Hong Kong

So after Beijing, we had one day in Hong Kong and I personally loved it. I didn’t even go to the one place I said I would go to in HK (Lantau Island, where the big Buddha is) but I still had an awesome time and really thought Hong Kong was a great city. Hong Kong has a great set-up naturally with the many islands it has, and the city is just really cool overall.

We got to HK at midnight on the one day we were there, but then we had to wait in the airport for 40 minutes for our buses to arrive to take us to the boat. In the end, we didn’t even get to the boat until 1:30 AM, so me and Eric just went to get some food and then went to bed. When we went to get food though, we went to McDonalds (all I wanted were fries, and its 24 hour and right next to where the boat was docked) and I ordered some fries. When he asked me to pay for it, I just gave the guy some of my leftover Yuan instead of HK dollars just to see what would happen. The guy actually took it! I was hoping this would work the rest of the time there since I had leftover Yuan, but sadly it was the only time it worked.

As for the city itself, the view of the city from the boat was absolutely amazing. The boat was docked on Kowloon Island, which is right across from Hong Kong island (the city of Hong Kong is actually a bunch of islands, but Hong Kong island is the main island with most of the city’s skyscrapers.) The boat had a great location, because the view was so good and because it was only a 5 minute ferry ride to Hong Kong island, and the ferry terminal was a 2 minute walk from where the boat was.

In our one full day in HK, we went out as a group of 8 to Monkook which is the shopping area. I just wanted to explore the city and didn’t have a one place in mind I really needed to see (except I wanted to go to the top of Victoria Peak, I figured if I only have one day that I shouldn’t go to Lantau Island because its far and then I wouldn’t get a chance to check out the main part of Hong Kong if I went there.) We spent a few hours just roaming around Monkook and checking out the city, then we went to eat and then went to the central part of downtown Hong Kong. This part is just a business district, but its still pretty cool. After walking around there, four of us decided to go to the top of Victoria Peak, so we did that. I had heard the best view of Hong Kong is from there, so I really wanted to see it. Anyway, the four of us took the tram to the top (which you get right in downtown HK) so we went to the top and the view was absolutely incredible. We were unlucky because the weather was crappy all day and rained for parts of it, but the view was still really good. I have pictures of it, but they don’t do the view justice (same goes for the pictures of the city from the boat, it looked way better in person.) After that, it was already 6:30, and on ship time was 9, so we just got dinner and then went back to the boat. We got on the boat at 8, which was perfect because we made it right on time for the light show, which happens every night. During this, the buildings in HK start to beam lasers all over the place for 10 minutes or so, it was pretty cool.

As for some details of HK, the city clearly still has lots of obvious UK influence, even though its now a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China (that’s the exact term.) HK controls everything about their area except for defense and foreign affairs, or at least that’s what I think the rule is. It’s very, very different from the rest of China. There is much less smog than in Beijing and Qingdao, it’s very clean (although I didn’t think Beijing or Qingdao were dirty), and it’s obviously much wealthier.

In HK, most of the buses are double decker, clearly an example of UK influence. Lots of people, though not everyone, speaks English, and lots of the places have names with blatant UK influence (like Victoria Peak, for example.) The city is also cheaper than I expected. It’s definitely more expensive than Beijing, but public transportation is real cheap (the ferry from Kowloon to HK island is 2.20 HK Dollars, which is around 30 cents, food was cheaper than it is in the states or Japan, etc.) and everything is really clean, modern, and nice. Overall, HK was awesome and I would go back in a second. I really wish we had more time there, because everything in the city seemed awesome and I did want to go to Lantau Island, although I was still really happy with what I did on my day there (because if I only have a day, I want to see the actual city, so that’s what I did.)

