Vietnam Reflection

Vietnam was not my number one place to visit on this trip, and I have to say it just about held up to my expectations with the exception of the backpacking district where I really honestly spent the bulk of my time.

Day one was really cool. My best friend Doug’s roommate (Justin) is on the ship, and the week we had in Vietnam lined up perfectly with their spring break, so their third roommate, Jeff, and their friend Jay met the ship in port! It was awesome to see some familiar faces, but also made me a little homesick to be honest. We got off the ship and went right to a tailor where I found online on the trip to Vietnam. I found an awesome suit for an even more awesome price. $57 for a two piece, $75 for a 3 piece. So I of course got a suit measured and cut, along with 4 shirts. I really wanted one thing though: a red suit jacket and my tailor couldn’t do it. I went to a few others and found a price right across the street who did an awesome job. I now own a red suit jacket! I’ve wanted one forever.

We finished up at the tailor and ran to a place Jeff and Jay had lunch at the day prior as they’d been in town a few days already. It was pretty straight up Vietnamese food. I’m not overly adventurous when it comes to food. I believe I had some Pho, some beef and chicken skewers and some rice, which I made the mistake of putting the hottest sauce on the table on top of. After lunch we headed to the spot where we were supposed to meet up with Justin, but we got a text saying that that he’d be an hour late. We decided we’d run into this mall and look around. Idk how this works but I have a way of finding the nicest malls in the weirdest countries. The entry floor on this mall is all designer stores. Versace, Louis Vuitton, Burberry stores line the hallways. If you go a few stories down however, there are coffee shops, restaurants, and all of that kind of stuff. We all grabbed assorted beverages and hung out for a little and talked.

We got another text saying that Justin would be another hour late and he’d meet up with everyone at the ship. We continued to hang out, then jumped in a cab and ran back to the ship. Me and Kael had to go get ready for the wedding. Yeah, I said wedding… and I was the minister. It was more of a spiritual marriage, nothing legal between two friends of mine who have met and kind of started dating on the ship. It was cool. I wrote a pretty fun sermon with everything I found online. I did however become an ordained minister online, and although I won’t share the entire sermon, my last line was “By the power invested in me by the website I found on Google, I now pronounce you man and wife”. And I literally mean this, from what I understand I am an ordained minister. We hung out the reception for a little and went to the club down the street, apocalypse now, which I must say is overrated, and super over ran by SASers. We all got a hotel room and I spent the night there.

The second day I took my buddy to my tailor to get fitted for some suits. We walked through the market, the same mall, got massages and just generally walked around bored until Kael was done with his FDP at 5:30. I did very little that is wasting mine and yours time by writing. We went back to the area around the tailor; Kael was leaving for Hanoi the next day and had his suit fitting that night at ten. The area where our tailor is is the backpackers’ district. There are people from everywhere. We met one girl who went to the same HS as Kael, which was crazy weird. We also met people from England, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Poland, South Africa, literally all over. Kael had his suit fitting, and then we found this awesome little hole in the wall place with live music. They had Vietnamese bands playing American covers. It was hilarious, but still a ton of fun and the bands were actually pretty good. We headed back to the ship and got to bed pretty late.

The next day I had an orphanage and school visit, through SAS. It was nice to give back a little. We had a bunch of school supplies and stuff from SAS to give them, as well a bunch of cash donations. It was pretty fun to play with all the kids from the school, but we weren’t at all prepared to visit the orphanage. It was an orphanage for kids with Down syndrome. Saying it was tough would be an understatement. Makes you appreciate everything we have in the states. Not to say by Vietnamese standards it wasn’t nice, but a place like that would never be somewhere in the states. We all left the orphanage a little sick to our stomachs, humbled and thankful. We got back to the ship around 4:30 and grabbed dinner on the ship. While there we all decided we were going to the backpacker district to hang out a little before my suit fitting at 7:30. It was me and two of my friends, then I talked to a girl I met a few weeks earlier, Jill to see if she’d want to come out as well. She and her friend had nothing going on and decided why not come with us?

