us a little apprehensive. Saigon was a very different port logistically then any other we had encountered to this point. Saigon is not on the coast of Vietnam but is on a river. This means the ship has to sail up the river to get there, which is not an easy task in the least. We got up early to watch the ship maneuver the tight turns of the river while going about 2 knots. It was really interesting to watch and I couldn’t believe the ship could do that. All the little fisherman were out on the river and when we would go by we would watch the wake of the ship and would hold our breaths to see if they were going to capsize. And yup the wake did knock a few of them over…very sad.
We pulled into port and it was pretty urbanized, which was really nice. I had forgotten that Vietnam was the parent trip port so there were all these moms and dads with signs for their kids, which was really sad. A few kids shed some tears and then we all moved on. There was a little welcome group in traditional Vietnamese attire and rice hats with a big Welcome Semester at Sea sign, which was cool. A tent with a little stall selling stuff had also been set up right off the gangway. I called this the “stuff white people like” market because they were selling rice hats, DVDs, and North Face Backpacks. Basically everything everyone on the ship bought. Hilarious.
I got off with Drew, Corinne and Sam to explore Saigon. We were provided with a shuttle even though the port was really close to everything. The government feels we make too much of a scene with people trying to hawk stuff and pedicabs and stuff it is just easier to have a shuttle. Our first debacle of the day was with money. The conversion rate is 1 dollar to 17,850 dong. That makes you a millionaire with like 50 bucks and it is the most confusing math I have had to do in my entire life. My pink calculator came in SUPER handy. It was easier to just round up to 20,000 and divide but still shit got confusing really fast. We then headed to the Ben Thanh Market, which is a giant market in the central area of Saigon. It was amazing. They had food, meat, clothes, furnishings, restaurants, livers (yes raw livers just chilling), basically everything you could ever want. Ever. We were in major shock for a while and just walked around in a daze. Vietnam is also REALLY hot, like subtropical, and this is an un air conditioned market so there was a lot of sweat. We kept running into sas kids everywhere. We got some beers as we walked around and it was just really cool taking it all in.
It is a known thing through SAS kids that Vietnam is the place to get clothes made. So we left the market to walk around to try to find a tailor. We finally found this great place. I got an amazing jacket made and my linen pants that were destroyed by the stupid camel in morocco fixed and then replicated. Gen’s trip left that am for Cambodia so I had her measurements and tried to have them make a dress from a picture for her without her actually being there. Drew got a blazer made and Corinne got a dress too.
After that we got some iced coffee. Vietnam is actually known for their coffee and they do this thing with the iced coffee where they put condensed milk in the bottom so it is delicious. This was just the beginning of us chalking up our health and safety to god by drinking the water. We have only been in countries where we can’t touch or eat anything for like months now and we are sick of it. So we drank the ice. Yup. Still alive. For now. Then we had our first experience with the North Face apparel. We found a great luggage stall and Sam and Corinne got gigantic North Face backpacks for $10 each and I got a new piece of luggage for China, which I am gifting to mom when I get back. Then we had our first encounter with the pirated DVD. They had so much! I got Up, Season 5 of Weeds, Season 6 of Entourage and the new Harry Potter for like $5 total. It was dangerous.
I had read about this place in Lonely Planet that had propaganda art and other things from the war so we decided to head over there. It was a cool walk (with many dangerous street crossings) but it enabled to see a lot more of the city, which was nice. The store was really funky and I bought a very cool piece of art that will hang on the stairs going up to the loft in the NYC apt when I move in. Yeah I have been decorating the apartment I don’t live in yet in my head the entire trip.
It was getting late by this point so we stopped and got a snack at Yogurt Land. It was great because I LOVE froyo and it was just like 16 Handles in the east village! They had all these flavors and you serve yourself and then add toppings and they charge you by weight. Delish. We headed back to the shuttle and went back to the ship to drop our loot from the day and get changed. Then we headed back out for dinner. I had read about this place in the NY Times that was supposed to be amazing and we tried to find it and couldn’t find it anywhere. So we ended up at a Vietnamese restaurant that the hospitality people on board had recommended. I ordered rice wine thinking it would be like sake. Mistake. It was like a shot of liquor stronger than vodka. So I had to order another drink and pour it into that. Good college kids know one cannot waste liquor! We had a really yummy Vietnamese food. Fresh spring rolls, scallops and other things as appetizers and I got glass noodles with seafood and it was really good! Drew went to find the bathroom and magically found Kara and a bunch of other people. Sam and Corinne went back to the ship and we went out!
