Maurian Ambition/Madu's Magical Love Tour/Elephant Dung be Damned

I am SO behind on this bloooooooog.

Mauritius was amazing. I’m just going to start there and then… keep going until I’m caught up. Ok, this just in: I just finished writing it and it's 6 1/2 word pages single spaced. I'm SO sorry. Feel free to skim it or not read it or whatever.

The good news about Mauritius in terms of how much I have to write about Mauritius, India, and Thailand, is that it we only spent one day there. That’s also the bad news about Mauritius because I wish I could have seen more of it. I spent the day snorkeling and had SUCH a fantastic time. My friend Ali and I woke up in the morning and hopped on a mini bus that took us to this pier somewhere. To get there, we drove through fields of sugar cane and had just the most beautiful landscapes outside the van window of volcanic island. It was JUST how you would imagine it I think if I told you to picture THE island. THE greenest most lush tropical island ever. Also you can google earth it.

At the pier we got on this catamaran. It was pretty big for a catamaran and held like 15 or 20 students plus a small crew. It was a vacation day, basically. We relaxed on the prow (I think it’s the prow…) and sunbathed. We dove off the catamaran and did all these cool jumps. The water was SO clear and gorgeous and warm but refreshing. Snorkeling I saw all sorts of corals and different colored fishes and an EEL. I found it under a rock while using my new snorkeling skills from Catalina and diving down do the bottom to look around.

Honestly, the day was suuuuuuper low key. They cooked us food on the catamaran (it was SO good) and served us beer and soda. Also, just so you know, I just got back on the ship after Thailand where I ALSO went snorkeling so, writing this, Mauritius has been sort of eclipsed by the sea life I saw in Thailand. At the time it was one of the best days of my life but since then I’ve had more best days of my life. Which is why I need to stay on top of my blog better in the future.

India was next. How to begin to describe my experience in India? First of all, I just should say, Chennai was the dirtiest place I have ever been. Except, maybe, for Tijuana. No Chennai was dirtier. Every time I came back to the ship I was not only sweat soaked but the soles of my shoes were BLACK and I had dirt Oliver Twist style stuck to the sweat on my face. I looked like an extra in the “Bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We traveled around in tuktuks which were CRAZY and all pimped out with the BRIGHTEST colors. And there were cows everywhere and goats and roosters. And sometimes it smelled fouler than anything. Like burnt poop. Ali maintained that it smelled like baby flesh which I find TOTALLY disgusting and also have no idea how to interpret. But other times it smelled like incense and the most mouth-watering spices. And there were SO many people. So that’s my best attempt at giving you a picture of what India was like.

The first day, I did a Faculty Directed Practicum (FDP) that consisted of a trip to visit the US Consulate in Chennai. It was really interesting. We talked to several people who worked there about issues from what it means to work for the state department to dealing with the bombings in Mumbai to the current conflict in Sri Lanka between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Government. Also I learned that a consulate is different from (smaller than) an embassy. Maybe you already knew that. Security at the Consul was interesting. We went through this little room in the wall that surrounded kind of the compound thing. This woman in a sari pulled out this little screen to pat me down and I went through a metal detector. The screen detail was a reminder that this, though it was sort of like a little piece of the US, was in India. We talked to men called “special agents” too. I learned a lot.

After that I went out to dinner with a large group of friends. The restaurant had a little birdcage with parrots in it and a little fountain outside but was otherwise not the nicest. Our waiter introduced us to an Indian practice that would continue to confuse me for the rest of my time there: Indian people display interest and understanding in a conversation by bobbling their heads from side to side in a motion that, in America, would be kind of saucy and indifferent. It’s awkward. There were tons of times where I thought waiters or tuktuk drivers were telling me “no” but what they were saying was “I hear you, yo.” Rather than plates we were served on banana leaves and there was no silverware on the table because in India people eat with their hands. There were twelve of us Americans and we pretty much all wanted cokes. They didn’t have that many Cokes. So people who ordered too late started asking for Sprite instead. They didn’t have that many Sprites either. I had a Fanta. Which was fine. But it was pretty funny that they had so little Coke. And Sprite. Heh.

