Temple Tour Extraordinaire

Luana has asked me to give the details of our tour of Anger What, or was that Angkor Wat? Whatever.

We spent an afternoon touring Wat and then the next day toured seven other temples, all within about a half-hour drive of one another. Luana even got up at o'dark thirty for the sunrise at Angkor Wat. And there were many temples we didn’t even see. (We flew to Cambodia from Vietnam -- about an hour’s flight.)

Temples are the big business in Siem Reap, a town now of about 200,000 in north-central Cambodia. About 2 million tourists a year visit the area, so the town has many nice hotels and no McDonald’s or other American fast food except one Dairy Queen in the local airport. The largest number of tourists come from Japan, followed by South Korea, France, Germany and the U.S.

The temples are of both Hindu and Buddhist origins and most were built in the 11th or 12th centuries by a variety of kings and Wall Street financiers.

The temples were mainly built of sandstone and have a variety of fantastic carvings in them, although many are in a state of some disrepair from centuries of neglect, war, etc. They virtually disappeared into the jungle for about 400 years, with the French beginning to uncover them in the 1800s. There are bullet holes all over the Angkor Wat temple from the civil war in the 1970s, and we also heard that many families hid out in the temples when they were fleeing the genocide.

We could just show you some of our cool pictures of the temples, but I think it is also important that I describe in some detail the Hindu myths that underlay all the carvings. HEY, WAKE UP OUT THERE!!

OK, as I understand there were these three important Hindu gods: Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, and at the creation of the world they fought over this sea of milk. Brahma won by destroying the other two in the Worlds of Warcraft video game, but the Sea of Milk was drained in the process, so Brahma wandered the world saying, “Got Milk?” However, I may have misunderstood some of what our guide was explaining to us, but you get the general idea.

So on one afternoon we toured Wat, which is about a mile square. The next morning we went to Angkor Thom temple, which is Cambodian for “Luana rode the elephant here.”

Then we went to Ta Prohm, which has a lot of trees growing out of it and is the place where the movie “Tomb Raider” with Angelina Jolie was shot. Considering the artistic merits of that movie I kept suggesting to our guide that Cambodia should tear down that temple. For some strange reason, he thought I was joking.

It was a little hot for our tour -- about 98 degrees with 90 percent humidity. The guide said we were lucky since it gets hot in April and May.

After our morning, Luana offered some cogent and profound analysis of our tour: “It’s too damn hot; I’m going back to our air-conditioned hotel room.”

I went on because I thought our guide said we were going to the Big Boob temple. I guess I misunderstood, or perhaps he was talking about me. Anyway, we who stayed for the afternoon toured the Hot temple, Hotter temple and Hottest temple before concluding at the “Hurry Up Through This So We Can Get Back on the Air Conditioned Bus” temple.

It was all quite spectacular; there were a lot of elephants and lions and monkeys and snakes and gods and goddesses. Our guide was very informative about it all. And I especially liked the little kids selling cold cheap Cokes. They should have their own temple. I would worship there.

I Get Around

It was hot as Asian chili peppers in Cambodia. About 100 degrees with 90 percent humidity. People walked around with damp butterfly patterns spread across their shirts as we trudged up and down stairs and around corridors and walkways of the many lovely ruins of the Angkor complex of temples. Fortunately, the sights more than made up for the intense heat (more on that elsewhere), and I found two delightful ways to cool off and enjoy the scenery--an elephant ride, and a tuk-tuk ride.

The elephant ride happened at the Bayon Temple at Angkor. I was one of the last in our group to decide to go for it, and couldn’t talk Bob into joining me, so I got an elephant all to myself (and of course my driver). My pachyderm lumbered all the way around the temple and knew just where to stop for the best pictures. Afterward I bought the tiny bananas that tourists are encouraged to purchase as an elephant reward, and it was really fun to feed them to my elephant and some of his (her?) coworkers. Kind of like putting a coin in the vending machine slot.

Now for the tuk-tuk. That’s what the folks in Siem Reap call the little motorcycle-driven carts that are used as cabs. They’re named for the sound the little motor makes. A ride costs $2, no matter where you want to go (and we found it interesting that the Cambodians definitely preferred dollars, not reals). Tuk-tuks are fast, fun, and the breeze they create is delicious. I had decided to skip an afternoon of more temples, since we’d already spent a day and a half doing temples in the heat... Instead, I strolled through a wonderful market, did some shopping, and took the tuk-tuk back to the hotel for a nice rest. Great fun!

Good Morning, Vietnam!

(Luana:) Couldn't resist the opportunity to use that cheesy heading. Everyone was saying it this morning as we traveled up the murky Saigon river to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), even the person who makes the announcements.

We had a lovely but very hot and humid day in the city and will write more later, but right now we're packing to fly to Cambodia to see the Angkor Wat temple complex. In the meantime, enjoy the picture of "Uncle Ho" and then scroll down to see our Great Wall posting. It's finally up, but it's backdated, so look below the China wrap-up.