Next up, I have Vietnam/Cambodia starting today right after I get off the boat in a few hours. I am leaving for Cambodia right when I get off the boat in an hour and a half, spending 3 days/2 nights there and going to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. The three things I have been looking forward to most on this trip since it started have been Cambodia, Thailand, and India, so I’m really excited for Cambodia, especially for Angkor Wat which looks incredible. I haven’t 100% figured out what I’m going to do in Vietnam for the last 2 days, but I’m thinking that I’ll probably spend one day going to the Mekong Delta and the other day at the Cu Chi tunnels and checking out Ho Chi Minh City.

And here are some pics of HK (again, the skyline looks MUCH better in person):

Beijing

I had an awesome time in Beijing, I thought the city was really cool and had some great cultural sites. Here are some observations from it:

1. I did an SAS trip in Beijing, and I feel that because we had tour guides and pre-scheduled buses that just took us directly to every site, that we didn’t get a good feel for the city. We went out at night, but we only took cabs (because they would end up being less than a dollar a person. I feel like in Japan, I got a good feel for each city because we all had to figure out how to get around, it wasn’t the same case in Beijing. The trip was awesome, there is no doubt about that, but when you go on an SAS trip, you don’t get to know the city as well.

2. Beijing has cleaner streets than I expected (I thought they would be disgusting but they weren‘t), but the smog was disgusting. However, I fully expected that, it’s bad.

3. Cheapest city I’ve ever been to. Cheap cabs, cheap food, cheap alcohol…..great place to travel to because the only thing you will spend money on is the flight.

4. The Great Wall is awesome, so is Tiananmen Square, but the Forbidden City is overrated. And the smog affects your view of it, but it affects your view of everything in Beijing (except the Great Wall, because its an hour and a half outside the city and has cleaner air)

5. There is tons of construction in Beijing, but that’s not surprising since China’s economy continues to improve and the Olympics are coming next year. There is also a lot of green near the streets though, lots of trees and hedges and stuff, and I wonder if they just added it to make the streets look nicer for the Olympics.) Anyway, a summary of my trip:

So our Beijing trip started the second day in China. It was an SAS sponsored trip to Beijing where we were supposed to see the tourist sites and also meet college kids at the University of International Business and Economics. The trip had around 40 people, but me and Eric didn’t really know too many of them going into it. Anyway, we had an 11:30 flight from Qingdao to Beijing. On the way to the airport, I saw some interesting propaganda signs. Some had English translations written under them, one said “Working together, hand in hand, building a harmonious socialist society” which I personally thought was hilarious. I can tell which billboards are propaganda, but unfortunately, the only ones with English written under them were in Qingdao which was disappointing because they were funny (in my mind, at least, especially since China will never be the “harmonious socialist society” they claim they are building.)

Anyway, the airport in Qingdao was surprisingly really nice, looked like an airport in Europe, it was new and very clean. Anyway, after our one hour flight to Beijing (and of course, little shakes on the flight were scarier than normal since we were flying in China and it’s a bit scarier just because its China), we got to Beijing. We then went to the hotel. When I saw the city, I was surprised by how clean the streets were, thought they would be filthy. I wasn’t surprised by the smog though, which was dirty and disgusting. It was worse the last few days though, you could see it everywhere. Anyway, the first day in Beijing, we only went to the silk street market, which is just a place where they sell lots of fake stuff. However, the people that sell stuff there are very aggressive and they get really pissy, this woman hit me and Eric with a shoe after we negotiated and then didn’t buy anything. I didn’t buy much there, I heard Vietnam has the same stuff for even less. Anyway, after that, we had some good Chinese food for dinner then went back to the hotel. Me and a few other guys then went out that night. We first went to some restaurant to get some cheap drinks (4 yuan for a big bottle of beer, 10 yuan (or $1.20) for a half bottle of the nastiest hard alcohol I have ever had, no wonder it was only 10 yuan, none of us wanted to drink it after 2 shots because it was so disgusting), then we went to a club called Mix which was packed and that was pretty cool.

