Croatia

Croatia would have been nicer if we had gone a few months earlier. November is the worst month to go to Croatia because it rains constantly, so much that there is, on average, only 3 hours of sunlight per day. So, it was unsurprising when I went with Mike and some friends to walk around “Old Town” in Dubrovnik and it was raining. Old town is the section of Dubrovnik enclosed in walls; the oldest sections of it date back to the late 1200’s. We went with Eva, Emily, Tanya, Jamie, and Kelly and browsed the expensive boutique stores and had lunch at an Italian restaurant. It was strange to see the blend of contemporary culture (high-end clothing stores) inside medieval stone buildings. At the Italian restaurant some of us had the cheesiest four-cheese lasagna ever. For the remainder of my time in Croatia I would have stomach problems, probably related to that first meal.

The rest of our first day was uneventful. We left the ship at 6 A.M. to take a bus to Split, it is the second largest city in Croatia and like Dubrovnik it is situated on the Adriatic Sea. Eva and I had talked about going to Zagreb but the 11 hour bus ride didn’t sound like much fun so we settled on going to Split with everyone else. Because of the way the national boundaries were drawn following the independence of Croatia and Bosnia, Croatia is partitioned by a small sliver of Bosnia which runs down to the Adriatic. In order to get from Dubrovnik to the rest of the country by automobile you have to pass through Bosnia. Unfortunately when you travel through Bosnia by bus they do not stamp your passport, so there is no proof that I traveled for 15 minutes through Bosnia. Expectedly, it looked identical to Croatia; especially since the Bosnian language is just a dialect of Croatian.

When we arrived in Split, yet another walled city, we checked into the hostel that we had reserved. This was the first time I had ever stayed in a hostel and it was interesting. All of the girls had their own room on the top floor, which was essentially the attic. Mike and I shared a room with a few Australians. After getting some recommendations from the lady who was working at the hostel we walked up the largest hill in Split to get a nice view of the city spilling into the Adriatic. Since I was beginning to get sick I stopped in a pharmacy to buy some cough syrup. The pharmacist gave me some weird herbal cough syrup that I don’t think even did anything. On the top of the hill we found a tiny zoo which was a very strange place for a zoo. It looked closed but we sneaked around the side and looked through a fence to see a bunch of ostriches and a lion.

We then spent what seemed like an eternity shopping for boots for Eva and the other girls. Tanya and Eva in particular wanted boots, and predictably all of the girls wanted to shop. There has to be about 100 shoe stores in Split and we went to almost every one of them. Eventually it was dinner time and we found a restaurant that served Bosnia food so we ate there. We then went to a supermarket and bought some vodka and various fruit juices. We went back to the hostel and hung out in the girls’ attic room. Tanya tried to show us all how to play some ridiculous drinking games at which point we were introduced to three Australians, Andrew, Grant, and Rachel. They were all in their mid-to-late twenties and were spending time traveling through Europe (they were all traveling separately). They joined in the drinking game and explained the variations in the Australian rules.

Around 8 P.M. we all went to a bar where the lady who worked at the hostel told us she would meet us, but she never showed up. We moved on to another bar for a bit and then Mike and Emily said they were going back to the hostel since Emily was falling asleep (which would happen almost every night we went out). The rest of us went with the Aussies to a nightclub that they thought would be open but it was closed. This was a problem we faced in both Split and Dubrovnik. November marks the beginning of the off-season in Croatia so many things are closed, especially on weekdays. With nothing else to do we went to a small store, bought more alcohol, and went back to the hostel.

Kelly, Eva, Jamie, Tanya, and I spent hours talking to the two Australians, Andrew and Grant, about the unique pronunciations and vocabulary of the Australian dialect. We also learned that Americans sound funny to Australians, and that in Australia they make fun of New Zealanders (commonly referred to as Kiwis) just as northerners in the U.S. make fun of southerners. Eva, Tanya, and I had a great conversation with Andrew about how he feels about the U.S.’s involvement in the Iraq war. He, like the guy that ripped us off in Alexandria, shared the sentiment that our government is absolutely incompetent, and many Americans may be too, after all we voted Bush into office, but generally speaking most Australians like Americans. I had a lot of fun talking to the Aussies and I wish I had had the opportunity to have conversations like that one with people from the other countries I visited. Unfortunately, the language barrier prohibited those kinds of conversations in most cases.

It had become obvious to us by now that there is was virtually nothing to do in Split other than wander from store to store in the day and go to bars at night. It wasn’t exactly the ideal way to spend our 5 days in Croatia. On the morning of our third day in Croatia we checked out of the hostel and tried to find a place to eat. Unfortunately it was that awkward time of day when it was after breakfast but not quite lunch, and as a result very few places were serving food. We went to a café/pizzeria that claimed they were serving food only to be told that we had to wait an hour until the kitchen opened.

After lunch we walked through the produce market and then went to visit the basement of Diocletian’s palace (which was built in 305 C.E.) where they had a strange art exhibit. We then walked to the bus station to get tickets for a bus back to Dubrovnik because a lot of SAS kids went to Split and most were returning the same day that we were. When we got there we were initially told that the 4:30 P.M. bus, the last one of the day, was full. Eventually we managed to reserve seats. On the way back I had the opportunity to get out of the bus and stretch while we were in Bosnia, so technically, I’ve been to 12 separate countries on this voyage (even if I was only in one of them for total of 30 minutes).

Once we got to Dubrovnik we tried to meet up with the Aussies we met in Split. We went to a club called Fuego where Eva convinced me to dance with her which, now that I think about it, didn’t require very much convincing. I never dance though, it’s usually embarrassing, but this time I had fun. Our fourth day in Dubrovnik it was raining and miserable out (in Split it was actually sunny and nice for some of the time). We walked the entire length of the walls that surround Old Town. It started pouring in the middle of our walk but that did not deter us. When Mike and I got back to our cabin that evening we found that our ceiling was leaking a yellowish liquid so we had to get the plumbers. They took a bunch of panels out of the ceiling which is impressive given the amount of room they have to work with. Our last day in Croatia was as uneventful as any other. I walked around Old Town with Mike, Eva, Jamie, and Ryan and then Mike and I went with Eva to an art gallery (it was part of an assignment for one of her classes).

Throughout our time in Croatia, Mike and I learned that Kelly, who we had only just met, lived in Philadelphia (about 10 minutes from where I live now) and used to live in Brigantine, NJ. She kept joking that we were stalking her. I also found out that she goes to Cabrini College which is directly behind Valley Forge Military Academy, where I went to high school. It was really weird to meet someone who I never knew before with so much of a shared history. Croatia was enjoyable mostly because it gave me a chance to spend time with friends and make new ones. Despite all of the amazing monuments and things I’ve seen in other countries it’s probably the conversations and things I did with my friends in places like Croatia that will be the most memorable in the years to come.

Turkey

Originally I wasn’t particularly excited about visiting Turkey. However, since Egypt was not as impressive as I expected and after I learned more about what Mike had planned for our independent travel I began to really look forward to Turkey. Mike and I were planning to go to Cappadocia, a region of Turkey famous for wine and its beautiful scenery which includes strange geological formations and thousands of man-made caves, some of which date back a thousand years. We were traveling with Hua, Eva, and Carly, the latter two were, like Mike, from Canada. We were planning on staying in a cave hotel and then taking a guided tour around Cappadocia. After two nights in Cappadocia we would fly back to Istanbul and spend a few days exploring the city.

Since we had some time before our 6:55 P.M. flight to Kayserı (the dotless “i" is pronounced as “uh”), Michael, Hua, and I decided to spend some time walking around Istanbul; Hua’s friend Steven was to come along as well. Originally it was just to be the four of us but our group doubled in size. We met up with Greg, Sherri, Lucy, Katie, her boyfriend (who was in Europe at the time and flew to Istanbul to spend a few days with her) and a few others. We found a small cafe/restaurant and ordered some food. I ordered a ’mixed grill’ which consisted of chicken, beef, and lamb with a few hot peppers and some rice on the side. It was spiced so well and tasted so good that I immediately decided Turkey was awesome. Over the next few days I would really come to appreciate Turkey for more reasons than the cuisine.

The port where our ship was docked was located in Beyoĝlu (pronounced bey-oh-loo), the contemporary and cosmopolitan section of Istanbul that lies along the Bosphorus strait adjacent to Sultanhamet, the old section of Istanbul which contains the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and other historical sites. Istanbul is unique in that it is the only city in the world that sits on two continents. We wandered around a bit and saw, among other things, the fattest pigeons ever. Around the city women sit at small tables selling bird feed with which you can feed the pigeons (or eat if you were really hungry, I guess), and apparently a lot of people do. In Egypt these pigeons would have made a great meal, but all that the giant pigeons did in Istanbul were congregate in giant flocks where they were least wanted.

Down one very steep cobblestone street we found store upon store that sold satellite dishes and strange electronic devices. Another street featured stores, on both sides of the street, which sold power generators. After I experienced two brief power outages in Turkey I began to see the need for all of those stores. We walked past a music store that sold drums, guitars, and sazs (a saz is a 6-stringed instrument that is similar to a lute), which I was determined to visit before I left the country. We decided to walk down to the Bosphorus strait which required that we use a walkway that ran underneath a busy four lane street. We discovered that in the pedestrian tunnel there were a variety of stores, some of which sold handguns and had them displayed on the wall behind the counter. Once on the other side of the street we watched people fishing and then found a restaurant where we ordered a beer and a hookah (in Turkey they are called nargheli, pronounced nar-ga-lee).

Around 2:30 Hua, Mike, Steven, and I left the others and walked back to the ship. Michael, Hua, and I grabbed our bags, met up with Eva and Carly, and left for the airport. We were originally going to take a taxi but a Turkish woman that Eva and Carly had met earlier recommended that we take the tram instead and she had gave them detailed instructions on how to get to the airport. It turned out to be very easy, and Istanbul’s train and trams were very clean and new-looking, similar to Tokyo’s in that respect. When we got to the airport we had some problems with checking-in. Turkey really only has one airline, Turkish Airlines, and they have automated kiosks where you check in by entering your credit card information, selecting your seat on the plane, and then received a boarding pass.