More about Vietnam later -- we have another day and half here after we return on Monday.

You Will Travel to a Land Without Fortune Cookies

Did you know that fortune cookies are as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July? Seriously, they don’t exist in China. For that matter, we never saw a single serving of General Tso’s Chicken or Happy Family. Not to worry. We never went hungry as we criss-crossed the country from Shanghai to Xi’an to Beijing to Hong Kong. In fact, over the course of at least eight lunches or dinners served at as many different restaurants, I don’t think we ever had a dish repeated, except rice. The most consistent element in each restaurant was the giant table with the giant lazy susan center, and for the duration of our visit, nine hungry adults with an occasional student or two. It was all fantastic, and even Bob, who is not known for his love of Chinese food, was wielding chopsticks pretty well.

The variety of food was amazing. Since it was New Year’s, we had one meal that was nothing but a succession of 18 different dumplings, since dumplings are a traditional holiday dish. We had a Peking duck dinner, which is a somewhat ritualized and special occasion meal involving little wrappers and hoisin sauce. It's similar to moo shu pork but using duck. There were memorable fish dishes. Unusual soups, mostly variations on egg drop. Some wonderful kernels of corn that had been fried to a delicate and memorable stage of crispy perfection. And our memorable home-cooked hutong meal (see separate post). A few restaurants poured complimentary glasses of sweet red wine, almost like a sherry, but in our crowd of nine "old folks," the beverage of choice was beer--Tiger, Tsing Tao, or whatever local beer was made in each city.

People, People Everywhere

(Bob:) We’re back in the blog world after eight very busy days in China, including five nights in Xi'an (pronounced she-on) and Beijing. Including time spent in Shanghai and Hong Kong, we visited four Chinese cities with a combined population of 52 million, but that’s only 4 percent of the Chinese population of 1.3 billion. It's hard to draw conclusions from such a limited perspective, but we’ll do it anyway, because that’s the way Americans are.

The tourism sites were definitely fantastic and should be seen by everyone: Terra Cotta Warriors, Great Wall, Forbidden City. But it’s definitely a land of contrasts. There are so many people. We were in a crush of people that went on for blocks in Shanghai on a New Year’s holiday. Fortunately I was tall enough to see over it, but for Luana it was a bit scary. Imagine what it would be like if the one-child policy hadn’t been enacted in 1979 and China had 400 million more people. The policy is still strictly enforced in big cities, but in the countryside it is now more permissible to have two kids if the first one is a girl, and minority groups (around 8 percent of the population, including Tibetans) can have more than two. If you violate the one-child policy, you face possible big fines and a loss of your job.

If you’re flying over eastern China’s flat lands outside of the big cities (about 60 percent of the country is mountainous) and you mentally divide the land into one-mile squares, there are sizable villages at all four corners of each square, and that goes on for mile after mile. This is overpopulation on top of overpopulation. The biggest Chinese City, Chungking, has 31 million people.

Shanghai has amazing modern architecture with many, many new buildings. We were told 4,500 buildings taller than 20 stories had been built in that city in the last 25 years! A number are 80-story to 100-story skyscrapers or even taller. One 2,000-plus-foot building is under construction. Just tear down the old and build the new as fast as you can. Beijing also has many buildings under construction, but many are completely empty in both cities. We’re told the government is propping up the real estate market, which is good, because if it goes, the Chinese economy might go down, and our economy probably goes with it, since China owns much of our debt. The average middle class family probably lives in a 1,000-square-foot apartment and shares it with the grandparents.

As a city, Beijing is rather ugly, and the air pollution is bad. Architecture is much more pedestrian than in Shanghai. Beijing has 18 million people (Shanghai has 19 million), 4 million cars, 12 million bicycles, and traffic is bad. But it has a good network of wide streets and freeways, plus a subway system.

Hong Kong is one big shopping mall and bank, but it’s a very beautiful city. Saw two Ferraris in our first 30 minutes in the city. Mao would not be pleased. But Hong Kong residents don’t care, one of our guides told us; they don’t like the mainland or its money (only Hong Kong dollars are accepted even though China rules the city now). Hong Kong residents consider the quality of goods made on the mainland as shoddy.

Education is another big push in the PRC, with new colleges, many of them technical schools, springing up everywhere. Our children had better learn Chinese, because their boss could be speaking that language in a couple of decades. The Chinese seem much more entrepreneurial than the Japanese, and they are definitely hard-working. The question remains whether the government can manage such a complex economy.

On a visit to Tiananmen Square, you don’t see any military presence, but experts told us there are plainclothes police/military everywhere ready to spring on any protester. But most Chinese seem more intent on shopping, buying a car and getting a piece of the good life. One student onboard went to visit a temple and found that all the monks were next door at the local Starbucks. We were told there are 124 McDonald’s in Beijing. We know there were 3 KFCs within a couple blocks of our hotel, and the Pizza Hut nearby had a line out the door. Pizza Hut is a sitdown restaurant in Beijing. We didn’t try it, but I was tempted. My hand was becoming permanently crooked in a weird shape from using chopsticks so much. Instruments of the devil, I call them.