We went and hung out at this little variety store with 50 cent beers, had a few and headed over to my tailor to get my suit fitted. Fit like a glove! Now all I have to do is never change my size as long as I live. After getting tailored, Jill saw a Pizza Hut. We definitely got a pizza, and it was sooo good. It tasted just like the pizza back home. And on top of that, I had a Coors Light and although I couldn’t make out much on the back, but it definitely had the words Golden, CO. We met some basketball players from the states who’re playing in Vietnam now for the Saigon Heat. Went back to that bar with local music, and made our back to the ship.

The next day I spent with Jill and her friend, we went to the market, bought some souvenirs, they found some fabric from a designer they both really like, and I looked for some shoes because I blew out my dress shoes at the wedding reception. However I’ve found something about people my size looking for shoes in Vietnam. They don’t exist. I wear a 13 and the biggest I found in the entire country was only a 10 :/. So now I don’t have any dress shoes on the ship and a brand new suit lol.

I found a painting that I fell in love with. But I didn’t buy it... so I went back and bought it on the last day. One of the best $20 I’ve ever spent. We went and met up with everyone on the ship and headed to a Mexican food restaurant, which was alright and really close to the backpackers district which I loved. Long story short, we got my buddies suit fitted, and hung out in the backpackers district like the nights before. Me and my friend Matt did Karaoke with a live band which was kind of fun.  We got back to the ship pretty early and got to sleep.

I woke up and met up with my friend to run and pick up our suits and get that painting I wanted so badly. The suits looked awesome, I got an awesome painting, and I headed back to the ship for my FDP that afternoon.

My FDP was pretty cool; we went to a waistband manufacturing facility. It wasn’t huge, but it’s a part of QST industries which is a huge multinational corporation specializing in manufacturing garment components. Waistbands for pants, suit linings, pocket material. All the oddball stuff that goes into a piece of clothing. The manager from Chicago was there which was pretty cool; he was super insightful about everything and gave us great information about the operations of an MNC. I got back to the ship around 5, which concludes my Vietnam adventure.

To be honest, I don’t think I will be back to Vietnam. I wasn’t left with any overwhelmingly bad taste, but I haven’t had the rosy experiences I did in many other countries. China is next! And this is one of the countries I was most excited to visit! I have 2 days in Vietnam, 3 in Beijing, and 2 in Shanghai! We arrive tomorrow! 2 days post China is Japan, then we have about 2.5 weeks until we are back in San Diego. It’s crazy that we are winding down, I don’t want it to end, but I can definitely say I’ve become more homesick than I thought I would.

 

Can’t wait for China and Japan!!

 

Much Love,

Matt

Singapore

Singapore is an amazing place, and it really is a place I wish I had more than one day to experience. Going from India to Singapore is a major culture shock as when I was in Singapore, I felt like I was in an extremely modern American city. The only difference, it was too modern for America.

We wanted to hit a bunch of really cool sites through the day, we had a plan and we were going to stick to it… which we didn’t at all, but we still had an awesome time. The first thing we did was go to the Marina Bay Sands hotel, if you don’t know what it is, Google it. We wanted to go up to the pool and hang out on the skyscape, but we got there at 9. First it opened at 10, and then at ten they pushed it to 11. So we left. We went to China town, and you may say, China town? Won’t you be in China in like, a week? And the answer to that is yes. But, our friend loves Singapore suits, and decided he wanted to pay way too much instead of buying a suit in Vietnam, like I will be.

We found some cool things around, I found a few ties, and there were some SAS girls walking by and I told them to each pick me a tie, and I would pick a third one. I ended up getting some pretty nice ties I’d say. We found a little hawker café and got a little food before heading to the Wave House Sentosa. Now I want you guys to Google what a flow rider is, and what a barrel rider is. I’ve done a flow rider a few times before, and I’ve gotten decent at boogey boarding, but I fell pretty good whenever I tried to surf. I’m happy to say I got surfing down for the most part on the flow rider, but I definitely fell pretty hard a few times.

We had an hour of the flow rider followed by an hour on the Barrel rider, and the barrel rider is intimidating, I will tell you that for sure. Everyone was asking who would go first, and of course I volunteered, but I had no clue what I was getting myself into. The first time you fall, you have no clue what is going on, which way is up, down, you feel your shorts being ripped off you, it’s crazy. I kind of got it down, but I fell every single time, pretty hard sometimes. The nice thing is once you learn to fall, and learn what to expect when you fall, it’s not as bad and you can bounce back pretty easily.  The Barrel Rider was a blast and I was definitely happy that we had the chance to do that.