Next a few of us decided to head to a Bollywood movie that was playing in a theatre in a nearby mall. The movie started at 10 and ended up being three hours with a little intermission! And it was TERRIFYING. And awesome. It was called Naan Kadavul and it was a Tamil movie that was completely in the Tamil language with no subtitles. I have never ever been to a movie that was so LOUD and on such a humongous screen. Plus the images were terrifying. We have no idea what exactly it was about but my friend Alex thinks maybe the main character was a spirit who came back as an activist for Dahlit and disabled people. Dahlit (I think I’m spelling it wrong) is the name Gandhi gave members of the untouchable class, untouchable being (obviously) derogatory and dahlit being a means of starting anew and celebrating these people as children of god. This dahlit thing brings me to my next point about the movie: it was about this group of severely disabled people and there were severely disabled people in the film. It was really cool to consider that these people, who would probably otherwise have been in the streets of India, were afforded an opportunity to be in a really popular Tamil film but it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in real life or in a movie. I won’t describe it all but it was pretty unreal. Ali and I managed to find a bootleg version so if you want to watch it when I get home, let me know! It was so intense that I decided to leave for a little bit (I didn’t know there was going to be an intermission) so I got up to check out the food options at the concessions stand. After talking to the guys there about how great Barack Obama is (plus totally embarrassing myself by messing up the payment process) I walked away with a huge thing of popcorn and a hot chocolate having spent the equivalent of only 3 US dollars. Unfortunately, because the movie ended at 1:00 AM, I had the sketchiest experience of the entire trip so far right afterwards. Don’t worry, it all turns out ok. There were seven of us who had stayed for the movie and when we walked out we were met by like fifty million tuktuk drivers who began to negotiate with us. They told us that, because it was so late, they could only take two of us in a tuktuk at a time (BS: I’ve been in one of those with three other people before) and that it would be more expensive (also BS). But we were tired so we said ok whatever. Ali and I got in one, Jacob and Ben in another, and Alex, Heather, and Peter in another. The third tuktuk with Alex Heather and Peter quickly got separated from us and it was obvious to us that they were behind us. Our tuktuk drivers pulled Ali and my tuktuk and Jacob and Ben’s up to a stop on the side of this busy street on one side of these bridged train tracks. During the day, we had crossed the train tracks on the bridge to get to the port, but they told us that “the gate” (what gate???) was closed since it was so late and that we would have to walk through this dark tunnel under the tracks to get to the dock. For 5 USD more EACH they would escort us. I was SO mad. I don’t think I’ve been madder than that. I told them that we weren’t going anywhere without the third tuktuk but they said it was ahead and that our friends had probably already gone. That wasn’t true. But there was literally nothing we could do. There were no other cabs, no other tuktuks and we had no idea whether they were telling us the truth about the bridge. We paid them the money to walk with us. Thank god Ali and I didn’t get separated from Ben and Jacob. And it was ok. But I learned how vulnerable you can become really quickly if you’re not prepared with information and if you stay out late in foreign countries. It turned out that they lied to us. There was no gate. They should have driven us. We agreed not to stay out that late again and that if anything like that ever happened again, we would just walk towards people and, rather than try to get to the ship through sketchy stuff like that, stay overnight in a hotel somewhere safe and not walk through scary tunnels. Also we will never be cought without at least one boy at night anywhere ever. Nobody worry. That will never happen again. And we dealt with it pretty well. Also I felt pretty secure that nothing bad would happen. I wasn’t afraid that the cab drivers would do anything since they weren’t even interested in walking with us unless we paid them, and there were cars going by around us, so we weren’t totally isolated. I was mostly just scared when I realized how helpless I had allowed myself to be. Never again. Don’t worry.