Now, on to more touristy entries, because we really enjoyed that aspect of our visit, and luckily hit perfect weather.

True Greatness

(Bob:) At last we arrived at the Great Wall, and it turned out to be as advertised. We had feared it might just be above-average, but it was indeed great. It was one of those places that everyone should visit, and at the rate the Chinese are going on promoting tourism, that could soon be accomplished.

We arrived at the portion of the wall chosen by our great guide after a great bus ride and a great lunch. The weather on the day of our visit was surprisingly great. We had all worn layers of clothing after hearing tales that it is almost always cold and windy and often cloudy at the wall in the winter and spring. But it was sunny and clear and almost shirtsleeve weather.

Our portion of the wall, at Mutianyu, is about 85 kilometers from downtown Beijing, slightly farther than the portion 50 k from Beijing that receives the most tourists. That doesn’t mean we went to an “undiscovered” portion of the wall. Mongol hordes of shopkeepers lined the road we had to walk from our bus. They were intent on arming us for our wall assault with great postcards, great tee shirts, great walking sticks, and great bunion pads with the little words “I got this great bunion climbing the Great Wall.” But on the day of our visit, since it was winter, our group of 98 people (three busloads) made up most of the people on our wall section. Not so great for the shopkeepers.

At one point in Chinese history, the wall was 4,500 miles long. About a third of it remains, some in poor repair. Our portion had been restored courtesy of a German corporation from Dusseldorf, according to a plaque we saw. That company probably ended up building a bunch of high-rises in Beijing, but then I just may be a cynic.

I had a great idea which I suggested to our guide. Since this is the year of the tiger, the Chinese government could sell long portions of the wall to Kellogg, which could maintain it and put neon Tony the Tigers along the wall every quarter mile or so, with loudspeakers that blare out, “Yes folks, it’s really Grrrreeeaaatt!” I think we’re looking at potentially one of the world’s great advertising success stories here. And little guys wearing Tony suits could walk along the wall, offering to have pictures taken with tourists. The cross-merchandising possibilities are almost endless, especially with the movie Wall-e character.

Anyway, to get back to our visit, any of our blog readers who are military strategists will know that a great defensive wall, to be effective, has to be built along the summits of hills and mountains, not in the valleys, which makes getting to the wall a little difficult. So we faced the Great Climb just to reach the transport up to the Great Wall. Up we went for about a steep half mile through the hordes of hawkers. We made it with our wallet unscathed, although the cold beer stall was tempting. Then we took the cable car on about a 10-minute ride up to the base of the wall.

We climbed some steps and there we were on the wall. About a thousand photos later we had walked to a couple of the guard houses, which you can see in our photos. Then we began to realize that walking on the Great Wall usually involves either walking up or down some fairly steep slopes, which really wasn’t so great. So after 90 minutes or so we walked back to the cable car and went down to catch our bus before it left. Almost all of the students in our group walked to a point where they could ride wheeled toboggan sleds down to shopkeeper heaven. We decided in our case that suicide was not an option so we would ride the cable car down.

When we got to the bottom of the cable car we were ready for the hawkers. We ran down the mountain, shouting lines from “Pork Chop Hill” and pretending we had bayonets at the ready. Gregory Peck couldn’t have done it any better, although I was wishing I had a real hand grenade. That would have been great.

The Naked City

There are eight million stories in the naked city -- if you remember the line from the old TV series -- and most of them are about concubines.

When Tiger Woods heard the Forbidden City had rooms for 3,000 concubines, he offered to buy it.

I’ve got a million Forbidden City jokes, but have been forbidden to tell them by Luana. I told her all my concubines thought my jokes were funny, but she didn’t laugh at that either.

On our first day in Beijing, we visited Tiananmen Square, (which is Chinese for big, ugly square) and the Forbidden City, which fronts on one side of the square. The best entertainment in the square is trying to identify the plainclothes police put there to immediately quell any demonstration, but the Forbidden City (FC) is magnificent.

It has some 20 courtyards, more than 8,000 rooms, and was used by 24 emperors, ending in 1911. To really get the best feeling for the place, you should rent “The Last Emperor” movie, which was filmed there and was the only movie to ever be allowed there by the Chinese government. It’s a generally true story. We watched it again on the ship before we arrived in China, which was a great refresher course on the history of the time.

You just walk through courtyard after courtyard, past building after building. Simple photographs don’t do the place justice, but we include some of ours anyway.

