Beautiful Cape Town, Or, The Perfect Day

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Okay, maybe Matt Damon got a better tour of Robben Island in the movie Invictus, where he stood alone in Nelson Mandela’s cell and conjured the mental image of Mandela studying, chipping rocks in the courtyard, and reading the words to the namesake poem. The reality is that you get about 10 seconds to block and tackle the 99 other people in your tour group so you can snap a picture, but that is perfectly okay. We were so grateful that we were even able to get a ticket to go out to Robben Island, and we had the most perfect, gorgeous, lovely day! What a thrill to walk in the tracks of the most special and extraordinary Mandela, who went from spending 27 years as a political prisoner to become president of his nation.

First some background: We docked in Cape Town at 8 a.m. today, coming into the harbor as we watched a lovely sunrise cast rays of light on the nooks and crannies of Table Mountain. The mountain was so much bigger and more imposing than I expected, and to arrive in Cape Town harbor by ship is one of the joyous benefits of ship travel. We docked right at the heart of the beautiful Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, a huge shopping and restaurant complex, and as soon as we could leave the ship we headed straight for the Nelson Mandela Gateway to try to purchase tickets to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 20 of his 27 years in prison. We had meant to purchase tickets online before we arrived, but online sales were closed by the time we tried, so we decided to just give it a go.

When we got to the ticket window, our salesperson told us the first available tickets were for the day after we were scheduled to leave Cape Town. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t walk away; I really felt that I was going to be going to Robben Island. First I asked if they had a waiting list. No. Did they sell tickets if people with presale tickets didn’t show up? No. Did they wait to see if the boat was full and then sell tickets at the last minute? A pause. Let me check. And before you know it, we had two tickets on the 11 a.m. ferry, the Sikhululekile.

The 7-mile trip out to the island, which we had just passed on our ship a few hours before, took about 40 minutes and was a nice change of pace from our big ship--fast and breezy. We docked at the island and walked to tour buses that take you around the island to see the lighthouse, churches, homes for the guards, and the leper cemetery (Robben Island hosted a leper colony from the mid-1800s until the 1930s). We also saw the building where Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan African Congress, was held in isolation during the 1960s. His four children were allowed to visit him and their pictures were on the wall above the beds they used.

Then we left the bus and met a new tour guide, a man who was actually a former prisoner on the island. Our guide Sparks spent 7 years on Robben Island after he was convicted as a terrorist for his anti-apartheid political efforts.

Sparks took us to the large room where he lived with 60 other men in double bunks. There were window openings with bars, but no glass, so during the winter the rain and wind blew in; there was no heat, and the 60 men shared 2 toilets and 2 showers. Then Sparks took us to see Mandela’s cell, which was in a section of individual prison cells, each a rectangle about 6 feet by 8 feet. Mandela slept on a mat on the floor and had a bucket for a toilet. Very sparse, very grim. And yet he decided to befriend his jailers. Sparks said that many of the prisoners hold reunions now and the jailers also attend.

At Sea (Or, A Touch of Cabin Fever)

(Bob:) Some of the regular readers of this blog have been saying, “Bob, that’s terrible.” So screw you.

I’m writing for the readers of our blog who have asked, “Doesn’t it get terribly boring at sea? Don’t you begin to get cabin fever and go a little crazy, repeating yourself at times?”

“Doesn’t it get terribly boring at sea? Don’t you begin to get cabin fever and go a little crazy, repeating yourself at times?”

“Doesn’t it get terribly boring at sea? Don’t you begin to get cabin fever and go a little cra… Whoa, sorry, I spaced out a little there.

No, silly readers, of course not. I’m well-adjusted to the routine and it doesn’t bother me a bit.

WHOA! IT’S THE END OF MARCH AND I HAVEN’T SEEN A SINGLE BASKETBALL GAME. THIS IS TORTURE! OH, THE HUMANITY! IN FACT I HAVEN’T WATCHED A SINGLE SPORTING EVENT (OTHER THAN A BLURRED VERSION OF THE SUPER BOWL) SINCE MID-JANUARY!

But, of course, there’s plenty of other things to do. I can go to college courses and watch know-nothing students gossip and play solitaire on their computers during class time so they’ll become know-nothing adults. Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth. That makes you encouraged about the future.

Or I can go to the meeting every other day of our “Lifelong Learner” (old coots) group, and hear the following conversation: “Now you all may want to go to the special performance tonight in the student union at 8.” At which time, somebody will pipe up and say, “ Where and when is that performance? I don’t know anything about it.” At which point I want to say, “READ THE PAPER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, YOU DIMWIT. IT’S IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. HOW DID YOU GET TO BE 186 YEARS OLD WITHOUT KNOWING HOW TO READ?” But Luana always stops me from doing that. So then we follow that up with questions about whether anti-malarial medicines cause gas and similar topics. Believe me, you don’t want to hear my answer to that.

NO SPORTING EVENTS SINCE JANUARY. OUR IN-ROOM TV HAS 6 CHANNELS, BUT NO ESPN. I CAN’T TAKE IT!

Of course, there’s always reading. I think I’ve read 186 books since leaving the mainland U.S., including all 940 pages of Don Quixote three times. Can you imagine someone so insane he rides around Spain trying to do good deeds to win the heart of Dulcinea del Taboso. And all the time she is in our 6th floor dining room, held captive by a dragon and a minotaur. I have a plan to get her out that involves bringing a horse and some lances on board. Stay tuned.

Anyway, as you can see --NO SPORTS ANYWHERE! NO SPORTS! WHY, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT PRISON THE OREGON FOOTBALL PLAYERS ARE GOING TO -- I’m perfectly well-adjusted to shipboard life.

Other than the food. Now I know it’s wrong to complain about food when we visit so many places where people don’t have enough to eat, but the cooks onboard hate me. They have this conspiracy that has made everything taste the same -- it all tastes like plain pasta -- salads, meat, pancakes, everything. I think that cockroach I killed in India might be the ancestor of one of the cooks. And the cockroach was a better cook. NO SPORTS!

So, now that I’m feeling better I’m going to get in my car and drive down to the local bowling alley, roll a few games and then go to Red Robin for a Banzai Burger and unlimited fries. UNLIMITED FRIES!!!!

Oh wait, Luana wants me to go to bed after taking my meds. I keep forgetting to do that on ship. There’s so much to do.