The next day, Ali and Colin and I met Madu. Madu was our tuktuk driver for the rest of our time in India. He was this eccentric Indian man who didn’t speak very good English but was fiercely dedicated to us and took us to many delicious restaurants and good shops. He got pissed whenever we bought something at a price higher than an Indian would have (the thing is, after you get like a bracelet down to $1, you might as well just pay that to these people who need your money more, right? Even if you could get it for $.75?). Madu claimed to be a stunt man for Indian movies including Naan Kadavul. I totally don’t know whether to believe that. He let us pay “as much as we felt was right” which was probably really smart of him because we probably overpaid him. But not by much. He called us his family. Colin was his brother, Ali was his daughter, and I was his sister. He told us our fortunes based on our birthday. He joined us for all our meals and several coffee stops. I actually talked to his daughter on the phone at one point…. It was weird. But it was cool.

We spent the second day shopping, eating, and visiting the beach. The third and fourth days were when we really had an adventure. Colin and Ali and I decided we wanted to recreate/live the Darjeeling Limited, this Wes Anderson movie starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman we had all seen recently. Our plan was to take a sleeper train overnight to Bangalore, a 7 hour ride away, spend the day in Bangalore (visiting a temple and this park…) and then take a train back that night. Our reasoning was that sleeping on the train would be cool because then we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel PLUS transportation. We were extremely optimistic about the train. In fact, it turns out that just believing that we’d be able to sleep on it at all was optimistic. Some really naïve pre-train moments: 1. We didn’t bring ANY bedding with us whatsoever 2. We didn’t bring any warm clothes at all 3. On the way to the train station, we had a conversation about whether we should accept “sweet lime” (this Indian lime juice, a prominent part of the movie) when (WHEN, not if!) it was offered or whether we should decline because it might contain Indian water that would make us sick 4. At the train station, walking through/among literally hundreds of sleeping and barefoot people, we wondered aloud whether we should buy more snacks for the train. “No,” I said, “There’ll be food on the train.” “Yeah, it’s pretty much going to be just like Harry Potter” (that part was Colin and he was PARTIALLY kidding). The train was like a prison cell. Our room was dinghy blue and grey with barred windows and peeling paint. The “beds” were tiny benches and there were three on each wall. We almost decided not to take the train. But we wanted the adventure so we boarded it and departed for Bangalore at 11:00 PM. We didn’t sleep. At first we kept ourselves amused by playing “ten fingers,” “would you rather” and “contact.” As the sounds of Indian people snoring (and farting!! More than once!) mounted however, we decided to do a rotating massage line. This was a bad idea because it reminded us how tired we were but we couldn’t sleep. Daylight saw Ali and I huddled for warmth (it was freezing) under a scarf I had bought the previous day and Colin SORT of sleeping across from us. Seven hours. We got into Bangalore at 7:00 AM and spent the next three hours trying to get tickets back to Chennai. Eventually we were able to (we actually had to go to a different train station in Bangalore to get a train) but we were too exhausted and delirious to explore Bangalore so we walked down the street to a hotel restaurant and ordered an early lunch at 10:00 plus rum and cokes. We stayed there, laughing, eating, and drinking in a daze for FIVE HOURS and then caught a 4:00 train back to Chennai where we pooped out on the ship.

We slept in on the last day and then did some final shopping with friends at this HUGE Indian mall. And then departed for Thailand. Just so you know, my description of India focuses on parts that may make it seem like I didn’t really experience the real India. This is really just because I brushed over the days spent shopping in markets and stuff in favor of the crazier stories about the train. I really had a terrific time. To me, the train was one of the most Indian experiences ever, even if we did kind of waste the day in Bangalore. I think that the train stations and the chaotic process of finding tickets also really brought us closer to Indian people. It’s really hard to prioritize these stories. But trust that there was much more to India and that it was incredible. I’ll show you pictures. Oh and we went to a temple which was GORGEOUS and SO colorful but not at all funny which is why I talked about the train ride instead of the temple.