At Tiananmen, we also saw Mao’s mausoleum. Did someone mention Mao? Well that brings to mind a joke. (How’s that for a transition?) It’s a joke told by a history professor on board, who said Chinese people really laugh at the following -- if there are no plainclothes police around. It seems Chairman Mao got up one morning, went outside and said, “Good morning rising sun. You look wonderful today.” The sun replied, “Oh great Chairman Mao, my beauty pales beside your great leadership abilities. The Chinese people are so lucky to have you.” At noon, Chairman Mao went outside, looked up and said, “Good afternoon, sun. I really appreciate your warmth.” The sun replied, “My warmth is pitiful compared to the many benefits your great leadership and bravery bring to China, handsome Chairman Mao.” As the sun was setting, Mao went outside and said, “Oh sun, your sunset is glorious tonight.” The sun replied, “You are a dumb little bastard, and now that I’m in the West I don’t have to listen to your bull any longer.”

Salt of the Earth

The scale is unbelievable. That’s the common thread of thought after visiting the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum complex outside Xi’an (pronounced she-on) in northeast China, about an hour’s flight from Beijing. Xi’an was the ancient capital of China, and the Chinese rightly place it in the same pantheon of ancient major cities with Athens, Rome and Cairo. Centuries before Christ it was a thriving major city, and the first emperor to unite China -- the founder of the Qin (pronounced chin) Dynasty -- had his capital here and had the Terra Cotta Warriors built to be part of his tomb 2,200 years ago. His name (there will be a test later) was Qin Shiuang. He also ordered the first connection of several defensive walls into what would become the Great Wall of China.

Construction at this site and the nearby actual tomb took 38 years, ending in 210 BC, and at one time involved as many as 720,000 workers. The warriors are located east of the actual tomb and face East, protecting the entrance to the tomb. Archeological work continues on the tomb, and the public is not allowed in that.

The average height of the warriors is 1.8 meters (pretty much life-sized), and each one weighs 110 to 300 kilos. In general, the legs are solid clay and the rest of the body hollow, and it’s the same with the horses. They were made in pieces and joined together for firing. Ears, noses and hair were handmade and added on. The heads were fired separately from the bodies and placed in holes in the body. Besides different faces, features such as armor plates, belt hooks and costume details were precisely sculpted. The craftsmen were ordered to inscribe their names on the backs of robes, legs or armor, and so far the names of 80 different craftsmen have been discovered.

The figures were all painted in bright colors, but the paint oxidized when exposed to the air upon discovery and being unearthed.

When we reached the site after an hour’s bus ride from Xi’an, we saw modern, low museum buildings. Since it was the New Year’s holiday there were thousands of visitors, but because it is on such a large scale there was no crush of people. About 2 million people a year visit the museum complex. You go into the first building expecting it to be about the size of a football field with lines of warriors. It’s about a football field wide, but several football fields long. At first glance, you think it’s nothing but a dirt floor, and then you notice the rows of pits in the floor, each filled with row upon row of soldier statues, each one unique, although there are groups of archers, foot soldiers, horse soldiers, horses, etc.

A wide walkway goes all around the Pit Number 1 building, which contains almost all the warriors. Smaller buildings adjacent to the big one house Pits No. 2 and 3, with only 30 or 40 warriors each. In the smaller buildings, individual warriors and horses have been put in glass cases so you can view them close up. The closest view of the soldiers in the pits is probably about 15 yards. Luana had a special moment when she was trying to photograph some horses; she motioned to the police guard, asking him if he would take a picture from his close-in, rope-free vantage point, and he kindly complied. His photo is shown above.

To think that these warriors were just discovered in 1974 by some farmers digging a well, and that the government has been able to unearth all this and reconstruct the warriors, is utterly amazing. Of course the work goes on digging up the warriors and putting them back together and will probably go on for many decades. There are places where you can see the unreconstructed pieces in the ground. It’s estimated that 8,000 warriors will be unearthed by the time all the work is completed, with 6,000 of those in Pit 1.

Interestingly, one of the farmers who first uncovered the warriors has become quite a celebrity and is even regarded as a national hero. He was at the museum the day we were there signing books (no extra fee involved; I’m sure the museum folks pay him.) We had him sign our copy.

Anyway, the Chinese call the warriors the 8th wonder of the ancient world, and we would have to agree with that. Only pictures can begin to convey the scope of it all, and we offer some here, and will set up a slide show on this blog of all our Terra Cotta pictures when we get home, along with some other slide shows from other places.

Flying Lights in the City

While the main reason to go to Xi’an is certainly the Terra Cotta Warriors, the city itself deserves some mention, particularly since we were there at the Chinese New Year, which meant the city had special lighting that gave it an almost magical air. All the trees in the city were wrapped in lights, as were all the temples and the city wall described below.

The city was the capital of the Chinese empire for 1,000 years, and 13 dynasties had their capital there. It is also the eastern end of the Silk Road, the famous trade route to the Middle East.

