April 28th
Busan, Korea
Today, like the previous Busan, consisted of me getting off the ship and taking the shuttle into the downtown area. I left with my friend Mario, but quickly ran into some other friends in the city and joined them for lunch (always a good idea when two of them speak Korean). After a great lunch (some big bowl of rice with vegetables and egg), we walked the markets until Mario and I split from the group to go exploring in some different direction. We didn’t have a ton of time, so we set our sites low and climbed a giant hill. As we were walking, we came across this huge expanse of stairs that seemed to go straight up, so after a few pictures, I talked Mario into climbing them. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was, but he did it and I got my cardio/leg workout in for the day. At the very top we were able to enjoy a great view of the city, take some pictures, and then head straight back down to where we came.
From then on we just weaved our way through the city till we returned to the drop off point for the shuttle and caught it back to the ship. The rest of the day for me consisted of little more than watching the evening show, catching up with these blogs, and going online. Yes, another lovely day on the Rhapsody of the Seas! Anyways, thanks for reading and have a great day!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Fukuoka
April 27th
Fukuoka, Japan
Finally, after years of waiting (10 days), we were allowed to set foot in Fukuoka. My plan, go with the trombone player, Jersey, and find a tennis court for a match. I had rented two bikes from the crew office that morning so that we’d be able to cover more ground in our search, which was a good plan, till I found out Jersey had remembered my suggestion from the other night and rented a bike for himself as well, leaving me with an extra bike I’d paid for with no way of returning it. Due to late arrival and boat drill, we had some time to search for a third person that would be interested in using the bike and reimbursing me for the $5 I spent, and did eventually find a Chinese girl, May, that Jersey was friends with and who wanted to tag along.
Before I go any further, let me describe Jersey real quick. Jersey, the trombone player on the ship is a 60-year-old Polish man with very rough English skills. I can communicate with him, but it certainly takes a lot of effort on both of our parts, something I can’t do for extended periods of time. But, that aside, he has such a happy demeanor and infectious personality that it makes you want to be his friend. He’s very fit considering his age, and notorious for finding tennis partners, somehow finding a court, and then winning the match. But back to the trip…
We left the ship around 2PM on the bikes, which were actually quite nice. We hadn’t even made it though out of the terminal when it was obvious that May hadn’t been on a bike for quite some time, which considering the pedestrian and bicycle congestion of Japan, worried me, but we set out regardless. Our first stop was barely past the terminal where we came across a high school marching band. Jersey had his camera and was having a good time walking among the band taking video in a way that only he could do. It was funny for the 10 minutes we spent watching them warm up, not to mention brought back some memories of my PR drum major days. I eventually pulled my Polish friend from the band and we set off again with our sites set on a park I’d visited once before.
After a nice ride to the park and some lucky navigation, we came across the courts. The man in charge of the courts saw we had rackets and approached us to explain the situation. Luckily, many people speak enough English to get points across, so we discovered the courts were booked till 7, exactly when we had to be back at the ship. After some more “discussion” and Jersey’s seemly inability to comprehend that we couldn’t play tennis, we were told that the next nearest courts were at a complex on the complete opposite side of the city. The complex was listed on our maps, but barely, and way in the corner with limited road depictions – just my type of an adventure. So we left the park and began our trek into what was completely new territory for all of us. I - being the youngest, most fit, and one with the map - had the lead.
The first half was easy, all ground I’d covered before, and the rivers cutting through the city always provided a reference point. It wasn’t till we crossed the final river and entered a much more industrial part of the city that navigation got difficult. I had a fairly good idea of which direction to lead, and I guess my other adventure experiences paid off because we arrived at the sports complex without a single wrong turn. It took forever because May wasn’t exactly keeping pace, but considering she had managed to get through the city without any problems, she was doing exceptionally well in light of how she began the trip.
We arrived at the courts around 4:45, almost 3 hours after first leaving the ship. The tennis arena was gorgeous, and a completely separate part of the larger sports complex. We parked the bikes and walked in the building to try to get a reservation to play ASAP considering we had 2 hours before we needed to be back on the ship. So we walked in and Jersey starts talking to the ladies behind the counter, introducing us as the international team (yeah, an American and old Polish man playing in Asia, if that isn’t international, I don’t know what is). After some difficulty with the non English speaking people behind the desk, we were able to get an indoor court at 5PM at a student rate, of which I’m still not sure how jersey convinced them of. So we got our stuff together and headed to the courts to start our match.
The courts were different than anything I’d ever played on before. The indoor courts weren’t standard carpeting like I’m used to at home, but something a little harder and covered with a dusting of sand. The sand made it like playing on a clay court, and aside from obscuring my vision of the lines, made it really hard to not slip while changing directions. I was playing on a racket Jersey had probably bought somewhere for $20, and after a short warm up, we started playing. Jersey played well, and as I expected, very consistently. Unfortunately, my out of practice game is the exact opposite of consistency, and I need not suffer the humiliation of posting his first set score in a public venue.
We left shortly into the second set, worried that the 75 minutes we allotted to return to the ship might not be enough. Again, I lead the way back to the ship through now barely familiar territory, trying to set a good pace. I’d stop every so often to let May and Jersey catch up, at which point Jersey would love telling me that I was a genius for being able to figure out how to get there and back, and we did eventually make it back to the ship with less than 15 minutes to spare. So from 2 till 7, we had close to a non stop cardio activity going on, and thanks to all my recent gym visits, was really quite pleasant (unlike the bike story of Cozumel late November).
We had a show to play that night, but that pretty much sums up the day. I do plan on playing tennis once more before I leave the ship and redeeming some of the pride I left on those courts, but till then, I’ll just keep doing my thing here on the ships. Thanks for reading and have a great one!
Fukuoka, Japan
Finally, after years of waiting (10 days), we were allowed to set foot in Fukuoka. My plan, go with the trombone player, Jersey, and find a tennis court for a match. I had rented two bikes from the crew office that morning so that we’d be able to cover more ground in our search, which was a good plan, till I found out Jersey had remembered my suggestion from the other night and rented a bike for himself as well, leaving me with an extra bike I’d paid for with no way of returning it. Due to late arrival and boat drill, we had some time to search for a third person that would be interested in using the bike and reimbursing me for the $5 I spent, and did eventually find a Chinese girl, May, that Jersey was friends with and who wanted to tag along.
Before I go any further, let me describe Jersey real quick. Jersey, the trombone player on the ship is a 60-year-old Polish man with very rough English skills. I can communicate with him, but it certainly takes a lot of effort on both of our parts, something I can’t do for extended periods of time. But, that aside, he has such a happy demeanor and infectious personality that it makes you want to be his friend. He’s very fit considering his age, and notorious for finding tennis partners, somehow finding a court, and then winning the match. But back to the trip…
We left the ship around 2PM on the bikes, which were actually quite nice. We hadn’t even made it though out of the terminal when it was obvious that May hadn’t been on a bike for quite some time, which considering the pedestrian and bicycle congestion of Japan, worried me, but we set out regardless. Our first stop was barely past the terminal where we came across a high school marching band. Jersey had his camera and was having a good time walking among the band taking video in a way that only he could do. It was funny for the 10 minutes we spent watching them warm up, not to mention brought back some memories of my PR drum major days. I eventually pulled my Polish friend from the band and we set off again with our sites set on a park I’d visited once before.
After a nice ride to the park and some lucky navigation, we came across the courts. The man in charge of the courts saw we had rackets and approached us to explain the situation. Luckily, many people speak enough English to get points across, so we discovered the courts were booked till 7, exactly when we had to be back at the ship. After some more “discussion” and Jersey’s seemly inability to comprehend that we couldn’t play tennis, we were told that the next nearest courts were at a complex on the complete opposite side of the city. The complex was listed on our maps, but barely, and way in the corner with limited road depictions – just my type of an adventure. So we left the park and began our trek into what was completely new territory for all of us. I - being the youngest, most fit, and one with the map - had the lead.
The first half was easy, all ground I’d covered before, and the rivers cutting through the city always provided a reference point. It wasn’t till we crossed the final river and entered a much more industrial part of the city that navigation got difficult. I had a fairly good idea of which direction to lead, and I guess my other adventure experiences paid off because we arrived at the sports complex without a single wrong turn. It took forever because May wasn’t exactly keeping pace, but considering she had managed to get through the city without any problems, she was doing exceptionally well in light of how she began the trip.
We arrived at the courts around 4:45, almost 3 hours after first leaving the ship. The tennis arena was gorgeous, and a completely separate part of the larger sports complex. We parked the bikes and walked in the building to try to get a reservation to play ASAP considering we had 2 hours before we needed to be back on the ship. So we walked in and Jersey starts talking to the ladies behind the counter, introducing us as the international team (yeah, an American and old Polish man playing in Asia, if that isn’t international, I don’t know what is). After some difficulty with the non English speaking people behind the desk, we were able to get an indoor court at 5PM at a student rate, of which I’m still not sure how jersey convinced them of. So we got our stuff together and headed to the courts to start our match.
The courts were different than anything I’d ever played on before. The indoor courts weren’t standard carpeting like I’m used to at home, but something a little harder and covered with a dusting of sand. The sand made it like playing on a clay court, and aside from obscuring my vision of the lines, made it really hard to not slip while changing directions. I was playing on a racket Jersey had probably bought somewhere for $20, and after a short warm up, we started playing. Jersey played well, and as I expected, very consistently. Unfortunately, my out of practice game is the exact opposite of consistency, and I need not suffer the humiliation of posting his first set score in a public venue.
We left shortly into the second set, worried that the 75 minutes we allotted to return to the ship might not be enough. Again, I lead the way back to the ship through now barely familiar territory, trying to set a good pace. I’d stop every so often to let May and Jersey catch up, at which point Jersey would love telling me that I was a genius for being able to figure out how to get there and back, and we did eventually make it back to the ship with less than 15 minutes to spare. So from 2 till 7, we had close to a non stop cardio activity going on, and thanks to all my recent gym visits, was really quite pleasant (unlike the bike story of Cozumel late November).
We had a show to play that night, but that pretty much sums up the day. I do plan on playing tennis once more before I leave the ship and redeeming some of the pride I left on those courts, but till then, I’ll just keep doing my thing here on the ships. Thanks for reading and have a great one!
Kobe day 2
April 26th
Second day in Kobe
Nothing really more happened today. I decided to sleep in – one of the few things that can tempt me from getting off the ship and spending more money. We left mid day and I spent the rest of the evening doing what I pleased. There was a crew party that night that I briefly showed up at to be social, but that’s about it. Thanks!
Second day in Kobe
Nothing really more happened today. I decided to sleep in – one of the few things that can tempt me from getting off the ship and spending more money. We left mid day and I spent the rest of the evening doing what I pleased. There was a crew party that night that I briefly showed up at to be social, but that’s about it. Thanks!
Kobe
April 25th
Kobe, Japan
Today was my first overnight port on this ship, and the first time we were all allowed to get off in Japan after a few weeks, so I was planning on having a good night in Kobe. I got off the ship around 5:00 that day with 4 of my friends (Mario, Terry, Garreth, and Micha) ready to have a long night on the town. We started out by taking the train into the center of the city, not to far off from where the ship was docked, and set our first objective at getting a good meal. After a while of searching and being reminded how cool Japanese cities are, we found a local place that seemed perfect. We sat down, and after the usual communication difficulties, ended up ordering a number of dishes, ranging from sashimi to strange appetizers including soy beans covered in raw egg. Most dishes were great, the raw egg was not, and we ended the meal with about a $12 charge each; but in true Asian food fashion, we were soon hungry again. After a while of walking the streets trying to get a feel for the area and scout out some jazz clubs we were hoping to visit later, we made our way to a hotel and shopping mall where we were able to stave off our lingering hunger with some Wendy’s, I had a frosty. The hotel we were sitting under was probably one of the nicest in the city, not to mention the tallest, so most of us took the elevator up to the top to do some site seeing while my one friend, Garreth, stayed below and waited. When we all got to the top, we found a really lovely restaurant and bar, and after some Japanese guy showed us around and pointed out the view, we sat down and a couple of my friends felt obligated to celebrate the moment by ordering $8 beers, something I passed on. So as we sat and enjoyed the view at the top, about a half hour or so went by till I remembered we’d left a friend down below waiting for us. I quickly left the party to find him and let him know what was going on, but by the time I had gotten back to ground level, he’d left for other adventures (I guess sitting around in the cold just wasn’t all that exciting). My friends eventually made it down and we the now smaller group departed.
From there, we started looking for a place for dinner. I had my mind set on finding some Kobe beef, something famous all over the world. Kobe Beef comes from cows that are treated like kings up until they’re slaughtered. This includes, feeding them only the best food, raising them on the best fields, daily massages, and even serenading them with guitars. This makes for a very happy cow, a very tender meat, and an extremely expensive dish. I knew all this before hand and was prepared for a price that was to be 10 times more expensive than a similar portion at home. We located a place after some searching via a “recommended steak house” map, and sat down to order our $60 meal. We sat where we could see the chef make the meal, a process that took a total of 5 minutes. After quickly grilling the outside of the steak, he sliced it up, positioned it on what reminded me of a plate for fajitas, covered it with onions and potatoes (fries) and a little butter, had a side of lettuce, and lit everything on fire with whatever oil he was throwing on the dish. It was quite the spectacle to see the highly specific preparation, but quite another thing to eat it. The steak, being prepared so quickly, was certainly rare with a cool red center, but I’m not about to argue with the chef as to how to prepare it. The taste though, was great. In all honesty, maybe not worth the $60 I spent, but still, probably the best flavor I’ve had from a steak. Again, a little pricey, but one more thing I can say I was able to do and check off my list, so I’m glad for that experience.
Next, we needed money after being wiped out by dinner. Micha (who’s the music director and therefore my boss) was able to get some money out of an ATM which lasted the rest of us the night. The first thing that money was used for was beer. Maybe it was a bad idea to go out with my Russian director for just that reason, but I wasn’t about to spoil the mood, and we all located some steps to sit on and watch the crowds as we drank on the street. Apparently it’s totally legal to drink on the streets in Asia, something we were unaware of, but glad to later find out we weren’t risking getting thrown in jail. We saw a few people we knew from the ship and hung out probably for an hour not doing much more than watching Japanese people before we figured out it was getting late nd should probably find a jazz club. We started looking for the places that we’d previously scouted out, along with anything else we came across along the way, all of which were closed! Apparently, the live music stops fairly early and is replaced with a Japanese club scene, not exactly what we had in mind. After some time of walking around and running into fellow crew members, we lost another of our group, Terry, to a taxi on it’s way back to the ship. And then there were three.
So now it’s Mario, Micha, and myself (the three M’s now that I think about it) wandering the streets. At this point, the Russian director was absolutely blasted, and certainly acted the part. Somehow, he’d gotten the idea in is head that he wanted a massage that night, and his drunken objective overcame anything Mario and myself had in mind, so we followed our fearless (blasted) leader. It was pretty funny, though, watching a drunk Russian speaking English to every Japanese guy he could find about where the good massages were. And as long as I was having a good time watching Micha, I didn’t quite mind where we ended up, we had all night anyways, so there was nothing to worry about. Well, that might have been the wrong attitude.