(Note from Luana: We arrive in South Africa momentarily. I promise I'll get him out for air.)

Could You Live on $2 a Day?

I miss having coffee with my friends back in Oregon, but it might be hard to go back to spending $3 or $4 on a latte again. That’s because this trip is really bringing home to me the poverty that informs the lives of so many other people in the world. As unemployed as I am, and as uncertain as I am about my future, I can see that my life will always be more privileged than most lives on this planet, and that is a very humbling thought.

When we get home, I’m thinking of decorating one wall in the kitchen with the World Population Data Sheet. It’s fascinating reading, a pile of statistics on each country in the world -- fertility rate, gross national product, AIDS/HIV rate, infant mortality, etc. One of the statistics that keeps calling out to me is the number of people in the world who live on less than $2 a day. It’s a pretty shocking number: 48 percent. Of the countries we are visiting, India at 76% and Cambodia at 68% are definitely in worst shape. In Africa, we will visit South Africa, at 43%, and Ghana, at 54%. But for the African continent as a whole, the sad statistic is 65% of people living on less than $2 a day, and in several African countries the numbers run upwards of 90%. In Liberia, 95% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Can you imagine it?

Today we can see Africa for the first time from the ship. We are hugging the South African coast as we round the tip headed for Cape Town, because the seas farther out are rough and roiling. I’m not sure why all these statistics keep floating in my head. Maybe it’s because I‘m about to see more statistics turn into real, live human beings. And I’m wondering: What does it mean? What can I do about it?

The students on the ship are working in groups to create projects on sustainability for their Global Studies class. One group is having its members take turns trying to survive on $2 a day as we visit each country, and another student is shooting video. We have some concerns about safety--$2 a day isn’t even enough to buy bottled water, and it doesn’t seem safe to sleep on the streets, which is about all you can afford on $2. But I’ll be really interested in seeing their presentation and hearing what they learn. I’ll keep you posted.

The Song of the Dodo…But Fortunately Not the Kestrel, Or the Fody, Or…

(Luana:) When we studied the itinerary for this Semester at Sea voyage, I will admit I had no idea where Mauritius was or why I might want to go there. It appeared that it might simply be a surf-and-sand mai tai stop for passengers to refresh after India on the way to South Africa (and that would have been just fine by me). But it was so much more. It was an amazing educational experience of a lifetime, thanks to my English lit class, taught by Professor David Sumner of Oregon’s own Linfield College, who absolutely rocks as a teacher (and who also plays great bluegrass).
It turns out that Mauritius was the one and only place on earth where the now-extinct dodo lived; the Dutch finished clubbing all of them to death around 1680 "because it was fun." From the number of T-shirts and trinkets featuring dodos that we saw for sale, I’m not sure if that’s a point of pride or not, but one thing is certain: Mauritius has its act together now where extinction is concerned, and is doing something about it.

In my lit class, which has focused on nature writing, we read a remarkable book by David Quammen called The Song of the Dodo, Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. Quammen traveled the world looking at evolution and extinction issues as they are illuminated by islands. A good part of the book focuses on the Mauritian kestrel and a biologist named Carl Jones, who managed to bring this nearly extinct bird back from the brink. (There were only 4 birds left in the 1980s.) David arranged for our class to go to Ile Aux Aigrettes (Island of Egrets) off the southern coast of Mauritius, where Jones’s Mauritian Wildlife Foundation is bringing back critically endangered native birds, animals and plants. The director of the foundation took us on a 4-hour hike to see the wildlife for ourselves.

What a success story! Over the past 20 years or so, the foundation has ripped out invasive species that choked the island, and killed off the nonnative mongoose and rat populations that were eating bird and tortoise eggs and ruining habitat for native plant species. They have restored native ebony trees and palms, started a nursery to repopulate plant species on the mainland (where sugar cane has replaced far too much native vegetation), and created an Eden for restoring birds and animals. It was a beautiful, heavenly place, a real paradise, very close in appearance to what Mauritius originally looked like before people first inhabited the island around 1600 and started tearing out the native flora to plant sugar cane for profit.

Interestingly enough, we never saw a kestrel, although that had been the focus of our readings and the stated purpose for making the trip. That’s because the kestrel is no longer endangered--WAHOO! It actually lives on “mainland” Mauritius, not on this little island. And we didn’t even care that we didn't see it! We learned so much and saw so much and we were so happy the kestrel was doing well, and we saw many other success stories for species that are currently being restored.

 Here are some of the things we saw in the wild:

• The Mauritius Fody, a bright green bird with brilliant red head, which is now off the critical list and merely endangered.
• The critically endangered Pink Pigeon, the only wild population of these birds to be seen by the public anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, it is showing some signs of distress, with unexplained disease and a decline in its reproduction rate.
• The Olive White-eye, Zosterops chloronothos, a bird I barely glimpsed.
• The Aldabran Giant Tortoise, brought in to replace the two species of Tortoises that lived on the island and that are now extinct.

• Telfair’s Skink, a lizard that was just reintroduced into the wild a couple of years ago.

After our visit to Ile Aux Aigrettes, we also went to the Vanille Crocodile Park, which had so much more than crocodiles, including the most gorgeous insect collection I’ve ever seen. We also saw a lot of what our group came to call “tortoise porn.” It was mating season for the 200 or so giant Aldabra tortoises that live at the park, and there were many, many pairs having what you might call Harry Met Sally moments. It was pretty noisy! We also happened to be there when they fed dead whole chickens, feathers and all, to the crocodiles. Horrifying!

I’m looking at the environment in a whole new way. Mauritius was a real gift for me--a place not on my radar turned out to be a highlight of this journey, thanks to one book, one professor, and one day out in nature. If you ever want a good, thrilling read that just might make you think, I highly recommend The Song of the Dodo.

Hope for India, and Welcome to Mauritius

(Bob:) My last entry for India, and my first and only entry for the island nation of Mauritius, strikes a distinctly different note than my first entry for India. That entry centered on our first port of call, Chennai (formerly Madras) on the southeast coast of India, plus the three northern India cities of New Delhi, Varanasi, and Agra. It was so depressing, bordering on despair, to see such utter poverty in a country with the resources of India.

But there is another Indian story in the state of Kerala on the southwest coast of India, and a related story on Mauritius, since 60 percent of its population are Indian descendants, whose forebears were brought there in the 19th century to work on the sugar plantations as indentured laborers when slavery was outlawed by Britain in the 1830s.