When Michael entered his credit card information it gave us a strange error, so we had to do it the old-fashioned way. Michael was able to check-in fine, but since both tickets were under his name they would not give me my boarding pass. We had to go to the sales office, get a refund for the one ticket, and re-purchase one under my name. It wasn’t that much of a problem but it was baffling, especially since Mike said that he had entered my name for my ticket on the website. We decided that Turkey would be the last time we bought tickets for each other. The security in the airports in Turkey is even crazier than the U.S., though they don’t make you take your shoes off. There is a checkpoint with an x-ray machine at the entrance to the terminal and then again nearer to the entrance to the gate. Flying to Kayserı I had no problems, but on the way back they were suspicious of the battery-charger for my laptop and made me take everything out of my bag and explain to them that it was not a bomb.

The flight was routine, and when we got to the tiny airport at Keyserı, a driver from the hotel was waiting with a sign that had Eva’s name on it. She was so excited to have someone waiting for her with a sign that she had a picture taken with our driver holding the sign. It was a little more than hour to Ayvali where the hotel was located. The driver drove really fast, keeping mostly to the dotted white line that separated the lanes. The road was mostly deserted so it made for an exciting ride. As he drove we tried to engage in a conversation but his English was poor. Hua was sitting in the front of the van so he spoke the most to him (though when we asked him later what the driver said to him he said he had no clue). The driver told us his name but we couldn’t pronounce it and subsequently forgot it, but he also told us that it meant ‘happy’ in English, so we decided to call him that instead. He seemed to take a liking to us and he promised to come by to our hotel room at 11 P.M. the following night with some local wine.

When we got the Ayvali Happy had to navigate the van through this tiny, hilly, cobble-stone street which had small stone houses on either side of it. We all thought that he was going to take out a taillight or a side-view mirror trying to get the van through a few of the tighter spaces, but he got through with no problems. We crossed a small stone bridge over a miniature gorge and the hotel rose up in front of us. Gamarisu Cave Hotel was a small hotel (only 20 rooms or so) that had been converted from a 1000-year-old monastery that was built into the cliffs. Cave hotels were a popular accommodation in Cappadocia (pronounced, and often spelled locally, Cappadokya) but Gamarisu had to be one of the better ones. It did not have all the fancy amenities of a luxury hotel but it felt like I was sleeping in a Turkish village (it was right next to one, after all), especially since the “lobby” looked like the dining room of any Cappadocian home.

The staff invited us in to sit at the wooden dining table and then offered some apple tea. Apple tea, we later found out, was only served to tourists in Turkey, though we suspected that it was probably once a traditional drink that had lost favor once tourists caught on to it. Either way it was delicious and it really warms you when it is chilly outside. Being from Los Angeles, Hua was especially grateful, since he had never experienced an air temperature below 65 or so. With a crisp fall breeze blowing and the temperature dropping into the low 40s, he was certain he was going to freeze to death. I didn’t expect that I would actually miss the cold weather but when I first stepped outside in Istanbul I realized that I liked cooler weather. In Cappadocia where all the birch and other trees had leaves that were turning from green to various shades of yellow, orange, and brown, autumn was in full-swing and the changing leaf-color along with the crisp cool air felt perfect.

The manager came and introduced himself, gave us the keys to our room and then offered us dinner which we ate after dropping our things off in our room. We had rented a ‘superior deluxe’ suite which included two bed rooms, attached by a living room with a fireplace. All of this was in a cave that was carved out of rock. The rock in Cappadocia is called tuff which is a type of volcanic rock that looks like sandstone and like sandstone is very easy to carve. As we would learn on our guided tour the next day, early Christians had made thousands of churches and dwelling places in the mountains and cliffs of Anatolia (the region in central Turkey which includes Cappadocia) in order to escape the Romans and later the Arabs who had invaded Turkey. After walking towards the village at midnight we turned back deciding it was too dark for pictures and too late at night considering that we had to meet our guide at 9:30 A.M. for our tour.

In the morning we ate a traditional Cappadocian breakfast which included olives, cheese, sausages, yoghurt and pastries. We were originally supposed to meet our guide at 9:30, but after breakfast we were told to wait until 10:00. Our guide turned out to be a 30-year-old Turkish woman who spoke excellent English. She had been doing guided tours of the Cappadocian region for English-speaking tourists for 6 years. Unfortunately I forgot her name so I will refer to her simply as “our guide”. As we drove from the hotel to the first stop on our tour she explained the itinerary. When we had signed up for the tour using the internet we were not told what the tour included, so up until she told us it was a complete mystery.

Our first stop was to the underground city near Kaymaklı (pronounced like ki-mok-luh), which contains eight levels only five of which are open to the public. The underground cities date back thousands of years, the cave entrance to this “city” dates back to the time of the Hittites making it 4,000 years old or so. The cities were originally built by early Christians who were escaping persecution from the Romans who would periodically sweep the countryside looking for them. When Arabs invaded Turkey and spread Islam the Greek orthodox Christians extended their underground cities and hid from the Arabs.

The cave networks were extensive, most village homes had tunnels which led to the cities, and the Kaymalı underground city in particular could support a population in the thousands for several months if necessary (though most people cannot live underground that long before psychological problems set in). Inside the underground city there are window-holes everywhere, it’s almost like walking through a giant piece of Swiss cheese. There are cutouts in the walls for storage and troughs for wine-making. There are numerous living quarters for families of various sizes and one room was a church with an alter cut out of the rock and a fading cross carved in one wall. In another room the walls were blackened from smoke, it was the communal kitchen. There is also a ventilation shaft running through the whole underground city that was also commonly used as a communication conduit which was easier than running up to different levels to tell someone something.

As we descended it got warmer and warmer. The lower levels of the caves apparently stay at a comfortable 16°C (approximately 64°F) year-round which is a lot warmer than it was outside. I was recording video as we were walking through a narrow winding tunnel that sloped gently downhill to the 4th level when all of the lights went out. No one had any idea what was going on. I had to use the light from the screen on my digital camera to walk the rest of the way through the tunnel. Our tour guide said this had never happened before and since we only had one weak flashlight we stuck together in the room for a bit. When there was no sign that the lights would be coming back on any time soon we began to make our way to another room. After 10 minutes or so the lights came back on and then promptly turned off again. It happened again, and again, and finally after 4 or 5 times of this they stayed on.

By the time we left the underground city I had already taken close to 100 pictures! On the way to the city our guide mentioned another tour the next day which we didn’t know anything about. She said it would cost another 160 Euros and if we wanted another tour we would have to let her know soon. Outside of the underground city we convened and decided that we were already enjoying this tour so much that we wanted another tour tomorrow. Besides, it was more convenient to have someone drive you around to sites that they know are worth seeing rather than figuring things out yourselves which could result in a lot of lost time, and we only had two days in Cappadocia. We also met some American college students who were studying in Cairo for a semester and had come to Turkey as tourists. It’s always nice to meet someone from home in a foreign country and even better if they happen to be around the same age.

Our next three stops included monasteries/churches that were built into the sides of hills. I don’t remember their names though one had a yellow sign with black lettering that said, rather ominously, “church with snakes”. It turned out that that particular church had a fresco of St. George defeating a three-headed snake. All three of the churches were impressive, with frescos dating from the 9-12th centuries. Around the churches and monasteries there were holes cut into the rock for pigeons which the monks and nuns used for their excrement which was a good fertilizer. Cappadocia was once a volcanic region and as a result the soil is poor in nitrogen and other chemical elements making it difficult to grow crops under normal conditions.

The frescos in the churches depicted saints as well as various scenes from the life of Christ. Unfortunately most of the frescos were covered in graffiti from the past few centuries. I found some dates from the mid-1800s carved into the frescos. In some of the churches the faces of all the people were scratched out or pock-marked which had been done by Muslims centuries ago because the depiction of idols is forbidden in Islam. Not being very religious I was not awed by the churches in any spiritual sense but I was really impressed with the architecture. In order to carve the churches the builders would wet the rock making it softer and then chip away at it. Even though it was relatively soft rock this could not have been an easy task. Carving out the underground cities must have been even more daunting.

For lunch we ate at a small restaurant near the village of Soğanlı (pronounced so-an-luh) which served the best food I had in Turkey. The appetizers were reminiscent of Italian cuisine, an amazing crumbly cheese, olives, and a dish of peppers and things in oil were served with bread, butter, and honey. Our tour guide explained that the cheese is usually eaten with butter and honey on it which tasted a lot better than it sounds. Interestingly, what we thought was olive oil and vinegar in jars on the table turned out to be olive oil and pomegranate sauce. We were served amazing lentil soup and then for my main course I had chicken that had been cooked in a clay pot and smothered in cheese.

After lunch we bought some hand-made dolls which the village is supposed known for and then walked through the village. It was the middle of the afternoon and it was deserted except for dogs, cats, and chickens which roamed the dusty streets in between the stone houses. Like most of the villages in Cappadocia, the houses were built when the caves the villagers had been living in started to collapse. Many caves in the region are still used to store grain and potatoes. After wandering around the village for a bit we drove to Mustafapaşa which used to be a city of mostly Greeks until 1924 when Ataturk initiated a citizen exchange program with Greece which resulted in Turks in Greece being resettled in Sinasos (which was renamed to Mustafapaşa) and the Greeks being moved back to Greece. This was part of Ataturk’s “Turkey for the Turks” program that resulted in the Armenian genocide, a topic which is rarely mentioned in Turkey today. As a result of the Greek legacy most of the buildings in Mustafapaşa are 18-19^th century Greek in style. We visited a hotel that was once a large Greek house which had original 19^th frescos on the walls.

Our final stop on the tour was an archaeological site in the middle of a field. A roman bath had been discovered there a few years ago and not many people knew about it. It wasn’t in our Lonely Planet guidebook and you were only allowed access if accompanied by a guide from a few of the local tourist offices. We were told that we absolutely could not take photographs. When we got there our guide explained a bit about the discovery of the baths and pointed out various sections of the baths. Excavation had stopped until the following summer but it was thought that much of the land we were walking on probably contained more Roman ruins beneath. We walked to another section of the ruins where a security guard held up a ribbon that cordoned off the area and let us walk under it. This section featured an amazingly well preserved mosaic and the foundation of what had been a sort of meeting-room for the local government (if I recall correctly).