Xi’an has preserved some nine miles of the ancient city wall, and it is all decorated and lighted at New Year’s. (Most of Beijing’s city wall and ancient structures were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.) The wall is massive, as the accompanying pictures should convey. Every 360 feet along the city wall is a guard tower. The spacing is because the effective range of the bows and arrows of the time was 180 feet, so two guard towers could cover the distance between them.

One special New Year’s custom deserves mention. The people take large, round, red paper lanterns that have a special setup underneath to hold a candle. The candle is lighted, and the lantern rises into the air. This is meant to give the person sending it into the air good luck in the coming year. It would never happen in the U.S. because of fire safety regulations, but it makes a beautiful sight to see a bunch of them going high into the air. There also appear to be no fireworks regulations either, as they were going off everywhere in Shanghai, Xian and Beijing--all night long. Luana ran to the window every time the popping noises started, only to have the fireworks end just as she got there--we had some good laughs over that.

There's No Place Like Home

Chinese culture emphasizes the group, and even in huge cities like Beijing the people historically have grouped themselves for generations in distinct neighborhoods called hutongs--lots of little grey single-story buildings that go on and on in a complex web, with walls, courtyards and interconnected hidden passages that only the residents can access. The hutongs are rapidly disappearing, so there is a strong movement to help preserve this way of life that is so identified with Chinese culture. To give us a look at the hutong tradition, which goes back to the 13th century, Semester at Sea’s tour organizers arranged for us to have lunch and a jiaozi (dumpling) lesson in a private home in one of Beijing’s hutongs. Dumplings are a traditional holiday food, so this tied in well with our visit during Chinese New Year.

To get into the narrow streets of the hutong, we ditched our big tour bus and rode by twos in trishaws--a modern version of the rickshaw that is powered by people pedaling bikes instead of running on foot. Our pedicab ride was a good 20 minutes long each way, so we had the opportunity to see down many alleyways and past open gates in the hutong walls. We finally arrived at the home of a Mr. Zhao, a friend of our tour guide. Using a kitchen smaller than my closet, he fixed about eight delicious courses for us. My favorite was the sautéed bamboo, which one of the students held up to her panda hat. Very cute. After we ate, we had the opportunity to make Chinese dumplings, learning the proper technique for rolling out the little circle of dough and then shaping it into a standing crescent filled with minced pork and herbs.

Why are the hutongs disappearing if they are such an integral part of city life in China? The answer is largely economics. First, there’s the price of land. Real estate in Beijing is getting so valuable that even a small shop can sit on millions of dollars worth of land alone, whether or not the building on top is a total shack. Then there’s the issue of plumbing: there is no indoor plumbing. People use pit toilets in the alleyways. In the city. And until last year when he finally got electric heat, our host heated his home with coal. So think of the pollution. It costs so much to retrofit the hutongs for plumbing and heat that they are rapidly being torn down so that high rises can go up in their place.

Like people everywhere, the Chinese love the idea of having nice new apartments with flush toilets and electric heat--go figure!

All We are Saying...Is Give Peace a Chance

(Luana:) Eskimos are mistakenly said to have more words for snow than do Caucasians, though this is apparently another urban myth. But I do wonder if the Japanese rightfully could say they have more words than we do for sadness--two of those words being Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sites of the two August 1945 atomic bombings that ended World War II. I visited Hiroshima with three busloads of students, faculty and staff from Semester at Sea--Bob had already been and didn’t want to return--and we all agreed that it was an intense, and intensely moving, experience.


It’s hard to process the amount of destruction that the bomb unleashed. The museum exhibit showed photos from the air, and all you really see are street patterns, natural features such as rivers, and some debris. But where the museum really excelled, from my perspective, was in painting a picture of the human cost. It’s very hard to look at the clothing and school uniforms preserved by parents of dead schoolchildren and not feel sadness and discomfort.

The peace park that surrounds ground zero of the bombing does provide a sense of hope and determination that people find a way to work for peace. I’m so glad we spent a leisurely walk and took our time there. It’s a nice counterpoint to the grim reality of the artifacts inside the museum. Our group had brought boxes of paper cranes in honor of the famous book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about the little girl who folded 1,000 paper cranes in hopes that she would recover from leukemia induced by the bombing (she didn’t). We hung the cranes in one of the little kiosks set aside for this popular activity. Many of us took a turn at ringing the peace bell that usually is shown on the news each year on the August 6 anniversary of the blast. We also encountered a survivor of the blast who had learned English so he could talk to visitors in the park. He had lost a brother and his father, and was a survivor himself. As he told his story there weren’t many dry eyes in the group.

Later, some students stumbled on the aftermath of a press conference with the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate, a woman from Kenya named Wangari Maathai, and got to speak with her. (She won the prize for her work with the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya.) One of the students recorded the conversation, so I’m hoping it gets posted on one of the ship’s officials blogs--if so, I’ll update this. Maathai had heard of Semester at Sea and its work with Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the students loved meeting someone so special at a place that is now dedicated to peace.