We eventually came to a street where a cute Japanese girl came up to me asking if I wanted a massage. And me, excited that I could tell Micha I found what he was looking for, quickly pulled him over where he became very happy to discover what I’d found. (now for those of you thinking massage might mean massage plus something else, yeah, you’re right, and that’s certainly what Micha had in mind, me, not so much. But I was having fun so I was just following along at that point). These Japanese girls then walked us over to the elevator that took us up to the massage room, which was a large, dimly lit room, where each massage booth was little more than the massage table with curtains surrounding it. I laid down on the table and the girl started walking on my back, something I haven’t quite had done before, and after about 15 minutes, she stops and brings over a menu of options. First problem – the menu’s totally in Japanese, so I can’t read a thing. Second problem, the one thing I could read, “VIP – 1hr”, was priced at $150. At that point, after checking and rechecking my price conversion in my head, yelled over to Micha’s booth asking if he’d seen the menu prices. He had, but being so drunk, was considering the price, not to mention considering paying for mine as well. After about 10 minutes of yelling back and forth through this curtain, I’d convinced him that $150 was way more than anything he expected to get out of it, and as soon as that clicked in his Russian mind, than that flared his temper and we quickly left. Now, it was still hilarious being there, seeing this setup, and talking to Micha, so I’m glad for the experience, but it’s another thing to check off my list and never do again. I’m just glad we were able to get out with out a problem and without someone taking our wallets (my first concern when I walked in the place).
So we left the building and got back to the street, where we realized Mario didn’t actually follow us in. We started walking around looking for him, but had absolutely no idea where he would be. I figured he’d probably return to the massage place in 30 minutes or so, but we weren’t about to sit outside of this place we’d just rudely walked out of, so we started walking. Micha, not having learned his lesson, continued asking everyone where he could find a massage, which eventually brought us to some guy who enjoyed discussing the massage scene with Micha in full detail. Luckily enough, however, Mario found us as we were talking to this large Indian man and his Japanese friends, and after the two of us dragged Micha away from his new friend, we figured he wasn’t getting any better and opted to take a cab back to the ship. And after the usual language struggle trying to communicate “ship” via charades and pictures, we found a cab that returned us to the port around 3 AM. And there ended my night, yet another overnight that will be carved into my memory for some time to come, and provide many more hours of entertainment through it’s retelling – and you read it here first! Anyways, there’s going to be another one in a week, maybe I should start preparing now. Thanks for reading!
Kobe, Japan
Today was my first overnight port on this ship, and the first time we were all allowed to get off in Japan after a few weeks, so I was planning on having a good night in Kobe. I got off the ship around 5:00 that day with 4 of my friends (Mario, Terry, Garreth, and Micha) ready to have a long night on the town. We started out by taking the train into the center of the city, not to far off from where the ship was docked, and set our first objective at getting a good meal. After a while of searching and being reminded how cool Japanese cities are, we found a local place that seemed perfect. We sat down, and after the usual communication difficulties, ended up ordering a number of dishes, ranging from sashimi to strange appetizers including soy beans covered in raw egg. Most dishes were great, the raw egg was not, and we ended the meal with about a $12 charge each; but in true Asian food fashion, we were soon hungry again. After a while of walking the streets trying to get a feel for the area and scout out some jazz clubs we were hoping to visit later, we made our way to a hotel and shopping mall where we were able to stave off our lingering hunger with some Wendy’s, I had a frosty. The hotel we were sitting under was probably one of the nicest in the city, not to mention the tallest, so most of us took the elevator up to the top to do some site seeing while my one friend, Garreth, stayed below and waited. When we all got to the top, we found a really lovely restaurant and bar, and after some Japanese guy showed us around and pointed out the view, we sat down and a couple of my friends felt obligated to celebrate the moment by ordering $8 beers, something I passed on. So as we sat and enjoyed the view at the top, about a half hour or so went by till I remembered we’d left a friend down below waiting for us. I quickly left the party to find him and let him know what was going on, but by the time I had gotten back to ground level, he’d left for other adventures (I guess sitting around in the cold just wasn’t all that exciting). My friends eventually made it down and we the now smaller group departed.
From there, we started looking for a place for dinner. I had my mind set on finding some Kobe beef, something famous all over the world. Kobe Beef comes from cows that are treated like kings up until they’re slaughtered. This includes, feeding them only the best food, raising them on the best fields, daily massages, and even serenading them with guitars. This makes for a very happy cow, a very tender meat, and an extremely expensive dish. I knew all this before hand and was prepared for a price that was to be 10 times more expensive than a similar portion at home. We located a place after some searching via a “recommended steak house” map, and sat down to order our $60 meal. We sat where we could see the chef make the meal, a process that took a total of 5 minutes. After quickly grilling the outside of the steak, he sliced it up, positioned it on what reminded me of a plate for fajitas, covered it with onions and potatoes (fries) and a little butter, had a side of lettuce, and lit everything on fire with whatever oil he was throwing on the dish. It was quite the spectacle to see the highly specific preparation, but quite another thing to eat it. The steak, being prepared so quickly, was certainly rare with a cool red center, but I’m not about to argue with the chef as to how to prepare it. The taste though, was great. In all honesty, maybe not worth the $60 I spent, but still, probably the best flavor I’ve had from a steak. Again, a little pricey, but one more thing I can say I was able to do and check off my list, so I’m glad for that experience.
Next, we needed money after being wiped out by dinner. Micha (who’s the music director and therefore my boss) was able to get some money out of an ATM which lasted the rest of us the night. The first thing that money was used for was beer. Maybe it was a bad idea to go out with my Russian director for just that reason, but I wasn’t about to spoil the mood, and we all located some steps to sit on and watch the crowds as we drank on the street. Apparently it’s totally legal to drink on the streets in Asia, something we were unaware of, but glad to later find out we weren’t risking getting thrown in jail. We saw a few people we knew from the ship and hung out probably for an hour not doing much more than watching Japanese people before we figured out it was getting late nd should probably find a jazz club. We started looking for the places that we’d previously scouted out, along with anything else we came across along the way, all of which were closed! Apparently, the live music stops fairly early and is replaced with a Japanese club scene, not exactly what we had in mind. After some time of walking around and running into fellow crew members, we lost another of our group, Terry, to a taxi on it’s way back to the ship. And then there were three.
So now it’s Mario, Micha, and myself (the three M’s now that I think about it) wandering the streets. At this point, the Russian director was absolutely blasted, and certainly acted the part. Somehow, he’d gotten the idea in is head that he wanted a massage that night, and his drunken objective overcame anything Mario and myself had in mind, so we followed our fearless (blasted) leader. It was pretty funny, though, watching a drunk Russian speaking English to every Japanese guy he could find about where the good massages were. And as long as I was having a good time watching Micha, I didn’t quite mind where we ended up, we had all night anyways, so there was nothing to worry about. Well, that might have been the wrong attitude.
We eventually came to a street where a cute Japanese girl came up to me asking if I wanted a massage. And me, excited that I could tell Micha I found what he was looking for, quickly pulled him over where he became very happy to discover what I’d found. (now for those of you thinking massage might mean massage plus something else, yeah, you’re right, and that’s certainly what Micha had in mind, me, not so much. But I was having fun so I was just following along at that point). These Japanese girls then walked us over to the elevator that took us up to the massage room, which was a large, dimly lit room, where each massage booth was little more than the massage table with curtains surrounding it. I laid down on the table and the girl started walking on my back, something I haven’t quite had done before, and after about 15 minutes, she stops and brings over a menu of options. First problem – the menu’s totally in Japanese, so I can’t read a thing. Second problem, the one thing I could read, “VIP – 1hr”, was priced at $150. At that point, after checking and rechecking my price conversion in my head, yelled over to Micha’s booth asking if he’d seen the menu prices. He had, but being so drunk, was considering the price, not to mention considering paying for mine as well. After about 10 minutes of yelling back and forth through this curtain, I’d convinced him that $150 was way more than anything he expected to get out of it, and as soon as that clicked in his Russian mind, than that flared his temper and we quickly left. Now, it was still hilarious being there, seeing this setup, and talking to Micha, so I’m glad for the experience, but it’s another thing to check off my list and never do again. I’m just glad we were able to get out with out a problem and without someone taking our wallets (my first concern when I walked in the place).
So we left the building and got back to the street, where we realized Mario didn’t actually follow us in. We started walking around looking for him, but had absolutely no idea where he would be. I figured he’d probably return to the massage place in 30 minutes or so, but we weren’t about to sit outside of this place we’d just rudely walked out of, so we started walking. Micha, not having learned his lesson, continued asking everyone where he could find a massage, which eventually brought us to some guy who enjoyed discussing the massage scene with Micha in full detail. Luckily enough, however, Mario found us as we were talking to this large Indian man and his Japanese friends, and after the two of us dragged Micha away from his new friend, we figured he wasn’t getting any better and opted to take a cab back to the ship. And after the usual language struggle trying to communicate “ship” via charades and pictures, we found a cab that returned us to the port around 3 AM. And there ended my night, yet another overnight that will be carved into my memory for some time to come, and provide many more hours of entertainment through it’s retelling – and you read it here first! Anyways, there’s going to be another one in a week, maybe I should start preparing now. Thanks for reading!
Shanghai/Sea Day
April 23rd/24th
Shanghai/Sea Day
There was nothing really exciting these couple of days. I decided to stay on the ship for Shanghai and work online, and the sea day was the same as always. Some rough waters sailing both days though, which was weird. But that aside, that’s about it. However, I did get my work schedule for this week. Get this, for the entire 7 day cruise, I actually have to take my saxophone out 2 days, for a total of 4 hours of “work”. It’s kind of weird getting paid to do next to nothing on the ship, and I’ve been working hard to be productive on my own projects, but I’m not about to start complaining. Enjoy the real world back on land, thanks!
Shanghai/Sea Day
There was nothing really exciting these couple of days. I decided to stay on the ship for Shanghai and work online, and the sea day was the same as always. Some rough waters sailing both days though, which was weird. But that aside, that’s about it. However, I did get my work schedule for this week. Get this, for the entire 7 day cruise, I actually have to take my saxophone out 2 days, for a total of 4 hours of “work”. It’s kind of weird getting paid to do next to nothing on the ship, and I’ve been working hard to be productive on my own projects, but I’m not about to start complaining. Enjoy the real world back on land, thanks!
Jeju
April 22nd
Jeju Island, Korea
I signed up for a crew tour today in Jeju, something one of my friends had organized and was extremely excited about. My friend had spent some time in Korea and was slightly familiar with the island, so I paid the money and set out on what was certainly an interesting tour.
First stop: Mystery Hill (oooooooo). And the mystery about the hill – cars roll up it instead of down. Yeah, sounds crazy right? Now, I saw it and can say it certainly seems as if these vehicles are rolling up the hills, along with the many water bottle we tried to roll in the opposite direction. The explanation behind it is that through some optical illusion formed naturally by the surrounding hills and hills before and after “Mystery Hill”, it undoubtedly makes it seem like the hill is slanted upwards, when in fact, gravity proves it isn’t. It might be hard to imagine, and pictures don’t quite do the mystery justice, so I guess you’re just going to have to take my word for it – Mystery hill is pretty darn cool (for about 5 minutes till you realize how easily amused you can be by a hill). After a quick stop to experience the magic, we left for the second stop.
Second stop: An outside museum called Love Land (yeah, what you think it is). This “museum” is predominately out doors and is little more than a showing of the museum’s comprehensive display of enormous, graphic sculptures – and let emphasize “graphic”. I have many pictures, none of which are suitable for posting, and should you want to see any of them, we can set up a meeting behind closed doors.
Third stop: Waterfalls! This stop was the first normal stop, and not that I didn’t enjoy the first to, but it was nice to end the tour with a more conservative sightseeing destination. We spent 40 minutes or so looking around the park area and then headed back to the ship.
And that about sums up my tour in Jeju, should you decide to deem it such. Thanks for reading!
Jeju Island, Korea
I signed up for a crew tour today in Jeju, something one of my friends had organized and was extremely excited about. My friend had spent some time in Korea and was slightly familiar with the island, so I paid the money and set out on what was certainly an interesting tour.
First stop: Mystery Hill (oooooooo). And the mystery about the hill – cars roll up it instead of down. Yeah, sounds crazy right? Now, I saw it and can say it certainly seems as if these vehicles are rolling up the hills, along with the many water bottle we tried to roll in the opposite direction. The explanation behind it is that through some optical illusion formed naturally by the surrounding hills and hills before and after “Mystery Hill”, it undoubtedly makes it seem like the hill is slanted upwards, when in fact, gravity proves it isn’t. It might be hard to imagine, and pictures don’t quite do the mystery justice, so I guess you’re just going to have to take my word for it – Mystery hill is pretty darn cool (for about 5 minutes till you realize how easily amused you can be by a hill). After a quick stop to experience the magic, we left for the second stop.
Second stop: An outside museum called Love Land (yeah, what you think it is). This “museum” is predominately out doors and is little more than a showing of the museum’s comprehensive display of enormous, graphic sculptures – and let emphasize “graphic”. I have many pictures, none of which are suitable for posting, and should you want to see any of them, we can set up a meeting behind closed doors.
Third stop: Waterfalls! This stop was the first normal stop, and not that I didn’t enjoy the first to, but it was nice to end the tour with a more conservative sightseeing destination. We spent 40 minutes or so looking around the park area and then headed back to the ship.
And that about sums up my tour in Jeju, should you decide to deem it such. Thanks for reading!
Busan
April 21st
Busan, Korea
I don’t have all that much to share with you for today. I got off the ship a little late, took a shuttle into town and walked around for the time I had left. Busan’s a really nice city, has some underground markets, the usual hustle and bustle of Asian streets up above, and a ton of culture – almost all of which I’m sure I missed. I made a quick climb to the top of a hill where there was a large tower I wanted to check out, and by the time I got back down and grabbed a strange waffle snack (big waffle folded in half, filled with cream, bananas, strawberries and chocolate syrup), it was time to get back on the shuttle for all aboard. And that’d be about it for the day, just another day spent walking through Korea, you know, same old same old. Seeya!
Busan, Korea
I don’t have all that much to share with you for today. I got off the ship a little late, took a shuttle into town and walked around for the time I had left. Busan’s a really nice city, has some underground markets, the usual hustle and bustle of Asian streets up above, and a ton of culture – almost all of which I’m sure I missed. I made a quick climb to the top of a hill where there was a large tower I wanted to check out, and by the time I got back down and grabbed a strange waffle snack (big waffle folded in half, filled with cream, bananas, strawberries and chocolate syrup), it was time to get back on the shuttle for all aboard. And that’d be about it for the day, just another day spent walking through Korea, you know, same old same old. Seeya!
Fukuoka
April 20th
Fukuoka, Japan
Yet again, I’ve (along with everyone else) been grounded to the ship by the Japanese government, meaning I got to spend a lovely day aboard looking out over a city I’ve really enjoyed visiting. They did let 100 people off today though…I wasn’t one of them. But, the day ended up going fairly decently. Some of my friends who organize crew activities had a few events planned during the day, including ping pong and rock climbing, so you can bet I was there. I was the only one to show up for ping pong for about the first 30 minutes, but as I started playing, we got some more people to join in the bracket and soon enough had a full fledged tournament in play. I ended up taking second in this international ping pong tournament (should have been first, and I will blame the paddle I was using for all my short-comings) and got a few wonderful prizes out of it too, all of which are RCCL gear – Whoopee! Then, following the ping pong show down, I headed upstairs for rock climbing, something I haven’t done in forever. It went well and everyone who showed up (like all four of us), had a good time. I ended up having a really nice time on the ship despite being confined to it, so I guess everything worked out fine. But that aside, I better be allowed to get off next time or there’s going to be a mutiny, Arghhh!
Fukuoka, Japan
Yet again, I’ve (along with everyone else) been grounded to the ship by the Japanese government, meaning I got to spend a lovely day aboard looking out over a city I’ve really enjoyed visiting. They did let 100 people off today though…I wasn’t one of them. But, the day ended up going fairly decently. Some of my friends who organize crew activities had a few events planned during the day, including ping pong and rock climbing, so you can bet I was there. I was the only one to show up for ping pong for about the first 30 minutes, but as I started playing, we got some more people to join in the bracket and soon enough had a full fledged tournament in play. I ended up taking second in this international ping pong tournament (should have been first, and I will blame the paddle I was using for all my short-comings) and got a few wonderful prizes out of it too, all of which are RCCL gear – Whoopee! Then, following the ping pong show down, I headed upstairs for rock climbing, something I haven’t done in forever. It went well and everyone who showed up (like all four of us), had a good time. I ended up having a really nice time on the ship despite being confined to it, so I guess everything worked out fine. But that aside, I better be allowed to get off next time or there’s going to be a mutiny, Arghhh!