Kerala is the most international of the Indian states and the least Hindu, with only about 50 percent of the population following that religion. About 25 percent are Christians, the highest percentage in India, about 18 percent Moslems and then various other faiths. Kerala was a prime area for the first European explorers who came around Africa in search of the spice trade. Also a prime area for the first European missionaries. It’s a very tropical area, getting about 120 inches of rainfall a year. This provides abundant water, allowing the state to produce a lot of hydroelectricity from the more mountainous area in its north.

Kerala has the highest literacy rate in India -- about 95 percent. This, I think is key to its success, along with a weak caste system.

The state also had a communist government that won elections and took over state government in 1956 and has been in power much of the time since. (It’s one of the few communist governments to ever take power through elections and maintain the elections.) The communists are currently part of the coalition government that rules the state. The communist government enacted land reform in 1968, so land ownership is relatively widespread. I was also told that the state has done a much better job of enforcing gender equality than many other Indian states.

There are things you don’t see in Kerala: there is very little garbage along the roadsides; I never saw a cow, let alone have them stand in the middle of the road. I saw no hovels of untouchables along roadsides; with the lesser number of Hindus, the caste system appears to be weak in Kerala.

More important are the things you do see: high-rise construction in many places, some of it apartments, some hotels and some offices. Kerala, probably because of the high literacy rate, has been a prime spot for American outsourcing of such things as call centers. This was also the only state where I saw family planning advertising -- “One child per family.” One indication of the growing prosperity of the place: our port city of Cochin, with about 1.5 million people, had brand new Audi, BMW, and Mercedes dealerships.

Kerala supposedly has nice beaches, although I didn’t make it to them, so it also has a growing tourism sector.

In short, Kerala seems to have it figured out in terms of economic development, I think primarily through education. But I plan to research this further to find out what the experts say about the place. I only hope that what’s happening there can spread to the rest of the country, but the task is so daunting.

One thing you discover even if you are in India for only a few days is that Indians are very vocal, very talkative and very opinionated and argumentative. It’s said that if you put 10 Indians in a room, you’ll have 25 opinions on any subject brought up. That’s one reason it seems unlikely that any governing system other than democracy would ever work for India, even though it doesn’t work very well.

In Mauritius, Indians have proved they can run a democracy well. Mauritius is an island about the size of Rhode Island, located several hundred miles east of Madagascar and west of the American bases on Diego Garcia. Mauritius is known to much of the world, particularly Europe, as a big beach resort with 200 miles of white sand beaches and a coral reef surrounding the island. There are many luxury and more moderate hotels lining the beaches, and the island has been discovered by McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.

The French ruled the island in the 18th century; the British took over in 1810 and ruled it until independence in 1968. The result: a French culture overlaid by a British bureaucracy. The people speak a Creole French; advertising signs are in French, but road signs are in English.

The island has 1.2 million people, and is visited by 900,000 tourists each year. The per capita GDP is more than $12,000, about six times the level of India and the highest in Africa, where Mauritius is placed for classification purposes. The country has a government paid health-care system (What a concept!) as well as old-age pensions, unemployment compensation, housing assistance loans and a whole variety of social welfare programs funded at an appropriate level for the country. You see poverty -- slums in the city, poor shacks for sugar cane workers, etc. -- but it appears manageable. Again, to me it appears to be Indians who don’t have the burden of the caste system being able to run things efficiently, as in Kerala.

Probably most important for the country has been the smart economic planning by the government: Realizing that sugar cane and tourism weren’t enough to provide needed employment, the government first in the 1980s created export processing zones where textile manufacturers could bring in material duty-free, have it sewn into finished clothing and then exported duty free. That proved 70,000 jobs. Then in the 1990s, the country loosened its banking regulations so off-shore banking became a growth industry, and banks built big office buildings in the capital. Today the government is building a big high-tech office park called Cyber City. Now, if you are a high-tech CEO, would you rather have your overseas office in India with all its problems, or in Mauritius where the CEO can have a beachfront house 10 minutes from work?

The country has had regular elections since 1968. Maybe we could convince this government to come over and run the United States for a few years.

We were only in Mauritius for about 36 hours, and Luana had the most interesting trip in that time, which she will relate.

In addition to going all over the downtown of Port Louis, I went a little way out of town to a sugar museum. I learned that Mauritius is one of the chief exporters of sugar to Europe, that there can be about 10 kinds of sugar, each tasting slightly different (I tasted them), depending on boiling time, and that Mauritius gets 40 percent of its electric energy by burning sugar cane waste.

Now you can rest from factoid exhaustion.

Crossing a Line

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way.
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small.
But it's as big as the promise - the promise of a comin' day.
     --Crosby Stills & Nash

(Luana:) We've now passed the half-way point of our journey in terms of how long we will be gone from home. We're now exactly half-way around the world, in a time zone 12 hours away from Canby, Oregon, so I guess it's only appropriate that now we are also in a different hemisphere. In the middle of the night last night we crossed the equator in the Indian Ocean, while sailing from India to Mauritius. This means we have been in all four hemispheres on the trip now -- East, West, North, South. Incidentally, we are so close to time for the Spring Equinox tomorrow, that we were told the sun was exactly overhead today at noon. I went up and took a picture; it looks like a flashbulb going off.

This weekend the ship will have Neptune Day, where exalted Shellbacks like Bob, who have already crossed, will initiate lowly Pollywogs like me into the Order of Neptune. I'm trying to decide which I'll choose: head-shaving or a bath in fish guts. I suspect vanity will rule. (Bob: The emphasis in that sentence should be on "exalted.")

Yesterday also marked my first real spotting of sea life. You'd think we would have seen plenty of dolphins and whales by now, but that hasn't been the case. The ocean has been vast and mysterious on this journey. Yesterday, though, I saw hundreds of flying fish. They're small and they fly close to the water, and they usually fly for only a couple of seconds. But I was beginning to think I would be the only person on the trip not to spot some, so I was thrilled to see so many all in the space of a half hour. It was a nice way to mark the half-way point. Who knows what other adventures lie in store?

Through the Eyes of a Child

(Luana:) Our last impression of India is one of hope and awe, full of good feelings, based on our visit to the SOS Children’s Village in Cochin. We didn’t know what to expect at an orphanage, after seeing some of the squalid living conditions in India. So it was a relief and a pleasure to feel both amazed and impressed.