In talking about the visit, many of us onboard have remarked at how we are puzzled that the Japanese didn’t seem angry at Americans, but they didn’t. Bob and I had fathers serving overseas at the time--Bob’s Dad was in Okinawa and would have probably been in danger if we had invaded Japan, so we are happy the war ended, and sometimes I think it isn‘t fair to second-guess decisions made in a different time, but it is certainly important to think about how we could work for peace so we could avoid these messes. Lots of food for thought.

But where else but Semester at Sea can you go to Hiroshima one day, and then sit down to breakfast the next day with two nuclear physicists who can talk about the scientific, moral, and political decision-making that went into deciding to use nuclear weapons. This has been such a great opportunity to think about things, even if you don't come up with any ideas but one:

Pray for peace.

Land of the Rising Sun

(Luana:) It took us three mostly rocky weeks and two days to cross the Pacific Ocean, with four of those days spent in Hawaii, so there were plenty of people who were very happy to see land as we approached Japan on February 9. Talk about cabin fever! The excitement built as we maneuvered into the dock at Yokohama, where a taiko drumming group greeted us from the top of the port terminal building. We received a very friendly welcome, from the drumming as we docked to the photo opportunity as we cleared customs. Most everyone lined up to have a photo in a kimono or whatever the guy equivalent is called.

Bob and I took a city tour of Yokohama on our first day, and I continued with day trips to Tokyo and Hiroshima, while Bob went to Nara. On our last day, we explored Kobe, where the ship had moved. I’m happy with the choices we made, but I think it’s time to get more adventurous. Most of the kids on the ship--about 500 of the 700--traveled on their own and didn’t reboard the ship for the transit from Yokohama to Kobe. I’ve talked to many of them since they got back (all on time, and nobody missing!!) and I’m so impressed with the wonderful independent travel adventures they had. With budgets in mind, many had slept in Internet cafes, hostels, the little sleeping cubes in Tokyo, or in Japanese ryokans--rooms with nothing but tatami mats and futons on the floor, sometimes a little heater under a central table. They took backpacks and headed for the hills, for the mountains, for the hot springs, for the hidden corners. One group just got off at a random, unplanned train station and walked until they found something interesting; they eventually wound up at a hot springs. Universally, everyone was “templed out,” but what great stories they will bring home. (The girls in the picture are three of our "extended family" members, Taylor, Lauren and Kate--real sweeties. Their headbands say Japan.)

It’s easy to beat yourself up thinking other people planned better adventures than you did, but I’m coming to accept that each trip is its own unique experience, and I’m enjoying other peoples’ trips as much as my own. I don’t usually like bus trips but had decided to do them this time in the interest of maximizing things seen compared to time spent figuring things out. And the independent travelers in many cases mentioned that they had no idea what they were seeing and wished they’d had someone to explain things. With a bus tour, you certainly get your share of information! At any rate, this was a nice introduction to Japan. We even met one lady at a garden in Yokohama who is traveling to Portland this summer; we exchanged emails and are hoping to see her when she comes our way. The people were so kind and lovely.

My biggest surprises: (1) I had no idea that the many coastal cities are not really distinct anymore -- they all kind of run together. We left Yokohama for Tokyo on Day 2, and I have no idea where one city ended and the other began, and we drove for an hour and a half. And this was not just suburbs -- I’m talking city, city, city, tall building, tall building, overpass, overpass, etc., as far as the eye can see. When I get home and have bandwidth, I want to do a Google Earth flight along the Japanese coast. (2) I read a bit of Japan’s Shakespeare, Basho, in a lit class on board, and he talked constantly about how difficult it was to walk from town to town across Japan on a pilgrimage he made. I thought it was just because the roads wouldn’t have been good in the 1650s. But I had no clue how mountainous the country is. You would really have to be quite the adventurer to set off to walk across this country.

One statistic I found very interesting: one of my guides said 80% of Japanese are Buddhist, and 80% are Shinto. Japanese aren’t tremendously religious to begin with, but many of them observe both traditional religions. Some are even Christian and Shinto. The Shinto temples are where they go to celebrate happy occasions -- births, marriages, buying a new car -- and the Buddhist temples are for the “meaning of life” issues and to observe a death. Happily enough for our group, at the big Shinto shrine in Tokyo we had the great good fortune to observe a Shinto wedding (see photo, right). Very lovely, very quick.

Kind of like our time in Japan.

Reflections on Japan

(Bob:) I had a variety of preconceived notions about Japan from my two previous visits, with both being business (reporting) trips in the mid- to late-1980s. With two exceptions, those notions tended to be reconfirmed.

First, the Japanese are very polite and friendly to tourists. The country is clean, well-organized and extremely efficient. It was amazing to see no trace of the mid-1990s earthquake in Kobe that killed thousands and leveled major parts of the city. New Orleans won’t look anywhere near that good 15 years after Katrina.