On the way back to where the cabs were, I grabbed a double cheeseburger from McDonalds, just as good as back home! And we jumped on a train which took us to the cabs area a ways down the road. We went from there to Clarke Quay which is a super cool outdoor restaurant area, where there are hundreds of places to eat. It’s really cool because although its outdoors, there is a huge vinyl umbrella on top so you are kind of under the shade, and if it rains, like it did when we were there, you won’t get wet, it’s a really cool place to check out and it’s something I’m surprised isn’t common in the states. We had a few (super expensive) drinks and bumped into our friends who got some awesome stuff that we must have walked right past in China Town. So we went to China town again in search of the couple things we wanted in order to spend our last Singapore Dollars. I got a T-shirt and two Tiger Beer tank tops, one for me and one for a buddy back home! We jumped in another cab to take us to the cruise terminal and found that the line at customs was massive. We waited in the line and literally ran through the terminal to the ship getting on about 10 minutes before on ship time.

I wish I had more time there, but Singapore has done a lot of stuff right in terms of building a beautiful nation. I’d say it is something that the US should model after, but I think that Singapore’s tiny size is why their mentality would not work in the states. We are a hugely diverse group of people, whereas Singapore citizens are vastly the same. There’s some diversity but many people seem very alike. The last thing is our history. I didn’t see any history in Singapore. Their Supreme Court building for example was built in 2005, and is a modern mecca to law, taking over from a building built in the 1800s. We love our history, and Singapore loves its modernity. I could see myself doing business in Singapore, or vacationing there again sometime, but as of right now I wish we had at least two days!   

India To The Face!

I’m going to start this out by saying that India was extremely rough, and although there is a lot of interesting stuff in the story below, I am perfectly fine, and every part of me (Except my wallet) is fully intact.

Let’s start at the beginning. Day one I woke up at 7am to eat breakfast and finish getting all of my stuff together to head into India. After waking up at 7, we didn’t get off the ship until 11:15 due to the bureaucratic headache that is the Indian government. We finally get off the ship and jump into a Rickshaw. Now, the Rickshaw was pretty cool, but four of us headed to the airport was pretty tight. We ended up paying too much for the rickshaw. He did get us to the airport in about an hour by weaving through traffic, but we still felt a little ripped off after talking to everyone else (Story of India). We get out E-Tickets out and go to walk into the airport, whose security is military personnel, and I am stopped and pointed out that my plane ticket is for the following day…

I felt screwed. First thing in India and I am already going to make other plans and cancel flights and waste a ton of money. Luckily, I talked to the ticket booth and they were able to put me on a flight that left 2 hours later, but still got me to Delhi the same night. The only catch- a 4000 Rupee change fee, about 80 bucks. I sucked it up and paid for it and sat in the airport for my now 3 hour wait before taking off. I got on the flight and started on my way. The nice thing about my new flight is that I got switched to the non-economy airline of Jet airways, which included a meal, water, soda, and really awesome service which was a nice surprise. I had a layover in Bombay, said goodbye to my SAS friend Anna and headed to my gate for the next flight which left in about 20 mins, which I of course almost missed. I was the last one on the flight and we actually made it to Delhi about 15 mins ahead of time, which would give me a little bit more time to find Kael and Max in the Delhi airport when I got in.

So I got into Delhi about 8:50 pm and made a B-line for the arrivals gate to meet up with Kael and Max. Now this is where it gets sketchy. I couldn’t find Kael and Max for over an hour. I scoured the Delhi Airport searching for both of them. I literally couldn’t find them. I gave Kael a call since he had turned his cell phone back on for India in case anything happened (Thank God). I can’t describe the emotion you feel whilst lost by yourself in an Indian airport. The best word I have for it is super disheartening. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried, and there were definitely a few times where if I’d have let myself, I think I’d have broken down. At one point I walked out of the airport and when I went back in to use the payphone, they wouldn’t let me in. I had to pull the “I’m from America” Card by showing my passport, my flight ticket into Delhi, and finally by bribing my first ever government official to get back into the arrivals area of the airport. At about 10:10 or so I finally found Max running around and I’d be lying if that was not the best feeling I could have felt right then.