Shanghai/Sea Day
April 18th/19th
Shanghai/Sea Day
The 18th was my second trip to Shanghai, and another well spent day. I left the ship early that morning to take the shuttle into the city with my friend Terry. After having a Chinese girl on the shuttle write down in Chinese the name of the street we were heading for, we hopped in a cab and made our way to a busy shopping area of the city (Cabs in Shanghai are super cheap, our eight minute ride cost 11 RNB, or about $1.50). It was a lovely area, very modern, and this main street was for pedestrians only. We were looking for a Thai food place someone had recommended, but after an hour of searching and exploring this area, we ended up going to an underground food court sort of place and had a decent lunch. I never mind finding places like that in these areas because there’s a reason they are packed with locals – cheap and good. I had some kind of duck which made a decent lunch. From there, I wanted to branch out a little more, so Terry and I started making our way down side streets, slowly removing ourselves from the shopping area. The first place we came to that caught his attention was a small tea shop, and Terry had a few things he wanted to pick up, so we spent some time in the shop. There was a younger Chinese girl who was running it, and as she tried to explain the different products, we asked to try some of the tea. For the next 45 minutes or so, this girl made us tea the right way (not Lipton bags in a glass thrown in a microwave), and we were able to sample a green, oolong, and jasmine tea. It was neat just hanging out there and watching the girl clean the glasses in the boiling water, strain the leaves, and prepare the tea, exactly the kind of cultural activity I love to do. Terry ended up buying about $40 worth of tea - I bought one tin of jasmine - and we left for the next place that seemed interesting.
That next place happened to be a massage parlor where we both got foot massages. The rooms were really nice and clean, there was no problem with the language barrier, and massage cost us both a total of $6! Yep, a great 50 minute foot massage for $6, while we laid our respective beds watching some weird Chinese TV show. I’ve never had a foot massage before, and considering I’m terribly ticklish, I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work out, but my feet felt great afterwards. And considering how much walking I do, it was probably the best thing I did all day, not to mention the health benefits (reflexology).
From there, we just started walking the city. By this point, we only had a general idea of where we were, but that wasn’t a concern because of the cab situation. Our next stop was a bakery and a café where we could just hang out for a bit and relax. Some areas of Shanghai are incredibly busy, and it’s amazing how the environment changes from tourist central to dirty local streets back to heavy tourism in the matter of blocks. The local streets were great though, you see set-ups at these places that you’d never see in the US, mostly because it’s just plain illegal to do what they do there in the US. We walked down a street where most shops sold animals, probably not as pets. But there’d be huge open fish tanks and buckets of fish, along with hundreds of live turtles stuffed into large bags (similar to those used for oranges), and odd wicker cages, each filled with a gigantic cricket. It was really unbelievable, but I’m sure an intricate part of the society.
And we simply continued walking, till about 5:30 when we thought it might be a good idea to try to get back to the terminal to catch the shuttle back at 6. The shuttles ran each hour, with the last one departing at 7:00, so we figured if we aim for the earlier shuttle, we’d be building in a buffer period…something we ended up needing. It took forever to find an empty cab. Maybe it’s just where we were, but between the heavy traffic and occupied cab’s, it took forever to get a ride back. I did eventually see a cab stopped at a light three lanes over in the middle of traffic that was open, so I made a run for it and he was able to take us to the terminal, after what must have been 30 minutes of traffic (but still only a $3 ride). But everything worked out and we ended up taking the late bus back to the ship, which was no problem.
That night was boat drill and that was about it for the day. I forgot to mention at the last Shanghai, during my boat drill, I had some little kid vomit all over my station, I don’t think the guests were too happy about it (just had to mention it).
Next day was a sea day, so it was the usual with a big band set at night. Thanks for reading and I hope everything’s well after the earthquake I read about in the Midwest!
Shanghai/Sea Day
The 18th was my second trip to Shanghai, and another well spent day. I left the ship early that morning to take the shuttle into the city with my friend Terry. After having a Chinese girl on the shuttle write down in Chinese the name of the street we were heading for, we hopped in a cab and made our way to a busy shopping area of the city (Cabs in Shanghai are super cheap, our eight minute ride cost 11 RNB, or about $1.50). It was a lovely area, very modern, and this main street was for pedestrians only. We were looking for a Thai food place someone had recommended, but after an hour of searching and exploring this area, we ended up going to an underground food court sort of place and had a decent lunch. I never mind finding places like that in these areas because there’s a reason they are packed with locals – cheap and good. I had some kind of duck which made a decent lunch. From there, I wanted to branch out a little more, so Terry and I started making our way down side streets, slowly removing ourselves from the shopping area. The first place we came to that caught his attention was a small tea shop, and Terry had a few things he wanted to pick up, so we spent some time in the shop. There was a younger Chinese girl who was running it, and as she tried to explain the different products, we asked to try some of the tea. For the next 45 minutes or so, this girl made us tea the right way (not Lipton bags in a glass thrown in a microwave), and we were able to sample a green, oolong, and jasmine tea. It was neat just hanging out there and watching the girl clean the glasses in the boiling water, strain the leaves, and prepare the tea, exactly the kind of cultural activity I love to do. Terry ended up buying about $40 worth of tea - I bought one tin of jasmine - and we left for the next place that seemed interesting.
That next place happened to be a massage parlor where we both got foot massages. The rooms were really nice and clean, there was no problem with the language barrier, and massage cost us both a total of $6! Yep, a great 50 minute foot massage for $6, while we laid our respective beds watching some weird Chinese TV show. I’ve never had a foot massage before, and considering I’m terribly ticklish, I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work out, but my feet felt great afterwards. And considering how much walking I do, it was probably the best thing I did all day, not to mention the health benefits (reflexology).
From there, we just started walking the city. By this point, we only had a general idea of where we were, but that wasn’t a concern because of the cab situation. Our next stop was a bakery and a café where we could just hang out for a bit and relax. Some areas of Shanghai are incredibly busy, and it’s amazing how the environment changes from tourist central to dirty local streets back to heavy tourism in the matter of blocks. The local streets were great though, you see set-ups at these places that you’d never see in the US, mostly because it’s just plain illegal to do what they do there in the US. We walked down a street where most shops sold animals, probably not as pets. But there’d be huge open fish tanks and buckets of fish, along with hundreds of live turtles stuffed into large bags (similar to those used for oranges), and odd wicker cages, each filled with a gigantic cricket. It was really unbelievable, but I’m sure an intricate part of the society.
And we simply continued walking, till about 5:30 when we thought it might be a good idea to try to get back to the terminal to catch the shuttle back at 6. The shuttles ran each hour, with the last one departing at 7:00, so we figured if we aim for the earlier shuttle, we’d be building in a buffer period…something we ended up needing. It took forever to find an empty cab. Maybe it’s just where we were, but between the heavy traffic and occupied cab’s, it took forever to get a ride back. I did eventually see a cab stopped at a light three lanes over in the middle of traffic that was open, so I made a run for it and he was able to take us to the terminal, after what must have been 30 minutes of traffic (but still only a $3 ride). But everything worked out and we ended up taking the late bus back to the ship, which was no problem.
That night was boat drill and that was about it for the day. I forgot to mention at the last Shanghai, during my boat drill, I had some little kid vomit all over my station, I don’t think the guests were too happy about it (just had to mention it).
Next day was a sea day, so it was the usual with a big band set at night. Thanks for reading and I hope everything’s well after the earthquake I read about in the Midwest!
Busan and Jeju Island
April 16th/17th
Busan/JeJu Island
Busan, my second time in the port, was terribly uneventful. I was planning on a tennis game with the trombone player in the band, but after we saw the substantial raining outside, we called it off. And really, that day didn’t offer much more than another day to myself to do as I pleased, nothing worth mentioning here.
Jeju Island wasn’t much better as far as I was concerned. We had a rehearsal in the morning for a show the cruise staff wanted to put on, and then the show itself in the afternoon, meaning it wasn’t worth our time to try to get off the ship. That night was the Gaucho’s show and that pretty much sums it up. It weird to think I didn’t get off the ship once that cruise, aside from Shanghai, but it just wasn’t in my favor. Oh well, I got some more reading in. Thanks for reading!
Busan/JeJu Island
Busan, my second time in the port, was terribly uneventful. I was planning on a tennis game with the trombone player in the band, but after we saw the substantial raining outside, we called it off. And really, that day didn’t offer much more than another day to myself to do as I pleased, nothing worth mentioning here.
Jeju Island wasn’t much better as far as I was concerned. We had a rehearsal in the morning for a show the cruise staff wanted to put on, and then the show itself in the afternoon, meaning it wasn’t worth our time to try to get off the ship. That night was the Gaucho’s show and that pretty much sums it up. It weird to think I didn’t get off the ship once that cruise, aside from Shanghai, but it just wasn’t in my favor. Oh well, I got some more reading in. Thanks for reading!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sea Day/Fukuoka
April 14th and 15th
Sea Day/Fukuoka
Surprisingly, there’s not much to report back about either day. The sea day was the usual, with a couple big band set’s that night. But during the sea day we were informed that the crew would be denied shore leave in Japan due to our failure to return all of the shore permits we were given. How the process works in Japan is that as a crew member, you have to pick up an orange card from the office that the Japanese government issues and uses to track how many people get off the ship. Once you return to the ship, you use this pass as a passport to get back on board and are then supposed to return it to the crew office. Due to 30 or so people not returning the passes, despite the announcements, we were all denied leave on the 15th. So that made it real unfortunate when all I could do is go to the back deck and read my book looking out at the city I wasn’t permitted to visit. And then with a day off that night, it meant the entire day had absolutely nothing going on, so I did my reading, internet work, and watched a movie about Jim Morrison that night, and there’s my day in Japan…Hopefully the crew will have learned it’s lesson and this won’t happen again. We’ll see…
Sea Day/Fukuoka
Surprisingly, there’s not much to report back about either day. The sea day was the usual, with a couple big band set’s that night. But during the sea day we were informed that the crew would be denied shore leave in Japan due to our failure to return all of the shore permits we were given. How the process works in Japan is that as a crew member, you have to pick up an orange card from the office that the Japanese government issues and uses to track how many people get off the ship. Once you return to the ship, you use this pass as a passport to get back on board and are then supposed to return it to the crew office. Due to 30 or so people not returning the passes, despite the announcements, we were all denied leave on the 15th. So that made it real unfortunate when all I could do is go to the back deck and read my book looking out at the city I wasn’t permitted to visit. And then with a day off that night, it meant the entire day had absolutely nothing going on, so I did my reading, internet work, and watched a movie about Jim Morrison that night, and there’s my day in Japan…Hopefully the crew will have learned it’s lesson and this won’t happen again. We’ll see…
Shanghai
April 13th
Shanghai
Today was the first day that I actually had a good chance to get off the ship and get into Shanghai. Unlike our other turnaround ports, the actual city is a good distance from where we dock, meaning the only way to get into the city is via a crew shuttle, and that’s what I did at 9:30 this morning.
One of my friends here on the ship had lived in Shanghai/China for 9 years, meaning I wanted to hang with him to experience the city from a local’s perspective. Along with my friend Mario came Andres and the Doctor, the same two guys I saw Danang with a couple weeks ago. We all took a taxi into a part of the city that was more traditional in design and architecture, and was absolutely packed with people. The area was amazing though, and the traditional Chinese buildings were gorgeous, it was a great area to walk through. We quickly found somewhere to eat, and Mario was able to order us something more indicative of the culture…not sweet and sour chicken. We ended up with this great tofu dish topped with what I was informed were rotten eggs buried in soil for 6 months, a bamboo dish, Lotus root, pig foot soup, a wanton soup, and some odd chicken dish. There might have been more, but that’s what comes to mind right now, and let me say, it was all great. Some things might sound a little weird and all, but I really enjoyed all the dishes, which cost all of us about $5 each. At that point, Mario had to head back to the ship, so we continued on with out him and wandered our way in circles through the area.
It was still fun without our Chinese-speaking friend, and Andres managed to buy 4 Rolexes (obviously fake) for $10, and a 4 gig card for his camera for $12 or so. He was proud of himself…but he’s kind of a quirky dude. We all stopped at one point for Haagen-Dazs ice cream, which was really good, but almost as expensive as the entire lunch. And then after a couple hours of wandering and eventually figuring out we walked in a cirle, we caught a cab back to the terminal and got on the 4:00 shuttle back to the ship.
Shanghai is a really cool city though. There’s a lot more I’d love to see and hope I have a few more opportunities to get off the ship for extended periods of time. And that’s about it for the day, thanks!
Shanghai
Today was the first day that I actually had a good chance to get off the ship and get into Shanghai. Unlike our other turnaround ports, the actual city is a good distance from where we dock, meaning the only way to get into the city is via a crew shuttle, and that’s what I did at 9:30 this morning.
One of my friends here on the ship had lived in Shanghai/China for 9 years, meaning I wanted to hang with him to experience the city from a local’s perspective. Along with my friend Mario came Andres and the Doctor, the same two guys I saw Danang with a couple weeks ago. We all took a taxi into a part of the city that was more traditional in design and architecture, and was absolutely packed with people. The area was amazing though, and the traditional Chinese buildings were gorgeous, it was a great area to walk through. We quickly found somewhere to eat, and Mario was able to order us something more indicative of the culture…not sweet and sour chicken. We ended up with this great tofu dish topped with what I was informed were rotten eggs buried in soil for 6 months, a bamboo dish, Lotus root, pig foot soup, a wanton soup, and some odd chicken dish. There might have been more, but that’s what comes to mind right now, and let me say, it was all great. Some things might sound a little weird and all, but I really enjoyed all the dishes, which cost all of us about $5 each. At that point, Mario had to head back to the ship, so we continued on with out him and wandered our way in circles through the area.
It was still fun without our Chinese-speaking friend, and Andres managed to buy 4 Rolexes (obviously fake) for $10, and a 4 gig card for his camera for $12 or so. He was proud of himself…but he’s kind of a quirky dude. We all stopped at one point for Haagen-Dazs ice cream, which was really good, but almost as expensive as the entire lunch. And then after a couple hours of wandering and eventually figuring out we walked in a cirle, we caught a cab back to the terminal and got on the 4:00 shuttle back to the ship.
Shanghai is a really cool city though. There’s a lot more I’d love to see and hope I have a few more opportunities to get off the ship for extended periods of time. And that’s about it for the day, thanks!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Jeju Island
April 12th
Jeju Island, Korea
Today was my second visit to Jeju Island, off the coast of South Korea. This time, however, we tendered at the island and were located way at the south end, so a completely different area than my first visit. The plan for the day, and for every Korea here on out, was to hang out with my Korean speaking friends who seem to know a thing or two about the country. I got off with a group of six, two of whom spoke Korean, and we went off to find some good food. Unfortunately, the port was fairly barren. There was, however, a restaurant very near to where the tenders dropped us off, so that was where we went. This was a usual Korea restaurant, one where you sit on the floor, and one where you cook some of the food on something like a grill sunken into the center of these long rectangular tables. I let me friends do all the talking, and ended up with some absolutely great food. We had two different types of pork that we cooked up at the table, along with some great side dishes to go a long with them. The procedure was to first take a lettuce leaf, put some pork on it, then top that with whatever was on the table, and roll it up into a mini taco and eat. It was really delicious and exactly what I was looking for in traditional Korean food. We also had a great cold soup, of which I have no idea how to even start to explain aside from the fact it was cold and had thin noodles.