On the negative side, it scares me little to see a culture that is so conformist that people would never jay-walk, even after standing at a traffic light for several minutes with no traffic in sight, and they say they feel guilty and won’t take all their vacations because the people left in the office might have to do a little extra work to make up for the vacationer. Now that’s really scary, but maybe I watched too many WWII movies as a child.

The two biggest changes I noticed concern public restrooms and women in the work force. Twenty years ago the public restrooms, as in many countries, were to be avoided. Now, the women’s at least, I am told, are worth a tourist stop, with multiple buttons on the toilets controlling multiple interesting functions, including heated seats. I’ll let Luana go into detail on this -- perhaps in private after the trip. These bathrooms were a great topic of conversation among the women on the ship.

Second, women in the work force have really increased in the last 20 years according to a lengthy conversation I had with a woman tour guide. But most of the jobs have been “temporary,” no pension benefits and subject to firing at any time. This has been a big change in Japan as lifetime employment is phased out. This has also given women economic freedom, and they are much less likely to get married. Some 30 to 40 percent of women aged 30 are single and for men the figure is even higher.

The tour guide said women don’t want the hassle and cost of marriage and kids unless the guy is really well off and not the first son, since the first son has to take care of his mother. The current population projection is that Japan will lose 25 percent of its population by 2050 because people are having so few kids.

Japan is also very expensive, probably always among the top three countries in the world in cost of living and much more expensive than the U.S. The average cost of a home is 10 times the average annual income, and food and transportation are also high-priced: upscale Kobe beef restaurants in Kobe have $200 and up dinner entrees.

Tours in Japan, other than the extremely important one to Hiroshima, invariably involve four things: Shinto temples (the first one is interesting, the second one much less so, etc.) Buddhist temples (ditto), old Japanese-style castles (ditto) and going up in a tall building to photograph what’s below. (Buildings are capped at about 70 stories because of earthquake concerns.) The Japanese seem to think that even though their mile after mile after mile of cities are crammed together and ugly they will become photogenic from 70 stories up. They don’t. All the American brands are here, including AM/PM and 7/11 stores on every block and McDonald’s on every other block (They serve hot dogs in Japan, according to their signs.) There is a giant ferris wheel in every port.

All that said, I really enjoyed my visit to the temple city of Nara, which has the world’s largest wood structure serving as a Buddhist temple. It’s truly spectacular, and on the grounds are hundreds of miniature deer, which you can buy food to feed. They are quite aggressive at pursuing the food and trying to take it out of your pocket, but it’s a lot of fun and provides great photo ops.

Now I’m really looking forward to arriving in China tomorrow. It will all be new and exciting. Luana says I can’t wear my “Free Tibet” tee shirt. What a killjoy.

A Typical Day

(Bob:) When we started this voyage Luana and I were worried that we might get bored during the days at sea. In fact, we even brought along cards and Scrabble in case that happened. Our children will be relieved to hear we have not played a game of Scrabble yet, since we have kept our days full. Our games of Scrabble usually end with passion (a poor word worth nine points) with me saying, “Luana, you’re cheating,” her storming out of the room and returning with a meat cleaver (much better, 13 points), threatening to kill me.

But we haven’t had to resort to Scrabble. That’s because we nap seven hours a day. Just kidding. Our days at sea go like this: Luana gets up at 6 a.m. most days to exercise in the fitness room. We have breakfast together during the breakfast time between 7 and 8:30. I exercise by walking on a certain area of the deck (90 steps a lap, a lap every 50 seconds, 35 to 45 minutes of walking, but who‘s counting) and read on the aft sun deck, all between 9 and 11. However, on days when the sea is extremely rough (see today’s photo of the sea spray hitting deck 6), there is no exercising on deck.

We audit two to three classes a day (most classes run on alternate days, seven days a week when we are at sea) between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Classes are 75 minutes long. We do squeeze in naps in the afternoon, or more reading.

A class both Luana and I audit, and which is required of all students, is Global Studies, which focuses on the countries we are visiting, the oceans we are traveling through and the patterns that connect them. One recent session dealt with Japan, China and India. Ahhaa, you say, I see the pattern already: All important Asian countries have five letters. That was confirmed when Burma changed its name to Myanmar, which translates from Burmese as “Unimportant Asian Country.” Yesterday, I also sat in on an interesting session about Vietnam joining the five Asian Tigers: the region’s fastest growing small economies. They are South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Tony, I think, but I may have dozed off in that one.

At 5 p.m. most days, the Old Coots group holds a meeting in the faculty lounge (Happy Hour) run by a ship’s staffer to discuss upcoming events and problems. (“Has anybody got their computer to work right yet? I can’t get mine turned on.”)

Dinner is from 5:30 to 7:30. All meals are informal and buffet style, and these are very social affairs. We usually sit down with faculty members or other adults and get to know them and discuss world events and philosophy (“What’s the Super Bowl point spread? I wonder who was on Oprah today?”) Occasionally students will even join us for meals (“Hey, let’s go to that table and count the Old Coots’ nose hairs.”)

