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India was fun; It started out with taking an hour and half ride to Cochin Airport. Kamu (Grandma) had arranged for someone to pick me up, his name was Jacob! On the way to the airport, a truck hit a car, and us yeah sounds pretty casual…cause it is! We were on a one-way road and all of a sudden a truck decided he’s not waiting any longer, he powers through on the road and plows the side of our car. We get out and assess the damage and then a girl on her scooter doesn’t brake fast enough and then plows into the back of the car. Overall I think it was a perfect start to India!

            I made it to the airport and I was the first to get there out of all the semester at sea students. I checked in and printed my boarding pass, I turned around and then all of a sudden all of semester at sea was there! I sat around and talked to some of the locals that were going to be on my flight to brush up on my Hindi and Gujarati. Good conversations were had with a guy from Ahmedabad (city closest to my house). We boarded our flight and man, I really noticed people were starting to stare, I know I’m Indian, but I thought I would have blended in a lot better.

         It was about 4-5 hours before I finally landed, first thing on my mind was tons of street food and what a better way to start that that pani puri and a sugar cane lassie? Roshan and Chirag (cousins) picked me up and took me out for dinner, shortly after we finally made it home. Right as I walked into my house, kamu was reading a book, I quickly threw my shoes off and ran over to her and touched her feet (necessity, pretty much a blessing). We talked for about an hour or so and then talked to my uncle for the rest of the time before everyone had decided to go to sleep.

            My time in India was mostly spent walking around town, meeting old friends and making plenty of new ones. The minute I got home, everyone knew. Small town problems, everyone knows your name, they know your family and for someone that tries to keep a low profile, too many people knew me! We went and shopped a lot, got shoe’s & pocket squares for my suit, plenty of shirts and a lot more stuff that was pretty useless. Ate food at my uncle’s restaurant, it was called mirch masala, really great food, got a tour of the kitchen and met the staff.

 

            Spending time with kamu and the family was great, I flew kites, went on to the farm and drove our tractor, saw peacocks and went to work with my cousin. I don’t know what he does for work other than point and yell. Its pretty much not even a job, I could do that from my house on the phone! We had one of his employees climb a tree for us to get coconuts and man they were delicious!

           

            The last day at home we made our way to the airport where I was also supposed to meet some of my family on my moms side, they were ecstatic to see me, they brought tea and a breakfast hahaha, we ate it in front of the airport and said our good bye’s before I made my way inside and started back for cochin. After I printed my boarding pass and made it past security, I saw a fight break out between a passenger and a ticketing agent, Airport security just watched as these two duked it out, I was not surprised in any way  that had happened, only in India!

            I made it back to Cochin that night and went back to the ship to meet up with some friends before going out that night. After everyone had made it back we all went out for dinner at a restaurant called the rice boat, which was fabulous. The next day Kayla, Carly, Sam and I all went on a back Water River cruise in allepey. The scenery was astounding! 

The tour lasted roughly around two hours, shortly after we went to get some henna done for the girls at a local’s house whose daughter was more than happy to draw on my friends with henna, It looked great! It was about that time to head back to the ship but Kayla needed to buy some sandals, I talked to the driver and told him to take us to a nice but cheap place to buy shoes. Her sandals cost 10 dollars, but they looked like they were worth a lot more, very stylish! We made it back to the ship and parted ways with our driver Shibu, what a great guy, we had met his family before making it back to the ship which was a great experience overall. India was a blast!

Next is Mauritius!!

-Raj Patel

             

They call it Myanmar…Or Burma?

Well, Burma was absolutely amazing! It started out with me being sick as a dog! I passed out on deck with a fever of 103 and pretty much started swabbing the decks after I knocked over a table full of water and other drinks. Not only that, there was a memorial service for one of the professors, on our voyage Professor Lancaster passed away in china and had a funeral service on the ship when his wife had returned in Singapore. I was never cleared to leave the ship but since I had already paid for the trip I just left! We were headed up to Mandalay, which was a province in Burma, It was absolutely and had an amazing time, and we drove up into the mountains and saw some very amazing sights!