When we got off the bus, children led us by the hand to an open-air pavilion and presented us with coconuts and straws, for a refreshing drink of coconut milk. Then some of the children entertained us. Beyond cute, and you could definitely see that Bollywood has had its impact. The ship had sent a group a day earlier, and SOS had prepared two groups of kids to do performances for them. Well, all the other kids wanted to perform so badly that three additional groups came up with acts overnight, so our group had five different acts to watch -- all adorable. Then the children led us around the complex to see how they live. Bob and I were with a darling girl with an unpronounceable name -- Amritsa?? -- who looked 12 but said she was 18. She seemed to like the arts, and she was sweet and shy, and she held my hand as we walked.

SOS is an international organization, and in India it has 40 orphanages alone. The term orphan is a loose one. Many of the children have family, but their family is either too poor to care for them, possibly has abandoned them, or could tell some other sad tale. But instead of just shoving the kids into an institution, SOS sets up its own family structure. Each child grows up in a home with about 10 other kids of all ages, with a mother to care for them. Each family does its own cooking, and there are three bedrooms. One bedroom for the girls, one for the boys, and one for the mother, with room for any babies or sick children who need special care. Each child has his or her own bed. This complex had Hindu houses, Christian houses, and Muslim houses, so the children could be brought up according to their own religion. The lovely thing is that this family unit remains intact, and the children don't even appear to be forced out at what we would consider adulthood--there are many 20-somethings still living with their families. That especially made me happy, given the job prospects they face and the number of people who appear to be living on the streets (although not so much in Cochin, which seemed more prosperous).

We visited inside the homes of four of the 15 families at the Cochin SOS site, and in each house the mother immediately pulled out the photo album for a “daughter” who had married, and wedding pictures were all over the walls, so that is a particular point of pride for them, to be able to marry off a daughter in that fashion. What impressed me was how nice the homes were -- they looked kind of like a Northwest scout lodge -- and how happy and well-educated the children were.

While the ship’s students were playing soccer with the kids, I wound up talking to Vipin Das, the village director. (He assumed I was the “teacher” and in charge of the group, because everyone else in our group was under 25). He said most of the children speak both Hindi and English, and all were in school or vocational programs. They appear to do a good bit of testing and try to help find good educational fits for each child so they have a chance at careers. I think this is definitely a good organization to keep on your radar, if you’re looking for charities to support. I know this will be a memory of India that I keep in my heart.

The Taj Visit, or, the Real "Incredible India"

Some of you reading this may want to visit the Taj Mahal some day. That’s understandable. It seems to us to be the most beautiful manmade tourist site on earth. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

If you visit it, we have some advice, learned painfully.

Go early in the day, and don’t go on a Sunday, which is the day Indians have off, which makes the crowds horrendous, particularly late in the day. If you hire a guide, and most foreigners do, insist that you go early in the day, particularly at sunrise since it opens at 6 a.m., and that you go before the guide takes you to shopping establishments where he gets a kickback to look at expensive rugs which you have no intention of buying and couldn’t afford anyway. By going early on a non-Sunday, you avoid having to spend an hour in the security line to get in and you have more than 45 minutes to spend seeing the Taj Mahal and its grounds, which is what we had. We would recommend that you allot at least 3 hours and take your time visiting the site and enjoying the beauty from all angles, especially the beautiful, detailed inlaid carvings and the screens that are chiseled from stone.

There. We’ve vented now, and we do realize that we were lucky to get those 45 minutes, since most people never get to see the Taj Mahal in person, but we were quite frustrated after our mad dash, which was sponsored by Semester at Sea. We wrote a restrained letter of dissatisfaction to the program about it.

One other word of advice: Don’t go on a Friday either since that is the Moslem holy day of the week and the Taj is closed on Fridays.

The Taj Mahal is located in Agra, a city of about 1 million that is a 2-hour train ride south of New Delhi. An average of about 200,000 people a day visit the Taj, according to the Indian government, although I might question those numbers on any day except Sunday.

Now about the place itself (HISTORY ALERT! HISTORY ALERT! If history puts you to sleep, you could be in danger in the next few paragraphs.)

Indians have had countless religious wars over the centuries between many different invaders. The Mughals, who we know as the Mongols, invaded India and won a big battle in 1526. The most famous Mughal ruler in India was Akbar, who ruled from 1556 to 1605. He greatly expanded and consolidated Mughal rule. His grandson, Shah Jahan, who ruled from 1627 to 1658, built the Taj Mahal, to honor his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who bore him 14 children, the last of which killed her.

Akbar was also important because he started construction on Agra Fort, a massive red sandstone fort and palace that his grandson also expanded. We visited that fort prior to the Taj. Shah Jahan was imprisoned there the last eight years of his life by his third son, who killed his brothers and took over. From his residence in the fort, he could see the Taj Mahal, which is a short distance away. He was buried there with his wife -- I guess the third son wasn’t all bad.

Akbar also built the city of Fatehpur Sikri (pronounced fotta-purr-see-kree), which is about 25 kilometers outside Agra. It served as the capital of the Mughal Empire for about 14 years, then was abandoned because of water supply problems. We visited that, too, and it was very impressive. (We hope to set up slide shows of all these forts and the Taj on this blog after our return home.)

The Taj took from 15 to 22 years to build, depending on the source. Shah Jahan brought in designers and artisans from around the world to assure it reached the levels of beauty he wanted. More than 20,000 laborers and a thousand elephants worked on it. The artistry and inlaid marble work are exquisite. A mosque was built to one side of the Taj, and to keep the symmetry of the site an identical building was put on the other site, even though it had no purpose.

A small local note: All three sites we visited on this day had beautiful blooming dahlias on the grounds; we wonder if the tubers came from Swan Island Dahlias in Canby, the largest dahlia farm in the world? Or are the Swan Island Dahlias descended from the ones at the Taj Mahal?

Dirty Chaos

(Bob:) That’s the description that came to mind after a couple of days in India. Then Luana and I got to the parts that were even worse. Our 6-day visit was only rescued somewhat on our last day during an orphanage visit in the southern state of Kerala on the southwest coast, which is the most literate part of India and also probably the most prosperous. We’ll describe it at greater length in a separate blog entry. We also found many friendly Indians who love the U.S. and love to talk at great length with people from America. But there are also a number of Indians who enjoy ripping off U.S. tourists, including the tourist company that took us to the Taj Mahal (another upcoming blog entry).