Second day, we went to the Great Wall. It was AWESOME! It was a 1.5 hour drive, then a 30 minute climb to the top, and the view from the top was awesome….we then walked around the top and stayed up there for around an hour. Some pics:





We then took a slide down, which cost 40 yuan (like 7 bucks.) I couldn’t believe that they actually have a slide down to the bottom of the mountain that the Great Wall is on, but yet they do. On the slide, you get this cart to go down on and then you control the brake and speed of it. The slide kind of freaked me out, but I still did it, although I probably should have gone faster than I did. Anyway, it was around an 8 minute ride down. From there, we then left, ate, and then drove by some of the stadiums for the 2008 Olympics. By the way, you see stuff for the Olympics EVERYWHERE in Beijing, and every tourist attraction has stores selling Olympics stuff. They are definitely ready for next summer. Anyway, one of the stadiums we drove by is nicknamed the Bird’s Nest and its one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. We then got dinner and then met the UIBE kids who we were supposedly doing an exchange with (clearly, we only saw them once, so it wasn‘t much of an exchange). The one meet up with them was at an all you can drink bar which cost 24 yuan to get in, which is $3 USD. It was funny because very few of them drank, but most of the SAS kids do and definitely took advantage of the fact it was an all you can drink.

Third day, we woke up and went to Tiananmen Square. We went to Mao’s Memorial, which was intense. The line to get in is really long, takes about 20 minutes just to enter. The beginning is a place where there is a statue of Mao and people put flowers in front. I, of course, did not put any flowers in front. After that, you walk into another room where you see his coffin with a wax statue of Mao on top. The whole way, you are just following a line and you don’t just get to stand and look. It takes around 7 minutes to get through the whole thing because the line moves slowly. I must say, it was pretty interesting to see. It was definitely interesting to see how so many of the people at the memorial love Mao when I personally don’t and live in a country that was opposed to him. Whether the people love him because their government spreads so much positive propaganda about him or if they really love him for his policies is a debatable topic, but either way he is admired by many in China and it was really interesting to see people pay their respects to a man who I personally see as a man who did bad things to his people and wasn’t really a good leader for his country.

After that, we walked up to the famous picture of Mao in Tiananmen Square, which was awesome to see because it’s a site I have seen many times growing up. Of course, this picture also shows off a famous characteristic of Beijing, terrible smog:



Overall, I really liked Tiananmen Square, thought everything was interesting and really cool to see, even the memorial of a leader I personally don’t like. After that, we walked into the Forbidden City (which is right behind Tiananmen Square), which I would say was probably the biggest disappointment of my trip so far. The Forbidden City is a very impressive site, there are lots of really cool buildings there. One problem however, THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME! Literally, it was an hour and a half of just looking at the same buildings. Also, part of it was under renovation, which I already expected, but I was disappointed by how boring it was. I didn’t know everything would look the same, but I’m still happy I saw it because it’s well known and because the buildings are cool, it’s just disappointing how repetitive it got.

After that, we ate and went to the Temple of Heaven which I thought was a cool site. We then went to an Acrobatic Show that night, which was awesome. Most of the performers were kids, they looked around 8 or 9, and they could do some crazy stunts, it was really amazing, and I definitely got some cool video of it too. We then ate dinner after that, and I went to bed right after because I was really tired. Two pics, one of me and Eric and some workers at a store near the Temple of Heaven and a pic of the Temple of Heaven:




The fourth and final day, we went to the Lama Temple in the morning which was a pretty sweet site. The Buddha in the temple was huge and really impressive, but we weren’t allowed to take a picture of it. After that, we looked at the UIBE campus for like 20 minutes. We hit up the Summer Palace after that, which was right on the water and that was really, really cool, the view from it was great. There was some renovation there too, but it was still awesome. After that, we went to the airport and got our 3 and a half flight to Hong Kong. We were all definitely loud the entire flight, and they had some entertaining Jackass style videos which were great. They also had FREE beer, so we definitely got that. We then got to Hong Kong after midnight and didn’t even get to the boat till 1:30, so I just went to bed after that. Pic at the Summer Palace site:





I’ll write about Hong Kong tomorrow, which was my favorite city so far

Day 1 of China: Qingdao

This entry is about my first day in China, which I spent in Qingdao. I wrote it on the morning of my second day before heading to Beijing, but wasn’t able to post it, so I’m going to now. I’m now in Hong Kong and I’ll write about Beijing and Hong Kong tomorrow. Beijing was awesome and today I’m going to check out HK which looks like it will be amazing as well.