We were on a mission to go to this bar called Apocalypse Now! (How funny is that), but we found this little hole in the wall first so we stopped there and had some drinks. Then we headed to Apocalypse Now! Which was packed with SAS kids but the drinks were super expensive. We found Cav and bounced back and forth between our cheap bar and Apocalypse. We closed our cheap bar and the Vietnamese bar tenders whipped out Jenga (really of all games yes JENGA) and we played jenga on the bar for a while. Eventually they closed and we headed back to the other club to dance for a long while. I found Kareem and Cynthia and a ton of other people and it was super fun. We danced for a while and since Kareem doesn’t drink i felt ok walking back to the ship with him. Walk is a stretch for our trip back but we made it! I got back to my room and Drew was just sitting outside my door, which generally means I am sick of dealing with my roommate and I want to sleep in the Klubhouse (what we named my new room). So I let him in and went and called mom and tim. When I got back into my room it was about 4:30 am and Drew’s alarm was going off because he had a trip. I had to wake him up to leave for his trip before I even went to sleep. Oh man. What a night but it was really super fun!
The next day thankfully my trip didn’t leave until 11:45. Lunch on the ship was actually great. When we are in port they have better ingredients and less people to feed. There were also parents on board so they were definitely showing off. We had grilled cheese and french fries which was helpful for my rough morning. We headed to the airport and flew out to Phnom Penh. This was the parent trip and there were a fair amount of both parents and solo students on my trip. I knew this was not going to be my most fun trip as we were dealing with serious subject matters and had lots of grown ups on the trip and I didn’t really know anyone. This was totally fine and I was trying to approach this with an educational attitude. Our flight was delayed quite a bit so our tour had to change slightly. When we landed in Phnom Penh we headed to the Palm Tree Orphanage, which has SAS affiliation. The kids put on a dance and then we were free to interact with them. We all know kids aren’t my favorite so I was feeling sorta awkward. One little girl came up to me and ATTACHED herself to my hand for the rest of the time there. She showed me her room, her classroom and some of her belongings. Then she gave me her stuffed bear. I almost died I kept saying no no it is ok it is yours! But she wouldn’t have it and made me take it. I felt so horrible but there was nothing I could do. Someone suggested that I regift it in another country and I thought that was a great idea.
We then took a Sunset Cruise on the Mekong River, which was very pretty. It wasn’t for very long but it was nice to see the city from the river. After the cruise we had a really nice dinner at this fancy restaurant. Cambodian food is very good and super similar to western Chinese food. With lotssss of sticky rice. Then we headed to our hotel. We got to pick roommates so I had already picked Denim earlier in the voyage and it was nice to be at least acquainted with the person I was staying with. Some kids went out but I still wasn’t over the night before so Denim and I stayed in and watched a little TV and I went to the business center and used the internet for a long while and got to gchat with liv, tim and RJ so that was great. We went to sleep for our 6am breakfast.
I did not sleep very well. Being on SAS trips makes me so anxious that I am going to miss an alarm and miss tours and stuff. It is super stressful and I psych myself out so I am waking up every hour. Not fun.