But in general, the country struck us as the poorest, filthiest, most inefficient, most chaotic place in the world with a level of income inequality that boggles the mind. When you see the conditions some of these people live under, you want to throw up. In most other countries, if the government allowed these conditions to exist while spending resources on building atomic bombs, the leaders would be dragged out of their offices by mobs and beheaded in a public square. And if that happened in India tomorrow I would be cheering.

Of course, that won’t happen, as 85 percent of Indians are Hindus, and as one of our guides explained to us, the oldest religion on earth is more than a religion, it’s an entire way of life. Most importantly, it’s a social structure that says you are born into your status on earth and you should just accept it. If it’s bad, maybe you’ll have better luck in the next life. In the meantime, just accept your fate and don’t associate with people below you in the social hierarchy, other than to give them orders. As I see it the only solution to all this is education, so that people become more secular and can see the harm their system and religion does to the entire country. Anyway, that’s my take.

We did have a lot of interesting and enjoyable moments that we will describe in other entries, including seeing the sunrise while on the Ganges and watching people doing their ritual bathing, visiting an Indian home, visiting an amazing Indian orphanage, and having Luana almost trampled by a herd of cows at a busy intersection.

But before we get to that let me close this entry with a few stark images:

Imagine so much garbage littering the streets and vacant lots and God knows where else that you begin to think it really must have rained garbage for this much to be around.

Imagine train stations, even in New Delhi, the capital, with the lobby floor covered with sleeping poor people. Then imagine the smaller stations where the rats wander among those people. You become glad when it’s only cockroaches that crawl across your eating table on the trains. Although you worry when you kill that cockroach that since it’s India you may have killed someone’s great uncle.

Imagine a major source for heating and cooking fires being cow pies, with the pies collected and piled for drying in interesting pyramid shapes in many different locations. Imagine being the lucky person who picks up all these pies and carries baskets full of them on your head.

Imagine riding a train for two hours at sunrise from New Delhi to Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal, watching the male villagers come outside the village in the early morning to squat beside the tracks and do their business. It’s like being mooned for two straight hours.

Imagine the city, Varanasi, that the Indians say is the oldest occupied city on earth. Then imagine that nothing has changed in that city in all that time, except that they've never taken out the trash, and now they sell some modern products in the millions of stalls lining the streets, and the streets are now filled mainly with motorbikes, but also with a few cars, and a lot of three-wheeled taxis and pedicabs, all blowing their horns, ringing their bells and with drivers shouting at one another, all at the same time. The level of noise is unimaginable. Oh, and add cows to that street mix everywhere. I wanted to get a picture that had an “LG -- Life’s Good” advertising sign right above people sleeping on the sidewalk, but I couldn’t get it in time.

Imagine a constant level of smell that assaults the senses and that’s also constantly changing, from exhaust to fresh spices to raw sewage to God knows what.
Imagine a heavily overpopulated country with more than a billion people, yet only about half speak the main language, Hindi. About 100 million people speak English, usually as a second language. And the rest of the country speaks more than 20 other languages, with the country divided into states usually on linguistic grounds.
After awhile, as stark image piles on stark image, you begin to think this can’t be real, but it is. It’s India.

More BS Than Usual

(Bob:) In India, the home of so many religions, it is easy to fall into obsessions, whether it’s with a new god, meditating, yoga, chanting, fasting, whatever.

My obsession was dried cow pies. (The emphasis in that phrase should probably be on “dried.”) They’re everywhere: stacked in little pyramids, in cylindrical columns, in big fields of pies, all sitting individually on edge. Being carried on piles on people’s heads. In wheelbarrows. In the city. All over the countryside.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them. Out of bus windows. Walking along roads. I just couldn’t stop. If the kids at our bus stops who seemed to be selling everything else--including copies of the Kama Sutra-- had been selling cow pies, my marriage probably would have ended right there: “Now dear, don’t be mad, but I bought some special souvenirs to take home. Only 50 rupees each. Can we store them in your bag?” (Kids, if you’re reading this and are worried about your trip gifts, let me reassure you that yours are of the highest quality. They have been dried an extra two weeks.)

The idea that in a major nation these days many people should have to rely on cow pies for cooking and heating fuel is beyond belief. Were I an Indian citizen, my first suggestion would be for people to take all their cow pies to the Prime Minister’s office and stack them up floor to ceiling until the entire office was filled, then make sure the Prime Minister was in the office and set it all on fire. That would be sweet (perhaps the wrong word) justice.

 Of course, there is another side to this. Using cow pies obviously qualifies as recycling in a big way. So avid environmentalists would be pleased. And in the U.S., where we don’t have to worry about where or when or if our next meal is coming and where we’ll sleep in a warm bed rather than on the street tonight, there is a big market for environmental products. So I sense a big business opportunity in cows and their attendant “products.”

First, real estate. We could start using cow pies for heating and cooking. Then we could measure houses according to how many cows you need to have on hand to meet your home’s needs. Big houses might be called 10-cow houses, rather than 4,000-square-foot houses, while most of us would probably live in more modest three-cow houses. I sense an upcoming Sunday Homes article for “The Oregonian.” Of course, we couldn’t really call those green homes, since the cow poop seems to change color from green as it dries, but I’m sure we can find some suitable classification.

Camping equipment: Let’s get rid of propane. How about a two-pie Coleman stove? Lighter to pack, too.

Barbecues: (I know the cows won’t like me writing about this subject.) We could separate the pies according to the type of grass the cow ate, like Traeger does with its mesquite and alder. Thus, we could have Traeger rye grass or clover hay cow pellet grilles.
Transportation: Remember the old Stanley Steamer cars? We could have steam-powered cars with the boilers fired by cow pies. It would be called the Manure Mobile. Rather than miles per gallon, it would be poops per mile. Saudi Arabia is going to be quaking when they hear about this idea.
We could have the untouchables, called dhalits in India, collect and dry the pies, thus helping the poor. We could call the company we would form the Dhalit Untouchable Manure Pie company, or DUMP.

As you can see, the opportunities may be as limitless as the supply. And we know it works since the advertising industry has been running on this for decades.

Mr. Rames' Wild Ride

This occurred on the same evening as Luana’s Bovine Brush with Death (see below).