When the group finished up at this place, the next thing to do was find a grocery store where two of the people could restock their food supplies. On the ship, there is something called the “slop chest”, a place that opens every so often where you can buy junk food, snacks, toiletries, and whatever else might be essential to cruise life. Two people in the group ran the slop chest and needed to increase the inventory, so we all went to a store where they bought the necessary items, including about 40 cans of Pringles. We were lucky enough to get a ride to the store from someone at the restaurant who made the offer to one of my Korean-speaking friends, so we accepted and he drove us there, very nice of him. Then, we had a completely different guy drive us back to the ship, again for no other reason than to just be nice. We were all very appreciative and accepted the free ride for us and our countless bags of junk food. There wasn’t much more in the city, so we were glad to get back to the ship. I had a couple big band sets that night, which was the last night of the cruise. Usually, everyone is out on the last night, but for whatever reason, there was no one at our sets. And by no one, I mean no more than 4 people at the first set, and 1 guy who slept through the entire second set. I’m serious though, we had one guy in the audience for the entire second set, and he had fallen asleep some time during the first set, and never woke up. He was still sleeping after I’d packed my stuff up and left, and yes, he was still breathing. But how nayone can sleep through a big band set, I’ll never know, but he was a pro.
That about does it for the day though, so I was pleased. It’s nice knowing people that can explain the culture and communicate with the people, this surely won’t be the only time I find such people to leave the ship with. Thanks for reading and have a great one!
Jeju Island, Korea
Today was my second visit to Jeju Island, off the coast of South Korea. This time, however, we tendered at the island and were located way at the south end, so a completely different area than my first visit. The plan for the day, and for every Korea here on out, was to hang out with my Korean speaking friends who seem to know a thing or two about the country. I got off with a group of six, two of whom spoke Korean, and we went off to find some good food. Unfortunately, the port was fairly barren. There was, however, a restaurant very near to where the tenders dropped us off, so that was where we went. This was a usual Korea restaurant, one where you sit on the floor, and one where you cook some of the food on something like a grill sunken into the center of these long rectangular tables. I let me friends do all the talking, and ended up with some absolutely great food. We had two different types of pork that we cooked up at the table, along with some great side dishes to go a long with them. The procedure was to first take a lettuce leaf, put some pork on it, then top that with whatever was on the table, and roll it up into a mini taco and eat. It was really delicious and exactly what I was looking for in traditional Korean food. We also had a great cold soup, of which I have no idea how to even start to explain aside from the fact it was cold and had thin noodles.
When the group finished up at this place, the next thing to do was find a grocery store where two of the people could restock their food supplies. On the ship, there is something called the “slop chest”, a place that opens every so often where you can buy junk food, snacks, toiletries, and whatever else might be essential to cruise life. Two people in the group ran the slop chest and needed to increase the inventory, so we all went to a store where they bought the necessary items, including about 40 cans of Pringles. We were lucky enough to get a ride to the store from someone at the restaurant who made the offer to one of my Korean-speaking friends, so we accepted and he drove us there, very nice of him. Then, we had a completely different guy drive us back to the ship, again for no other reason than to just be nice. We were all very appreciative and accepted the free ride for us and our countless bags of junk food. There wasn’t much more in the city, so we were glad to get back to the ship. I had a couple big band sets that night, which was the last night of the cruise. Usually, everyone is out on the last night, but for whatever reason, there was no one at our sets. And by no one, I mean no more than 4 people at the first set, and 1 guy who slept through the entire second set. I’m serious though, we had one guy in the audience for the entire second set, and he had fallen asleep some time during the first set, and never woke up. He was still sleeping after I’d packed my stuff up and left, and yes, he was still breathing. But how nayone can sleep through a big band set, I’ll never know, but he was a pro.
That about does it for the day though, so I was pleased. It’s nice knowing people that can explain the culture and communicate with the people, this surely won’t be the only time I find such people to leave the ship with. Thanks for reading and have a great one!
Fukuoka
April 11th
Fukuoka, Japan
Today was off to a roaring start…with me sleeping till about 2:00. I woke up in the morning for breakfast, and then started waiting around the room to hear from some friends about getting off the ship, and eventually just went back to bed for what was supposed to be a short while. Maybe not so short after all. Once I woke up and realized I’d missed most of our port time, I hurried off the ship to make the most of what was left of the day, about 3 hours. I decided not to take a bus into the city today just because I wanted to walk, which ended up working out nicely. I walked for a little ways into the city till I got to an interesting area I didn’t get a chance to explore on my last visit. After a quick stop for a $4 bowl of noodles and fried onion and shrimp thing, I continued through the city till I got to this large mall. The mall was composed of several buildings, between which ran an outdoor stream. It was a really nice design allowing for this outdoor area and sort of refuge from the downtown area. They even had a nice little venue for performances, at which I saw a clown do his act.
I eventually made my way out of the mall, got my bearings, and decided it was about time to start walking back. I wanted to walk back in the direction of a shine I saw indicated on my map, and quickly came across it. I went in to this traditional Japanese shrine area and took tons of pictures. It was a really amazing place and indicative of the culture that surrounds the country. However, I got to excited by walking through the shrine that I misjudged my time and left about 30 minutes to walk back to the ship, about 15 short of what I should have left. I knew I’d be cutting it close, but thought I’d be fine to walk back, so I again got my bearings and set a course to get me back. With about 15 minutes before I missed my aboard time, I figured I was at least 20 minutes away and began running. In all reality, I had a nice run back to the ship, maybe not under the best of circumstances, but it was still pleasant to run through Japan. I made it back with about 3 minutes to spare, but only to find there was a gigantic mass of people waiting to get on the ship. I figured that if I waited in line, I’d likely end up being 30 minutes late, and as I saw a different group bypass the line with some special pass, I figured I’d follow them onto the ship as best I could. I got to the front, tried to sneak in, and then made sure to have my crew ID out and pretend I was important enough to not wait. Well, it worked out fine, I got passed the line and on the ship with out the security guards taking my ID card. Can’t say I wasn’t nervous though.
I didn’t have to work tonight, so I guess that’s about it for the day. I still say Japan is probably the coolest country ever and again, can’t wait to return. Thanks!
Fukuoka, Japan
Today was off to a roaring start…with me sleeping till about 2:00. I woke up in the morning for breakfast, and then started waiting around the room to hear from some friends about getting off the ship, and eventually just went back to bed for what was supposed to be a short while. Maybe not so short after all. Once I woke up and realized I’d missed most of our port time, I hurried off the ship to make the most of what was left of the day, about 3 hours. I decided not to take a bus into the city today just because I wanted to walk, which ended up working out nicely. I walked for a little ways into the city till I got to an interesting area I didn’t get a chance to explore on my last visit. After a quick stop for a $4 bowl of noodles and fried onion and shrimp thing, I continued through the city till I got to this large mall. The mall was composed of several buildings, between which ran an outdoor stream. It was a really nice design allowing for this outdoor area and sort of refuge from the downtown area. They even had a nice little venue for performances, at which I saw a clown do his act.
I eventually made my way out of the mall, got my bearings, and decided it was about time to start walking back. I wanted to walk back in the direction of a shine I saw indicated on my map, and quickly came across it. I went in to this traditional Japanese shrine area and took tons of pictures. It was a really amazing place and indicative of the culture that surrounds the country. However, I got to excited by walking through the shrine that I misjudged my time and left about 30 minutes to walk back to the ship, about 15 short of what I should have left. I knew I’d be cutting it close, but thought I’d be fine to walk back, so I again got my bearings and set a course to get me back. With about 15 minutes before I missed my aboard time, I figured I was at least 20 minutes away and began running. In all reality, I had a nice run back to the ship, maybe not under the best of circumstances, but it was still pleasant to run through Japan. I made it back with about 3 minutes to spare, but only to find there was a gigantic mass of people waiting to get on the ship. I figured that if I waited in line, I’d likely end up being 30 minutes late, and as I saw a different group bypass the line with some special pass, I figured I’d follow them onto the ship as best I could. I got to the front, tried to sneak in, and then made sure to have my crew ID out and pretend I was important enough to not wait. Well, it worked out fine, I got passed the line and on the ship with out the security guards taking my ID card. Can’t say I wasn’t nervous though.
I didn’t have to work tonight, so I guess that’s about it for the day. I still say Japan is probably the coolest country ever and again, can’t wait to return. Thanks!
Nagasaki
April 10th
Nagasaki, Japan
Today was my first and only visit to Nagasaki, or so I’ve been told, so I had to make the most of it. I got off the ship with a group of people, which is something I usually don’t do because groups always go awry due to indecision and conflicting interests, but they had an idea of where to go and it seemed better planned than my idea to do the usual, meander through the city. So we got off the ship and made our way to our first stop, Peace Park, which is this large park in the city dedicated to where the US dropped one of the atomic bombs. We got there by taking a tram through the city which turned out to be a really effective and inexpensive way to get there. So the group of eight I was with all left the tram and found our way to the park, which was gorgeous. The cherry blossoms were still in bloom, so that just added to the beauty of it all. The park was filled with statues and memorials along with signs that would describe the events that took place August 9th, 1945. I was able to stand right under where the bomb exploded, and just being in that area where so much had been devoted to the victims was a really powerful experience. After that, we made our way to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. That place was really amazing, not to mention interesting just for the sake of getting the story from a completely different perspective. I always say I disliked history in school more than any other subject, but it’s times like these where you actually get to see it first hand and observe the effects that history strikes you in a more personal way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the museum, so hopefully you can look it up online if you’re interested. But all in all, it was an extremely intense and eye-opening experience for me, and I’m not sure anyone could make it through those exhibits without being affected.
Following our time in Peace Park, we all made our way back to the main part of the city, nearer to the ship, where we’d begin the never ending search for food. After about 45 minutes of searching, certain people got impatient and took off to go find food at a shopping mall, something I’d never do. So the group shrunk to six people and we continued the search for a place that was more of my style – local and authentic. We did eventually come across a place right around the time everywhere else was closing up do to the end of “lunch time”, and ended up being very happy with it. It wasn’t quite as good as the first stop I had made in Fukuoka, but we got to sit at one of those short tables without chairs, and of course, had to take off our shoes.
When we finished eating, the next stop was for some of the group to try their hand at Pachinko, a Japanese casino game. Similar to slots, Pachinko is instead played with hundreds of tiny metal balls that bounce through this machine while a strange “role playing game” sort of scene is displayed on the monitor in front of you. I don’t have the slightest idea how to play, nor did I understand the monitor and the game these people appeared to be playing on it, but there was no question that a ton of steel beads flying like crazy and the flashing lights, beeps and alarms, made for the noisiest and most intense casino environment I’ve ever seen. But for whatever reason, the game is unbelievably popular and you see these casinos all over these Japanese cities, I have no idea why. Some people stayed and played a hyped up game of slots, while me and a couple others walked around a mall for a bit while we waited in safety.
There were a few other things on our to do list after we left that area, and as we navigated our way through the city, we would come to our different points of interest only to find out everything had an entrance fee. This was a usual deterrent, but we did pay a price to get into a Confucian Shrine, which was maybe not as interesting as the price made it seem, but cool none the less. We ended up getting kicked out after a half hour because we came just as they were about to close, so it was unfortunate that we probably didn’t get our money’s worth, but it was still something interesting to see.
Then we all headed back to the ship, most people got back aboard, but me knowing I still had 90 minutes in Japan, had no intention of stopping. After a brief walk along the pier, I set out to climb a large hill near the ship that I swore I saw an observatory at the top of. The hill was scattered with houses most of the way up, meaning I could navigate the streets to near the top, but the last 400 meters took me through these old neighbor hoods with traditional Japanese houses, and then up countless stairs that slithered it’s way through the dense foliage at the top. When I finally reached to summit, totally out of breath, I found I was right with my observatory sighting and spent the next 15 minutes sitting up there looking over Nagasaki. It was perfect. I was quickly running out of time though and had to make the 1km journey back down the hill and then walk a reasonable distance back to the ship within about an hour, but did it with out a problem. When I returned, they actually had a school band playing marches outside the ship, something that I was actually able to hear at the top of the hill and on the trip down it as well (something I pretended was my victory music for making it to the top).
I had a late set that night, but that was about it for the day then. It was a great day and I remain sold that Japan is probably the coolest country ever. I can’t wait for tomorrow when I get back to Fukuoka. Seeya!
Nagasaki, Japan
Today was my first and only visit to Nagasaki, or so I’ve been told, so I had to make the most of it. I got off the ship with a group of people, which is something I usually don’t do because groups always go awry due to indecision and conflicting interests, but they had an idea of where to go and it seemed better planned than my idea to do the usual, meander through the city. So we got off the ship and made our way to our first stop, Peace Park, which is this large park in the city dedicated to where the US dropped one of the atomic bombs. We got there by taking a tram through the city which turned out to be a really effective and inexpensive way to get there. So the group of eight I was with all left the tram and found our way to the park, which was gorgeous. The cherry blossoms were still in bloom, so that just added to the beauty of it all. The park was filled with statues and memorials along with signs that would describe the events that took place August 9th, 1945. I was able to stand right under where the bomb exploded, and just being in that area where so much had been devoted to the victims was a really powerful experience. After that, we made our way to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. That place was really amazing, not to mention interesting just for the sake of getting the story from a completely different perspective. I always say I disliked history in school more than any other subject, but it’s times like these where you actually get to see it first hand and observe the effects that history strikes you in a more personal way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the museum, so hopefully you can look it up online if you’re interested. But all in all, it was an extremely intense and eye-opening experience for me, and I’m not sure anyone could make it through those exhibits without being affected.
Following our time in Peace Park, we all made our way back to the main part of the city, nearer to the ship, where we’d begin the never ending search for food. After about 45 minutes of searching, certain people got impatient and took off to go find food at a shopping mall, something I’d never do. So the group shrunk to six people and we continued the search for a place that was more of my style – local and authentic. We did eventually come across a place right around the time everywhere else was closing up do to the end of “lunch time”, and ended up being very happy with it. It wasn’t quite as good as the first stop I had made in Fukuoka, but we got to sit at one of those short tables without chairs, and of course, had to take off our shoes.
When we finished eating, the next stop was for some of the group to try their hand at Pachinko, a Japanese casino game. Similar to slots, Pachinko is instead played with hundreds of tiny metal balls that bounce through this machine while a strange “role playing game” sort of scene is displayed on the monitor in front of you. I don’t have the slightest idea how to play, nor did I understand the monitor and the game these people appeared to be playing on it, but there was no question that a ton of steel beads flying like crazy and the flashing lights, beeps and alarms, made for the noisiest and most intense casino environment I’ve ever seen. But for whatever reason, the game is unbelievably popular and you see these casinos all over these Japanese cities, I have no idea why. Some people stayed and played a hyped up game of slots, while me and a couple others walked around a mall for a bit while we waited in safety.
There were a few other things on our to do list after we left that area, and as we navigated our way through the city, we would come to our different points of interest only to find out everything had an entrance fee. This was a usual deterrent, but we did pay a price to get into a Confucian Shrine, which was maybe not as interesting as the price made it seem, but cool none the less. We ended up getting kicked out after a half hour because we came just as they were about to close, so it was unfortunate that we probably didn’t get our money’s worth, but it was still something interesting to see.
Then we all headed back to the ship, most people got back aboard, but me knowing I still had 90 minutes in Japan, had no intention of stopping. After a brief walk along the pier, I set out to climb a large hill near the ship that I swore I saw an observatory at the top of. The hill was scattered with houses most of the way up, meaning I could navigate the streets to near the top, but the last 400 meters took me through these old neighbor hoods with traditional Japanese houses, and then up countless stairs that slithered it’s way through the dense foliage at the top. When I finally reached to summit, totally out of breath, I found I was right with my observatory sighting and spent the next 15 minutes sitting up there looking over Nagasaki. It was perfect. I was quickly running out of time though and had to make the 1km journey back down the hill and then walk a reasonable distance back to the ship within about an hour, but did it with out a problem. When I returned, they actually had a school band playing marches outside the ship, something that I was actually able to hear at the top of the hill and on the trip down it as well (something I pretended was my victory music for making it to the top).