By now it was close to 4:30, the scheduled end of our tour. We drove to the nearby town of Ürgüp where the driver and the guide dropped us off with the agreement that the driver would pick us up at 9 P.M. to take us back to the hotel. We went to a small café and ordered apple tea and Turkish coffee, and then browsed the nearby stores. Then we went to a liquor store and bought two bottles of local red wine and a small bottle of raki, which is a grape-based anise-flavored drink that tastes similar to Sambuca. While we were walking around looking for a specific restaurant we ran into two people that we had seen in Soğanlı. We walked around with them for 20 minutes or so trying to find a restaurant that they were looking for but we never found it. They walked us to a restaurant they had eaten at the night before and then they decided to join us.

During our walk in circles around Ürgüp, and later during dinner, we learned that Lou and Kris (or is it Chris?) were from San Francisco and that they were not married. I think we all assumed they were married or dating since they were an Asian-American man and women from San Francisco traveling together. Kris was doing some traveling overseas and did not want to travel alone so she asked some friends back home if any of them wanted to join her, and Lou agreed. They had just been to Israel and were now spending some time in Turkey. Over dinner we learned that they were both well-traveled having been to many countries in Asia and Europe. Lou was a 30-year-old mechanical engineer who obviously had enough money to afford to travel. During dinner we discussed food from various countries and talked about which countries we liked best and so forth.

After a great dinner (I had this ‘grilled salad’ which consisted of grilled peppers, tomatoes, tons of garlic and some other tasty things as an appetizer) we said our goodbyes and then walked to a pastry shop and got a few pastries before meeting our driver at the bus station. Back at the hotel we went to the lobby where they had two computers and wireless internet access. While we were planning what to do in Spain a saz player, a drummer, and the hotel manager (who played spoons) played traditional Turkish music. I recorded a few songs on video and then I asked if I could try playing the saz. I had no idea what scales or chords they used so anything I played sounded terrible but it was fun nonetheless.

Later in our cave room we opened the bottles of wine and listened to some music while waiting for Happy to come over. We called to have someone bring wood for the fire place and eventually, around 11, Happy came to our room with a crate full of logs. Our decision to purchase wine was a wise one because, for some reason, Happy did not have the wine he had promised. He spent a good 10 minutes holding a torch of some kind up to the logs in the fireplace to get the fire going. Afterwards he sat down with us and we offered him some wine and raki.

As Happy drank wine and then Raki he began to get really crazy, made all the worse by his inability to communicate with us well in English. He insisted that we put on some music he could dance to so I put on Radiohead’s new album ‘In Rainbows’. He attempted to dance to the first song, “15 Steps”, for a bit and then he convinced Hua to join him. That didn’t last long before Happy started giggling profusely and tried to explain to us that when Hua danced he looked like the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, except he said it like this: “He wandeem, he wandeem”. We had no idea what he was saying so he elaborated, “wandeem, cinema, tae kwan do” and he stood there with a martial arts pose. When we just shook our heads in confusion he fell to the ground and we weren’t sure whether he was laughing or crying. At some point in the continuing madness one of us finally figured out what he was trying to say. On another occasion he got very serious and asked us, "Are any of you Jewish?" When we all said no he said, "Good!" It was totally random and very strange.

At another point he told Hua that he looked like a cow, and at another point he kept laughing and saying things to us in Turkish as if we knew what he was saying. Suddenly he decided he wanted to play a card game but all he knew were Turkish card games. He decided to play with Carly but since he couldn’t explain the rules she had no idea what was going on. As we were all watching them play, the manager of the hotel walked in. He looked at Happy, then at us, and then said a few words to Happy. He sat down next to us and tried to explain the card game they were playing. When Carly appeared to have won a few games Happy got upset and exclaimed, "I can't believe I lose to a girl!" Hua asked the manager what kind of music he listened to and he said he liked hip-hop so we put on some Dr. Dre to which he exclaimed, “I like this song”. Who would have thought we would go half-way around the world only to drink and listen to hip-hop with middle-aged Turkish men?

On our last day in Cappadocia we started late and subsequently met our tour guide late. Our tour today started off with Imagination Valley which has a bunch of unique geological rock formations (called fairy chimneys, you’ll understand when you see the pictures) that supposedly look like various objects and persons though I couldn’t tell. We then visited another set of caves in which I climbed up through a narrow tunnel in the ceiling with the aid of handholds carved into the walls to access the otherwise inaccessible second floor. That was followed by a trip to the “open-air museum” which is a collection of some 30 cave-churches and a cave-monastery. One such church was unique because the ceiling had collapsed midway through construction leaving it exposed to the outside.

The final stop on our tour featured a breathtaking panoramic view of the rock formations of Cappadocia. In the distance we could see a snow-capped mountain which judging by its apparent size might as well have been Mt. Everest. Michael and I climbed down into the hills and explored some caves on our own for a bit as the sunset made the landscape in the distance glow pink. Our tour guide took us back to Ürgüp where we had to retrieve Mr. Carrot from the tourist office. Mike had placed Mr. Carrot on the mantle above the fireplace back at the cave hotel and forgot it when we checked out. Our tour guide arranged to have him dropped off at her office and sure enough he was there when we arrived. We said goodbye to our wonderful guide and spent the brief amount of time we had in Ürgüp at a pastry shop.

We flew back to Istanbul that day and dedicated our fourth day in Turkey to an exploration of the city. Mike, Eva, Carly, and I visited the Blue Mosque, Aya Sopia (known as Hagia Sophia in Greek), and the Grand Bazaar (which has some 4,000 shops). Aya Sophia was under renovation which was a bit of a disappointment and none of us wanted to go into the Blue Mosque. It was a rainy, cold day, and after everything we’d seen in Cappadocia the monuments of Istanbul seemed unexciting by comparison. In the late afternoon as it began to pour Mike, Eva, and I (Carly had enough sense to go back to the ship) walked through the Spice Bazaar which, since it was situated on an incline, was like walking uphill through a river.

The highlight of my last day in Turkey was a visit to Topkapı (pronounced something like top-kap-uh) Palace. I accompanied Eva, Carly, and some other people. Topkapı Palace is immense; we didn’t see the entire thing even though we spent several hours there. In the evening we walked around doing some shopping, I spent some time browsing music stores for a cheap saz but they were either too cheap or too expensive. During our few days in Istanbul we got accustomed to their transit system. They have some of the nicest, newest, and cleanest trains I’ve been in (aside from Japan) and since they run on the streets (like trolleys) you get to see the city as you travel.

Turkey ended up being one of my favorite countries. I came with no preconceived notions and left with a feeling that Istanbul is a great city and Turkey is more than worthy to be a part of the European Union. The main obstacle to their entrance thus far has been the reluctance of countries such as France. Since France has the largest Muslim population of any EU nation there is a fear there of the possibility of further Muslim immigration upon Turkey’s acceptance into the EU. This instinctual fear of Muslims is ridiculous especially since Turkey is very much a secular country (their government is influenced by religion even less than America’s). There’s also the pesky problem of Turkey’s inability to acknowledge or discuss the Armenian genocide. Of course, you don’t hear too many people complaining about the 27-72 million people that died during the Cultural Revolution in China (both the low and high estimates make this the worst disaster in terms of human lives lost in the history of the world). That aside, Turkey is a wonderful country that I would love to return to some day.

Egypt

Our voyage is over and I’m still far behind in my blog so I’m going to be doing slightly shorter summaries from now on. Egypt would be the last country with warm weather that we would experience on this voyage. The dry desert heat was a nice break from the ridiculous humidity in the tropics. Our ship had made port at Alexandria and since Mike and I had a trip to Cairo & Sharm El Sheikh we would not get the chance to see the city. In the morning of our arrival we packed, met Hua (who we had traveled with independently in Japan and Vietnam), and went to the designated meeting place for our group.

Thankfully there were far less people on this SAS-sponsored trip than there were on the Phuket/Bangkok one in Thailand (40 versus 120). The bus ride to Cairo was not notable except for the fact that our tour guide was exceedingly annoying. She talked for most of the 3 hour ride when all any of us wanted to do was listen to our ipods and sleep. She would occasionally raise her voice and say, “Attention, attention!” What she had to say about the history and geography of Egypt was certainly interesting but no one wanted to hear it then. By the end of the trip we would all warm up to her a bit.

Once in Cairo we went immediately to the Pyramids at Giza which sit on a plateau overlooking the city. Everyone else wanted to ride camels but I decided against it, the fifteen minute ride was not worth the price and I wanted the time to take some pictures of the pyramids. The pyramids were really cool to see but I have to say that Angkor Wat is still so much more impressive. The pyramids definitely have grandeur and a classic shape that is very aesthetically pleasing. Despite all of that I just didn’t feel as impressed by them as I was expecting. Maybe I’ve been spoiled? Later in Turkey when I would go to Cappadocia to see the natural geological formations and man-made caves and underground cities I felt that same sense of awe that was present when I visited Angkor Wat. Perhaps the pyramids are just overrated.

After the pyramids we had some free time so we went to buy tickets to walk in one of the pyramids but after seeing the lines and heeding the warnings of our tour guide (she said that if we wanted to pay to crawl through a tiny passage and get dirty just to see a bare chamber it was fine by her but she didn’t recommend it) we turned back to see the Sphinx instead. Hua, Mike and I hung out near the Sphinx for a bit making fun of the scantily clad Europeans. It was made very clear to us on the ship that Egyptians keep their legs and shoulders covered at all times, they are very conservative dressers. So while everyone on SAS were dressed properly there were Europeans dressed in some of the skimpiest clothing I have ever seen, including pre-teen girls with their parents! People often make a big deal out of the way that Americans supposedly dress, very scantily and lewdly, but that image is quickly shattered once you see how Europeans dress. Dignified they are not.