Day 1: Qingdao
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So I’ve been in China for a day and this place is awesome. I had a great first day in China, and definitely saw some really interesting things, even though I’m in Qingdao which is a nothing city with only one attraction.

Yesterday, the boat was cleared much faster than in Japan. The Japanese took over 5 hours to clear the boat, the Chinese didn’t even take 2, so we were able to get off before 10. In Japan, when you get off, you have to go through a metal detector and you get searched, the same doesn’t happen in China. In China, you just get off the boat and boom, you are free to walk around.

Since Qingdao is a nothing city, it obviously doesn’t have many cruise ships coming through. Or any, for that matter, besides us. Our boat is docked right next to shipping liners, and when we got off, tons of trucks are just flying right next to where we are walking going from the ships to the city. There is no sidewalk, so we were just walking right in front of these big trucks trying to dodge them and not get hit. On top of this, it was raining. I thought this was hilarious, a great introduction to China, just trying to avoid getting run over by a tractor trailer.

The boat was docked 10 minutes away walking from any street, so after we were dodging trucks for 10 minutes, we finally found safety….a sidewalk.

Our group of 6 started the day by going to the Bank of China in the city to get money. At the bank, some guy at the bank was yelling at some bank teller for 15 minutes at the top of his lungs for god knows what reason (it was in Chinese obviously, so I have no idea what was going on.) It was….interesting, but pretty funny.

After we got money (which took a while since we were exchanging USD for Yuan instead of just taking it out of the ATM…their ATM was broken), we got food (SO CHEAP), shopped a little, then went to the one attraction in town, the Tsingtao Brewery.

The Brewery was really cool. It was 50 Yuan to get in (or 7 bucks, the most expensive thing of the day), and we got to walk around, see the Museum, and got a lot of free beer. It was really cool. Obviously, tons of SAS people went since it was a) the only attraction in town and b) they are college students and love beer.

Also, at the Brewery, the Chinese people there kept wanting to take pictures with the girls in our group. It was so funny. One of the girls even got dragged by one of the people out of no where just to take a picture with her. So great.

After that, we walked around some more, shopped some more (I didn’t really do much shopping, but some of the people in our group wanted to and there is nothing else to do in Qingdao so I was fine with it), and ate. We then just went to the boat to crash for the night (obviously, dodging trucks on the way back) because we all have trips leaving today for Beijing.

By the way, the stuff in this country is SO cheap. None of our cab rides were more than 8 Yuan. Since the exchange rate is 7.6 Yuan to the Dollar, that means our cab rides were all around 1 dollar (and this is for the whole cab, which would have 3-4 people in it.) We took 4 cab rides yesterday, so if I was riding around by myself, I would have spent a little more than 4 dollars ALL DAY on cabs. Since I wasn’t, it was like a dollar for cab rides to everywhere we needed to go. So awesome.

Also, the smog in Qingdao is terrible. Off the boat, you could taste the air, and it tasted real bad. Beijing apparently has even worse air quality, so I’m sure this trip will be great for my lungs.

Also, food is cheap. Lunch was around $3.50 USD, and dinner was $4 (that’s with desert, too, and the place looked nice and had good food.) Beer at dinner was 6 Yuan (or around 85 cents) for a 600 ml bottle of Tsingtao, which is around 20 ounces or so. I don’t think I spent more than 20 bucks all day yesterday because its so cheap here, and the awesome thing is that the countries coming up next (Vietnam, Thailand, and India) are even cheaper.

My trip to Beijing leaves in an hour and a half, and I’m so pumped. 4 days there, then a day in Hong Kong before getting on the boat (wish I had more time there)….this is so awesome. SAS definitely beats out school, even though I love U of A.