There are also seminars and other group meetings between 7 and 10 p.m. Usually there are 3 lectures a night to choose from. Luana and I have also been sitting in on a free class: Chinese for Beginners, or as we call it, The four ways to pronounce ‘ma.’

In the evening you can also go to your room and watch the small TV with its 6 channels, two of which are usually old movies that relate to the countries we are visiting. Another channel has environmental stuff (screened by Al Gore to guarantee boredom), one has been Chinese history documentaries, and two are related to ship’s operations, administrative matters (Picked up your malaria medication yet?), etc.

The faculty lounge is open for drinks from 9 to 11 most nights, and the drinks are priced very reasonably. We usually go to sleep relatively early, although sometimes we stay up to read. I must say I am reading many more books on this ship -- three already in three weeks.

So there you have our exciting days at zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Water, Water Everywhere

(Bob:) On the umpteenth day of our crossing of the Pacific (seven days to Hawaii, eleven days to Japan, not counting the tragedy of the skipped day described below), one becomes acutely aware of the immense size of the Pacific. One professor onboard said all the continents would fit into it, with some water left over. We have traveled 24 hours a day at about 17 mph on and on and on. The water in most places is 16,000 to 18,000 feet deep and has been uniformly about 70 to72 degrees most of the time. We have only seen a couple of ships (of course Luana and I sleep 22 hours a day so our viewing time is limited.), a few birds and some flying fish.

Now I know there are many of you reading this blog thinking, “I wonder what’s on TV right now, but there might be a few of you thinking “It’s too bad we can’t do something useful with all that water.” (Fish don’t think that.) Well we can, Ancient Mariners. Unlike the line from “The Ancient Mariner,” it turns out there are plenty of drops to drink. This ship, like all modern cruise ships, desalinates ocean water to get its water supply. The ship can purify up to 150,000 gallons a day, using both a sand filter and reverse osmosis (like synchronized swimming) through several other filters. It costs $600 to $700 in fuel oil a day to run the desalination plant.

While at sea, we on board use only about 50,000 gallons, mostly for showers. Only about 500 gallons is used by the ultra-low-flow, vacuum-powered toilets. (Flush that at the wrong time and you’re singing tenor for the rest of the cruise, matey.)

A problem occurs in port, since they can’t desalinate water there since it’s usually too polluted. So the ship stocks up our storage tanks prior to port. Also, in-port usage drops way down since guys would rather run ashore and pee on trees than risk these toilets. The ship also can’t send out its “used” water in port -- only at least 12 miles at sea. So no laundry gets done in port. (Laundry is $3 or $6 a bag for those who want to know, with the cost difference coming for stuff that gets ironed.) Fortunately, for Luana, she is washing her unmentionables by hand. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to mention that.

For those of you concerned about the environment, the ship does not send toilet water directly into the sea, although it does do so with laundry and shower water. The systems have separate drainage piping, so the toilet water gets treated to remove the “solids.”

This, of course, is an excellent time to return to my previous mention of the poop deck in an early blog. In fact, it’s the deck at the rear of a sailing ship above the large cabin that usually housed the captain. The phase was coined by the famous French mariner, Capitan LePoop.

Luana says I now have to eat in the room for 2 weeks, and no more potty humor in the blog. Life just isn’t fair.

February 3, We Hardly Knew Ye

(Bob:) On Feb. 1, at about 1:15 p.m., we crossed the International Date Line. That statement is revealing a deep, dark secret about this ship, but more on that later.

They were ready for our crossing. The line was all lighted in neon and there was a big sign that read: “Welcome to tomorrow, Semester at Sea.” Below that was a small reader board advertising bingo night at a nearby Indian casino, but we didn’t have time to stop.

Of course, there were a few people on board who claimed to have crossed the date line before it became overly commercialized, but those are the same types who don’t appreciate the natural scenic grandeur of Disneyland.

Now back to the cover-up. We passengers were expecting that we would skip Feb. 2 (Groundhog’s Day) and go immediately to Feb. 3. But noooooo! The captain or whoever the dictator is who is controlling the ship’s calendar decided we would sail merrily on all of Feb. 1 and 2 pretending nothing had happened and then we would skip Feb. 3. Perhaps the powers-that-be thought if we skipped Feb. 2 we would have 12 more weeks of winter -- or worse yet, of the never-ending crossing of this ocean. So they pulled their great day switcheroo. But there are those of us who plan to report this to the proper authorities in Greenwich. You never saw Captain Kirk switch days on the log of the Starship Enterprise when he crossed the date line; we will not let this injustice stand.

But that’s not the end of it. There is talk that they may show a live broadcast of the Super Bowl on board, since we still won’t be in Japan. But we will be watching it on Monday! Super Bowl Monday? Oh the horror! God will come down and smite this ship with a giant bottle of Bud Light. I hope we survive.