After finding Max, we went back to the cab where Kael was waiting and we took off for our hotel, the Amax Inn. The rest of the night was pretty boring, we grabbed dinner on the rooftop café, had a couple beers as we all needed to wind down from the events of the evening, and after calling home to no avail, ended up Skyping with Doug, which was awesome, and got to bed because since the trains were full we had arranged a car to take us to Agra at 6 in the morning.

We woke up the next morning and met our driver for the day, whose name I can’t recall, but in all honesty I don’t care to recall because he was a Jackass. From Delhi to Agra is a 3-4 hour ride depending on traffic. It took us 6. We stopped twice for seemingly no reason and 30 mins into our trip he turned around to go back to the office because he needed to pick up train tickets for other customers, and felt he could waste our time. After finally getting to Agra he took us to another tour company to see if we could get Train tickets, and of course, the train was full, there were 0 open spots and we were screwed into taking another car from Agra to Varanasi, what we had hoped to be our last long car ride. After the tour company we were on our way to the Taj Mahal! But our driver who felt like he could waste our time said he wanted us to eat lunch before seeing the Taj. I was pissed, I was sitting in the back seat and yelled at him in the front saying that we don’t want to eat, but we want to see the damn Taj Mahal!!! He finally got that I wasn’t messing around and took us to the Taj.

And it was awesome. You know the feeling you get when you actually look at the Taj Mahal in a picture? And how you feel like that picture is of something that doesn’t exist? Well, it does. The Taj is something out of a movie. There are so few words to describe it, and I was so in awe the entire time, that I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I should have. I do have some pretty awesome pictures though. I mean, the Taj Mahal! I never thought I would be at the Taj Mahal. It is so hard to put something like one of the 7 wonders of the world into words...

After the Awe of seeing the Taj, we went and checked flights and trains online to make sure there was no other possible way of getting to Varanasi. There wasn’t, and we would be taking a 12 hour car ride from Agra to Varanasi. We grabbed some lunch at the local place that our cab driver wanted us to eat at. It was alright, a nice restaurant and pretty cheap, but nothing to write home about. We finished lunch and headed back to the tour company to get into our new car for our long drive to Varanasi. We drove through the night and finally arrived in Varanasi around 4am. We found the cheapest hotel we could find, which was pretty nice actually, and we crashed until 8-9 pm. giving me a grand total of 4 hours of sleep thru the night as I can’t sleep in a car, especially when someone I don’t know is driving.

We were finally in Varanasi! Varanasi is a city that is super holy and on the banks of the Ganges river. Our first day in we jumped in a rickshaw and told them to take us to the Ghats at the waterfront. The Ghats are essentially stairs that lead down into the river, and span pretty much the entire length of the city. We walked around pretty pointlessly until we saw a sign for a restaurant called Bread for Life Bakery, which is a little bakery restaurant which I guess is pretty famous in the travel books. We walked the Ghats for a good 2 hours before deciding we wanted to find our hotel for that night.

We stayed at the Sita Guest House. It is pretty authentic India, not about to lie. Our joke was that in our bathroom is that we could take a #2 and shower at the same time, this due to the fact that the shower was literally just a spicket high on a tiled wall. Sita had a little café on the roof, so we ran up there, grabbed some water and all the different kind of Naan in the building, Cheese Naan, Buttered Naan, and my favorite, Garlic Cheese Naan.

It was kind of funny as we had heard about how polluted the Ganges River was, and how on occasion members from the lowest castes can’t afford to have their bodies cremated, so instead their families just throw their bodies into the rivers and let the river take care of them. So as we were wrapping up lunch Kael made an offhand comment: “This may be kind of morbid, but I kind of want to see a dead body floating down the river”. Keep in mind that we were all debating swimming in the river as it is a holy rite of passage amongst people in India. A bit of time passed when we saw this white thing bobbing up and down 30-40 feet from shore. Either Kael or Max pointed out that they thought it was a body, but we were all quick to dismiss it, while keeping our eyes glued on it… The more we looked at it the more it started looking like a body, the neck wrapped in a white sheet, the arms wrapped tight around the body in the white sheet. A minute or two later, a boat carrying 2 white people’s oar hit the object and then the white lady in the boat covered her mouth with disgust, or surprise, or some inexplicable emotion. At that point we knew, there was a body floating in the Ganges River probably 40 feet from our hotel. There was no way we would swim in that.