I had a late set that night, but that was about it for the day then. It was a great day and I remain sold that Japan is probably the coolest country ever. I can’t wait for tomorrow when I get back to Fukuoka. Seeya!
Sae Day
April 9th
Sea Day
It was the usual for today, reading. I had the day off, so I had the full day to do whatever I wanted, so that was nice, I guess, if I wasn’t cooped up in a ship. But I did finish two of my books today, including my Andrew Carnegie Biography, so I’m really excited that I’ve been making so much progress with reading. Since leaving March 15th, I’ve read about 1500 pages, probably more than I’ve read during any single semester at school (granted, I was in music school, but still, it’s a lot by my standards). Unfortunately, this means I’m running out of books to read, so I’ll be stopping in at the next bookstore I come across for sure. But, I do have to reread most of these books to really absorb what I’m trying to get out of them, so I’m sure I’ll still be kept busy. Anyways, that’s it for another day at sea, hope you all had a great day on land!
Sea Day
It was the usual for today, reading. I had the day off, so I had the full day to do whatever I wanted, so that was nice, I guess, if I wasn’t cooped up in a ship. But I did finish two of my books today, including my Andrew Carnegie Biography, so I’m really excited that I’ve been making so much progress with reading. Since leaving March 15th, I’ve read about 1500 pages, probably more than I’ve read during any single semester at school (granted, I was in music school, but still, it’s a lot by my standards). Unfortunately, this means I’m running out of books to read, so I’ll be stopping in at the next bookstore I come across for sure. But, I do have to reread most of these books to really absorb what I’m trying to get out of them, so I’m sure I’ll still be kept busy. Anyways, that’s it for another day at sea, hope you all had a great day on land!
Shanghai
April 8th
Shanghai
Today was another turn around day in Shanghai, but similar to the last one, we ended up running way late. First, we got into port many hours behind schedule, I have no idea why, and then didn’t end up leaving until late that night. For whatever reason, we’re having a really hard time with this port, probably because we’re 90 minutes outside of the city. But anyways, do to the lateness, I wasn’t even going to try getting off the ship and taking the crew shuttle into the city, there just wasn’t enough time. So I stayed on board and did the usual on the ship till the shows that night. I showed up to play the first show that night at 8:30, like scheduled, but was informed about 5 minutes till show time that it was cancelled because no one was in the audience, we still hadn’t gotten the passengers on the ship! So that was kind of strange considering I’ve never had a show cancelled like that before, and on top of that, the passenger drill that had been pushed back to right after the first show also got cancelled, another first for me. The next show at 10:30 was still on though, and we played it to a very responsive audience. Now this cruise is somewhat different because it’s been chartered out to a Chinese cosmetics company, meaning there’s no one on the ship but this group of people, about 1500 of them, most of which don’t speak English. So the language barrier made that show really interesting for the guest entertainer that night – an Argentinean doing a show in English for a Chinese speaking crowd. I don’t know if I’ve explained the show yet, but I’ll explain it again anyways. His act, Los Gauchos, is an act that dances traditional Argentinean dances, plays drums, crack whips, and does an amazing dance that includes swinging around plastic balls on a rope. There’s a point toward the end of the show where the main guy invites everyone on stage up to the front to take a picture. Usually, this takes a minute or so while the guest take pictures from their seats, it’s kind of awkward, but it’s always really funny that he interrupts the show to bring everyone up for pictures. Well, bad mistake when your crowd is a photo happy group of Chinese who all kind of know each other. For what must have been close to ten minutes, we had dozens of guest coming on stage taking pictures with the act, with the individual band members, with the girl dancers of the act, everything, and they wouldn’t stop bombarding the stage. He probably should have known something like that might happen from when we posed for the first picture and literally everyone had their cameras. I’ve never seen so many cameras in my life pointed at me before, it was kind of intimidating having the Chinese paparazzi after us. But it ended up lasting forever, so long in fact everyone who didn’t have cameras or those who were just impatient, actually left the theater thinking the show was over. After we finally got every one off the stage, we played the last couple tunes and finished the show, but I think the Andres (the main guy) is going to think twice now about having his picture session during each show. And then that’s about it for the night, but I just had to write about that show, it was too funny for all of us on stage to not make it on the blog.
The cruise did eventually sail, but our itinerary has been completely changed accommodating for the late departure, meaning tomorrow is going to be a sea day with an early boat drill to make up for the one we missed tonight. Otherwise, that’s about it. Thanks!
Shanghai
Today was another turn around day in Shanghai, but similar to the last one, we ended up running way late. First, we got into port many hours behind schedule, I have no idea why, and then didn’t end up leaving until late that night. For whatever reason, we’re having a really hard time with this port, probably because we’re 90 minutes outside of the city. But anyways, do to the lateness, I wasn’t even going to try getting off the ship and taking the crew shuttle into the city, there just wasn’t enough time. So I stayed on board and did the usual on the ship till the shows that night. I showed up to play the first show that night at 8:30, like scheduled, but was informed about 5 minutes till show time that it was cancelled because no one was in the audience, we still hadn’t gotten the passengers on the ship! So that was kind of strange considering I’ve never had a show cancelled like that before, and on top of that, the passenger drill that had been pushed back to right after the first show also got cancelled, another first for me. The next show at 10:30 was still on though, and we played it to a very responsive audience. Now this cruise is somewhat different because it’s been chartered out to a Chinese cosmetics company, meaning there’s no one on the ship but this group of people, about 1500 of them, most of which don’t speak English. So the language barrier made that show really interesting for the guest entertainer that night – an Argentinean doing a show in English for a Chinese speaking crowd. I don’t know if I’ve explained the show yet, but I’ll explain it again anyways. His act, Los Gauchos, is an act that dances traditional Argentinean dances, plays drums, crack whips, and does an amazing dance that includes swinging around plastic balls on a rope. There’s a point toward the end of the show where the main guy invites everyone on stage up to the front to take a picture. Usually, this takes a minute or so while the guest take pictures from their seats, it’s kind of awkward, but it’s always really funny that he interrupts the show to bring everyone up for pictures. Well, bad mistake when your crowd is a photo happy group of Chinese who all kind of know each other. For what must have been close to ten minutes, we had dozens of guest coming on stage taking pictures with the act, with the individual band members, with the girl dancers of the act, everything, and they wouldn’t stop bombarding the stage. He probably should have known something like that might happen from when we posed for the first picture and literally everyone had their cameras. I’ve never seen so many cameras in my life pointed at me before, it was kind of intimidating having the Chinese paparazzi after us. But it ended up lasting forever, so long in fact everyone who didn’t have cameras or those who were just impatient, actually left the theater thinking the show was over. After we finally got every one off the stage, we played the last couple tunes and finished the show, but I think the Andres (the main guy) is going to think twice now about having his picture session during each show. And then that’s about it for the night, but I just had to write about that show, it was too funny for all of us on stage to not make it on the blog.
The cruise did eventually sail, but our itinerary has been completely changed accommodating for the late departure, meaning tomorrow is going to be a sea day with an early boat drill to make up for the one we missed tonight. Otherwise, that’s about it. Thanks!
Jeju Island
April 7th
Jeju, South Korea
Today was another Korean port, fairly similar to where I was yesterday in Pusan. And like in Pusan, I spent a few hours just walking the streets seeing what there is to see. It was an interesting city with some nicely hidden treasures, like really cool markets and underground shopping centers, but wasn’t much to look at most of the time on the surface. After walking for a while, I ran into a few friends in town and walked with them back to the ship making stops here and there, nothing especially exciting to list here though. I always find it really difficult in these ports to do anything just because of the language barrier, I do have a friend who speaks Korean on the ship, so I’m going to make sure to get off with that group next time.
I got back to the ship, did some reading, nap, and a couple of shows, followed by more reading, and that’s about it. Thanks and have a great day!
Jeju, South Korea
Today was another Korean port, fairly similar to where I was yesterday in Pusan. And like in Pusan, I spent a few hours just walking the streets seeing what there is to see. It was an interesting city with some nicely hidden treasures, like really cool markets and underground shopping centers, but wasn’t much to look at most of the time on the surface. After walking for a while, I ran into a few friends in town and walked with them back to the ship making stops here and there, nothing especially exciting to list here though. I always find it really difficult in these ports to do anything just because of the language barrier, I do have a friend who speaks Korean on the ship, so I’m going to make sure to get off with that group next time.
I got back to the ship, did some reading, nap, and a couple of shows, followed by more reading, and that’s about it. Thanks and have a great day!
Pusan
April 6th
Pusan, South Korea
Today was nice, not as exciting as yesterday, but still very enjoyable. After sleeping for 12 hours (which I didn’t want to do, it just happened), I got off the ship around 1:00 and figured I’d walk around the city till all aboard at 4:15. Pusan was nice because like many European ports I visited, was built on a hill, meaning I feel more comfortable walking large distances away from the ship because I cane always get back to the water by walking down the hill. So I did just that, walked for a full 3 hours, all around the mountain the city was built on and as high as I could, and through as many areas as possible. I saw some really great, authentic areas of the city where few tourists every wander into, and picked up some good pics and great exercise. There wasn’t anything especially eventful about the walk, just a great time setting my own course as I went along while hoping to be able to figure out a course back to the ship as I went along. Toward the end, after I’d established exactly where I was again, I found a place to eat, pointed to a picture of something, and ordered a really nice omelet thing filled with rice and topped with a great sauce, all for $3.50, which was fine by me. I also picked up a 2 liter bottle of water some time before for less than a dollar, bringing my total for the day to about $4.50, a great deal for the three hours in Korea! Anyways, I made it back to the ship with about 15 minutes to spare, and got back aboard to enjoy yet another day off. This is a job? Yeah, best one ever! Anyways, I did some more reading and hit the gym, and that was about it for the day. Thanks!
Pusan, South Korea
Today was nice, not as exciting as yesterday, but still very enjoyable. After sleeping for 12 hours (which I didn’t want to do, it just happened), I got off the ship around 1:00 and figured I’d walk around the city till all aboard at 4:15. Pusan was nice because like many European ports I visited, was built on a hill, meaning I feel more comfortable walking large distances away from the ship because I cane always get back to the water by walking down the hill. So I did just that, walked for a full 3 hours, all around the mountain the city was built on and as high as I could, and through as many areas as possible. I saw some really great, authentic areas of the city where few tourists every wander into, and picked up some good pics and great exercise. There wasn’t anything especially eventful about the walk, just a great time setting my own course as I went along while hoping to be able to figure out a course back to the ship as I went along. Toward the end, after I’d established exactly where I was again, I found a place to eat, pointed to a picture of something, and ordered a really nice omelet thing filled with rice and topped with a great sauce, all for $3.50, which was fine by me. I also picked up a 2 liter bottle of water some time before for less than a dollar, bringing my total for the day to about $4.50, a great deal for the three hours in Korea! Anyways, I made it back to the ship with about 15 minutes to spare, and got back aboard to enjoy yet another day off. This is a job? Yeah, best one ever! Anyways, I did some more reading and hit the gym, and that was about it for the day. Thanks!
Fukuoka
April 5th
Fukuoka, Japan
Unlike my last post, I’ll actually write something for today simply because Japan rocks! So here’s the story:
It starts off with me and two of my friends (Terry, a singer from Tennessee, and Jason, trumpet player from North Carolina) getting off the ship to start our day in Japan. After a quick immigration process and a slight delay, we got off the ship to change some money and catch the first bus into the central area of Fukuoka. Fukuoka is a very developed city, much more like that of the big cities in the US, though not too many skyscrapers. The first thing on the to-do list was find a post office so that I could send my taxes home, something that we found rather quickly. After that, Terry started asking around about where we could get some sushi, seeing as we were in Japan. Oddly enough though, every local we asked about sushi (non of which spoke any English) looked at us terribly confused. Is sushi just not a word that they use in Japan? Eventually they got an idea about what we were talking about, or faked it, and sort of pointed us in a direction. So we set off in some arbitrary direction hoping that we could find something. After a ways of wandering down the main road and seeing the building start to shrink down in size, I decided to take a right down the first side street I could find in hopes that the more authentic restaurants would be those not located in the center of town, a thought that was quickly confirmed. Suddenly there was a large collection of really good looking restaurants with signs out front completely written in Japanese. The one thing we could read, however, was the operating hours, which quite successfully communicated the places were all closed. So we continued to navigate our way through the streets till we eventually did come across a place that was open and looked to serve sushi (as indicated by the guy behind the counter filleting/slicing up very fresh looking fish). We sat down (in this place filled with Japanese guys in suits, we felt terribly underdressed in jeans), the waitress quickly came over and presented the menus, and quickly realized that we had no idea about what the menus, and considering there were no pictures, we were kind of stuck. She pointed to what seemed to be the special of the day, and quickly ran towards the kitchen to show us what she wanted us to order. It looked great, so that’s what we did, three orders of the mystery special. We were all brought tea, and soon after received our meals. It’s kind of difficult to explain what some of this stuff was seeing as I really just didn’t know, but it was phenomenal. The dish she showed us was a bowl of rice with huge chunks of fish (our sushi) on top. I’m sure there’s a better term for it, but we’ll just call them tasty fish chunks. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was definitely raw, and it was certainly great. With it came a soup with a couple clams at the bottom, which was great. And then some tempura, or fried shrimp/vegetables, also great, and then a couple other side dishes that I just really can’t identify. And for this really great meal prepared by a sushi guy who seemed to know what he was doing…$7!! This was something that you couldn’t get in the states for less than $25, and it was so good, so we totally lucked out on that place. Then, Terry had the idea at the end to order Saki (sp?), a Japanese rice wine. After Terry’s request, they brought it out hot, we poured it into these shot-like glasses, and drank this surprisingly strong drink, much more like hard alcohol than any wine I’ve ever had. But anyways, just another part of the culture I get to check off my list.
After leaving, we just started walking around, hoping to run into something cool, which in a place like this is inevitable. Some of these shops we walked through were absolutely unbelievable, especially the electronics places. I mean wow, these places are like Best Buy on crack, I was instantly overwhelmed. There were a ton of other places that were similarly exciting, but I’ll skip ahead to the fun part.
After running into some friends on the street, they pointed my group in the direction of a castle they had come across, telling us to follow the cherry blossoms. It is cherry blossom season in Japan, meaning these trees just explode with gorgeous white and pink flowers, making for some really beautiful sights. So we set off for this castle and followed the cherry blossoms up into this fort-like area. I’m still not sure if this was supposed to be the castle we were told about, but there’s no doubt that this is where the blossoms lead us. The fortress was set up to slowly spiral up as you walked around it, and by the time you got to the top you could really see the concentration of the cherry blossoms while looking out upon a seamless canopy of white and pink flowers. The grounds of this area through our entire hike up to the top were packed with groups of people sitting on large blue tarps having extravagant picnics with BBQ’s, sushi, fruits, and drinks, and many of which would smile and wave as we took pictures, drunk out of their minds on Saki no doubt. Right before reaching the top, a group invited one of my friends over to join them while he was taking a picture, which he declined, and then told me of when we reached the top. Well, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no way I’m passing up an invite to join a group of drunk Japanese people with food, so we walked back down, took some more pictures, and again got invited to join them, and we did. After taking off our shoes and finding a place on the tarp among the 20 or so people, we started to attempt communication. Luckily, there was one guy who spoke enough English to talk with us and translate for the rest of the group, so while everyone screamed Japanese at us and through food and drink our way, our older friend could provide some communication medium. He introduced us to everyone and let them know we were all musicians, and after everyone heard my one friend was a singer, they instantly wanted him to sing something. Well, on their request, we sang stuff like the national anthem, Frank Sinatra, Jingle bells (which they had a Japanese version for), and Row Row Row your boat, the American songbook. We would trade back and forth, and after we sang, they’d sing a Japanese tune. One of which was traditional to sumo wrestling, another of which required everyone to stand up and walk around in a circle while doing some choreography that everyone seemed to know but us. It was kind of weird, being three American’s among 20 some Japanese singing songs and dancing in this circle, but at the same time exactly what I was hoping for when we joined them. We stayed for 45 minutes or so, drinking, eating peanuts and sashimi, singing and trying to communicate, it was amazing.
