TravelBio

Our fifth port of call was Penang Malaysia. Penang is a small island just off the coast of mainland Malaysia, and the two are connected by a 13 kilometer long bridge. Unlike the previous ports, our ship anchored in the harbor and we had to take the lifeboats to and from the docks (a process known as tendering). Here is a summary of my five day stay: Day 1 I had an FDP with my Asian Art teacher at 9:30, so we got priority for the first tender off the ship; the morning of the first day the tender boats went back and forth quickly to get everyone off, but the rest of the time the boat would leave the ship at the top of every hour and leave the docks at half past – 12:30, 1:30, etc. Our professor took us on a walking tour of the Chinese area of Georgetown, the city on the island of Penang, looking at several temples and traditional homes. Streets of Georgetown / Penang A local Buddhist temple After the tour ended (around 1:00) I took a short walk around the doc...

We spent five days in Chennai (Madras) from October 14th to the 18th. Here’s a summary of my time in India: Day 1 Typical rickshaw taxi Henry and I had an FDP at 1:00 for our Global Environmental Policy class so we decided to try and do a little bit of shopping and exploring in the morning. We took two rickshaw taxis with Rob, JR, and Jack (JR’s roommate) to a store in the center of the city. The rickshaw had three wheels and was about half the length and width of a normal car.  Over the course of my stay in Chennai I learned a lot about Indian driving rules: lane lines don’t mean anything – often two lanes can be made into three or four; bikes, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and people are all often within inches of each other (going both the same and opposite directions), and traffic can make a 15 kilometer commute turn into an hour drive. Also, because there is so much congestion, vehicles honk their horns frequently to let others know they are close, and it is ...

Since I am in the middle of an 11 day trip from Cape Town to Chennai I thought now would be a good time to let you know about my classes and about life on the ship. I am taking 4 classes: Introduction to Anthropology, Asian Art, a Global Studies class on the rise of China, and Global Environmental Policy. Anthropology and Asian Art meet on designated A days from 2:20-3:35 and 3:45-5:00 respectively. The Global Studies class and Environmental Policy classes meet on B days from 9:20-10:35 and 10:45-12:00. When we are sailing the class days alternate, and occasionally we have a day off. Since we are in port a considerable amount of time during the trip, the workload is pretty heavy while we are at sea. There are occasional papers, but most of the work comes in the form of reading, which makes it easy to fall behind. Overall though, I don’t think the classes are too tough, but I’ll have a better idea after the midterms coming up over the next several days. The MV Explorer, our...

Here’s a recap of the seven days (our longest stop) we spent in Cape Town, South Africa: Day 1: I had a trip planned with SAS at around 1:00, so I couldn’t venture far outside of the dock area when we were cleared to leave the ship in the morning. The place where we were docked, called the Waterfront, was a beautiful tourist area with several restaurants, outdoor stores and a mall. Henry, JR, Rob and I explored the Waterfront and found an ATM inside the mall. Henry loaned me some Rand, which trades at the same rate as the Namibian dollar (about 8 Rand to 1 USD). We did a little shopping in the mall, and I bought a cheap t-shirt, partly because I was starting to run short on clean clothes and we weren’t going to get a laundry day until after we left Cape Town. The beautiful Cape Town waterfront, just before my camera broke! After walking around in the mall we headed back to the ship to have lunch. When we went to the pier to join the SAS trip to Robben Island they t...