After that incident we all decided to walk the last few miles of Ghats and walk thru the back alley shops to buy (wayyyy too much) stuff for ourselves and others. One point of interest was the burning Ghat, the site of the religious cremations in Varanasi. The Higher castes are burned further from the water, so it is convenient for the family to watch, and the lower castes are burned closer to the water. It was really quiet. Nobody talked. We all sat contently and watched for a sold 45 mins without saying anything. It was really cool.

After the burning Ghat we just walked around, I sent out a few postcards I bought at the Taj at a sketchy back street post office (Hope you all get it!!) and I bought some really cool things. Some alli-bah-bah pants, which is spelt terribly wrong, a sweet tapestry, a bunch of bracelets, and some neat gifts for other folks. We were getting hungry so we found this nice German bakery with a restaurant on top, and grabbed a bite while the sun set over Varanasi, which was pretty awesome! We ran back to our guest house pretty quick as the back alleys can get kind of scary when its dark and we all jumped on the internet. I got to Skype my mom, post a pic or 2 on Facebook; it was really nice to be back in contact with the states again!! Just a shameless plug, my Skype Username is Matt.Schnitzler! Feel free to add me and maybe we can Skype sometime! We hung out on the roof until say, 11-12 at night, and got to bed eager for tomorrows activities.

We woke up at 5am, excited to take a boat out onto the water for the sunrise over the Ganges. It was pretty cool as we went downstream, we had a guide who told us a lot of the history and pointed out many of the buildings that had been around for centuries. The sunrise over the river was awesome. So beautiful. India is so polluted that it actually makes for an amazing sunrise, which seems exactly the opposite of what you’d expect right? There’s something about that morning that sticks in my head, the company, scenery, the history, or all of the above. When we got off the boat, Kael started feeling pretty crappy, probably because of his habit of getting something he knows he will be comfortable with to eat, he asks the server what’s good, and just gets it without any questioning. He went back to bed, and Max and I went to eat breakfast at Bread for life where we had eaten yesterday morning. It was a nice breakfast, and we picked up some food for Kael to try to settle his stomach. We took it back and he wasn’t feeling much better. Max and I headed back out to buy more stuff from the back alleys of Varanasi. It is so easy to get turned around in there. There were points where we thought we were making progress towards a shop we were familiar with, then next thing we know we walk right past a shop we were just at in the opposite direction. This day I picked up a few gifts and an awesome purple Indian shirt that people wear all over India with little sticks for buttons. Neat-o if you ask me!! From there we went back to the hotel to pack up and start on the 1 hour drive to the Varanasi Airport. We pried Kael out of bed, who was feeling slightly better, after admitting that he contributed to the nastiness of the Ganges by puking in it as he walked back to the hotel after the boat ride.

We got in the cab, which had no A/C and looked like a 1950’s wagon, and headed for the airport. Slightly less than an hour into the drive we reach the airport and find out our flight to Delhi was cancelled. Of course, Kingfisher strikes again. We were in a fury trying to figure out everything and how to get back to Delhi to catch our flight the 5^th day at 9am. We went in and talked to different airlines; the only flight that wasn’t booked was that by Indian Air and cost 15,000 rupees, about $300 US. We just about cut our losses and paid for the ticket when my card was rejected and the Air India guy said we had to pay in currency. We started walking out to the parking lot to run to the ATM when we thought about calling a tour company to see if we could be driven, it was only 1pm anyways, a 13 hour drive would get us in at 2. We tried to call but couldn’t get through when a bunch of cab drivers sitting on the lawn outside the airport asked if we needed a taxi. When he heard it we jokingly said “Yeah, we need a taxi to Delhi”.

We had 3 taxi drivers all over us. It’s weird how it works because first you have 3 cab drivers in a bidding war to feel you out, then 2 cab drivers drop out in an attempt to screw you. We got so frustrated at that point that we just took their offer of 16,000 rupees ($320) and got in the cab ready to go. We were told there would be two drivers as the drive was very long. We start on the drive; 1:15 becomes our official departure time from the airport in Varanasi. We stop at an ATM and I pull 16,000 rupees, and then jump on the highway for the 12-13 hour ride. It’s interesting how inefficient Indian roads are. The infrastructure is lacking on a very fundamental level, and everyone seems to drive like that annoying guy who is just going fast just to pass everyone and be a jackass by swerving in and out of traffic. I consider myself a pretty good driver, taking the appropriate risks when needed, but I’m not all too sure I could drive in that sort of environment.