After a few pictures, exchange of business cards to email the pics to, and avoiding the older women trying to kiss us, we headed out for what ever came next. I first wanted to make it back to the main road to centralize our location before heading out again, and then started looking for a good noodle place for an early dinner. I was so excited the whole day by the culture that I ate a ton just because I needed to take advantage of being there. We did find a noodle place, and though not as amazing as the first joint we stopped at, we still had a delicious noodle soup that no one could finish for $5, this time ordered by pointing to a picture. We left there, by which time my friends wanted to head back to the ship. But me, being the seize the day kind of guy, had no intent of leaving an hour sooner than I had to, so I waited with them till they caught the bus back and headed out on my own adventure, now in the dark. Though it wasn’t as eventful as the earlier part of the day, I had a great walk along the rivers cutting though the city and checking out some really hip places I’d love to come back to next time we’re in town. Also, in certain areas of town, the sidewalks fill up with covered stands selling food, stuff I’d love to hit up next time, but all things I had to pass on just for the sake of all the food I’d already eaten. I then made my way back to the bus stop, ran into some friends also waitin for the bus, and made it back to the ship to enjoy a night off.
Well, I guess that’s about it, busy day, right? I love having long port days, and Fukuoka was absolutely amazing to spend the day in, I can’t wait to come back in 5 days or so. If I get a chance, I’ll try to post a few pics on my blog and make sure there’s a link to them, but the internet search hasn’t been going so well, but we’ll see. Anyways, thanks for reading the long post and have a great one!
Fukuoka, Japan
Unlike my last post, I’ll actually write something for today simply because Japan rocks! So here’s the story:
It starts off with me and two of my friends (Terry, a singer from Tennessee, and Jason, trumpet player from North Carolina) getting off the ship to start our day in Japan. After a quick immigration process and a slight delay, we got off the ship to change some money and catch the first bus into the central area of Fukuoka. Fukuoka is a very developed city, much more like that of the big cities in the US, though not too many skyscrapers. The first thing on the to-do list was find a post office so that I could send my taxes home, something that we found rather quickly. After that, Terry started asking around about where we could get some sushi, seeing as we were in Japan. Oddly enough though, every local we asked about sushi (non of which spoke any English) looked at us terribly confused. Is sushi just not a word that they use in Japan? Eventually they got an idea about what we were talking about, or faked it, and sort of pointed us in a direction. So we set off in some arbitrary direction hoping that we could find something. After a ways of wandering down the main road and seeing the building start to shrink down in size, I decided to take a right down the first side street I could find in hopes that the more authentic restaurants would be those not located in the center of town, a thought that was quickly confirmed. Suddenly there was a large collection of really good looking restaurants with signs out front completely written in Japanese. The one thing we could read, however, was the operating hours, which quite successfully communicated the places were all closed. So we continued to navigate our way through the streets till we eventually did come across a place that was open and looked to serve sushi (as indicated by the guy behind the counter filleting/slicing up very fresh looking fish). We sat down (in this place filled with Japanese guys in suits, we felt terribly underdressed in jeans), the waitress quickly came over and presented the menus, and quickly realized that we had no idea about what the menus, and considering there were no pictures, we were kind of stuck. She pointed to what seemed to be the special of the day, and quickly ran towards the kitchen to show us what she wanted us to order. It looked great, so that’s what we did, three orders of the mystery special. We were all brought tea, and soon after received our meals. It’s kind of difficult to explain what some of this stuff was seeing as I really just didn’t know, but it was phenomenal. The dish she showed us was a bowl of rice with huge chunks of fish (our sushi) on top. I’m sure there’s a better term for it, but we’ll just call them tasty fish chunks. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was definitely raw, and it was certainly great. With it came a soup with a couple clams at the bottom, which was great. And then some tempura, or fried shrimp/vegetables, also great, and then a couple other side dishes that I just really can’t identify. And for this really great meal prepared by a sushi guy who seemed to know what he was doing…$7!! This was something that you couldn’t get in the states for less than $25, and it was so good, so we totally lucked out on that place. Then, Terry had the idea at the end to order Saki (sp?), a Japanese rice wine. After Terry’s request, they brought it out hot, we poured it into these shot-like glasses, and drank this surprisingly strong drink, much more like hard alcohol than any wine I’ve ever had. But anyways, just another part of the culture I get to check off my list.
After leaving, we just started walking around, hoping to run into something cool, which in a place like this is inevitable. Some of these shops we walked through were absolutely unbelievable, especially the electronics places. I mean wow, these places are like Best Buy on crack, I was instantly overwhelmed. There were a ton of other places that were similarly exciting, but I’ll skip ahead to the fun part.
After running into some friends on the street, they pointed my group in the direction of a castle they had come across, telling us to follow the cherry blossoms. It is cherry blossom season in Japan, meaning these trees just explode with gorgeous white and pink flowers, making for some really beautiful sights. So we set off for this castle and followed the cherry blossoms up into this fort-like area. I’m still not sure if this was supposed to be the castle we were told about, but there’s no doubt that this is where the blossoms lead us. The fortress was set up to slowly spiral up as you walked around it, and by the time you got to the top you could really see the concentration of the cherry blossoms while looking out upon a seamless canopy of white and pink flowers. The grounds of this area through our entire hike up to the top were packed with groups of people sitting on large blue tarps having extravagant picnics with BBQ’s, sushi, fruits, and drinks, and many of which would smile and wave as we took pictures, drunk out of their minds on Saki no doubt. Right before reaching the top, a group invited one of my friends over to join them while he was taking a picture, which he declined, and then told me of when we reached the top. Well, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no way I’m passing up an invite to join a group of drunk Japanese people with food, so we walked back down, took some more pictures, and again got invited to join them, and we did. After taking off our shoes and finding a place on the tarp among the 20 or so people, we started to attempt communication. Luckily, there was one guy who spoke enough English to talk with us and translate for the rest of the group, so while everyone screamed Japanese at us and through food and drink our way, our older friend could provide some communication medium. He introduced us to everyone and let them know we were all musicians, and after everyone heard my one friend was a singer, they instantly wanted him to sing something. Well, on their request, we sang stuff like the national anthem, Frank Sinatra, Jingle bells (which they had a Japanese version for), and Row Row Row your boat, the American songbook. We would trade back and forth, and after we sang, they’d sing a Japanese tune. One of which was traditional to sumo wrestling, another of which required everyone to stand up and walk around in a circle while doing some choreography that everyone seemed to know but us. It was kind of weird, being three American’s among 20 some Japanese singing songs and dancing in this circle, but at the same time exactly what I was hoping for when we joined them. We stayed for 45 minutes or so, drinking, eating peanuts and sashimi, singing and trying to communicate, it was amazing.
After a few pictures, exchange of business cards to email the pics to, and avoiding the older women trying to kiss us, we headed out for what ever came next. I first wanted to make it back to the main road to centralize our location before heading out again, and then started looking for a good noodle place for an early dinner. I was so excited the whole day by the culture that I ate a ton just because I needed to take advantage of being there. We did find a noodle place, and though not as amazing as the first joint we stopped at, we still had a delicious noodle soup that no one could finish for $5, this time ordered by pointing to a picture. We left there, by which time my friends wanted to head back to the ship. But me, being the seize the day kind of guy, had no intent of leaving an hour sooner than I had to, so I waited with them till they caught the bus back and headed out on my own adventure, now in the dark. Though it wasn’t as eventful as the earlier part of the day, I had a great walk along the rivers cutting though the city and checking out some really hip places I’d love to come back to next time we’re in town. Also, in certain areas of town, the sidewalks fill up with covered stands selling food, stuff I’d love to hit up next time, but all things I had to pass on just for the sake of all the food I’d already eaten. I then made my way back to the bus stop, ran into some friends also waitin for the bus, and made it back to the ship to enjoy a night off.
Well, I guess that’s about it, busy day, right? I love having long port days, and Fukuoka was absolutely amazing to spend the day in, I can’t wait to come back in 5 days or so. If I get a chance, I’ll try to post a few pics on my blog and make sure there’s a link to them, but the internet search hasn’t been going so well, but we’ll see. Anyways, thanks for reading the long post and have a great one!
Sea Day
April 4th
Sea Day
Sea day, nothing much, a lot of reading, big band set, go to sleep. ‘nuf said.
Sea Day
Sea day, nothing much, a lot of reading, big band set, go to sleep. ‘nuf said.
Hong Kong/Sea Day/ Shanghai
April 1st – 3rd
Hong Kong/Sea Day/Shanghai
The first was my last visit to Hong Kong before changing home ports further north to Shanghai. Unfortunately, my last day wasn’t anything spectacular. To begin, the sail away time was about and hour sooner, meaning I had less time in port. But, I didn’t think it’d be that much of a problem as I was simply hoping to get online, do my needed work, and get back to the ship. After talking to some of my friends, someone told me that there was an area in the mall connected to the terminal that had free WiFi, so I got off the ship in the hopes of locating this hot spot…which didn’t work out so well. I walked all through the mall looking for areas, non of which had WiFi and/or were free. Well, me being determined to save that extra dollar, wouldn’t settle for anything less than free internet, so I decided to go to my usual place at the mall across the river.
It was kind of a crummy day, cold and foggy, slight rain from time to time, and I’m crossing the river in a T-shirt. It wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t care, I was on my internet mission. So I got to the mall to sit down in the same café I always go to for internet, open my computer, get on the signal, and find that it’s taking 10 minutes to load my internet page. That wasn’t going to do, so I packed up and figured I could find another place in this huge mall. The place where I always stopped was the first place I tried on my first visit to Hong Kong, so I figured if I could get lucky on the first attempt in a totally unfamiliar place, I’ve got to be able to find somewhere if I actually try, right? Well, there was nothing. I walked around that mall for hours, and nothing had wireless, and the places that did were packed and I wasn’t going to force my way in to steal internet. It got to the point where I was running out of time and decided to just head back to the ship and try the other mall once more. Again, nothing really seemed to turn up. But then, right before I got on the ship again, I tried a place where I saw some other people sitting with their computers (a place I had tried maybe 3 hours before), and this time it worked! So for the last 30 minutes before I had to get back on the ship, I caught up with all these posts, took care of my bills, did my emails, and was able to do most everything I needed to. I was kind of mad that it took so long before I could get online anywhere, but hey, at least it worked out in the end. Then I got back on the ship, played the welcome aboard shows, and that’s about it.
The 2nd was nothing special, most of the day was spent reading. I’ve passed my halfway point in my 800 Andrew Carnegie Biography I bought last Hong Kong, so that gets me excited. Otherwise, I just had two big band sets that night, and that’s about it.
The 3rd will be about equally eventful as the 2nd. Though we’re in Shanghai today, the actual city is so far away that it’s not worth getting off the ship unless you can make a day of it, which I can’t today. I’m just hanging around right now doing my reading and working on my tax forms to send back home. I have the day off today, aside from boat drill, so I’ll just try to be productive on my own today. We start cruises today to Japan and Korea though, so I’m really excited for that. Anyways, I’ll keep up writing as long as you keep up reading, thanks!
Hong Kong/Sea Day/Shanghai
The first was my last visit to Hong Kong before changing home ports further north to Shanghai. Unfortunately, my last day wasn’t anything spectacular. To begin, the sail away time was about and hour sooner, meaning I had less time in port. But, I didn’t think it’d be that much of a problem as I was simply hoping to get online, do my needed work, and get back to the ship. After talking to some of my friends, someone told me that there was an area in the mall connected to the terminal that had free WiFi, so I got off the ship in the hopes of locating this hot spot…which didn’t work out so well. I walked all through the mall looking for areas, non of which had WiFi and/or were free. Well, me being determined to save that extra dollar, wouldn’t settle for anything less than free internet, so I decided to go to my usual place at the mall across the river.
It was kind of a crummy day, cold and foggy, slight rain from time to time, and I’m crossing the river in a T-shirt. It wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t care, I was on my internet mission. So I got to the mall to sit down in the same café I always go to for internet, open my computer, get on the signal, and find that it’s taking 10 minutes to load my internet page. That wasn’t going to do, so I packed up and figured I could find another place in this huge mall. The place where I always stopped was the first place I tried on my first visit to Hong Kong, so I figured if I could get lucky on the first attempt in a totally unfamiliar place, I’ve got to be able to find somewhere if I actually try, right? Well, there was nothing. I walked around that mall for hours, and nothing had wireless, and the places that did were packed and I wasn’t going to force my way in to steal internet. It got to the point where I was running out of time and decided to just head back to the ship and try the other mall once more. Again, nothing really seemed to turn up. But then, right before I got on the ship again, I tried a place where I saw some other people sitting with their computers (a place I had tried maybe 3 hours before), and this time it worked! So for the last 30 minutes before I had to get back on the ship, I caught up with all these posts, took care of my bills, did my emails, and was able to do most everything I needed to. I was kind of mad that it took so long before I could get online anywhere, but hey, at least it worked out in the end. Then I got back on the ship, played the welcome aboard shows, and that’s about it.
The 2nd was nothing special, most of the day was spent reading. I’ve passed my halfway point in my 800 Andrew Carnegie Biography I bought last Hong Kong, so that gets me excited. Otherwise, I just had two big band sets that night, and that’s about it.
The 3rd will be about equally eventful as the 2nd. Though we’re in Shanghai today, the actual city is so far away that it’s not worth getting off the ship unless you can make a day of it, which I can’t today. I’m just hanging around right now doing my reading and working on my tax forms to send back home. I have the day off today, aside from boat drill, so I’ll just try to be productive on my own today. We start cruises today to Japan and Korea though, so I’m really excited for that. Anyways, I’ll keep up writing as long as you keep up reading, thanks!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Sanya
March 31st
Sanya China
Well, today didn’t work out quite as planned. I was hoping to get on a tour today, and after getting the call the previous night confirming the tour that was to take me to all these Buddhist temples, I had to turn it down for a lame rehearsal on a show I’ve played multiple times now. So I was really bummed about that seeing as I’d have really liked that learning experience, and especially considering that my day was foiled by a less than spectacular string duo. After the 11:00 rehearsal, I did manage to get off the ship for a moment, and had just enough time to go running. The ship is docked on what I believe is a man made island specifically for cruise ships, and its racetrack shape along with almost nonexistent traffic made it perfect for running. True, there was absolutely nothing on the island other than the walkway that encompassed it, but I had some nice views of the city, bay, and distant islands. It was a nice way to spend my last (and only) hour that day in Sanya, though I don’t believe we’ll return.
The rest of the day was slightly busy, being split between the string duet show at 3:00, going to the gym and dinner, and the two farewell shows at 7:00 and 9:00. Tomorrow will be our last Hong Kong before we relocate to Shanghai. Supposedly we dock 2 hours outside the city, which means I might not have easy internet access like I did in Hong Kong, so it might be a while before I can make some more posts, but you know I’ll be doing my best to get them online. Anyways, that’s about it for tonight, hope all is well back where you are, and as always, thanks for reading!