Beijing

I've been in Beijing for two days and I love it. This city is actually much cleaner than I expected (they are really cleaning it up for the Olympics) and its pretty nice too. I've been really surprised by how nice it is, this is definitely a great city. Today I climbed to the top of the Great Wall which was an awesome experience. I'm at an internet cafe and don't have time to write much, just wanted to say whats going on and to say that this city is pretty awesome....and really cheap (cabs are around 2 dollars to go 5 miles or so, food is so cheap, beer is even cheaper, yesterday I got a 600 mL bottle of Tsingtao (around 22 oz) for less than a dollar at a restaurant)! I'll definitely write more when I'm back on the ship in 3 days, but I just wanted to give a quick update. Tomorrow we are hitting up Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City which should be awesome, then in two days we are off to Hong Kong! Hope everything is good with everyone back home!

Japan

So I’m on the boat right now after leaving Japan and it was awesome. The country is SO nice and the people are awesome. They are so helpful, even though there is such a large communication barrier. You can’t read any signs (although they have a lot in English too) and it just feels like a completely different world because of the huge language difference. However, it’s a great place and I would recommend it to anyone, I really liked it there.

Some observations about Japan:
1. It’s the most orderly place I’ve ever been to. People walk on the left side of the sidewalk, people stand on the left side of the escalator and pass on the right, no one crosses the crosswalk until they get the sign to, its just very orderly in that respect.

2. It’s very difficult to find a garbage can, it’s even more difficult to find an ATM. You might have to walk 7-10 minutes in some areas of a populated, city area to find an ATM, you definitely don’t have that problem in the US.

3. Sushi isn’t as common in Japan as you think. It’s common, but not every restaurant has it, you actually do have to look for it.

4. Best trains I’ve ever been on, by far. They are expensive (12500 yen, which is around 110 US, from Tokyo to Kyoto, but they go almost 200 mph and are really smooth, efficient, and run on schedule)

Also, I must say that my favorite part of Japan was Kyoto. It’s the ancient capital of Japan, and it has lots of shrines and cool historical sites to see. However, at the same time, it’s a nice sized city (around 1 million people) and has a modern section and tons of restaurants. It’s a really cool place. I really liked Tokyo as well, but I liked the more laid back feel of Kyoto more (also, Kyoto has more historical sites, Tokyo is a more modern city and is more about experiencing the city rather than sight seeing, although Tokyo does have some historical sites as well.) Now, here is what I did in Japan (this will probably get really long and boring):


My trip in Japan started out by porting in Yokohama on the 12th. After 8 days in the Pacific Ocean, I was definitely pretty excited to see land. We docked at 8 AM, but Japanese Immigration had to clear everyone on the boat before we could leave. They came on the boat, and just started looking at passports. We didn’t have to go face to face with them like we did with US immigration in Hawaii (since the boat left from Mexico, we had to deal with US immigration in Hawaii) but it took them way longer than it took in Hawaii (of course, its because we aren’t Japanese, so they check everything more thoroughly, and I had heard before that they operate pretty slow). Anyway, it took 5 hours to clear the boat, which sucked because after 8 days at sea, we were dying to finally see a country.

After they cleared the boat, our group of 15 or so (it was a huge group to travel with, although not everyone in the group planned on doing the same stuff the whole time) went to the train station and caught a train from Yokohama to Tokyo which only took about 30 minutes. However, our group got split up in Yokohama because some people bought rail passes (the people who bought them definitely lost money, good decision by me not to get one) but we had already set up a meeting spot for later that night in case there was a split up. Anyway, the 7 or so of us still in our group got to Tokyo and just walked around and checked stuff out. We walked to the Imperial Palace which was close to the Train Station, but unfortunately it was closed. However, we were able to see it from far which was cool. However, the coolest thing is that when we were there, we bumped into the other half of our group.