Long story short, we are on a 13 hour cab ride. It is super boring and I can’t sleep in a car when I don’t know/trust the driver. So as Kael and Max were sleeping, I was sitting in the back with a dead iPod on my lap listening to the crazy Indian music our drivers were playing. Some of it was good, but the majority would not fall under the category of being considered “good” We pull into Delhi and our cab driver starts talking to a cab right next to us, and he says that he won’t be able to get us into the Delhi airport because he doesn’t have the right permits or something along those lines. So we paid our driver, jumped into another cab and finally got to the airport right around 2:30 AM. It was rough, we looked like hell, but we made it to the Delhi airport.

We found a bathroom, washed our faces, hands and arms, I changed my shirt, and we grabbed some Tea. We hung out, I gave my mom a quick call to explain what happened, and at 3:30 we were allowed inside the terminal. We found nice benches in front of the McDonalds inside and crashed. It was nice to get a few hours of sleep, but I felt weird sleeping in public like that so I only really got a couple hours of sleep. We caught our flight the next morning, and got to our ship at about 4ish PM. However, the craziness of India had not yet gotten over. That night we all went to a hotel called La Meridian to smoke hookah and hang out, it was a really nice hotel. We pretty much fought our rickshaw driver because they wanted to rip us off so badly and finally I found someone who gave us a fair price and 6 of us jumped into his Rickshaw and headed back to the ship. We got back to the ship about 1 or 2 at night, and we had decided we were going to do yoga in the morning and we’d need to wake up at 6 to make it to the place in time.      

So I woke up at 6, and we jumped on a water taxi across the canal area to a hotel where someone had set up a yoga class for us. Yoga is rough for those of you who haven’t tried it. It can be extremely relaxing, but I definitely sweat through my shirt pretty readily. This class was more of a flexibility and less of a strength class, for my body type I feel I’m relatively flexible, but there was no way anyone could do half of what our instructor was doing. I’ll try to find the poses sometime. It was unbelievable.

After yoga we went back to the ship, ate on board, changed and headed back out for a last couple hours of shopping and wasting our remaining rupees. Girls bought scarves, shoes, anything you could imagine. My only purchase was a case of coke so I could have some on the ship without buying it for $2. We stopped by a crafty area called Jew-town, and headed back to the ship.

We got back to the ship around 6ish, grabbed dinner and I’m pretty sure I immediately went right to bed. I learned a lot in India, but it’s hard to put into words what all I learned. India is one of those places you either love or hate, but either way it hits ya hard at first. I’d say I found a middle ground between love and hate though. There were aspects I really enjoyed, parts I didn’t enjoy at all, but I have a lot of stories. So far I’d say India is the country I am the least eager to get back to, Ghana at this point still being top of the pack. But if I were to go back to India, I wouldn’t be as rushed as I was on this trip.

I apologize for the length, but India was one of those places where if you only write half of what you did, nobody would get the fullest understanding. I also apologize for how long it took me to write this, We are on a strip of the trip where we have something like 6 days of class and 17 days in port… it’s a hard knock life right? We were in Singapore yesterday, which was awesome. I’m starting that blog immediately following, and we are in Vietnam in 36 hours!   

Much Love!

Matt

Quick Mauritius recap

We were extremely surprised to find out the day we were supposed to be in Mauritius that we would get about 4 hours on shore the next morning. This was awesome, but what are you supposed to do in 4 hours in a country? Effectively most SAS kids went crazy. I went to a beach with some friends and hung out, I had a drink called a sexy dream at a hotel bar, but most people went and bought bottles upon bottles of booze and partied extremely hard on the beach. There is little say except for the fact that Semester at Sea reinforced some stereotypes about Americans. It was honestly a little embarrassing to be looking around at 10:45 am and seeing people throwing up all over themselves on the beach. Even though I was in control, Mauritius was fun except for taking care of people who took it upon themselves to screw up everyone else’s time.


Much Love,
Matt