(Bob:) Our ship had docked in Chennai (formerly Madras) on the southeast coast of India, and the day after we arrived, a large group from our ship--about 3 busloads--flew out to start a three-day tour of first Varanasi, then New Delhi, and Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal and some historic forts.

Varanasi is along the Ganges, and Hindus in India consider it their oldest and most sacred city.

It’s also important to Buddhists, since Buddha gave his first lecture here. Buddhism arose as a protest against the stratified social structure of Hinduism, much like Martin Luther rebelled against Catholicism.

Hindus go to the Ganges to bathe in the river because they consider it sacred. It is also an important place for cremating bodies; many people actually come here to die or at least to be cremated and have their ashes scattered in the river. Important environmental point: The professor of a Water Resources course on board pointed out that the fecal coliform count along the shoreline of the Ganges at Varanasi is about 6 million parts per milliliter. The acceptable level in the U.S. for drinking water is 0 parts per million. Suffice it to say I didn’t bring my swimsuit for a dip in the Ganges. But there were people actually swimming in the middle of it, in addition to all those bathers.

Anyway, to get to the river to see the evening Hindu prayer service -- something all tourists in the city do -- our guide said we would have a little pedicab ride, since the streets near the river were too crowded for buses. We anticipated a leisurely little 10 minute ride, similar to one we had in China through a nice neighborhood. Wrongooo!

This was a 45-minute-to-an-hour ride through Purgatory. It was uncomfortable -- sometimes painfully so --a little scary and complete and utter fun. Better than any ride at Disneyland.

The road was unbelievably rough; you had to brace your feet on the main struts from the driver’s seat to keep from being thrown off. That was when you stopped, because my pedicab had no brakes and stopped by hitting the back of the pedicab in front. You held on to the side with one hand and tried to shoot pictures with the other.

My driver was named Rames (Luana was in another pedicab), and he looked so small and frail that I felt that I should clearly be the one pedaling. Before we started, Rames introduced me to his son -- age six or seven I would guess -- who was hanging around the pedicab stand late in the day. Rames, a Hindu, said he had three children.

Rames got us going into the cacophony of constant horns from the motorbikes and loud bells from the pedicabs. Every time one of these vehicles, or pedestrians, got too close to us, Rames rang the bell and shouted at the offending party, who then shouted back. Then they each did some more shouting. When we had an actual collision, things really got heated, but surprisingly no fisticuffs resulted.

Rames had limited English, but pointed out the Catholic church along our route, and the Hindu temple, and the Mosque, and the Hindu temple, and the Hindu temple, and -- you get the idea.

Vibrant color followed vibrant color, from the fresh fruit and vegetable and flower stalls, to the knock-off Nike stalls, with women in bright saris everywhere.

About 75 electrical wires snaked off every pole: I wonder how many of those are metered?

Monkeys ran across the tops of buildings.

Everything was crowded in on everything else -- especially in the street.

A few people were laughing and pointing and commenting to Rames, undoubtedly about his luck in getting to haul the lardo American.

Add into this the cows. It is a strange phenomenon about Indian cows: They don’t like fields. Even in the village areas they seem to like congregating on the side and middle of the road and in front of shops, where they have easy access to eating the garbage in the street.

(I wonder if they have “Why did the cow cross the road?” jokes in India. Maybe one would be “Because stopping traffic was udder fun.” I’ll stop now, rather than milk it for all it’s worth.)

So we make it down to the Ganges for the evening ceremony that Luana will describe in another entry. Then we have to come back. Rames is waiting. He specifically told me the number of his pedicab and said I was to ask for him by name. Masochism is alive and well in India.

More good news for Rames. A Semester at Sea student from another group got lost and ended up with our group, so Rames got to haul the two of us back, with the other guy sort of perched up on the side of the seat: one guy in the prime of life and a svelte 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds--or so--and the student: about 6-foot-5 and 220 or so pounds of muscle (I could take him in a fair fight). Needless to say, Rames struggled and we fell far behind the group. Danny, the student, and I suggested Rames stop for an energy drink or two, but for some reason our fluent Hindi didn’t seem to register with Rames. He said something to us like “So’s your mother” and kept pedaling.

We eventually made it, and Rames earned a substantial tip of about two day’s wages in India -- $5 or so from me. I don’t know what the tour company paid him as the basic price for our trip, and I was going to suggest he might want to invest in some brakes. But then I remembered his kids.

Cruisin' the Ganges

(We’ve been a little negligent writing about India, in part because it’s a very complicated place, and in part because we’ve been busy doing other important things onboard, like kissing fish. Now, we’re past Mauritius and on our way to South Africa, and one of our upcoming Mauritius entries will also relate to India.)

(Bob:) As a Roman Catholic would revere attending Mass at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, or a Muslim would thirst for a pilgrimage to Mecca, so a devout Hindu longs to attend the Ganga Aarti, the daily prayer service on the banks of the Ganges in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi. The Holy Goddess Ganga, or Mother Ganges, is the source of purification for Hindus, and many people even attempt to die along the banks of the Ganges so they can be cremated and have their ashes placed in the river.

The Indians say that Varanasi is the oldest occupied city on earth, but I think there are some places in Egypt, Iraq, Greece and China that might dispute that claim. But there is no disputing that Hindus regard it as their most sacred site along the Ganges, their most sacred river. Hindus come to the river to be blessed particularly at times of significant events in their lives, so many people had traveled long distances to attend. The crowd -- and there was quite a crowd, as seems to be the case everywhere in India -- included many pilgrims dressed in white saris or robes; women pilgrims had shaved their heads.

The evening we arrived in Varanasi, after the trishaw ride described in our Wild Ride entry, we attended the Ganga Aarti. As the sun goes down, seven priests walk out on seven platforms above the river and perform a series of religious rituals involving bells, candles, chanting and so on -- quite similar to Catholic mass, as one person from our ship said. Many people light little candles in tiny bowls of flowers and walk to the banks of the river to float these, saying a prayer as they launch them in the water.

There were groups of Hindus and tourists watching all this, with some of the Hindus going down to the river and getting in boats during the ceremony after being blessed by the priests. Some of the tourists watched while standing behind the Hindus, some watched from boats; some, like us, watched from snack shops above the crowds where we could get Cokes. The ceremony lasted about two hours. It provided lots of good photo ops, but seemed somewhat touristy. (Luana: I didn’t think it was as touristy as Bob did; I thought it was quite spiritual and serene; I just wish the tourists had shown a little more respect.) Can you imagine what the response would be if a group of Indian tourists came to a U.S. church on a Sunday morning, taking photos, drinking cokes, and holding up the peace sign while they had their picture taken? But the Indians didn’t seem to mind -- I guess it‘s the tourist dollars.