Our breakfast at the hotel was really good and we started our day at 7 am. This was not going to be a fun day as it was focused on the Cambodian Genocide during the Khmer Rouge. I did not know a lot about this and I was amazed that it all happened so recently and that no one knows about it. Our first stop was the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. This museum was a former high school, which was then used as the Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. The prison has been transformed into a very disturbing museum. It is estimated that more the 17,000 people were imprisoned in the 3 years. The cells have pictures of what they looked like the day the Vietnamese uncovered the prison complete with torture tools and dead bodies. They still had the torture facilities standing including what used to be recreation equipment, but was used as a type of waterboarding machine thing during the Khmer Rouge. Prisoners were hung off of it and dunked into giant containers of contaminated water or human feces. There are pictures of many of the prisoners up in the cells. There was also a very interesting art exhibit by a Swedish man who had been invited to Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. It was a exhibit of his photographs with blurbs about how the communist spun the stories and what they had thought in the 1970’s and what they now think of the photos. It was very interesting and disturbing. The most famous thing in the museum was the Skull Map, which was a huge map of Cambodia composed of over 300 skulls. They dismantled the map in 2002 and many of the skulls are still on display and the rest have been brought to the killing field memorial. Out of the 17,000 people that were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng there were only 12 known survivors. When we were visiting there was actually one of the survivors at the museum. Our tour guide was telling us that he probably has post traumatic stress disorder and survivors guilt and apparently spends a lot of time at the museum now. Even our tour guide is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge and lost his own father in the purges.
After the Genocide Museum we headed to the outskirts of Phnom Penh to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. When the Khmer Rouge took power they forced evacuation of all of the cities in Cambodia. So a lot of things are all on the outskirts. These were the most upsetting. It is estimated that at least 17,000 people were executed here and many of the remains cannot be exhumed because of the flooding in the areas after the regime fell. They have found mass graves of over 8,895 bodies so far. Many of these were former prisoners of Tuol Sleng. Walking around was extremely upsetting. In the center of the field they have a memorial stupa that is over 8 stories high and has acryclic siding and is completely filled with skulls (over 5,000 of them separated by gender and age). Walking around one can see the pits and they have markers like “600 naked woman”. As you walk around you have to be very careful as to where you walk because there are still tons of clothes from the victims on the ground. There are also bones and teeth still in the ground and you can just see them as you walk around. Still there. It is very upsetting and scary to think this only happened 30 years ago or less. The same decade I was born this was going on. And we let it but bothered ourselves with stupid oil wars instead…anyways another subject for another time. Pol Pot stayed in power will almost 1997 and we never took away Cambodia’s seat in the UN. Sometimes I just don’t understand the world and government but there is no right answer or correct fix as we have seen. Communism was the answer for a while but look where that got Cambodia.After visiting the Killing Fields we headed to the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace, which was a stark contrast. The Royal Palace was gorgeous. The pagodas were beautiful in the traditional south east asian style. Most were Buddhists but some still had remnants of the Hindu religion that once dominated the area. We kept saying how it looked like Disney World because it was absolutely unbelievable it almost looked fake. We saw the famed emerald Buddha and several Stupas that held the remains of some of the Kings. The Silver Pagoda has more than 5,000 silver tiles lining the floors. They try to protect the tiles by covering them but they almost look like metal and one wouldn’t know they were actually silver. It was a really cool area.
Then we went to lunch, which was no where near as good as dinner was. We wandered around on the pretense of shopping but Cambodia was expensive especially in comparison to Vietnam! They were like American prices for Cambodian quality so we didn’t get much. Then we headed to the National Museum, which was sort of ehhh. It had a lot of statues that were taken from Siem Reap and Angkor Wat when the Khmer Rouge took power (because art and history was against their “plan”). So it was just a precursor to what we were going to see anyways.We hopped on ANOTHER plane and flew from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. From the airport we headed right to Angkor Wat. Our tour guide was a sweet guy but extremely annoying. He literally said “you know” every 4 words like we would say um or like. It was painful. We got to Angkor Wat and got to watch the sunset over it, which was gorgeous. Dinner was ok there was a “cultural dance show” after dinner, which was frankly pretty boring and we were all exhausted. The best part was the end. The place was pretty fancy and there was this HUGE group of Japanese tourists and during the last dance a group of them went and put dollars on the stage…like this was a strip club. Then at the end when they came out to bow all the Japanese people ran onstage and took pictures with them! It was horribly embarrassing and hilarious all at the same time. Not only were they taking pictures they were doing the very stereotypical Japanese peace sign. So ridiculous but we got a good laugh out of it.
We headed back to the hotel and passed out.