Thailand. Frick. You must be really exhausted reading this and let me tell you I am pooped just writing it. Whew. Reload. Ok. I’ll tell you about Thailand now.

THAILAND: Thailand was my favorite port yet. But I’ve said that after just about every port. We docked in Laem Chabong (I may have misspelled that..) which is a two hour drive away from Bangkok. The first day, I had another FDP. This one took me to an Elephant Village in Pattaya, a nearby town. It was pretty incredible. I rode two different elephants. One of them, I mounted when it bent its front leg for me to step on. I held onto its ear to pull myself onto its neck. It was amazing. They were the sweetest creatures of all time. And their sweetness was even COOLER since they were so dang big. I hugged several and fed others bananas. There is nothing as bizarre as holding out a banana for an elephant’s eye to see, and then watching as its trunk snakes towards you and grabs it. So weird, so cool. Actually, as I learned later in Thailand, some things ARE more bizarre than that…

Thailand is, according to Ali (who got this from the Travel Channel) the “sex capital of the world” which I assume has something to do with the fact that prostitution and “sex shows” are legal there. So, while I’m on the subject of the bizarre, I feel I should take a moment to address the weirdness that is Thai prostitution and sex shows. I’ll just group all the relevant stories from my five days into a little paragraph here: I did not attend a sex show but apparently almost everyone else did. I’m not just saying that I didn’t, I DIDN’T. And I’m VERY glad because it just sounds appalling. For one thing, these shows are called (by the creepy guys in the street who try to get you to go to them) “ping pong show, sex show”s. I'm not going to elaborate here but feel free to ask me. SO. We got offered to go to “ping pong show, sex show”s many times. Also, there are Thai massage parlors everywhere and, in Thai massage parlors it is no big deal if they include manual sex in male massages. A “happy ending” as Larry David calls it in Curb Your Enthusiasm. My friends turned the masseuses down for this part of the massage. Many Semester at Sea people didn’t, apparently. I opted out of a massage all together. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND that’s all the Thai sex stuff I have energy for.

SO. After the Elephant thing, some friends of mine, Hussein, Steve, Keith, Disha, and Lia, decided to stay in Pattaya for dinner and general exploration. We did a lot of shopping and had a really delicious Thai meal: Pad See Yu (I don’t know how to spell it…) and fried shrimp and Mai Thais. Also we sampled the Thai beers, in particular Singha and Tiger. I really enjoyed getting to know these guys. I LOVED that night with them. I hope we can hang out more. We ate cooked grasshoppers together from a street cart. We also frequently paired off girl-boy girl-boy girl-boy because the BOYS kept getting cat-called! This is the first port EVER where the guys have been cat-called and not the girls. I understand why the prostitutes were so interested. Their clientele was ENTIRELY made up of old fat creepy white men from Europe and the States. It was funny and sad, actually. We saw TONS of couples with old men holding the hands (or other parts) of hot young Thai women. So imagine how much they must have liked seeing these young college guys walking down the street! When the night ended, we all rode in the back of a pick up truck taxi back to the ship toasting each other.

The second day I went snorkeling! It was SO beautiful! The water was SO warm and clear and beautiful. I saw soooooooooooo many different sorts of fishes and corals. Also there were these little tiny jellyfish that were too wimpy to sting us but that FREAKED me out every time I would accidentally touch one, swimming. They were almost completely transparent so this happened a lot. We also jumped off the top deck of the boat we took off. It was probably 20 feet. I LOVED it. It was another really great lazy day. Afterwards I took a taxi with several SAS people to Bangkok, including my friend Tim. In Bangkok, I met up with my friends Colin, Alex, Molly, and Becky.