Anyway, that first night, we walked around, ate, checked some cool stuff out, went to Shibuya which apparently has the busiest intersection in the world (and it was really crowded, its nuts) We then went to Roppongi (which is where the young people are at, apparently), found a capsule hotel, and went out that night. Capsule hotels, by the way, are these hotels where you get a little capsule to sleep in, its pretty cool. They are also pretty cheap, a capsule costs 4500 yen a night, which is around $40 US. They are big for Japanese businessmen who miss their trains home (since they stop running at midnight in Japan) so they just get a capsule for the night. Anyway, that night, we hit up the bars and clubs but since it was a Wednesday, there weren’t a ton of people out (lots of SAS people were though, obviously.) Still, we had a pretty fun night out in Tokyo.

Thursday we woke up and then went to Ryogoku where the sumo wrestling happens. They are having a grand tournament right now for sumo which is obviously a must see. We got to the area, walked around, then went and bought tickets for sumo. We had crappy seats but we moved up because we got there early and didn’t plan on staying the whole time, we just wanted to see some sumo, didn’t really care who it was. Sumo was pretty cool to see, but it does get boring after a while. After we caught that, we then went to the Tokyo Tower which is the tallest structure in Japan. After that, we met up with Suki who goes to school with me and Eric at U of A. Then, we tried to get a hotel in Shinjuku, where we were at the time. However, we couldn’t find one, so after lugging our bags around all day (which was just a backpack for each one of us), we ended up at the same capsule. Since we were kind of loud the night before, I’m sure they weren’t too happy to see us, they actually started laughing when we came back, but whatever, we stayed there a second night.

That night, we went out again which was also a fun time. Then the next morning at 6 AM, 4 of us decided to go to the fish market which was really cool. It smells terrible obviously, but its so big and you see all the vendors and people moving fish around and its just a really cool thing to see, especially in the morning which is the time to go to it. After that, I then went to my capsule, met up with the rest of my friends (at this point, our group was down to 8, the others had SAS trips the second day so they left after the first day or they decided to go to Hiroshima) and went to Kyoto. By the way, I slept the whole way to Kyoto to make up for the little amount of sleep I got the first two nights in Tokyo.

On the train, our 3 friends that didn’t have rail passes got kicked off because their rail passes weren’t allowed on the train we got, so our group was broken down to 5 which sucked, but we would eventually find them later. By the way, Japan has an AMAZING rail system. The trip from Tokyo to Kyoto is only 2.5 hours and they aren’t even close to each other. The trains come very frequently (as in every 30 minutes for the Shikansen, which is the long distance train that covers all of Honshu, the island that most of Japan lives on) and are really fast. In Kyoto, we checked out the Joju shrine the first day which was cool. We then walked around and just checked out part of the city. On the side of the street, I saw a beer vending machine which I thought was cool, and of course I had to test it out. By the way, vending machines in Japan are so cool looking. We then found a Ryokan to stay at, which is a traditional Japanese inn. The ryokan was really cool. At the ryokan, when you check in, they serve you tea in your room. Then, you get these mats that you put on the floor to sleep on, which was actually pretty comfortable. It was definitely cool to stay in one of those.

The fourth day started out by bumping into some SAS people at the Ryokan that we knew. We all had to get a hotel for that night, so we started calling around and then found a Westin we could stay at. Of course, we lied to them and told them we had less people in a room than we really did, so it ended up only being $50 for that night which was cool. We then went over there, dropped our bags off (which was awesome because we carried them around the first 3 days all day which got annoying), and checked out some stuff. We first went to the Golden Pavilion, where we bumped into the 3 people we lost on the train. In Japan, most cell phones don’t work due to their advanced system, so its hard to get in touch with people when you lose them. Anyway, we set up a meeting spot to go to the baseball game later that day, so we then went into the Golden Pavilion which was awesome. I highly recommend it to anybody, it was my favorite site in all of Japan. We then went to the Imperial Palace in Kyoto although we didn’t go inside. After that, we met up with the rest of our group (we split up after we bumped into each other at the Golden Pavilion to go site seeing) and went to Osaka for the baseball game. The train ride there was only 10 minutes, even though it’s a completely different big city. We then took the subway to the stadium and the baseball game was awesome. Japanese people go crazy for baseball, they are way louder at baseball games than Americans. However, we were at a game for a last place team so there were lots of empty seats but it was still pretty loud (and there were tons of away fans there, they were all really loud cool.) It was definitely a cool experience, lots of fun. Then, half of us went back to Kyoto to stay at the hotel while the other half went down to Kobe.

