Namibia - A Beautiful Country with some Horrible History

I'm guessing many of you do not know much about Namibia.  Perhaps you have not even heard of it before. That's understandable I guess - it is the least densely populated of any African nation with a land mass bigger than California but only 2 million people. If you like to travel, you should put this one VERY high on your list. If all the countries we visited, Namibia and Vietnam are the two I would revisit first. In fact, I promised Aspen a trip for her high school graduation (which she hasn't collected on yet) I was so impressed with my trip to Namibia that I am trying to convince her that this is where she should visit.

Why should you travel here? Well, first of all it's really pretty easy to get around and to speak to folks. I was surprised to see that they have a very well done and well maintained road system, with nice asphalt highways. The traffic is light, especially in the rural areas, and there are only a few cities.

Second, most everyone speaks English, which makes communication very simple.

Third, it has spectacular natural beauty. I mean SPECTACULAR. Namibia is home to two of the most unique deserts on Earth; the Kalahari and the Namib. The Namib is a coastal desert - yep, nearly a thousand mile stretch of sand piled into enormous dunes (some a thousand feet high) that run right to the ocean.

Favorites with a Month to Go

I was thinking about some of the best things that have happened these first few months, so I decided to make a list of favorites and least favorites, mostly for me as I look back on this in the future.

Favorite Food – Well, this one is impossible to answer. Everything we ate in Vietnam and Japan was perfect, but Myanmar, India, and China were not far behind. If it has noodles and a broth, I seem to love it. Ostrich is amazing too - my favorite meat! I ate oryx (below), warthog, springbok, ostrich, zebra, eland and a couple other mammals that aren't coming to mind just during our visit to South Africa and Namibia. It was all tasty!

Neptune Day!

This ain't no pleasure cruise!  Well, at least that's what we keep telling ourselves as we head around the world with 650 college students. In all honesty,  we actually do work hard, and travel hard, and try to take every opportunity to learn more about the world and become better people in the process. But, on occasion....

Point any camera at a group of college students and this is what you get. Smiles are even bigger if you have a freshly shaved dome.

NEPTUNE DAY! Today is probably the first day where we haven't had any education at all (actually, not true, we did take the morning off to play, but classes are back on track this afternoon, and I'm grading papers and writing a proposal). This morning however, was 100% about having fun.

India – Beauty, Culture, Aggression, Cooking over Cow Shit and Open Defecation

Well, I just finished writing this post, and I'm rewriting the intro since it turned out completely different than I expected when I first started it. I guess that's fitting, since our visit to India was much the same. I wasn't expecting great things to be honest. We don't hear good things about India in the States - poor, crime-ridden, too many people, you will definitely get sick if you go there for a week, etc. Well, some things are true, most are not, and my stomach is perfectly fine.

We just spent nearly a week in India. It was the one country that probably scared our shipboard community the most prior to making port. Very few of our voyagers have been there, and the few that have were basically laughing at what everyone had in store.

This is in the bus parking lot for the City Palace in Jaipur. We parked right next to it and watched monkeys run around on the roof above (you will see one if you look). Yeah, a bit different. 

India has some of the greatest sights on this planet. And some of the worst. The most incredible smells (especially the food – it’s always been the center of the world in terms of the spice trade), and some of the foulest. You literally do not want to stand in the corner of ANY building in India – I did not go near a single one that did not smell like urine (except for the Taj Mahal), and most were still wet. It's horribly ugly in some places, yet I just saw the most beautiful thing I've ever seen humans create (the Taj Mahal, more in a minute). We were told we would love it and hate it, and probably at the same time. That is perhaps the most true statement I've heard about India.

The Taj Mahal from Agra Fort. 

Crapping next to a water hole. Saw this everywhere.

Just photos - Myanmar

This is the local dish - mohinga - a breakfast fish soup. I know that sounds bad, but you will taste few things in life better than this.

It's a land of many Buddhas.

Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (Rangoon)

More Shwedagon

Karen and durian. One of them stunk.

Downtown Yangon during the Chinese New Year festivities.

Yangon Airlines for our flight to Mandalay - wouldn't this make you feel safe? ;)

My college students being college students

Buddha Superstore...

View of Mandalay from the top of Sagaing Hill in Mandalay.

That's my Karen. On Sagaing Hill in Mandalay.

My turn to do the work. Local transportation in Mandalay. So much fun!

Selling thanaka in a local market. The bark is ground with water and Burmese women and some men put it on their cheeks as a makeup and sun block. You find it everywhere, and they will even put it on the Buddha statues as well. 

Standing on the longest teak bridge in the world - U bein bridge in Amarapura.

Near Mandalay. Pretty common site.Below is Karen eating avocado juice. Might not sound great, but it was. Avocado, sweetened milk, and fresh coconut. Yum. 

People here work hard, and it seemed to us as though the women did most of the tough manual labor. 

Coke with real sugar - love Myanmar!

A room made entirely of teak and gold, in one of the poorest towns I've ever been to.

I really wanted to ride a bike through the rice paddies. 

We had some extra soccer balls so we gave them to a local monastery. Nothing brings about a smile quicker than a soccer ball. 

Women working hard. Everywhere.

Making traditional cigarettes, but we saw almost no smoking in Myanmar. Love it.

One of the most common sites - kids checking us out on our bikes.

Karen making way for the locals.

More tough work. It hit 100 degrees when I took this photo.