You can see a short video of the Ganga Aarti online; Luana took a video but we can’t upload large files from the ship.

Our second ceremony on the Ganges came the next morning before dawn, when we went out in rowboats to watch the sunrise and see Hindus bathing in the river as a religious ritual. We also went further downriver to see the funeral pyres along the river. Despite an abundance of tourists in boats, it all seemed very peaceful, beautiful and serene, and like we had stepped back in time.

Of course, there were modern touches. Like the boat that came among the tourists with the big battery powered TV sitting high in the boat. The rower was selling DVDs of the Ganges ceremonies and was showing tourists what was on the DVD. Other hawkers in boats were selling non-high-tech items.

The cremations were nearly done when we arrived in that area, so we didn’t see actual bodies (which was in some ways a relief), but a couple of sites were still smoldering. It costs $100 if you cremate with the most expensive wood -- sandalwood. It takes about 4 hours for a body to burn to ashes. Then of course, the ashes are thrown in the river to try to return to the holy mother Ganges, ensuring a better afterlife.

After the cruise we got another taste of the religious diversity of India, traveling to the Buddhist shrine just outside Varanasi where Buddha gave his first lecture promoting Buddhism as an alternative to Hinduism. Buddha was an Indian prince and founded that religion in India. Buddha didn’t like the caste system and all it entails. The Buddhist temple at this site was very impressive inside, with a gold Buddha and a large group actively meditating.

Hindus now extol Buddha as the ninth earthly incarnation of their god Vishnu, protector of the earth. This all seems very strange to me: as if the Pope suddenly made Martin Luther a saint. And while Hindus seem to revere Buddha, they pretty much ignored his advice about the caste system.

I’m very religiously confused after India, but that’s nothing new. Perhaps the word “religiously” should be removed from that sentence.

The Year of the Cow, or, The Hills Get Horned Again

(Bob:) In most of Oriental Asia, it’s the Year of the Tiger. But for the Hill family it’s been the Year of the Cow, with the wily bovines apparently plotting their revenge against us for years of eating steaks, Whoppers and Tillamook Cheeseburgers.

First, last summer, daughter Julia hit a cow while driving a rental car in Botswana. The result: $1,500 of damage to the Toyota Yaris, which was uninsured because the company didn’t offer collision coverage. What happened to the cow is uncertain since it was dark and the cow was still mobile after the accident, running away in the dark, leaving a slight bloodstain and some hide on the fender.

Now the cows of India have struck, almost taking Luana to the next life -- hopefully not as a cow.

It happened at night, in the ancient town of Varanasi, just after we had watched the beautiful evening Hindu prayer services along the Ganges.

Our group was crossing an extremely busy street -- all streets in the town are choked with motorbikes and pedicab and bicycle traffic. I was several steps behind Luana. Suddenly a motorbike rider decided he wouldn’t wait for a bunch of tourists and cut Luana from the herd (so to speak). She screamed and jumped back and then noticed the group of three or four cows running right at her from the opposite direction.
Then she really screamed. The cows brushed right by her, but by the time I reached Luana she was understandingly sobbing, ready to take the next boat down the Ganges to go home.

After it all happened, we could laugh about it -- I was able to do so much earlier than Luana.

But now that I reflect back on it, the whole situation creates all sorts of mental scenarios.

Suppose they had trampled her: Would any court in India have convicted the guilty cow? I think not.

If she had died there, we would have had to import for her funeral pyre along the Ganges a load of mesquite wood -- for that real barbecue taste. We would have had to play the theme from the old television series, “Rawhide” during the burning. Then we would have had to figure a way to get her ashes into a pair of cowboy boots and launch those boots into the river, all while hundreds of pairs of spurs jingled quietly in the background. And -- most difficult of all -- the kids and I would have had to find a steakhouse to hold the wake.

Anyway, an experience of this magnitude really deserves a song, so I composed the following to be sung to the tune of the old Western classic, “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

Luana Hill went walking one hot and humid night.
In a crosswalk she stopped, purely out of fright.
A mighty herd of red-eyed cows was running toward her side.
If they knock her to the ground, surely she will die.

Chorus:
Yippee Ki Oooh -- Varanasi
Yippee Ki Aaaayy -- Varanasi
The traffic cows of Varanasi

Luana screamed and jumped,
Their hot breath she could feel,
As the cows ran past her,
Going home for their next meal.
The local people shrugged, it’s just India they said.
One minute you are here, the next one you are dead.
Repeat chorus.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, I may have missed my true career calling. I may be moving to Nashville after we return home.

Family is Everything

When you marry in India (and usually your marriage is arranged for you), you don’t just marry a person. You marry that person’s entire family. The groom’s sister even places a toe ring on the bride’s foot to seal the marriage (and if there is no sister, they‘ll come up with a cousin or family friend). We didn’t get to experience an Indian wedding, but we had the good fortune during our stay in India to see little snippets of rich family life in action.

In Chennai on the very first day of our visit, we went to the home of an entire extended family centered around two brothers and their sister. About 15 people of their extended family took the day off work or school to host our group of 25 people from our ship, and they all dressed up in their best traditional clothing.

They had drawn a good luck symbol on the sidewalk to welcome us to the house, and brought us in through their front room, which was wall-to-wall shrines to Ganesh (the god with the elephant head), and other Hindu Gods. Then all 40 of us, with shoes removed, crammed into one room of their small, meticulously clean home and sat down on chairs, floor, bed, etc. They prepared fruit and something like the Indian version of Chex party mix for us to eat, explained their clothing and jewelry (nice bling!) and told us about family customs and religion. The grandmother sang in traditional Indian style for us -- quite beautifully.