Sanya China
Well, today didn’t work out quite as planned. I was hoping to get on a tour today, and after getting the call the previous night confirming the tour that was to take me to all these Buddhist temples, I had to turn it down for a lame rehearsal on a show I’ve played multiple times now. So I was really bummed about that seeing as I’d have really liked that learning experience, and especially considering that my day was foiled by a less than spectacular string duo. After the 11:00 rehearsal, I did manage to get off the ship for a moment, and had just enough time to go running. The ship is docked on what I believe is a man made island specifically for cruise ships, and its racetrack shape along with almost nonexistent traffic made it perfect for running. True, there was absolutely nothing on the island other than the walkway that encompassed it, but I had some nice views of the city, bay, and distant islands. It was a nice way to spend my last (and only) hour that day in Sanya, though I don’t believe we’ll return.
The rest of the day was slightly busy, being split between the string duet show at 3:00, going to the gym and dinner, and the two farewell shows at 7:00 and 9:00. Tomorrow will be our last Hong Kong before we relocate to Shanghai. Supposedly we dock 2 hours outside the city, which means I might not have easy internet access like I did in Hong Kong, so it might be a while before I can make some more posts, but you know I’ll be doing my best to get them online. Anyways, that’s about it for tonight, hope all is well back where you are, and as always, thanks for reading!
Danang
March 30th
Danang
Danang, another Vietnamese port, will be my last chance to see Vietnam. I was hoping to do a shore excursion like I had done so frequently on the Navigator, but due to some different policies here and a boat drill, I haven’t been able to work out any tours. There was, however, a crew tour to Hoi An, a city about 90 minutes away, but due to my hopes for the tour escort thing, the crew tour was booked by the time I tried to get on it. So as I walked off the ship to try to get on the bus anyways, Andres, one of the featured performers on the ship, saw me waiting and asked if I wanted to go to Danang with him (the ship docks about 30 minutes outside the actual city, the only way to get there is by cab or bus from where we were). Considering I wasn’t likely to get on the crew bus, the fact that the port that we were at is totally desolate, and Andres being this awesome Argentinean, I said yeah. We ended up going with the doctor (who’s from Rockford) aboard the ship and the RCTV lady as well, making the total cab fare $10 each for the 30 minute trip there and back. Andres and the doctor where friends and had been to the city before, each time by cab, and knew that the price should be $40 total, so I thought it was a safe bet to go with them. So a guy calls a cab over, we all get in, and the guy who called the cab hops in with us, no one is quite sure why. I didn’t say anything as I thought it was just what happened, hoping that if there were any problems, my more experienced travel buddies would handle it. Well of course, there had to be a problem. This guy, about 10 minutes outside of the port, starts telling us it’s $40 one way, not round trip as my friends understood and knew from past trips. So they’re arguing back and forth over the price, this weird Vietnamese guy in his broken English, Andres who keeps calling the dude “amigo”, and doc. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the back of this mini van sitting next to our uninvited guest. So after a lot of heated debate, threats to drive back to the port, and a frustrated Argentinean (who’s act on the ship deals with him using whips), the ordeal was worked out to our satisfaction. The rest of the drive, this guy wouldn’t shut up about different stuff in the city and showing us pictures on his phone, and it wasn’t till Andres told him flat out to shut his mouth that he behaved till we got our destination.
We successfully arrived in Danang and exited in front of a silk shop, a place Doc was more than familiar with. We instructed the drive to meet us back at the same location at 4:00 PM, about 4 hours from when he dropped us off, and the group went inside the store. This place was unbelievable. Their thing was embroidery, and they would use these silk threads on a cotton (I believe) canvas and construct the most elegant and detailed scenes I’ve ever seen with thread. The artwork of these pieces was amazing, and the detail of it all, considering the skill and time involved, was just unbelievable. So we toured the shop for a while, a place that seemed like more of an art museum, and ended up on the top floor where they made clothing. The dresses were just stunning, they had some unbelievable kimonos, and really nice silk ties. I ended up buying two ties as I hadn’t brought any with me, and I thought hand made 100% silk ties were worth the $15 each that I paid. We eventually left and made our way towards a restaurant that my friends were familiar with, and had a really nice meal. But by the time we were finished eating, and after the long time we spent in the silk shop, we were out of time for the day. That was the problem I was afraid of when I joined up with the group, but at the same time thought that since they’d been there before, they’d know the interesting places to go. And sure, the silks were amazing and the lunch was great, but I could have covered most of the city in the 4 hours I’d been there instead of the few blocks that separated our two stops. I just really need to find a friend who likes to explore like I do, something I thankfully had on the Nav.
That aside, we hopped back in the taxi for the trip back, and our strange friend who tried to hustle us on the way there was in the cab waiting for us. No one wanted him there, but as he’d jumped in before everyone else to the back seat, no one really wanted to make the scene. So again, I climbed into the back with the guy and we left. But surprisingly enough, our “friend” didn’t say a word the entire trip back, who knows why. Upon our return, I left the price discussion to the veterans of the group and just gave them my $10 I thought I owed. They got it worked out for $48, though not entirely sure why the price was $8 more than it should have been. And after the doc denied the cab driver any additional tip, we got back on the ship.
So all in all, kind of an odd day with more than a few tense moments. It maybe wasn’t as productive as I’d had hoped, but at least I was able to see a new city and pick up some really nice ties. The rest of the day I had off and filled with reading. And that concludes my Vietnam adventures for this cruise! Thanks for reading!
Danang
Danang, another Vietnamese port, will be my last chance to see Vietnam. I was hoping to do a shore excursion like I had done so frequently on the Navigator, but due to some different policies here and a boat drill, I haven’t been able to work out any tours. There was, however, a crew tour to Hoi An, a city about 90 minutes away, but due to my hopes for the tour escort thing, the crew tour was booked by the time I tried to get on it. So as I walked off the ship to try to get on the bus anyways, Andres, one of the featured performers on the ship, saw me waiting and asked if I wanted to go to Danang with him (the ship docks about 30 minutes outside the actual city, the only way to get there is by cab or bus from where we were). Considering I wasn’t likely to get on the crew bus, the fact that the port that we were at is totally desolate, and Andres being this awesome Argentinean, I said yeah. We ended up going with the doctor (who’s from Rockford) aboard the ship and the RCTV lady as well, making the total cab fare $10 each for the 30 minute trip there and back. Andres and the doctor where friends and had been to the city before, each time by cab, and knew that the price should be $40 total, so I thought it was a safe bet to go with them. So a guy calls a cab over, we all get in, and the guy who called the cab hops in with us, no one is quite sure why. I didn’t say anything as I thought it was just what happened, hoping that if there were any problems, my more experienced travel buddies would handle it. Well of course, there had to be a problem. This guy, about 10 minutes outside of the port, starts telling us it’s $40 one way, not round trip as my friends understood and knew from past trips. So they’re arguing back and forth over the price, this weird Vietnamese guy in his broken English, Andres who keeps calling the dude “amigo”, and doc. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the back of this mini van sitting next to our uninvited guest. So after a lot of heated debate, threats to drive back to the port, and a frustrated Argentinean (who’s act on the ship deals with him using whips), the ordeal was worked out to our satisfaction. The rest of the drive, this guy wouldn’t shut up about different stuff in the city and showing us pictures on his phone, and it wasn’t till Andres told him flat out to shut his mouth that he behaved till we got our destination.
We successfully arrived in Danang and exited in front of a silk shop, a place Doc was more than familiar with. We instructed the drive to meet us back at the same location at 4:00 PM, about 4 hours from when he dropped us off, and the group went inside the store. This place was unbelievable. Their thing was embroidery, and they would use these silk threads on a cotton (I believe) canvas and construct the most elegant and detailed scenes I’ve ever seen with thread. The artwork of these pieces was amazing, and the detail of it all, considering the skill and time involved, was just unbelievable. So we toured the shop for a while, a place that seemed like more of an art museum, and ended up on the top floor where they made clothing. The dresses were just stunning, they had some unbelievable kimonos, and really nice silk ties. I ended up buying two ties as I hadn’t brought any with me, and I thought hand made 100% silk ties were worth the $15 each that I paid. We eventually left and made our way towards a restaurant that my friends were familiar with, and had a really nice meal. But by the time we were finished eating, and after the long time we spent in the silk shop, we were out of time for the day. That was the problem I was afraid of when I joined up with the group, but at the same time thought that since they’d been there before, they’d know the interesting places to go. And sure, the silks were amazing and the lunch was great, but I could have covered most of the city in the 4 hours I’d been there instead of the few blocks that separated our two stops. I just really need to find a friend who likes to explore like I do, something I thankfully had on the Nav.
That aside, we hopped back in the taxi for the trip back, and our strange friend who tried to hustle us on the way there was in the cab waiting for us. No one wanted him there, but as he’d jumped in before everyone else to the back seat, no one really wanted to make the scene. So again, I climbed into the back with the guy and we left. But surprisingly enough, our “friend” didn’t say a word the entire trip back, who knows why. Upon our return, I left the price discussion to the veterans of the group and just gave them my $10 I thought I owed. They got it worked out for $48, though not entirely sure why the price was $8 more than it should have been. And after the doc denied the cab driver any additional tip, we got back on the ship.
So all in all, kind of an odd day with more than a few tense moments. It maybe wasn’t as productive as I’d had hoped, but at least I was able to see a new city and pick up some really nice ties. The rest of the day I had off and filled with reading. And that concludes my Vietnam adventures for this cruise! Thanks for reading!
Halong
March 28th/29th
Sea Day/Halong
There’s nothing really exciting to tell about for the sea day, I just got a lot of reading done, so that was good. It’s kind of funny when my friends wake up at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and talk about how they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing that day, when thankfully, I don’t share that problem.
The 29th in Halong was a good day. I got off the ship with the intention to find the internet café that everyone seems to frequent, so I left around noon with my lap top in my backpack ready to start searching. The first place I noticed with a WiFi sign was fairly close to the ship, some restaurant that I thought I’d try. So I go inside, and planning to sit down for a while to work online, order a tea. In Vietnam, the currency is the dong (or so I understand), but they readily except US dollars, so I didn’t think there’d be any difficulty with the money, but when all you have is $20’s and you try to buy tea for a dollar, they don’t like that. The lady behind the bar who I’m ordering from has her calculator out and is showing me exactly how much dong I should be getting in change. This would have been alright if I had another month in Vietnam, but seeing as after this cruise, I won’t be returning to the country, I didn’t want to get stuck with tons of dong I couldn’t use. During the conversation I’m trying to hold with the lady who speaks very little English, a teenager comes up behind me to get my attention, at which point his mother offers to buy me the tea. But seeing as the only reason I wanted tea was that I was going to be using their internet, I declined. I did however ask them if they could change the 20, which they couldn’t, so I moved on to someone sitting two tables down who looked like he worked on the ship. He was able to give me two 10’s, but then also pointed out the internet was terribly slow and wasn’t even worth my time to try. He pointed me in the direction of where he though everyone always went, and I left without purchasing the tea they had in the meantime prepared and placed on the counter for me.
So I left, and started walking further in towards the city to the area I had been on my last visit. Halong has a market there in the city where people sell tons of junk gifts, cheap shirts, pearls, carvings, and a myriad of other Vietnamese items. The afe I was looking for was on the other side of this market, but I had decided to make a right turn before the market, taking me up the hill into the part of the city cruise ship tourists probably don’t wander. Here, it was noticeably dirty, had some very run down buildings, stray dogs, and oddly enough, about a dozen nice looking hotels. I honestly have no idea how these hotels do any business, but they are all over Halong. Anyways, my detour took me about 30 minutes out of my way before I found a suitable road to get me back towards the water and on a road towards the markets, but it was an interesting walk and I’m always up for wandering unfamiliar places. Sure I stick out from the locals, and yeah, everyone on a motorbike approaches me offering their taxi services, but that’s the fun of it all, right?
I did make it back to the market area and was able to sniff out the café where my friends were sitting at doing their computer work. The place was really nice, large, clean, and US friendly. I paid for tea with a $10 and got US bills back, no problem. I hung out there for a while till my battery died and I left to do some shopping.
Now here’s where the real fun starts. I wanted to buy some pearl necklaces, something that Vietnam certainly isn’t sort on. Supposedly, they cultivate pearls near Halong, and the locals have some way of getting to the pearls that aren’t 100% perfect and suitable for high end jewelry stores, which they then turn into necklaces and earrings. The pearls are in fact real, which is hard to believe when you see hundreds of necklaces draped around the arms of street peddlers, but the fire test holds true. If you hold a lighter to the pearls and they melt, then for obvious reasons, they aren’t real. The stand I eventually stopped at made sure to demonstrate this by holding the flame to the pearl for what must have been 15 seconds, having no effect on the pearl. So I find a nice necklace, one with really large round pearls and in a crappy red jewelry case, but still, the best quality I’d come across in the market. The price is $25, about $14 more than I currently have in my pocket. I offer $10, she looks slightly shocked and offended at the low ball offer, so I say OK and leave. She starts screaming, louder and louder as I get further, till I turn around and go see what she’s trying to offer. So she comes back with her calculator and lowers the price to $18, of which is still more than I have in US. I tell her that, show her that I just don’t have it, and again walk away because she won’t give me the necklace for $10. Well, she’s yelling again, but this time I don’t turn around, not until she runs up behind me, grabs my arm, and walks me back to the tent. In showing her that I had too little US, she saw the other currencies that I had in my wallet and was willing to except it. So, on top of $11, I gave her 40 hong kong, and about 50 cents worth of dong I’d picked up earlier. For that she would sell me the necklace, the equivalent of about $18. Well, still didn’t get the price I wanted, but I did like the necklace, so I grabbed one of the smaller pearl necklaces as well, one that she wanted $10 for, and gave her an additional 20 hong kong…absolutely all that was left in my wallet. Well, she took it – so for a grand total of maybe $20, I got the really nice huge pearl necklace and a beautiful smaller one, something that should have totaled $35.
Considering that was my first time really negotiating price with anyone, I’m actually somewhat pleased with myself. It was a good experience to have, not to mention something that will help me the rest of my time in Asia. Following that, considering I had absolutely nothing left to spend, I headed back to the ship to play a big band set that night. Then that’s about it for the day, thanks!
Sea Day/Halong
There’s nothing really exciting to tell about for the sea day, I just got a lot of reading done, so that was good. It’s kind of funny when my friends wake up at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and talk about how they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing that day, when thankfully, I don’t share that problem.
The 29th in Halong was a good day. I got off the ship with the intention to find the internet café that everyone seems to frequent, so I left around noon with my lap top in my backpack ready to start searching. The first place I noticed with a WiFi sign was fairly close to the ship, some restaurant that I thought I’d try. So I go inside, and planning to sit down for a while to work online, order a tea. In Vietnam, the currency is the dong (or so I understand), but they readily except US dollars, so I didn’t think there’d be any difficulty with the money, but when all you have is $20’s and you try to buy tea for a dollar, they don’t like that. The lady behind the bar who I’m ordering from has her calculator out and is showing me exactly how much dong I should be getting in change. This would have been alright if I had another month in Vietnam, but seeing as after this cruise, I won’t be returning to the country, I didn’t want to get stuck with tons of dong I couldn’t use. During the conversation I’m trying to hold with the lady who speaks very little English, a teenager comes up behind me to get my attention, at which point his mother offers to buy me the tea. But seeing as the only reason I wanted tea was that I was going to be using their internet, I declined. I did however ask them if they could change the 20, which they couldn’t, so I moved on to someone sitting two tables down who looked like he worked on the ship. He was able to give me two 10’s, but then also pointed out the internet was terribly slow and wasn’t even worth my time to try. He pointed me in the direction of where he though everyone always went, and I left without purchasing the tea they had in the meantime prepared and placed on the counter for me.