Throughout our entire Egypt trip I felt close to starvation since they kept feeding us at odd hours. Our first day in Cairo we skipped lunch, so when it came time for a (not-so-Egyptian) buffet in the evening we ate as much as we possibly could. We then returned to the Giza plateau at nightfall to watch a laser light show that was tacky, amusing, and very cheesy. We finally checked into our hotel where Mike and I stayed in an executive suite on the 23^rd floor. It was probably the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in and it was really not necessary at all. I invited Hua up to check it out and he told me that he wasn’t even allowed to take the elevator that far, we were exclusive. After coming down to get him he told us that when he opened the door to his room he found boxes stacked everywhere, dozens of lamps on the floor, and mattresses lining the walls. Apparently they gave him a storage room by accident. The contrast between our room and his was so big, it was really funny.

The following morning we endured an early wake-up call and shuffled sleepily downstairs to pick up our boxed breakfasts and headed to the bus for our ride to the airport. I tried to enjoy the breakfast as much as I could with the knowledge that there would be no lunch yet again. The flight to Sharm El Sheik was short and full of Europeans on their way to the resort town for vacation. Sharm El Sheik had been an Israeli resort town since they captured the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1982 it was returned to Egyptian control as part of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979. Egypt has since developed it further and it remains, aside from Cairo, one of the top travel destinations in Egypt.

Our first day in Sharm was spent on a Jeep safari through the Sinai desert. The Sinai desert is a wasteland devoid of any life. Lone acacia trees dot the landscape every few miles or so and sterile lifeless rocks posing as mountains fill the horizon in every direction. As we made our way through a landscape that would look better on Mars than on Earth one of our guides explained that it is easy to get lost in the desert, only the Bedouins know their way around it, and in fact they were lost right now. After we stopped on one occasion to consult with other drivers and then made dramatic changes in direction I realized we really were lost.

After an hour or so of driving through the desert we stopped in front of 40 camels that we would be riding through the desert (technically they are dromedaries since they only have one hump). Everyone else had ridden camels the day before but I hadn’t and I was a bit nervous. Before I left for SAS I had read an amazing book about three Canadians who rode camels through the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, the world’s driest desert (it hadn’t rained in 10 years when they arrived there). Throughout that book I read about the pain of riding a camel for 14 hours a day in 120F heat, how it felt to get used to riding a camel, Bedouin hospitality, and the feeling of being in such an inhospitable place for months.

Because of that book I was really looking forward to the camel ride and the Bedouin camp that awaited us at the end. I was a bit nervous about the six-year-old child that had the reigns of my camel but he seemed to know what he was doing (until later when he insisted on whipping one of the other kids holding the reigns of another camel). The slow ride through the desert was fun though the swaying motion was not as smooth as the elephants we rode in Thailand. After almost an hour of riding we stopped, dismounted, and gratefully stretched our legs. When I woke up the next morning my thighs would be so sore I could barely walk.

We had come to a Bedouin tent where they were awaiting our arrival with traditional tea and unleavened bread. The shade of the tent was a welcomed relief from the sun and the Bedouin tea was absolutely amazing. They take a normal black tea and add a green herb to it that looks like dried basil but has a very sweet taste to it. The Bedouin men cooking bread over the fire let some of the girls in our group roll the dough and cook it while the rest of us learned about Bedouin culture from our tour guide. Afterwards I bought some of the herbs they use for the tea and then walked around nearby for a bit.

We had the remainder of the day to ourselves so Hua, Mike, and I decided to go to the beach near our hotel. There was a small coral reef right next to the shore that you can stand next to and watch all of the tropical fish swim around you. I loved it and wanted to stay for hours but Hua seemed bored so we decided to go to the swimming pool until we realized the water was too cold for a swim at 5 P.M. when the air begins to cool significantly. That night we ate dinner at an excellent Egyptian restaurant. Hua had pigeon which is a delicacy in Egypt; it was very similar to quail.

After dinner we smoked a hookah which is a water pipe that you smoke flavored tobacco out of. It is a tradition in much of Middle East (as well as Turkey) and as they say: When in Rome (or Egypt) do as the locals do. It makes you feel really relaxed and I can certainly see why they consider it a good way to unwind at the end of the day. Unfortunately it’s terrible for your health. It was nice to try a few times though. We walked around the tourist area for a bit marveling at all of the Russians who had come to Sharm for winter vacation. Like the Europeans we had seen in Cairo the women had no sense of decency when it came to clothing (which was fine by me), luckily in Sharm El Sheikh the locals don’t care.

I woke up on our second day in Sharm El Sheikh feeling horrible. I was so dizzy I could barely stand and I was having really bad stomach pains. I couldn’t believe I had gotten through all of Southeast Asia and India without getting sick only to get sick in a resort town in Egypt! I tried to take a shower without passing out and then went down to breakfast even though I wasn’t able to eat anything. I really didn’t want to miss out on the snorkeling we were going to do that day so I decided I would try to come along even though I knew I should stay in bed. During the 15 minute ride to the place where we picked out our snorkeling gear I began to feel worse and worse and realized that if I didn’t go back to the hotel I would have to come along with everyone else and wouldn’t be able to rest. I told our guide Iman that I needed to go home and she arranged to get a cab for me and even offered to pay for the ride herself.

I went back to the hotel and slept all morning. When everyone came back in the early afternoon for lunch I came along but again could not eat. I felt so dizzy and feverish that I could barely keep my head up. There have been only a few occasions where I felt as sick as I did then. Iman called for the hotel doctor and he took me to his office. He took my temperature which was up to 102F. After describing my symptoms he told me that the constant change in food and environment probably upset the amount of bacteria in my stomach and my immune system responded as if it were being invaded. He injected me with an anti-spasmodic to calm my stomach and an anti-inflammatory drug to keep the fever down. Within 15 minutes I was feeling much better. He was extremely nice and helpful; he even had someone from the hotel deliver anti-biotics and stomach medicine to my room later in the afternoon.

Mike and Hua went out for the afternoon and I slept more or less the rest of the day and into the next. The following day, our fourth in Egypt, I was feeling much better. We drove to the southern Sinai desert to visit St. Catherine’s monastery which contains what is supposed to be the burning bush that spoke to Moses. It is the oldest Christian monastery still in use in the entire world. The monastery itself was impressive. It contains a room of paintings of saints and religious icons, the only of its kind in the entire Muslim word. Idols and icons are banned in Islam; all depictions of religious figures have been destroyed in past centuries. The only reason the paintings in the monastery survived, some of which date as far back as the 6^th century C.E., is because of the remoteness of the monastery.

We visited the library which contains the second-largest collection of Christian manuscripts in the entire world (the Vatican has the largest collection). It was amazing to see all of these ancient texts, some 1500 years old, in very good condition due to the dry heat of the desert. We were given a tour of the library by an American monk who was from Texas and had been living at the monastery for 11 years. I asked him some questions about the manuscripts in the library, I have an interest in some early forms of Christianity that were suppressed by the church after the fall of the Roman Empire and I was interested in whether or not the library had any manuscripts from these early Christians.

On our last day in Egypt we flew back to Cairo and visited the National Museum which has a huge collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. Unfortunately, the museum was packed and we had to go slowly as we followed our guide Iman who spent time explaining various objects. Hua, Mike, and I were impatient so we wandered from room to room but mostly stood around waiting for our tour to end. Being forced to go on a guided tour of a museum is inherently boring; if we had had two hours to wander around on our own we would have enjoyed it more.

When we first got to the museum I had to use a toilet so badly. In Egypt there are always men in the public restrooms who stand there doing nothing and then expect you to pay them “baksheesh” which is essentially a tip. It is custom in Egypt that you pay these men even if they have rendered no services. The smallest bill I had was a 20 pound note, but because I had to go so badly I ended up paying the man in the restroom the equivalent of $4 for doing absolutely nothing. I’m sure I made his day.

After we got back to Alexandria Hua, Mike, and I decided we wanted one more Egyptian meal before we had to get back on the ship. We met up with some friends and two of them, Greg and Katie, decided to join us for dinner. As the call to prayer rang out across the city we wandered around aimlessly trying to find a restaurant. An Egyptian man approached us asking us what we were looking for. He had been following behind me asking me if I wanted to go shopping or if I wanted food. I had already learned from Thailand and India that when someone approaches you on the street you do your best to ignore them.

The man approached Greg who had just spent the day with an Egyptian guy he met randomly on the train. He had taken Greg to his house and made him food. He probably had that encounter in mind when this other guy approached him and he agreed to let him take us to a restaurant. We walked through a bunch of twisting streets and made our way through a market. I’ve never felt as out of place as I did then. We drew more than a few stares at the weird sight of four white men and a woman (with a poorly arranged headscarf) being led by an Egyptian man. For all we knew he was taking us to a dark street somewhere where 5 guys would beat us with bats.

Instead he led us to a tiny street-side “restaurant” just like the ones I had eaten at in Vietnam on several occasions. We sat down in plastic chairs and told the man to order us whatever he thought would be good. When our food came the man told us that it would cost us 200 Egyptian Pounds (a little over $30) to which Greg declared, “No, that’s bullshit! That’s bullshit!” Greg is a very outspoken person who once accidentally got into a fight in Bangkok by walking down the street yelling, “3,000 Baht for a pair of jeans? 3,000 baht?!” As he complained loudly to the man I was afraid of what would happen next. The man explained to him that Egyptian people are very sensitive and they do not talk like that, and if he wanted to discuss the issue further he would have to calm down.

The man then told us that he would pay for us and we didn’t need to worry about it. The chicken we were served was the best chicken I have ever had. As we had walked to the restaurant we passed a stall in the market where they were weighing chickens and selling them. The chicken we were eating had probably been weighed, sold, and slaughtered not too long before. As we ate the man explained to us that he and most Egyptians liked American people but they did not like the American government. This was the same sentiment that we encountered in many countries and I’m glad that most people see a distinction between the policies of the American government and the American people themselves.

As the man led us back out of the maze of streets Greg was still upset over being ripped off for dinner (he kept saying that he had been eating meals for 30 Egyptian Pounds throughout Egypt) and he kept refusing to pay. Though the man had told us he would pay for our dinner, when it came time to go our separate ways he insisted we pay the original price of 200 pounds. The rest of us realized that we only had two choices, either pay or run away. The latter option seemed too risky so we all paid our share and the rest that Greg refused to pay. The dinner was so good that the entire experience was worth it even if it seemed like we were close to running into trouble at some points.