I don’t know if there are any kinder, more warm-hearted people on the planet; they acted like it was a total honor for a group of strangers to descend on their home, eat their snacks, and take picture after picture. It was very humbling to have total strangers open their home to us in this very personal way. These folks have a family foundation to promote traditional Southern Indian culture, and they had friends at the local newspaper who came to write an article about our visit. We’ve been checking their website, where they hoped to post a link to the newspaper article. Their website address is http://www.srimylaporetrio.in/

An Extra Added Attraction

(Luana:) Yesterday the captain announced that we were going to idle for three hours so we would be awake this morning to see the Nicobar Islands as we passed them. I’m sure you would be as excited by this as we were, since we had never heard of the Nicobar Islands and kept calling them the Mallobar Islands all evening. We even googled the Nicobars to see what was special about them, and didn't find much of note. And yet, because we are Academic Ad-ven-tur-ers and here to learn, we dutifully got up in time to watch the Nicobar Islands go by at 7 a.m. We saw a shipwreck on one island shore, and the islands were nice and close, and they looked like islands.

Fortunately, we also went to Global Studies today, because a linguist on board was there to tell us the significance of what we saw. Evidently, a few of the Nicobar Islands are inhabited by one of the last true remaining hunter-gatherer groups who do not want contact with the outer world, pygmy-like and undeveloped. Of course they are getting more development, but they are hostile about it. They turned down aid following the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, when the earthquake moved some of the islands a hundred feet.

The islands once hosted about 14 dialects, none of them related to any other language on the planet, and there is speculation these are closely related to the original languages spoken when humans developed out of Africa. The Nicobar languages are dying out; the linguist thought they were down to about six. One 85-year-old woman died last year as the last person to speak her language, and she hadn’t been able to have a conversation with anyone for 25 years.

Since the Nicobars are under the administration of India, I guess this means we are now in India, even though we don’t arrive for two more days. We are officially in our second of three oceans--the Indian Ocean--and in the Bay of Bengal. We are also at about half way into our trip--hard to believe!

They say the more you know, the more you find you don’t know; today's little lesson confirmed that for us. Class dismissed!

We Laugh at Danger

(Bob:) Today our ship stopped off the coast of Singapore just for refueling. The ship couldn’t take on fuel in Vietnam because that country has just one refinery, so fuel is very expensive and the quality is not that good. So we anchored far from downtown Singapore, which we could just see when we sailed past. We were refueled for several hours by a fuel barge, but no one could go ashore.

While the refueling was going on, we learned there was a terrorist alert for the Straits of Malacca -- between Malaysia and Indonesia leading to the Indian Ocean, where we are sailing now. Some terrorist group said they were going to target a large oil tanker “or some other ship” in the strait. All day in Singapore harbor we had Singapore Navy patrol boats sailing near us and Singapore military planes flying overhead. But they are gone now that we have left Singapore. We have been sailing for about two hours in the strait.

Anyway, we just wanted to reassure our readers that everything is fine, this terrorism stuff is nonsense and there is no need to worr…..Oooooh NOOooooo, Not thaaaat! Aieeeeeeeee! ……………………………….................

Vietnam Past and Present

(Bob:) It was especially interesting for me to visit Vietnam under the circumstances I did. Of course, I had many friends who served in Vietnam, and it was only by happenstance that I avoided it and served out my Army tour in Texas.

Many of the college students on our ship knew virtually nothing of the war. It was sobering for them to hear a panel discussion before we arrived in Vietnam that included two veterans of the war who broke down in tears during the discussion. It shocked them to see the emotions we of our age group still have about the war.

Of course that didn’t stop some of our more sensitive students from visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels and firing AK47s: as described by one Vietnamese-American student on the cruise, “It is like an amusement park of death.” Imagine if our country had a museum glorifying our dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan; I think that might create a little outcry.

So the Vietnamese government does present one-sided pictures in some of their museums, but I guess that’s their right. Anyway, there is no detectable bitterness among the Vietnamese people toward Americans. They tend to take a long view of history.

They also love our money and our investments. They have about 25 to 40 percent inflation, so many merchants would rather get U.S. dollars than dong, which is the Vietnamese currency. (We’ve already heard all the jokes.) Most businesses price their goods in both dollars and local currency.

There is a lot of American investment pouring into the country, including a number of golf resorts on the coast. It is a great country to get inexpensive goods, including tailor-made suits, crafts and delicious food. (Thank God it’s our last chop stick country.)

The war in the jungle may be over, but the war in the streets goes on every day. Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City) has 10 million people and 11 million motorbikes. Crossing the street for pedestrians is truly survival of the fittest. This is how you do it. Look at the far side of the street and begin crossing in a purposeful manner. Look neither right nor left and neither slow down nor speed up. Definitely do not turn around or stop. Rely on the motorbikes to miss you. Then, when you reach the sidewalk on the other side, stop and look both ways on the sidewalk because motorbikes could be coming down it. We did survive, but we had a couple of close calls.

Cambodia’s Killing Fields

Fully one-fifth of Cambodians, or 2 million people, died between 1975 and 1979, when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge brutalized the country in a civil war.

The ship offered a flight from Saigon to Cambodia that included a trip to Pnomh Penh, where there is tourism related to the Killing Fields. We chose a different trip that flew us only to Siem Reap to see the Angkor Wat temple complex. Knowing the story of the Killing Fields, we really didn’t feel up to seeing the gruesome sights of torture chambers and rooms full of human skulls and bones, important as it is. But it is hard to get away from the devastation wreaked by Cambodia’s civil war, no matter where you are in the country. We heard a first-person account from our tour guide, a lovely man named Bunrith, who told us his family story.

Bunrith was three years old when his father, who was in the Cambodian Army, was executed in 1979. The government was forcing all the city people back into the countryside to be rice farmers, and the Khmer Rouge executed most of the educated people and intellectuals. Please don't ask me why, because I still can't understand it.

Bunrith’s sister later starved to death in the aftermath of the war, and his brother and mother were so affected in terms of health that they died prematurely, about 10 years ago. Bunrith managed to grow up, get an education, marry, and have four children. He has worked as a professional guide for about 16 years. In a country that has 50 percent unemployment, he is fortunate to be doing so well.

The students on our trips often chat during the tour guide lectures, a fact that is often disappointing as well as irritating. But as Bunrith shared his sad story, the bus became entirely quiet. Deathly quiet.

Everywhere we went in Cambodia, it was hard to miss the repercussions of this terrible war. Children hawking postcards and bracelets when they should have been in school. Children diving into trash cans looking for food at the temple complexes. A band made up of land mine victims playing traditional instruments for spare change. Siem Reap as a city was actually pretty nice, with lots of beautiful new hotels to serve the rapidly growing interest in Angkor Wat, a world heritage site. But the country has a long way to go to recover.