Plowing the banana starts, and trying to keep the cows from eating them.

More local transportation.

Lots of smiles in this country.

More kids.

My favorite photo of the trip so far. Hey kids, there's an ELEPHANT behind you. Never mind...

Collecting sap for palm wine. It was tasty and strong.

Karen and a goat jam

Singapore or Singarich? What I Learned From a 20 year old Burmese Monk

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this Semester at Sea experience is that we typically have opportunities to interact closely with some of the people in the countries we visit. One thing that is easy to see from our vantage points is that many of the folks in Asia realize that learning English is an avenue for a better life. As teachers. As tour guides. Working for international businesses. And on and on. Our travels to Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore and Myanmar (Burma) have been relatively easy in terms of communication, even in rural areas, with respect to language since most people seem to know some English.

Singapore Botanical Gardens

I’ve heard, and you probably have too, that English and Mandarin are quickly becoming the international languages. We’ve all noticed a lot of anti-Chinese sentiments during our travels in Asia (even in China!), and a real desire to speak English to anyone who will speak it back, especially in the rural areas of Vietnam and Myanmar (where they are strongly anti-Chinese because

Singapore skyline

the former military government struck many sweetheart deals with China that left out most Burmese citizens).

Since leaving Vietnam we spent 2 days in Singapore, and a week in Myanmar. I dare you to find 2 more different countries. Singapore is tiny and has essentially no resources, yet has the greatest number of millionaires per capita and the longest life-expectancy of any country on Earth. It’s also very clean, with some of the most advanced infrastructure found anywhere.  However, Singapore residents rate VERY LOW on most happiness scales. I saw more Louis Vitton and Rolex stores than I did smiling people. If I never go back to Singapore, I won’t feel too disappointed. I feel bad about dissing it because there are some things that are really impressive (I will post some photos tomorrow) such as the architecture and the botanical gardents, but it was overly western and completely lacked the charm we experienced in Vietnam. Overall? Meh.

Solar trees in Singapore

Myanmar, on the other hand, has enormous natural riches (gold, silver, oil, teak, ruby and other precious gems), but because it had one of the most corrupt governments on Earth until 2012, the people are very poor, and the country has such a poor infrastructure that they can’t attract foreign investors (even though it has the two post populated countries on Earth for neighbors). However, I will be bummed if I don’t get back to Myanmar. An amazing place with lots of smiles and hospitality (and great food!).

So, I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time working on English-speaking with a group of prospective English teachers from Nha Trang College, and a couple of hours at a monastery in Myanmar conversing with an English class attended by many from the community, including a couple dozen monks.  It’s actually a very draining (constantly trying to come up with questions that allow them to answer with their level of English) but really fun mostly because of their humor and enthusiasm, which I’m sure comes through in the photos.

Sitting with Nha Trang University students.

My conversations with a group of 20-something monks drifted towards politics, poverty and natural resources. I commented on how Singapore had so much affluence despite lacking most things a country needs to be prosperous, and how things were totally turned around in Myanmar, all because of leadership. One monk agreed that was true, but added the most important aspect of society – “but we are happy and they are not”.  Touche’ good friend. 

My group of English students in Mandalay, Myanmar

I hope Myanmar can develop so that people there don’t have to toil so hard to make a living. In doing so I also hope they can keep hold of the parts of their culture that uplift them and keep out the aspects that make an affluent country like Singapore become Singapoor when measured by happiness.

Vietnam Markets - Not for the Squeamish

One of the things I've enjoyed the most about Vietnam is how different it is from my everyday life. I've traveled to some interesting places, and seen some crazy places, and some cool markets (especially in Italy and central America) but no place I've visited can compare to the markets I visited in Vietnam. I'm not talented enough to capture the experience with words. Too many smells and emotions and 360 degree movement. And all of the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touches change SO damn fast. You'll be looking at an 8' live python while breathing in motorbike exhaust while smelling dried squid and durian while getting bumped into by some fast moving 80 year old woman with a bag of frogs while hearing some woman trying to sell you a shirt, and then everything changes the very next second.  I can't bring you the sounds and smells and bumps, but I do have a few pictures just to show how different.

Snake wine - I tried it. Not as terrible as it looks. Reminded me of vodka only sharper. Way too much alcohol for anything to live in, so it's not going to make anyone sick.

Yum. Squid and octopus.

A bag of frogs for you to take home.

All sorts of pig parts. I especially like the pig snouts in this picture. I'm sure I ate some at one point during the week. I had no idea what I was eating half the time, but it sure was good.

Take home a dried croc.

Pig head with skull.

Pig head without. Looks like someone popped him.

Never realized you could buy so many types of eggs. The fertilized ones with a fetus already growing is a real delicacy here. I never got to try one, but others said they were great once you got past the idea of what you were eating.

Sprinkled in between fish, pig, and vegetables you could find lots of fabric.

Despite all the dead animals I've shown, this is a paradise for vegetarians. Karen and I have never had dishes that tasted so fresh and lively. The way they use veggies and spices here is really an art form. It's worth visiting here just to eat, but there is soooo much more.

Veggies and motorbikes. Everywhere.

A little jackfruit to start your day.

Just a monkey hanging out. I don't think he was for sale, but I suspect everything has its price in these markets.

Just about everyone treated us with a smile. She wouldn't let me leave until I took a picture of her.

Dried shrimp, fish, squid, octopus and who knows what else. And some of it finds its way to my belly.