India - Days 3 through 5

The rest of our stay in India was much better than the first few days but since I am running out of time on the ship I’m going to have to resort to a summary of events. On our third day in India we went to a tourist office to inquire about guided tours and were told that there were none available. After we stopped into another private tourist office we met John who said he would personally take us on a walking tour of Ooty that afternoon if we chose. He met us at our hotel a few hours later and took us on a wonderful walk through the hills around Ooty, pointing out birds, trees, and various plants along the way. We walked along a muddy path in the forest that brought back memories of our jungle trek in Thailand. Finally we visited a tea factory where we had the chance to see how tea is processed and we were given a free cup of tea. I bought several kilograms of tea there (which cost less than $10).

John recommended that we visit the botanical gardens which were begun by the British in the 1800s and have been maintained since that time. He said that we could visit a tribal village nearby which was easy to get to. All we had to do was walk towards the back of the gardens, up some hills, and we would eventually stumble upon gate that said, “No entrance” which we should ignore and enter anyway. We would probably be met by a man who, if we paid him a small sum, would let us in the village. John also arranged a driver to pick us up at 6 A.M. or so the following day to take us to a national park a few hours away where we could go on an animal safari.

In the late afternoon Mike and I walked to the botanical gardens and wandered around a bit. As soon as we saw how big the gardens were we realized we would never find the Toda (one of the tribal peoples that have lived in the Nilgiri Hills for centuries) village. The gardens themselves had weird trees and flowers from around the world that I had never seen (such as the Monkey-Puzzle tree indigenous to Australia). We eventually found the gate with the “no entrance” sign but were yelled at by someone when we went through the gate so we turned back, disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to visit a Toda village.

On the way back to the gardens we met a young boy on his way home from school, he told us that he “lived in the forest” and pointed back towards the village. It wasn’t until we left him that we realized we could have gotten him to bring us to his home. That would have been an interesting experience. I always think of the really good ideas after it’s too late. After we left the gardens we walked around the Tibetan market which, just as the Russian market in Phnom Penh contained no Russians, was devoid of Tibetans. I bought a small bag to transport all the tea I bought but I hadn’t realized at the time that it was rusting and falling apart. By the time I got it back on the ship a few days later the shoulder straps had ripped off and I barely got it on the ship before it felt apart completely.

On our fourth day we woke up early and met our driver in front of the hotel who would take us to Mudumalai national park for an animal safari. The park itself was only open in the morning for a few hours and since it took a few hours to drive there we had to leave at 6 A.M. The drive down through the hills was stunning. We went around some 30 hairpin turns and probably twice as many s-turns on roads that had only one lane. There were signs on the sides of the roads that said “do not overtake automobiles on turns” which everyone violated at every possible moment. The only way to let a car know you were coming was to beep your horn which meant most of the ride was spent listening to our driver and other drivers beep their horns at each other.

In the beginning of our journey while we were still at the top of the hills we drove through an ancient forest with towering trees. In the early morning gloom everything looked ancient and alien and I kept expecting dinosaurs to wander on to the road. As we slowly descended a few thousand meters the hills were wrapped in a thick mist that would not go away until the sun was high in the sky later in the day. After the spell-binding drive to the park the animal safari was bound to be disappointing. We had to sit on a bus with a bunch of Indian families and their screaming kids. During the 45 minute-long drive we saw elephants, boar, and some other unexciting animals. After it was over we left the park and began another long drive, this time up the hills. It was just as exciting on the way up and the combined four hours we spent driving to and from the park were definitely worth it.

That afternoon we had to check out of the hotel and take a taxi to Coimbatore. From there we would fly back to Chennai on the following day (our last day in port). Driving to Coimbatore required that we again descend through the Nilgiri hills (in a different direction than Mudumalai national park) which this time proved to be nerve wrecking. Not only did we have to deal with passing cars on hairpin turns but many of the other automobiles were large trucks that didn’t bother to slow down when they saw oncoming traffic. There were a number of times when I was sure we were going to be mashed by oncoming trucks (including one military truck that was carry plastic explosives from a bomb-making factory we passed).

That we made it back alive is a testament to the driving skills of the people who probably drive the hill roads every day. We checked into a decent hotel (it had its own supermarket!) in Coimbatore, had some dinner, and then went to the bar where the bartender spent most of the time making fun of us for being American (at least that was how I interpreted it). We went to bed somewhat early because we had to wake up at 4:30 A.M. to get to the airport to catch a 7 A.M. flight (or so we thought).

We lugged ourselves out of bed, packed our things, and checked out without showering due to time constraints. When we got to the airport we noticed something odd, there was no one at the counter for the airline we were supposed to be flying on. I checked our itinerary and suddenly everything made sense. Our flight to Chennai was last night at 8 P.M. not that morning at 7! How could we have been so stupid? When we were originally looking to book our flights we had discussed flying back the morning of our last day in port. When we asked Cheryl to help us book the flights our return flight was changed but somehow in our minds we still thought we were flying that morning, and we were so certain of it we never bothered to check.

So here we were at an empty airport at 5:30 A.M. We were tired and the humidity of the day was creeping up along with a disgusting amount of flying insects buzzing around. There was only one airline counter open, Kingfisher airlines, and thankfully they had a flight that morning that we could take to get back. We spent an uncomfortable couple of hours waiting in the un-air-conditioned airport. I had to use the bathroom but in India public restrooms don’t usually have toilet paper. The power went out in the terminal at one point which got me to thinking about how often they do safety checks of the planes. Eventually we got on the plane and despite the kids behind us who kicked the back of Mike’s seat the entire flight we got back to Chennai in time for our SAS trip to the Theosophical Society.

Mike and I went on the Theosophical Society trip because our Philosophy professor was leading it and we felt that we should attend one of the day trips he was leading. We went with Eva and a bunch of other people from his various philosophy classes. The Theosophical Society was pretty boring and it didn’t change my low opinion of Theosophy. Theosophy was founded by a Russian woman and an American man in the 1870’s. They attempted to combine what they saw as the best of all the world’s religions into one system which predictably meant that Theosophy was a ridiculous mess. They had noble goals but they failed miserably. Along with strong influences from Hinduism, Theosophy includes strange ideas that today we would consider “new age” or “occult” (such as gibberish about “latent powers of the mind).

The Theosophical Society’s headquarters were founded in Chennai (then called Madras) because the founders thought that India, with its long tradition of spirituality, was the perfect place for such a society. After the Theosophical society we visited Kapaleeshwarar, a Hindu temple, which was an overwhelming site. If you ever want to know what India is all about visit a Hindu temple, they encapsulate everything that is India: The smell, the chaos, the color, it’s all very overwhelming. While we were there we saw beggar children being beaten with paddles and Indians used our group as a background for their pictures (a big group of white people is an exotic site in India these days).

Next to the temple is a market that was teeming with people. As we made our way through the throngs of people I felt scared, the first time I ever felt in real danger in any of the countries we had been to. People kept approaching us trying to sell us things and limbless beggars clung to you trying to get you to give up some money. We had to take our shoes off and walk barefoot around the temple which was quite unnerving. India is about the last place on Earth I’d want to walk around barefoot but we had no choice. Accompanying us on our trip to the Theosophical Society and the Hindu temple was an Indian lady who had been an interport lecturer for SAS a few years ago. She was extremely nice and very knowledgeable about Chennai, Theosophy, and the rituals that we saw performed at the Hindu temple. She was very grandmotherly and seemed so excited to be able to teach SAS kids about India again.

After our trip we went back to the ship and Mike, Eva, and I decided to eat a quick dinner before the mandatory on-ship time. We met up with some other friends, quickly negotiated with some autorickshaw drivers, and went to a restaurant that our Indian tour guide had recommended to us. The food was excellent and it was a memorable experience, unfortunately not as memorable as the smell when we traveled over the bridge that went across the sewage river. Never have I smelled something so foul, I wish I could have bottled it up to bring home and share with everyone. Then you would know India.

In the end I have mixed feelings about India. Ooty was beautiful but the bigger cities in India are a mess. There has been a lot of discussion in the media about the economic rise of India and China in recent years and though they make it sound as if both countries are on equal footing it’s not even close. China is years ahead of India in almost every respect and their strong central government is actually part of the reason for this. On the other hand India has the advantage of more liberal social policies (except rural areas that haven’t quite caught up with the times) and Indians tend to be much better speakers of English which is becoming increasingly important. Since each of India’s states speaks a different language English has unofficially become the lingua franca of India (Hindi is the main official language but has traditionally been the language of only one state). If nothing else, India was a learning experience in how to plan and execute private travel plans in a foreign country.

India - Days 1 and 2

Leading up to our stop in India, all of the students had been told repeatedly that India is like nowhere else in the world, that it evades description, that it will change us forever. I don’t know about the last part, but it is definitely the most ‘alien’ place I’ve been to yet. Michael and I decided to eschew visiting Delhi, like most of the other students, because we wanted to get away from the chaos and the heat both of which had been constant throughout all of the cities in Southeast Asia and even more-so in Chennai as we quickly found out. Instead we planned to go to Ooty, formerly a British hill station where the British who ran the state of Tamil Nadu would escape from the sweltering heat of summer in Madras (now called Chennai). Ooty is located in the Nilgiri mountains which are famous for tea and eucalyptus oil.

I felt a lot of trepidation about India and I didn’t know whether or not I was looking forward to it or dreading it. That we would soon be in India meant that we were leaving the Southeast and East Asian countries I had been looking forward to most on this trip (and ended up really enjoying). India also meant that Michael and I would be all on our own since we did not choose an SAS-sponsored trip. Everything on the SAS trips ran smoothly, but on our own anything was possible. As we would find out later, everything did not run smoothly, partly due to Indian incompetence and partly due to our own forgetfulness. That aside, we both had fun and it gave me a taste of what India has to offer (both good and bad things). One day I hope to go back, particularly to the Himalayan states of northern and northeastern India.

The morning we arrived in Chennai I woke up suddenly before my alarm went off and noticed a horrible smell, a combination of sewage and car exhaust, and I knew we were in India. The smell was so bad that I didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep again. Thankfully I did fall back to sleep but unfortunately that would not be the last time I would smell the unique aroma of India. The morning of our arrival at port was routine by now, Michael and I packed what we would need for the next 4 days and waited until it was our turn to pick up our Indian customs forms and our passports.