The fifth and final day (the 16th), we checked out another shrine and the Doji Castle, both of which were awesome. We then caught a train to Kobe, which was 30 minutes away, and caught the ship and left. Kobe looked like a cool city, but I obviously didn’t have time to check it out. I’m still really happy with what I saw in Japan. I saw lots of cool things, and going there really makes me want to go back because there is way too much in Japan to see in only 5 days.

Next up for me is China. I get to Qingdao on the 19th (only 1 day away.) I’m going to spend the 19th there, then I’m going to Beijing until the 23rd on an SAS sponsored trip, then we fly to Hong Kong where I’ll be until the 24th when I have to get back on the ship. I think China is going to be awesome, I can’t wait.

And some pictures:

Near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo

Me at the Intersection near Shibuya Station (the busiest in the world)


Me with two sumo wrestlers outside of the Ryogoku Arena

Sumo wrestling action (we were there early so it wasn't packed yet)

Our group (when it was broken down to 5) at the Ryokan in Kyoto

The Golden Pavilion in Kyoto

By the way, I have a ton more pictures from Japan (and the trip so far in general) that I need to put up, which I will when I get a chance, but its tough because the internet on the boat is so slow and expensive.

Hawaii

So yesterday we went to Hawaii which was awesome. The worst thing is that we only got to stay for a day, but Honolulu is an awesome city. We started the day by walking from the Port of Honolulu to Waikiki Beach. However, it wasn’t a walkable distance, which we realized for a while. We started walking by the shore, which was all rocks. However, we then saw a staircase which lead into the water, so we just went in which was awesome. The water there was so good, way better than the water in the ocean out on Long Island obviously.





So after we swam there we caught a bus to Waikiki. We were then hungry so we looked for a spot to eat at. We then saw this big Japanese festival so we decided to hit that up. However, that was a bad idea. It was really packed and the places at it only took exact change which didn’t work for us. Furthermore, we lost two people there in the crowd so our group dropped down to 4 people. Guess we just weren’t very organized, guess that’s a lesson I learned for the next countries because you don’t want to lose anyone in Ho Chi Minh City or anything, but luckily the two of them were still together. Okay, so after we spent 10 minutes looking for the two of them, we went to find a restaurant. We walked for around 45 minutes finding a place, but after we couldn’t find any authentic Hawaiian food, we went to a place called Zippy’s. It was absolutely terrible, don’t ever go there. I got some food that looked good in the pic but when I got it, it not only looked sketchy but tasted it too. Okay, so after that we went to an awesome shaved ice place which made up for the crappiness of Zippy’s.



After that we hit up the beach in Waikiki. The water was so nice, it was really warm and clean. However, I had no idea that all of Waikiki Beach was on a coral reef. None of the beaches were sandy at all. The beaches are very small, and then 3 feet after you walk in, its all coral reef. I heard the beaches are way nicer on the North Shore, but the water is still great at Waikiki so it was all good.