           

After taking a short flight into Mandalay, which was about an hour and half and while we were at the airport we had no atm’s, Wi-Fi, or any technology whatsoever. Our boarding passes were pieces of paper that were stamped and we had received a sticker to place on our chest to inform the flight crew that we were on the flight manifest. The plane was not even a jet; it worked with propellers and literally had spiders and bugs crawling around.

We arrived into Mandalay airport, which wasn’t even in Mandalay, they just called it that! We had roughly a 3-hour bus ride to where we were going to stay, the scenery was astounding, and I wouldn’t have imagined seeing pagoda after pagoda literally every few hundred yards. I didn’t even need to go to bagan to see the land of a thought pagodas, they were literally everywhere on the side of the road! Our food any things were already paid for so every time we ate dinner, we paid in fat stacks of cash. No credit cards or atm’s only paid in thick wads of paper.

Our hotel was in the mountains, it was nice and cool, and fortunately it wasn’t humid at all! While everyone else in Yangon suffered from intense humidity we were drinking brews and eating food next to a warm campfire every night. The bus ride was mostly a one-way road all the time, if you looked to the right or left you pretty much starred death into the eyes! Cliffs on both sides with jacked rocks at the very bottom, it was quite scenic, but also really scary!

           

            Our itinerary consisted of going to a school for the blind, it was very interesting to see how kids that were born blind still continue to live their daily lives. We sat for a while observing the kids and how they go about their daily routine, some kids would walk around with cell phones to make noise to let others know to get out of their way and some walk around knowing exactly where they are headed with out any guidance. We quietly observed as we saw them eat lunch, every meal they pray and thank the donors for the help in maintaining the school and giving them food to eat. On behalf of semester at sea we had donated 10,000 Kyats to the school to put towards new housing for the kids.

            Shortly after, we went to a nun school; it was here when all the little girls had their heads shaved to become nuns! While we were at the schools the little girls would run around or away from us, they were very shy! Shortly after they all grouped up and sang us songs. It was like a battle between them and us! I don’t know at all what they were singing but when they were done we sand itsy bitsy spider and if you’re happy and you know it. We all had a great time; at the end of this we also donated more money on behalf of semester at sea to the nunnery school.

           

        This entire time I was still really sick from my what ever I had, people definitely said I had yellow fever and some people just thought I had a stroke and yelled CPR!!! So not only was I sick but it didn’t help that I was traveling in the cold, with no jacket, not drinking any water, and definitely not eating enough, It started to get worse! For the last few days I powered through and tried to enjoy what was left of Burma. Since I’m very tired I'm gonna wrap this up by fast forwarding, we also went to a botanical garden, the longest bridge in the world, boated through some lakes and rivers and Also we ate plenty of local food, met a lot of monks and visited a lot of holy places. The people in Burma are very friendly and this is definitely a country I would love to come back to!!

Stay tuned for India!!

-Raj Patel

             

Singapore Slingers

Ahh, Good Ole Tiger City! The day started out with the Kayler and I, we decided that it was just gonna be the two us of roaming around Singapore! The plan was to go to the zoo, therefore Kayla had decided she would be my shadow, We arrived at the MRT (metro) and Kayla had just stopped talking for a while, she said that all she was gonna do is follow me and observe how I like to travel or some crap like that. After a while she began being herself again which made my day! Great sense of humor and always smiling no matter what, an amazing person to be around when ever possible! We made it to our stop on the metro and from there we had to take a 40-minute bus ride to the zoo!

There was never a dull moment, we had a blast! As soon as we made it to the zoo, it was about that time for lunch. Kayla and I had decided to eat a restaurant right outside of the entrance of the zoo, so here is where it gets interesting! Even though Singapore is known as the cuisine capital of the world, of all things Kayler gets porridge not knowing what it was, in the mean time I had ordered chicken curry with French bread.  She dug into her porridge and said that it was great, while I knew what it was I thought I’d let her keep on eating this lovely dish, after a while she asked me what porridge was made of! I had the break it to her and tell her it was pretty much blended rice or oatmeal. I offered her some of my food but she’s quite the stubborn one, she refused and kept on going with the porridge! She later gave up and decided to try some of my food, which I was more than happy to give her, she ate two to three bites and said she was done.