As soon as we had our passports and customs forms in hand we grabbed our bags and walked to the gangway where we would leave the ship. Leaving the comfortable air-conditioning of the ship I was greeted with a furnace-blast of heat. From our departure in Thailand to our arrival in India 4 days later I had not gone outside on the ship because the heat and humidity have been terrible. Unfortunately there was no escaping it now.

The port we were located at was not meant for passenger ships, it was surrounded by warehouses, tractor-trailers, and various pieces of industrial equipment. While we were on the ship an announcement was made telling everyone to make sure that once we walked in between the two warehouses in front of the ship we should go left and absolutely not go right because it posed a security risk. With those words in my mind I wondered what awaited us past the warehouses. As it turned out the only thing on the other side of the warehouses was more warehouses, stacks of giant steel plates, and a bunch of rickshaw drivers and various suspicious looking characters.

Unsure what to do Michael and I accepted the offer of an auto-rickshaw (a motorized rickshaw) driver to take us wherever we wanted to go. Our plan was to eat at a restaurant in a fancy hotel that was recommended by our Lonely Planet India guidebook. The driver agreed to take us there, or at least that is what we thought he said, so off we went. After a few minutes we came upon a gate with at least 50 Semester At Sea students standing around it. The rickshaw stopped and the driver told us that we had to get off here. We ended up paying the equivalent of $5 for barely a 5 minute rickshaw ride that took us to the front gate of the harbor. That was the first of two times we would get ripped off that day.

After waiting in line in the sweltering heat for 45 minutes we got another rickshaw that took us to the hotel. The driver absolutely insisted on waiting until we finished eating after which he would take us shopping. By the time we got to the hotel my nose and eyes were full of dirt and grit. Apparently there are no automobile emission regulations in India and as a result its major cities are the most polluted in the world. Chennai made Beijing’s air seem clean by comparison and yet Chennai has ¼ the population of Beijing. To make matters worse, in India everyone uses their horns all of the time. In the U.S. using your car horn is strongly discouraged but in India you can be ticketed for not using it in some cases. Since rickshaws are open on the sides a ride through Chennai resulted in a pounding headache from the car exhaust fumes and the constant squealing of horns.

It was a relief to finally get to the hotel and have lunch, especially since we had missed breakfast on the ship. Lunch was pretty good, though we ended up having better meals later. The one good thing about eating in India is that about 80% of the population is vegetarian so most restaurants only serve vegetarian food so you don’t need to worry about being served strange or uncooked meats. Interestingly, I never got sick from the food in India, nor did Michael. Some people I know who have been to India told me that I was guaranteed to get sick despite my best efforts to avoid it. On the contrary, I really don’t know how you can get sick from the food or water in any foreign country as long as you follow the simple rules of avoiding tap water, ice cubes, and uncooked fruits and vegetables.

After lunch Michael and I went to a shopping mall right next to the hotel to find an ATM and waste some time before we had to go the airport for our flight to Coimbatore. In the mall the merchants stood outside their stores and tried to convince passersby to come in and take a look around. It was certainly different from the usual malls back home. Mike and I got conned into visiting some Persian rug store where we bought some gifts (not rugs though). Afterwards we took a taxi to the airport which, thanks to the traffic problems in Chennai, took over an hour.

We arrived in Coimbatore in the evening, picked a random hotel in our Lonely Planet guidebook and checked in. We chose it because it was right across the street from the train station, if it wasn’t for that we probably would have left. The paint was peeling off the walls of the bathroom and the bed was rock-hard due to the paper-thin mattress. This was also the first time we experienced Indian hospitality which is so ridiculous that it becomes annoying. A boy showed us to our room, explained how to turn the lights on with a switch on the wall, showed us where the bathroom is, and turned on the TV for us. It was nice of him but I’m sure we could have figured it out by ourselves.

We woke up at 4:30 A.M. and went to the train station to wait for the 5:00 A.M. train. The lobby of the train station was filled with sleeping people, beggars, the homeless, and those that just didn’t want to miss their train. When our train came we had no idea which car to get into. People were unloading hay and sacks of produce from some cars and other cars looked air-conditioned. We walked into an air-conditioned first-class car and were quickly told that we did not have the appropriate ticket. So we moved to a sleeping car with metal bunk beds, dirty mattresses, and steel bars on the windows. It looked like one of those prison cars that the Nazis used to transport Jews and other minorities to concentration camps.

I was so tired and just wanted to take a nap but I was afraid we would miss our stop. After less than an hour we came to a station that Mike assured me was where we should get off. We wandered around the station trying to find the ticket office for the toy train (so-called because it was a minature steam engine train) we would be taking to Ooty, deep in the Nilgiri Hills. As we made our way to the ticket office a white college-aged girl (who looked as out of place as we did) approached us looking distraught and asked, “Do you speak English?” When we told her that we did she looked relieved. She proceeded to explain that the person at the ticket office told her that there were no more seats available on the toy train. When she exclaimed, “Now I’ll have to take an 8 hour bus ride with a bunch of smelly Indians” we realized just how upset she was.

I couldn’t figure out what country she was from but the girl had a strange accent. We soon found out that Celine was French and had been backpacking with friends through India for several months. She had more recently been spending a week traveling on her own and it was clear that the solo travel was getting to her. We decided to walk over to the toy train, find a seat and sit down, and see what happens. Celine kept asking us, “It is okay if ze sit down but have no tickets? What happens if some persons come to check for ze ticket?” The Indian guys in the car we sat in assured us that everything would be okay and that, if anything, we could bribe someone 200 rupees and stay where we were. All Celine’s worrying amounted to nothing though since no one ever came and asked for our tickets.

The train ride however, was torture. Spending seven hours in a tiny train car meant for five with nine other people is not something I’d like to repeat. The Indians we shared the car with were friends from a local town who decided to take the train together to Ooty. They spend most of the trip laughing and talking loudly. They had an interesting concept of personal space. When one of them wanted to stretch out their legs they would just lay on the others or insist you spread your legs a bit so they could put their feet on your seat opposite them. Celine spent the entire trip obviously upset and when one of the Indian men kept looking at the tags on her backpack she would glare at him.

At one point one of them literally took a bottle of water out of my hands and drank the remaining water that I desperately wanted. They did offer us food such as banana chips but it did not seem like appropriate compensation. We made stops every 30 minutes or so in order to stretch and take in the scenery. I had to go to the bathroom the entire time but since no one knew how long we would stop at each station or scenic point I didn’t want to leave the train. As we went higher and higher into the hills the palm trees gave way to conifers and the air cooled dramatically. It felt wonderful, like coming into an air-conditioned building after spending hours in the summer heat. When we left Chennai the day before it was around 90F and when we arrived in Ooty it was in the mid 60s. The hills were wreathed in mist and covered in neatly manicured tea plantations. This was the first time I’d ever seen tea plantations in person, and since tea is my favorite beverage, it was exciting.

It was such a relief to finally get off the train when we arrived at the Ooty train station 7 hours later. Mike and I took a taxi to the hotel that had been reserved for us. This is when our problems began. The only proof I had that a room was reserved for us was an e-mail from the travel agent and even that didn’t say very much. The staff had no idea that we had reserved a room; they had absolutely no record of it. Frustrated, and with no way to call overseas to find out what happened, we agreed to check in to a room even though we were supposed to have had one reserved anyway. They showed us to several rooms but each one had a problem with it. The last room had no toilet paper or shower, in its place were two faucets and two buckets.

Mike and I asked if we could use the phone and they explained that we would have to walk down the road about ten minutes and we would see a stand on the side of the road with a phone that can make overseas calls. On the way down the road we passed uniformed school kids and a herd of cows. The air was cool and misty but it didn’t help me feel any better about the current situation. We called another hotel in our guidebook, one that was supposed to be “high-end”, and we were told that they had some vacancies.

Back at the other hotel we were notified that our cash advance would be kept and that we would have to pay for a day’s stay even though we “stayed” in the hotel for barely an hour. It was mid-afternoon and at this point we just wanted to eat something because we hadn’t eaten since the previous day. We paid the bill, thanked them for nothing, and took an auto-rickshaw to the other hotel, which turned out to be very nice. We were so tired that we fell asleep as soon as we checked into our room. Later we walked around and took a look at the stores on the main road and then picked a random Indian restaurant. Eating in India was interesting since the menus had no English descriptions and the restaurant staff usually did not speak English well enough to discuss menu items. After a while you begin to identify certain words and get an idea for what is what, but most of the time you guess and hope you guessed right.

Thailand - Days 3 through 5

Our sea-kayaking was to take place in another national park; this one includes hundreds of tiny islands in the Andaman Sea spread out along the coast of Thailand. Our group drove to a pier and got on a boat that would take us to the islands of Koh Panak and Koh Hong. The journey to the islands took about an hour. On the way there we were introduced to our guides and assigned paddlers for our kayaks. Michael and I were assigned Mario who ended up being pretty funny. It rained heavily throughout the one hour ride to the first island and would continue to rain off and on the rest of the day.

When we arrived at the first island we boarded our kayaks and paddled to Oyster cave where oysters hung from the ceiling of the cave. We had to lay down flat on the kayak at the entrance to the cave, even at low tide the entrance was small, and during high tide the entire cave is submerged. We left the cave through the same entrance and followed the cliffs along the edge of the island. Due to the erosive action of the waves the island had a large overhang which loomed overheard of us. The next cave was a bat cave that was pitch black and reeked of guano. Once we went through the cave we entered a small lagoon on the inside of the island. It was absolutely beautiful and I don’t think any of the pictures I took captured it properly. Vines, trees, and all sorts of tropical vegetation clung to the cliffs on the inside of the island. It looked as if all of the plants were slowly descending into the emerald green lagoon below.

After the two caves we went back to the boat and rode to the next island. Koh Hong is the site of the diamond cave, so-called not because it contains diamonds but because within the lagoon there is an opening in one of the walls that is shaped like a diamond. On the way to another cave on the other side of the island we saw monkeys on the shore. One monkey was eating a banana and it climbed up into branches of a tree that hung over our heads. I was expecting it to jump into one of the kayaks but it didn’t. Then we spotted the alpha-male monkey who was strutting along the shore confidently. When he spotted us he walked over to one of the female monkeys, mounted her, and began mating.