We first hit up one spot in Waikiki, but we wanted a sandier beach, and some local told us to go towards the Pink Hotel where it was apparently sandier. We got lazy, so instead, we just hit up the Westin which was half way there. We just snuck into the Westin (which looked really nice) and just went to where the beach was in the back. It was the same in terms of size and coral as the first beach (which was a coral reef) but it was still nice. Then we wanted to get towels, so we walked up to the towel desk at the Westin and tried to get them. The lady asked us if we were staying at the hotel, so I lied and said “yes!” She then asked me what the room was, so I said I didn’t know. She then asked what name the reservation was under, so I said “Johnson.” She then asked for a first name. Luckily, Swain was looking at the same sheet she was (which had the names of all the people staying there) and then when she saw a Johnson, she asked for a first name. Since Swain was looking at the list, he saw that there was a Daniel Johnson staying there so he said Daniel. The lady at the desk then said nice guess and gave us the towels (don’t worry, we actually did return them though, so we didn’t steal from the hotel or anything.) We then just chilled at the beach for a few hours, then we met up with Chris who is another guy on SAS and the five of us went back to near the ship to get dinner. We then went to dinner and happy hour and then went back to the ship. I got through security at 8:20, which I thought would be fine because we were supposed to be back on the ship at 9 (the ship was scheduled to leave at 11, but obviously we have to be back earlier than that. Anyway, the ship has a rule saying we have to be on the ship at 9, otherwise we get “dock time.” I cleared security at the port at 8:20, but then there was an insanely long line to get on the ship. I ended up not even getting back on the ship until 9:27. According to the rules, I am supposed to get 6 hours of dock time for being 27 minutes late, which means that in Japan, I am supposed to have to stay on the ship the first six hours we are there as a punishment. However, the line was really long and if they actually give out this punishment, it means a lot of people are going to get dock time. I’ve heard rumors that they will either cut down on the dock time or not give us any at all because the lines were so ridiculous so I really hope we don’t get dock time. It would really suck to miss out on 6 hours of Japan because of the lines.

Overall, I had an awesome time in Hawaii and I just wish we had more than a day there. It was a really awesome place and the people there were really nice. I would go back there in a second, its great. I wouldn’t recommend Waikiki if you just want to sit on a beach (apparently the North Shore, which is around an hour away I think, is better for beaches), but Honolulu is still really nice.

Now we have been at sea for a day and we have seven more after this until we get to Japan which I can’t for!!! Of course, I really hope I don’t get dock time, but I don’t have any control over that so we will see what happens. My plan for Japan is to travel with Eric (who I go to school with at the wonderful University of Arizona) and hit up Tokyo, Kyoto, maybe Osaka, and Kobe (where we leave from). We also plan on chillin with one of our friends from school who is studying abroad in Tokyo for a year.

As for other news, we are “retarding” our clocks for the fourth time tonight. In a few days, we will lose a whole day when we cross the international date line. I still keep making jokes about the fact that they say we need to “retard” our clocks instead of using any other word (don‘t they realize that we are in college and will think its funny that they tell us to retard our clocks? When I hear the word retard, I don‘t think of turning back a clock), which I know is immature but I still think its funny.

Also, classroom #3 is the spot to watch global studies (which is the class that everyone on the ship takes, its everyday at 9:20 and they don’t have enough room in the union so some people have to watch it in other rooms on TVs) and pre-port meetings. I never go to the union for that stuff, I only hit up classroom #3, which I also sometimes call “the tres.” It’s the spot to watch anything, its way better there. Plus, the people who run the telecast like to mess around sometimes, and you don’t get to witness what they do unless you watch in the tres. For example, on the first day of global studies, they put a heart around someone’s head. And they tend to like to do things like use a superman logo to make a transition from one cut to another of someone giving a speech, which is completely unnecessary but really funny.

Also, thanks to the people who commented on my last post, they definitely gave some good advice. Its pretty cool that past alum actually read this thing.

And in sad news, my sports teams are playing like absolute crap. The Mariners have lost nine in a row, but at least we are still in the wild card hunt. We really need to step up our performance though. Also, Arizona football lost to BYU this weekend which is embarrassing. We are supposed to be a team on the rise and we lost to BYU which isn’t in a BCS conference and lost a bunch of their top players. This is Mike Stoops’ fourth year as Arizona coach and he really needs to step it up if he wants to keep his job. We can’t put up 7 points on a mediocre BYU defense. Its an embarrassment to the university to lose to non-BCS teams, especially ones that have lots of new starters. My Arizona Wildcats really need to step it up.