Our last day in Cambodia had a LOT of temples! I got up at 4:15 am and we headed back out to Angkor Wat to watch the sun rise over it. There were so many people there watching the sunrise it is amazing to think that 100 people are there every day watching the sun rise over the temple when we are doing our own thing every day. Then back to the hotel for breakfast then BACK to Angkor Wat for a tour. There was a lot of Angkor Wat. The tour was nice. It is a very cool building but sorta like the Taj in the fact that once you get in there isn’t a ton to see. Our tour guide actually lived in Angkor Wat during the Khmer Rouge and fed off the bats that live there. The bats are the main reason the whole thing is turning black…it’s the acid from their urine. Cool. Angkor Wat was found when the French were colonizing Cambodia. The jungle had completely reclaimed it and the locals knew about it but it wasn’t like a huge important site. It has gone through years of restoration to look the way it does now. It was originally a Hindu Temple and then became Buddhist.After Angkor Wat we headed to Ta Prohm Temple, which I thought was actually in a way cooler then Angkor Wat. Ta Prohm is a temple that has not been restored unlike many of the other Angkorian temples. The jungle has almost completely reclaimed this temple and it is absolutely indescribable. There are these amazing ruins mixed with vines and trees. It is very cool and my pictures will do more than I can. They also filmed parts of Tomb Raider there.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and to check out and then went to Angkor Thom. Ankgor Thom was the walled city in Siem Reap. The temple there is known as the face temple and is most famous for this as well. We walked around and went to the little market there. There isn’t a lot to say about these places and it is best shown in pictures.Then we headed back to the airport and back to Vietnam! I was amazed at how some of the kids on my trip treated their parents. Appalled is a better word. I mean I am no angel with my parents but if they paid a fortune to drag themselves out to Vietnam to visit me on top the small inheritance they paid to send me SAS and I hadn’t seen them in 3 months I would be pretty nice. Nope. Not these kids. One girl wouldn’t even sit with her mom at meals. Like seriously? It was so upsetting. There was also this one kid. Oh man. Well lets just say someone finally got sent home from SAS and he was on my trip. It started the day we left for Cambodia. He was missing in the airport and then he almost missed the plane but got on by the skin of his teeth. Then we got to Cambodia and he lost his passport and was MIA with him mom all day trying to get it back. When he did join us on tours it was very obvious he was def. on drugs. Probably xanax it was a bad scene. He was from Greenwich (obviously) but the icing on the cake was in the airport back from Cambodia. Unfortunately, he got arrested….for trying to steal cigarettes in the airport in Cambodia. Great. Well somehow the authorities let him come back to Vietnam and then Semester At Sea decided to dismiss him from the program. Whoops.
The last day in Vietnam Gen and I went out and found a great coffee place and got food and coffee and then shopped all day. I got all the last minute stuff I needed and we picked up all the stuff we got made at the tailor. Then we ran into Drew and got Pho. Pho is traditional Vietnamese soup with glass noodles. There are all these chain restaurants that just served it and it is so yummy. A little hard to eat with the chopsticks but I am getting a lot better with them. Then we decided to go get massages. Vietnam is famous for their affordable massages so Gen had found this place that was $12 USD for 1.5 hours. It was great and super fun and clean and relaxing. We got these robes and all got our hot stones massages in the same room. It was great and we were giggling the whole time. 
It was pretty much time to head back to the ship but we realized everyone else was going to be getting on wasted so we decided to hit up a bar on the way back….cutting it close to onship time. The first place we tried to go in said that Drew could come in but Gen and I were not welcome…whorehouse. We found a cute place with happy hour and the bar tenders were really nice. Over the half hour we sat there we realized that that too was a brothel. All these women kept walking in and going up the stairs and then this one guy came in had half a glass of wine and he went upstairs too. We were cracking up at this point. We also realized he had like 15 minutes to get back to the ship. It was a mad dash and thankfully we made it in time!
I really enjoyed Vietnam & Cambodia. Cambodia was extremely eye opening and I really had no idea the horrors that happened there so recently. Vietnam was a ton of fun and I can't wait to get back. There is so much I didn't get to see (Hanoi, Ha Long Bay etc).
Asia has been super fun so far and I have loved it!
Asia has been super fun so far and I have loved it!
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