This last cave was by far the most impressive. It opened up into a huge lagoon with little islands inside of it and giant pillar-like islands with trees on top. From our position it didn’t look like an island in the normal sense, there was no beaches, just a collection of huge rocks rising out of the sea covered in vegetation. We were paddled into another lagoon where a man in a small fishing boat was catching crabs. At this point the guides started to mess around. They spoke to the fisherman for a bit and then removed some crabs and horseshoe crabs from his boat and handed them to us. The girls in some of the kayaks screamed when they were handed the crabs, and one of the guides put a horseshoe crab on his head. The girls in one of the kayaks started wrestling with their guide and managed to knock him out of the kayak. They stole the paddle and paddled away, he just stood in the shallow water with his hands in the air laughing.

Our final stop for the day was Lawa Island where we had a few hours to paddle the kayaks on our own, sunbathe, or swim. During the ride to the island we were served a Thai buffet which was very tasty. I’m not sure how they managed to prepare it on the boat, but they did a great job. The boat anchored some distance from the shore and we all jumped into the water. I opted to swim the distance with Mario paddling around me in the kayak. I swam and swam and was ready to give up when I noticed people not too far from me standing up, so I stood up. I didn’t have to walk too far before half of my body was out of the water. I walked to the shore and grabbed the pink kayak we had been riding around in all day and set off.

I paddled around for a bit near Mike and some other kids who had their own kayaks as well. I noticed a dot-sized island some distance off, at least a mile away, and I considered trying to paddle there. As I was considering it another SAS guy, Zach, started paddling towards the island. I followed, not sure whether I would paddle to the same island or some others that were farther still. It took 45 minutes of constant paddling to get to the island and on more than one occasion I was close to giving up and turning back. I spent the time thinking about when I used to go sea-kayaking in Brigantine and wondered what it would be like to live on some of the islands we had paddled around earlier. Some of my favorite books as a child, Robinson Crusoe and The Island of the Blue Dolphin, were about people being stranded on islands. Paddling around these semi-remote islands with no inhabitants brought me back to daydreaming about what I would do if I were stuck on an island (or if I moved there willingly). While it’s fun to think about, it doesn’t sound too pleasant in practice.

Eventually I reached the island I had originally planned to paddle to; Zach had reached it five minutes before me. We walked around looking for coral and just checked things out. The island was basically a mostly barren rock with a group of trees and bushes on the left side. The rocks were very sharp and looked volcanic in origin, walking on them in bare feet was painful. After 15 minutes or so of walking around we decided it was time to get back to the boat. We decided to stack the kayaks and try paddling back in the same kayak because Zach’s was losing air and kept filling up with water. We tried this for 10 minutes until the top kayak slid off and we fell into the water. We spent a few minutes floundering about in the water trying to put the kayaks on top of each other again. The effort of trying to stack the kayaks on one another (while treading water) and then climbing back into my own kayak left my arms so sore I really didn’t think I would be able to paddle back.

Somehow I got back to the boat quicker than it took me to get to the island. As I got closer to the boat I saw Zach leaving his kayak and climbing on board, everyone else had boarded the boat and they were waiting for me. Less than a minute’s paddling time from the boat the wind started blowing heavily and these frighteningly dark clouds moved in over the water. Mario was standing on the back deck of the boat yelling, “Hurry Andy, the storm will blow you away!” As the wind began blowing even harder and the rain started to fall I felt like I was moving backwards. I finally made it to the boat and crawled on boat just as the monsoon rains came in full force. Back on the boat I gratefully accepted a young coconut with the top cut off and a straw in it, I gulped the coconut juice down quickly and wondered how much my arms would hurt later that night.

When we got back to the hotel a few hours later Mike and I asked for a “good Thai restaurant” and made arrangements to have a free shuttle take us there. Five minutes later a shuttle from the restaurant came to pick us up. When we got to the restaurant and saw the menu we realized we were at what was probably one of the fanciest restaurants in Phuket. The people around us were dressed nicely, though it would still generally be classified as ‘casual’ in most of the U.S., but Mike and I were in t-shirts, shorts, and sandals (thankfully we left our stinky jungle-water-logged shoes at the hotel). We sat on a balcony on a cliff that overlooked the beach where waves from the Andaman Sea crashed on the shore. The food was good (I had some green curry Chicken and spring rolls) but it wasn’t quite as good as the previous night when we paid four times less for a better dinner.

After dinner we decided to wander around Patong Beach, specifically Bangla Road which is the notorious red-light district. All we did was wander down the street and get bothered by Thai guys who wanted you to go to their nightclub (it was feeling a lot like Roppongi in Tokyo though not as insane). There were these other Thai guys who hung around on the streets and would stop and introduce themselves and ask if you wanted to go party with them. I had read in a guidebook somewhere that sometimes, though it is uncommon, these guys will take you to a bar where you order some drinks and talk to a woman who approaches you for a bit. When you decide it’s time to leave they present you with something like a $600 bill and claim it was for the woman’s drinks. If you refuse to pay they may beat you and take your wallet. I certainly didn’t want to ‘party’ with a total stranger in a foreign country, especially not with what I’d read in mind.

Mike and I crossed to the other side of the street where it was devoid of shady characters and walked back to the hotel. We ran into Emily and Brittany who were heading the way we had came and they invited us to come with them but Mike declined (he was feeling sick) and after all that paddling I was exhausted. Back at the hotel I watched some T.V. and then went to sleep. This concluded our trip to Phuket. The next day we would fly to Bangkok where, strangely, SAS had decided to put us in a classy hotel that was directly adjacent to Bangkok’s famous red-light district. After the tranquility and beauty of Phuket Bangkok was noisy, crazy, and just plain weird. As I would find out, there is almost nothing in Bangkok for tourists unless you are planning on visiting the royal palace or the red-light district.

After flying from Phuket to Bangkok we checked into our fancy hotel that was one block away from the red-light district. Mike and I went to drop our bags off in our hotel room and we found that the beds were not made and there were dirty towels in the bathroom, not to mention the room smelled strange. With several buses of SAS kids checking into the hotel at once, and only two elevators, waiting for the elevator was torturous. All of this was making me annoyed and it made me wonder why we spent so much money to stay in a nice hotel that seemed to have some problems.

While our room was being cleaned Mike and I went to lunch at a pizzeria attached to the hotel. Everyone else wanted to eat pizza and I, being in Thailand, wanted Thai food. I was starving and I didn’t want to eat alone so I went with Mike, Emily, Brittany and some other girls to eat some pizza. Afterwards we walked around the few streets comprising the red-light district which, in daylight, was deserted. They were setting up tables and tents in the middle of one of the streets that would serve as a night market. After walking around for a bit we all went back to relax for a bit and Mike, Emily, and I got Thai foot massages.

The red light district at night was pretty intense. As we wandered from stall to stall in the night market we were constantly bothered by Thai men standing in front of the night clubs, bars, and strip clubs that lined the street. They offered menus of drinks and a list of prices for “ping pong shows” which involve women, ping pong balls, and private parts (I don’t think any more detail is necessary). Brittany had wanted to see one of these shows, for reasons I can’t fathom, but when I went on the internet earlier in the day to do some research I found out that not only are they disgusting (obviously) but that many of the women are forced to take part and patrons are often scammed into paying a lot of money to leave the clubs. So instead we had to fight off the dozens of Thai men trying to get us to pay to see a ping pong show. They were absolutely shameless too; they had no problem asking the girls in our group if they wanted to see one of the ping pong shows.

We wandered around for a bit trying to find bars without ladyboys, strippers, or prostitutes. Since we were all hungry we decided to find a random Thai restaurant. The restaurant we went to ended up being great. They put giant pieces of paper on the table and let us draw on it with crayons. The waitress kept joking with us throughout dinner. She told us that we would have to pay her one million Baht in order to write on “her table”. When she brought the bill to us with a Buddhist book underneath I was curious and she told me I could keep it as long as I read it. I did read it and it amounts to a Buddhist version of those pamphlets the Jehovah’s Witness people hand out sometimes in the streets and the train stations in Philadelphia.

After dinner we wandered around some more looking for ‘normal’ bars. We walked back to the hotel where Emily asked reception where we could find a bar “with no ping pong shows and no girls”. After getting directions we walked to another street we hadn’t seen before. It didn’t take long to realize that this street was full of gay bars. Well, there certainly wouldn’t be any girls or ping pong shows here. We drank there a bit, feeling out of place but enjoying the peace, and then went to find a place for karaoke. We did find a place but it was empty, and at 2 A.M. it was getting rather late, so we decided to head back to the hotel.

The following day was a bit of a blur. We visited the royal palace which would have been more interesting if I didn’t have to go to the bathroom so bad during the tour. Even worse, the batteries in my camera died so I took very few pictures. By the time we took the bus back to the port at Laem Chaebang it was early evening and only a few hours from the time we had to be back on the ship. Laem Chaebang is apparently an industrial city and the port did not seem to be near anything. Any hopes I had of having one more spicy Thai meal were quickly dashed when I realized this. Instead I went back to my cabin dreading the next 14 days on board the ship before we reached India. I enjoyed our time in Phuket, it gave me a taste of “adventure travel” and made me look forward to visiting national parks in other countries on our itinerary.

Thailand - Days 1 and 2

Thailand was a nice break from historical site-seeing. Michael and I went to Phuket, an island the size of Singapore on Thailand’s southern peninsula. It is a resort island on the Andaman Sea. Most of our first day was spent traveling. Bangkok is not a coastal city; the ship was docked at Laem Chaebang which is about three hours by bus. When we finally arrived at Bangkok’s international airport I was very impressed, it was one of the largest airports I have ever seen and it looked new and shiny (several billion dollars was spent on it by the time construction was finished in 2002). After our long trek to the gate we waited at a stringent security checkpoint where they confiscated my sun-block lotion because it was over 2 ounces (and I finally found a country with air travel regulations that were dumber than the U.S.).