Bangkok was reeeeeeeeeeeally cool. There were prostitutes but not as many as in Pattaya and it was WAY bigger and brighter too. Bangkok is to Pattaya as New York is to Portland except pretend in this simile that New York is cooler than Portland (obviously it’s not). The COOLEST thing about the streets of Bangkok was the fact that elephants were in them. BABY elephants. Five years old (the one I hugged) to be precise. I won’t walk you through Bangkok in order because there was a lot of clubbing and a lot of eating and a lot of shopping. I had a BLAST with this group of people. I’ve been hanging out on the ship more and more too. Thailand was a really good place for me and friendships. WOOHOO. We ate a lot of excellent food, we celebrated St. Patrick’s day at an Irish pub, we smoked hookah a LITTLE, and we danced at this club called “Spice Club” that was ultra sketchy (as in we were the only white people there who weren’t paying Thai women to dance with them).

Highlights: The first night in Bangkok we went to a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It was pretty weird. It was all about sex education though, which was cool, because STDs are a pretty big problem in Thailand (duh). There was this spinning wheel that had pie-slice things that said: “BAMN, you got Chlamydia” or “Way to go, you used protection and DIDN’T get HIV” or something. I guess they represented your chances of getting STDs…? All the décor was made with colorful condoms. There were dummies dressed in condom-outfits that Tim Gunn would have been proud of, as well as lanterns with condom flowers on them. It was weird. The food was pretty good though.

Anther day, we hired a boat to take us along Bangkok’s canals. I am SO glad we did this. It was the first time I really saw the poverty that some Thai people live in. We passed shacks on stilts in the river with birds hanging in cages on porches, countless dogs, and tons of people sitting still, doing nothing, presumably either out of work, or in between scarce job opportunities. Every house we passed had laundry hanging outside and I doubt most of them had electricity at all, much less a dryer. We saw children playing in the FILTHIEST river water. We saw a crazy huge lizard crawling up someone’s steps… The plants around the river were incredibly lush and green and it was mostly a really peaceful opportunity to observe and reflect. Most of the houses had these little temple-like models on poles outside of them. These are called spirit houses and are built to commemorate dead loved ones and to ask spirits to watch over the people living there. Eventually the boat stopped at this weird traditional Thai house that had been converted into a museum. We saw an orchid farm there as well as a demonstration of traditional Thai boxing. The boat ride ended with a death defying crossing of this huge river. Filthy water splashed towards us and sometimes hit us and our tiny boat rocked a LOT. But we survived. And then, that night, we celebrated Molly’s birthday with a really good dinner and a visit to the nicest club/bar I’ve ever been to, called “Q Bar” (we thought it was “Q Ball” and kept calling it “Screw Ball” for fun).

On the last day, we visited the Grand Palace, home to the Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of Jade, don’t be confused). The Grand Palace was the most overwhelming, complex, detailed thing I’ve ever tried to take in. There was gold EVERYWHERE. It was stunning. I literally don’t know how to describe it. HUGE. The coolest part was the Emerald Buddha which is housed in this HUMONGOUS temple. The Buddha sits on top of this GIANT mass of gold STUFF that’s all sooo incredibly ornate. It’s funny. There’s so much stuff built up around it that it comes across as pretty small. It’s like, not higher than my knee. That’s pretty big for something carved out of jade I guess, but it has this massive palace built around it with SO much gold… I just expected it to be bigger. WAY bigger. It has three friggin costumes for different seasons… Pretty funny. I guess some guy discovered it in the 15th century and thought it was just some random plaster Buddha. But then one day the plaster on the nose popped off and the monk who had found it realized it was straight-up jade and freaked out and gave it to the king who passed it down until eventually someone built the Grand Palace. Our visit to the Emerald Buddha’s palace was cool because there were a lot of people there praying. Outside we saw some women light incense and inside monks were bowing. The monks had their own private area for prayer. You aren’t supposed to sit next to monks on the bus because if the bus moves and you bump them it ruins their vows. So I guess that’s why they had their own section too. Also, a cool fact, you aren’t supposed to point your feet at people but ESPECIALLY not at the Buddha. It’s really offensive. So we all did a really good job either sitting cross-legged or else on our heels.

I'm in the process of putting more pictures on the facebook.com. Check those out.

That’s all I got. Martha OUT!