            I knew she was still hungry but after we ate, she refused to eat anything else so we made our way into the zoo, Kayler was really looking forward to seeing giraffes and while walking towards them she asked me what my favorite animal was and like any guy I was pretty much stumped! It took me 10 minutes to tell her I’d let her know by the time we left the zoo. We got to the giraffe’s and I never thought someone would be so ecstatic to see an animal we would see in South Africa at a Zoo in Singapore, but as long as she was happy, so was I. We took plenty of pictures at every animal and slowly moved on.

At the center of the zoo we went into some sort of green house where animals would come up to you and not be afraid at all. It was essentially like a petting zoo, you could get as close as you want to the animal but I don’t think petting was allowed! We then made it quickly out of the zoo and by the time we had reached the exit I told Kayla my favorite animal would have to be penguins, although we never made it there to see penguins, they just seemed to be the only animals that seemed awesome at the time!!

            We left the zoo and I knew Kayler was starving, she was to stubborn to tell me so we went ahead and made our way into Ben & Jerry’s! I bought some really good Ice Cream and moved along in to the air conditioned KFC.  Kayla and I had decided we would go watch a movie. We both wanted to see Safe Haven so we ended up trekking from one end of Singapore to the other to find out that it wasn’t going to release till the next day. Of all the movies playing in the theater we ended up watching a movie called Parker! Surprisingly it was a decent movie and Kayla and I got a kick out of it! So far the Valentines date I had owed Kayla was going great! Or that’s what I thought, who knows what was going through her head! After the movie we had decided to eat dinner at a hawker center! This was by far the cheapest food in Singapore and it was decent. Food cost around 4-6 dollars and the portions were huge! We ordered a big order of fried dumplings and a lot of noodles!

As soon as dinner was over we got some fruit juice and made our way back to the Metro, it was time to start heading back towards the ship! We had a long train ride back in to the city; we were probably the furthest out in Singapore than any other SAS kid. It took nearly 50 minutes to get back to the Marina Cruise Bay center and at that point I was in the mood for brews! We were in the middle of down town and I had just started walking in one direction and that was towards the marina sands bay hotel. I was ready to get a Tiger and possible a Singapore slinger. We walked for a good 30-45 minutes blasting the Jambox while walking down the streets of Singapore.  As soon as we found a cab we got in and told the guy we needed to get to a bar. He was a native and he was really expressive as far as descriptions and talked in a very unbearable condescending way but at the same time it showed his love for Singapore!

           

            We were dropped off at the Marina Sands Bay Shopping center; it was time for find some Tigers! We walked around the mall for what seems like hours until we came across a place called Café B! Up until this point my day was probably one of the best yet! Don’t know what Kayler was thinking but she seemed to be having a good time! We ordered 3 rounds of 750 ml Tigers and 2 Singapore Slingers right on the pier.

            At 9 o clock there was a light show on the pier that no one had seen but the two of us, it was absolutely beautiful! Water, bubbles, and lights were everywhere it was amazing! The show had lasted around 30 minutes and in that time our minds were blown! I’d have to say the bill at the end of the night was out of this world but it being a valentine’s date it was well worth it! I had to be back on the ship by midnight since I had a field lab the next morning, while on the other hand sitting at the pier and drinking for Kayla was just the pre-game. From what I heard, she went out and partied like a boss!

            The next morning I woke up and it was time to learn about the Japanese occupation of Singapore. My history class was amazing to begin with but after going to the places where the Japanese had attacked and where soldiers had stood it really made an impact about the way I view history. I was standing on land where blood had been spilt for the defense of Singapore and it’s people! Two professors were guiding us at the national university of Singapore.  The day was pretty much an over glorified lecture but at the same time I had learnt a lot, by the end of the field lab we went to a cemetery where a fraction of the soldiers had been buried. As we arrived I had began scrolling through the names that had been chiseled on to the memorial and I had just then realized how many Indian immigrants were apart in defending Singapore and what it had meant.  Although the field lab was absolutely eye opening it was quite depressing at the same time know that so many had died due to the Japanese ruthlessness. The two days we had in Singapore were absolutely amazing and now that I look back on it there’s not one thing I would change. Had the best time of my life those two days!

Next post is Burma!!

 -Raj Patel