We flew on a 767 full with 120 SAS students and assorted Europeans and Australians. The flight to Phuket took about an hour and during it we were treated to the best airplane food I’ve ever had (on the way back to Bangkok a few days later we were served curry chicken which was also delicious). The ocean near Phuket is dotted with hundreds of islands which made for some great photo opportunities as we descended to land. Once on the ground it was another 45 minutes from the airport to Patong Beach, the resort area where our hotel was located. Patong Beach is located on the other side of a winding mountain road which is considered the most dangerous in Thailand because of the numerous motorbike-related fatalities that occur there each year.

We stayed in Duangjitt Resort which was nice but it was under renovation since it was the low season. On the way to the hotel we were told by our tour guide that we would have to choose which of tomorrow’s activities we wanted to do, either jungle trekking, sea kayaking, or elephant riding. I started getting angry because the itinerary made it clear that everyone would have the opportunity to do all three. It turns out that our tour guide just spoke poor English and what he said was not what he meant. Once there we were informed that we had to find out which color-coded group we were in which would determine the order of the next day’s activities. The tour company, Destination Asia, split our group of 120 students into two subgroups and then further dividing each of those groups into color-coded groups. Mike and I were in the same group but our friends on the same trip were in another group.

After dropping our things off in our hotel room and relaxing for a little bit Mike and I met up with some friends to figure out what we were going to do since we had the evening free. After some confusion and indecisiveness we finally settled on finding a Thai restaurant and then going to see a Muay Thai boxing match. The tour company, Destination Asia, arranged a shuttle that would pick us up and take us to the fight; we even bought tickets through them. Destination Asia had their own table set up in the reception area of the hotel where Semester At Sea could get information, restaurant recommendations, and arrange transportation.

We walked down a nearby road and looked around for restaurants. We found a bed and breakfast nearby with a restaurant that looked promising so we ate there. It was my first taste of authentic Thai food and it was delicious and very spicy. In Thailand at every meal you are given a small tray with dried chili peppers, diced chili peppers in vinegar, and sliced chili peppers in water which you put on your food. At every meal I ate (breakfast included) I would accidentally put too many chili peppers on my food and make it really hot, I loved it though. At this meal I tried Tom Yum for the first time which is Thai lemongrass soup with various weird roots (whole chunks of ginger root and some unidentifiable things).

After dinner we walked to the nearby 7-11 to get drinks. My mouth was on fire from dinner so I bought some green tea. I was constantly reminded of home throughout all of Asia and Southeast Asia by the ubiquitous 7-11 convenience stores. They were in Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and even Thailand. We all walked back to the hotel to wait for the van that was going to take us to the fight. The ride over to the fight was uneventful until we pulled into a seedy alleyway and stopped near a rundown looking building we all began to have our doubts about this boxing match. We handed our tickets to some people who looked like they worked there and they handed each of us a free t-shirt.

We walked into the arena-area and sat down on some bleachers and waited for the fights to start. Since we had arrived an hour early we had ample time to drink Thai beer. Thailand’s national beer, Tiger, is pretty good but of all the new beers I’ve tried I think Angkor beer from Cambodia was the best. The seats slowly filled up, mostly with westerners, and eventually it was time for the fights to begin. At this point we learned that we were in for a treat, a band would be playing live traditional Thai music throughout the fight. This was a tradition that has been around as long as Muay Thai fighting itself. The musicians were on a raised platform in one corner of the small arena (it looked more like a warehouse) and they played almost nonstop for the next 3 hours, I don’t know how they did it.

The first fight finally began at 9 PM and we were shocked to learn that it was between a 13-year-old and 15-year-old. Before each match begins each fighter performs a pre-fight ritual which involves praying, paying their respects to the King of Thailand, and various other exercises. What distinguishes Muay Thai from boxing in the west is that the fighters can kick as well as use elbows and knees which they sometimes do with a devastating effect. Very few people can withstand an elbow to the head. Despite the possibility for brutality the fighters were always very nice to each other. They didn’t “talk trash” or criticize each other, in fact, on a few occasions after knocking an opponent down they would quickly check to make sure they were okay. There were eight fights that night and since I am not a sports writer I can’t possibly capture what they were like. Thankfully Emily brought her video camera with her so the entire thing was recorded. Needless to say, I had a great time and I felt like I got to see an aspect of Thai culture that very few people get the chance to see.

The following day I had to wake up early for the jungle safari. It was a 3 hour drive by bus to Khao Sok National park in Phang Nga province on the mainland of Thailand. Southern Thailand is covered in rubber plantations which made for interesting scenery as we made our way to the park. Once we arrived at the park we met our tour guide, a youngish Thai woman named Siri. It had started raining lightly by the time we picked out our walking sticks and started our trek into the jungle. We had barely begun our trek when we came to the Sok River which had a strong current. In order to get across we would have to go, four at a time, on a bamboo raft that was pulled across the river by a Thai guy who held onto a rope that was tied to trees on the river banks.

Once on the other side we made our way up a steep narrow path. With the tour guide behind us we had no idea where to go. Michael and I heard the sound of falling water nearby and found a small stream where the path ended. Unsure of what to do next we turned around to find a path going up a steep incline. We decided to follow that but after a short time we realized it was the wrong way. We walked back down towards the stream and waited for our guide while swatting mosquitoes that seemed impervious to the ridiculous amounts of insect repellant I had applied to every exposed body part. We stood and waited with others in group and made nervous jokes about getting Dengue Fever.

When Siri and the rest of our group caught up we learned that we were going to walk through the stream. No one told us we would be walking through water, in fact the Destination Asia tour company had recommended that we bring hiking shoes. Undeterred, I tried to hop from fallen branches and half-submerged rocks to avoid getting my feet wet. Eventually I gave up and just hopped into the water (as a result my shoes would be soaked and smelly until we got to Bangkok several days later). One of the girls in our groups broke her flip-flops and Siri graciously gave hers to her and walked barefoot the rest of the way. One guy had the good idea of using leaves and branches from a plant to make shoes which worked okay for a while. Sometime later he realized that he had put his shoes down and forgot to pick them back up again.

Scrambling up and down steep muddy paths I would go to grab hold of trees and plants and then remember Siri telling us that some of the plants are poisonous and if touched caused swelling and pain. The trek took us through more creeks, mud with the consistency of quicksand, and sharp jagged rocks. It was exciting and made more so by the possibility of touching poisonous plants or getting dengue fever from a mosquito (luckily no one in our group was hurt). We joked amongst ourselves about the possibility of getting blood poisoning from cuts and scrapes on feet and then walking through mud and possibly unclean water (to my knowledge no one was seriously injured but a few people had some nasty cuts on their feet from the jagged rocks).

Being in the thick jungle, literally in the middle of nowhere, was really exciting, even though we didn’t see any wildlife. After an hour or so of walking up and down hills through mud and water we walked down a steep path that I recognized as the one Michael and I had accidentally walked up earlier. We got back to Sok River and crossed on the bamboo raft once again. Looking like proper savages we emerged from the jungle covered in sweat and mud, glad to be back and ready for lunch. We were all treated to a Thai buffet in which I yet again put too many chili peppers on my food.

After lunch it was our turn to ride elephants. In Thailand elephants are considered sacred, they are commanded by mahouts, people originally from Tibet, who are well-respected for their ability to train and control elephants. The mahout sits in the front of the elephant towards the head where he can gently nudge the elephant’s ears with his feet to coax it into going left or right. In the event that the elephant is feeling rebellious or has caught sight of a particularly tasty plant the mahout has a hook which he uses to hook the elephant behind the ear (we were assured that to an elephant the hook would feel like a tickle).

Michael and I sat together on a seat with a safety bar on top of the elephant. The gentle swaying of the elephant as it made its way through the jungle was a nice way to relax after our jungle trek and a Thai buffet. As the mahout guided our elephant through the muddy jungle paths the mud squelched underneath the elephant’s feet. After following paths for 45 minutes or so we came into a clearing full of tall grasses, various plants, and a scattering of flowers. All around us the sides of the mountains towered above us, everything up to and including their jagged peaks were covered in trees.

While we were in the clearing, the other mahouts stopped their elephants and gave the riders the opportunity to take some pictures, but ours did not. Instead, he let our elephant walk into, and through, trees while it ripped up vegetation with its trunk and stuffed it in its mouth. Eventually we left the clearing and resumed our journey through the jungle, this time following a path that seemed to lead back to where we had started.

After leaving the elephants we rode to the Sok River where we got into canoes and went downriver. Michael and I didn’t even have to paddle since we, like everyone else in our group, were supplied with guides to paddle for us. It had started raining and we never really saw anything particularly interesting, though the guides did point out some snakes in trees and a monkey up high on a cliff that overlooked the river. After our relaxing trip down the river we got back on the buses for the 3 hour ride back to the resort at Patong Beach.

We got back to the hotel in the late evening and decided to go out on our own to buy some sandals and find a good Thai restaurant. For some reason we decided that we didn’t need anything to protect us from the rain, despite the fact that it had been raining heavily off and on all evening. It started raining as we walked down a street near the hotel looking for someone who sold sandals so we wouldn’t have to wear our shoes that had been soaked by the jungle trek. We found some sandals but were left stranded underneath the corrugated metal roof of a store because the rain had turned into a downpour.

As we waited for the rain to stop we watched the Thai transvestites (known affectionately as “ladyboys” in Thailand) across the street trying to convince passing men to pay for their services. After 15 minutes of waiting the rain had not yet abated. A Thai guy in his 20’s who had been standing near us introduced himself and asked us where we were from. After a brief discussion we learned that he was the owner of the clothing store we were standing in front of. He told us that he had plastic ponchos in the store but that he had just closed it and could not open it again. After consulting with his grandmother who was nearby selling beverages he offered to sell us their ponchos. We couldn’t possibly accept that so we politely said no. He then asked his grandmother if he could go back into the store to get some ponchos to sell to us, which he did once she consented.

Since we were looking for a Thai restaurant we decided to ask him if he knew of any. He immediately put on his plastic poncho, said something to his grandmother in Thai, and then told us to follow him. We walked not too far down the street to a restaurant that he said was very good. He was an extremely helpful stranger and he was right about the restaurant, the food was delicious. It was probably the spiciest meal I have ever eaten. After dinner I walked back to the hotel and went to sleep looking forward to sea-kayaking the next day.