So I left, and started walking further in towards the city to the area I had been on my last visit. Halong has a market there in the city where people sell tons of junk gifts, cheap shirts, pearls, carvings, and a myriad of other Vietnamese items. The afe I was looking for was on the other side of this market, but I had decided to make a right turn before the market, taking me up the hill into the part of the city cruise ship tourists probably don’t wander. Here, it was noticeably dirty, had some very run down buildings, stray dogs, and oddly enough, about a dozen nice looking hotels. I honestly have no idea how these hotels do any business, but they are all over Halong. Anyways, my detour took me about 30 minutes out of my way before I found a suitable road to get me back towards the water and on a road towards the markets, but it was an interesting walk and I’m always up for wandering unfamiliar places. Sure I stick out from the locals, and yeah, everyone on a motorbike approaches me offering their taxi services, but that’s the fun of it all, right?
I did make it back to the market area and was able to sniff out the café where my friends were sitting at doing their computer work. The place was really nice, large, clean, and US friendly. I paid for tea with a $10 and got US bills back, no problem. I hung out there for a while till my battery died and I left to do some shopping.
Now here’s where the real fun starts. I wanted to buy some pearl necklaces, something that Vietnam certainly isn’t sort on. Supposedly, they cultivate pearls near Halong, and the locals have some way of getting to the pearls that aren’t 100% perfect and suitable for high end jewelry stores, which they then turn into necklaces and earrings. The pearls are in fact real, which is hard to believe when you see hundreds of necklaces draped around the arms of street peddlers, but the fire test holds true. If you hold a lighter to the pearls and they melt, then for obvious reasons, they aren’t real. The stand I eventually stopped at made sure to demonstrate this by holding the flame to the pearl for what must have been 15 seconds, having no effect on the pearl. So I find a nice necklace, one with really large round pearls and in a crappy red jewelry case, but still, the best quality I’d come across in the market. The price is $25, about $14 more than I currently have in my pocket. I offer $10, she looks slightly shocked and offended at the low ball offer, so I say OK and leave. She starts screaming, louder and louder as I get further, till I turn around and go see what she’s trying to offer. So she comes back with her calculator and lowers the price to $18, of which is still more than I have in US. I tell her that, show her that I just don’t have it, and again walk away because she won’t give me the necklace for $10. Well, she’s yelling again, but this time I don’t turn around, not until she runs up behind me, grabs my arm, and walks me back to the tent. In showing her that I had too little US, she saw the other currencies that I had in my wallet and was willing to except it. So, on top of $11, I gave her 40 hong kong, and about 50 cents worth of dong I’d picked up earlier. For that she would sell me the necklace, the equivalent of about $18. Well, still didn’t get the price I wanted, but I did like the necklace, so I grabbed one of the smaller pearl necklaces as well, one that she wanted $10 for, and gave her an additional 20 hong kong…absolutely all that was left in my wallet. Well, she took it – so for a grand total of maybe $20, I got the really nice huge pearl necklace and a beautiful smaller one, something that should have totaled $35.
Considering that was my first time really negotiating price with anyone, I’m actually somewhat pleased with myself. It was a good experience to have, not to mention something that will help me the rest of my time in Asia. Following that, considering I had absolutely nothing left to spend, I headed back to the ship to play a big band set that night. Then that’s about it for the day, thanks!
Hong Kong
March 27th-28th
Hong Kong/Sea Day
So the 27th was another turn around day spent in Hong Kong and another chance for me to get off the ship and see the city. Like last time, I started with a few hours on my computer in a mall picking up wi-fi. It’s really nice being able to get online somewhere and communicate in real time with my friends back at home, not to mention I just enjoy telling people I’m in Hong Kong. After my battery died out, I made my way out of the mall to explore in the opposite direction from my last visit into the city, and yet again, with my main focus being food. I got down to street level from the foot bridges and began my trek.
This other side of town was completely different, filled with shops and different stands selling everything from clothes to cultural items like dried shark fin (I think) and ginseng. These traditional medicine shops were everywhere, each selling the same strange array of dried animal products, exotic nuts, and anything else you might think would seem better suited for a garbage can than in one’s body. I really wish I had a guide to explain some of these products to me as I’m sure they all have fascinating origins and uses, but I guess I’ll just deal with being the ignorant, photo happy American.
I did find a number of restaurants that looked both appetizing and in my price range, though most of which had huge lines that I just didn’t have time to deal with. I ended up at some café place where they had the lunch special listed in English, so I went in there hoping for a comparatively easy ordering procedure, and luckily I was right. After standing at the door for 5 minutes staring at the same two lunch options and watching a few others go straight to the counter to order, I eventually figured out how to go about obtaining food at this place. It probably wouldn’t have taken so long to order if the girl I followed into the store didn’t stop just inside the doorway and do nothing, making me think she was waiting for something that I should be waiting for as well. I still don’t know why she never went up to the counter to order, but and even after I squeezed past her and got my order to go, she still remained there waiting for something that apparently wasn’t coming. Whatever.
So I left to start making my way back to the mall where I would eat my order of chicken in white sauce. I wanted to find the mall before I started eating so that if I was running behind, I’d know exactly where I was and how long it’d take to return. On my way back to the central area, I walked through some more unbelievably busy and amazing streets, not to mention some side roads and alleys that had food stands set up that I was sorry to have not seen before getting food somewhere else. I made it back though with no problem and found a table to eat my lunch which was really great for the $4 US I spent on it.
I still had plenty of time left, so I decided to walk around the mall a bit and see if anything caught my eye. Now there are a lot of really cheap things in this area of the world, but a mall in downtown Hong Kong is certainly not of that category. I went into some well respected clothing retailers only to find certain T-Shirts on sale for over $100 US, and I mean simple graphic T-shirts. Needless to say, I didn’t spend any money on clothes. I did however find a book store in the mall where I spent some money. I’ve had a lot of free time on this ship, but also certain difficulties in practicing due to the ship’s design and room use. So it’s meant tons of time that I need to fill in other ways, so reading is about to become very frequent in my time aboard. I’ve already finished a 400 page book that I started after leaving home and intend to bring up the pace a bit. So, seeing as I didn’t bring a ton of reading material with me, I purchased Andrew Carnegie’s biography at this book shop, over 800 pages of what will soon be well spent time. I’ve set great goals and schedules to keep myself on track during this cruise, things that will get me out of bed in the morning, keep me productive during the day, and discourage wasting my nights with people in the bar, so I’m really excited for that. It’s been funny though, people don’t think I’m a real musician because I wake up every morning for breakfast. But hey, I’m glad to be making progress on my own terms at a rate that I can be proud of.
Anyways, I got back to the ship early to get started on my new book and play the welcome aboard show. That was about it for the day then, and with the next day being a sea day, there’s not much more to add. I’m writing this at 2:00 on the sea day just to get it out of the way, so if anything substantial happens I’ll come back and edit the post, but otherwise it’s safe to assume there’s nothing too exciting other than the two big band sets I play tonight, woohooo…. Anyways, time to get back to Carnegie, thanks!
Hong Kong/Sea Day
So the 27th was another turn around day spent in Hong Kong and another chance for me to get off the ship and see the city. Like last time, I started with a few hours on my computer in a mall picking up wi-fi. It’s really nice being able to get online somewhere and communicate in real time with my friends back at home, not to mention I just enjoy telling people I’m in Hong Kong. After my battery died out, I made my way out of the mall to explore in the opposite direction from my last visit into the city, and yet again, with my main focus being food. I got down to street level from the foot bridges and began my trek.
This other side of town was completely different, filled with shops and different stands selling everything from clothes to cultural items like dried shark fin (I think) and ginseng. These traditional medicine shops were everywhere, each selling the same strange array of dried animal products, exotic nuts, and anything else you might think would seem better suited for a garbage can than in one’s body. I really wish I had a guide to explain some of these products to me as I’m sure they all have fascinating origins and uses, but I guess I’ll just deal with being the ignorant, photo happy American.
I did find a number of restaurants that looked both appetizing and in my price range, though most of which had huge lines that I just didn’t have time to deal with. I ended up at some café place where they had the lunch special listed in English, so I went in there hoping for a comparatively easy ordering procedure, and luckily I was right. After standing at the door for 5 minutes staring at the same two lunch options and watching a few others go straight to the counter to order, I eventually figured out how to go about obtaining food at this place. It probably wouldn’t have taken so long to order if the girl I followed into the store didn’t stop just inside the doorway and do nothing, making me think she was waiting for something that I should be waiting for as well. I still don’t know why she never went up to the counter to order, but and even after I squeezed past her and got my order to go, she still remained there waiting for something that apparently wasn’t coming. Whatever.
So I left to start making my way back to the mall where I would eat my order of chicken in white sauce. I wanted to find the mall before I started eating so that if I was running behind, I’d know exactly where I was and how long it’d take to return. On my way back to the central area, I walked through some more unbelievably busy and amazing streets, not to mention some side roads and alleys that had food stands set up that I was sorry to have not seen before getting food somewhere else. I made it back though with no problem and found a table to eat my lunch which was really great for the $4 US I spent on it.
I still had plenty of time left, so I decided to walk around the mall a bit and see if anything caught my eye. Now there are a lot of really cheap things in this area of the world, but a mall in downtown Hong Kong is certainly not of that category. I went into some well respected clothing retailers only to find certain T-Shirts on sale for over $100 US, and I mean simple graphic T-shirts. Needless to say, I didn’t spend any money on clothes. I did however find a book store in the mall where I spent some money. I’ve had a lot of free time on this ship, but also certain difficulties in practicing due to the ship’s design and room use. So it’s meant tons of time that I need to fill in other ways, so reading is about to become very frequent in my time aboard. I’ve already finished a 400 page book that I started after leaving home and intend to bring up the pace a bit. So, seeing as I didn’t bring a ton of reading material with me, I purchased Andrew Carnegie’s biography at this book shop, over 800 pages of what will soon be well spent time. I’ve set great goals and schedules to keep myself on track during this cruise, things that will get me out of bed in the morning, keep me productive during the day, and discourage wasting my nights with people in the bar, so I’m really excited for that. It’s been funny though, people don’t think I’m a real musician because I wake up every morning for breakfast. But hey, I’m glad to be making progress on my own terms at a rate that I can be proud of.
Anyways, I got back to the ship early to get started on my new book and play the welcome aboard show. That was about it for the day then, and with the next day being a sea day, there’s not much more to add. I’m writing this at 2:00 on the sea day just to get it out of the way, so if anything substantial happens I’ll come back and edit the post, but otherwise it’s safe to assume there’s nothing too exciting other than the two big band sets I play tonight, woohooo…. Anyways, time to get back to Carnegie, thanks!
Kaohsiung
March 26th
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Today, due to a rehearsal and an early departure to make it back to Hong Kong in time tomorrow, was cut drastically short as far as my exploratory time was concerned. I did however have almost 2 hours to get off and walk around, so I guess that’s better than nothing.
I got off the ship with the intentions to spend the remainder of my Taiwan currency, something that would soon be totally useless seeing as I don’t return to Taiwan any more this contract. It was about lunch time, so as usual, most of my time was spent trying to find a good place to eat. I ran into one of my friends on the street who pointed me towards a restaurant he’d just came from that was fairly decent, so I took his advice and found the place. This was one of the few nice places to eat, if not the only, that I saw walking through the city that day. The place almost reminded me of Hard Rock Café and Americana meets Taiwanese culture, and considering the menu also had English descriptions, it was bound to work out fine. I ordered some spicy chicken dish which I enjoyed along with a local beer. I spent almost all my money there, I guess the décor meant it was slightly more expensive than the food being served a block away, cooked under a tent using a barrel fire, but I knew it’d be clean.
After leaving, I spent my last 45 minutes wandering up and down the streets zigzagging my way back to the ship. The town was really interesting to walk through, and much less developed than anything I’d seen yesterday. There was an amazing high number of shops that resembled piles of moped parts, motors, wenches, or anything else mechanical. Walking by these places, you’d see someone tending to the shop sitting way in the back hidden by 6 foot piles of parts, and this would be the dominant business on multiple streets. I have no idea how they make any money doing that or what the actual service is that’s being offered, but machine parts seems to be a passion shared by many.
I returned to the ship with about 10 minutes to spare, and got back on to play a matinee show and then two farewell shows that night, an unusually busy day. Then that would be about it for the day and for me in Taiwan. I’d really love to go back sometime and get more time to really learn about the cities and the culture, but I’m thankful for the taste I was able to get over the past two days. Thanks for reading!
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Today, due to a rehearsal and an early departure to make it back to Hong Kong in time tomorrow, was cut drastically short as far as my exploratory time was concerned. I did however have almost 2 hours to get off and walk around, so I guess that’s better than nothing.
I got off the ship with the intentions to spend the remainder of my Taiwan currency, something that would soon be totally useless seeing as I don’t return to Taiwan any more this contract. It was about lunch time, so as usual, most of my time was spent trying to find a good place to eat. I ran into one of my friends on the street who pointed me towards a restaurant he’d just came from that was fairly decent, so I took his advice and found the place. This was one of the few nice places to eat, if not the only, that I saw walking through the city that day. The place almost reminded me of Hard Rock Café and Americana meets Taiwanese culture, and considering the menu also had English descriptions, it was bound to work out fine. I ordered some spicy chicken dish which I enjoyed along with a local beer. I spent almost all my money there, I guess the décor meant it was slightly more expensive than the food being served a block away, cooked under a tent using a barrel fire, but I knew it’d be clean.
After leaving, I spent my last 45 minutes wandering up and down the streets zigzagging my way back to the ship. The town was really interesting to walk through, and much less developed than anything I’d seen yesterday. There was an amazing high number of shops that resembled piles of moped parts, motors, wenches, or anything else mechanical. Walking by these places, you’d see someone tending to the shop sitting way in the back hidden by 6 foot piles of parts, and this would be the dominant business on multiple streets. I have no idea how they make any money doing that or what the actual service is that’s being offered, but machine parts seems to be a passion shared by many.
I returned to the ship with about 10 minutes to spare, and got back on to play a matinee show and then two farewell shows that night, an unusually busy day. Then that would be about it for the day and for me in Taiwan. I’d really love to go back sometime and get more time to really learn about the cities and the culture, but I’m thankful for the taste I was able to get over the past two days. Thanks for reading!
Keelung
March 25th
Keelung (Taipei)
Today was my first stop in Taiwan on a cruise that we’ll only do once while I’m aboard, so I had to make the most of the day. Keelung is the port where the ship docks, and a fairly busy city as well. It’s really nice when we can dock right there in the middle of the city, walk off the ship, and have so much right in front of you. My plan for the day, however, was to travel to Taipei to check out the Taipei 101 building, the tallest building in the world as of today, along with just see what a modern Taiwanese city looks like. I got off the ship with the intentions of finding the train that would take me into the city, a plan that was developed after a couple people told me there was a cheap train I could take into the city. Well, as soon as I stepped off the ship, I ran into some friends who were preparing to go to Taipei via taxi, and after assessing my situation and the fact I neither knew where the station was nor knew any Chinese to help me get there, decided splitting a cab is probably a great idea. So that’s what I did, and after 25 minutes, we were all in downtown Taipei at the base of the 101 building. My friends were in town for the shopping at the malls in the area, so they went their way as I decided to start my exploration by getting to the top of the tower, and after $400 Taiwan dollars, or about 15 bucks, I did just that.
The building was really amazing though. First, they have the fastest elevators in the world in use there, and the car got us up to the top in 37 seconds, so that was cool. Then, at the top, aside from looking out over the city, you’re provided with an audio guide and presented with numerous displays illustrating the technological achievements of the building’s construction and design. The city was gorgeous from the observatory, and the perspective allowed me to plot out my course for when I got down to street level. But I spent a good deal of time up there, and eventually headed back down to street level to find some food and a bank to exchange some more money seeing as I’d just spent a good deal of my original 20 riding an elevator.
The city was unbelievable. It was amazing how busy the roads were and how insane all the people on motorbikes would drive. Mopeds certainly seem the vehicle of choice, and with good reason considering the density of the city, and I saw a full spectrum of moped riders, from teens to little old women. But despite the hustle of everything, I had the hardest time getting money changed over. I must have walked into 5 banks, either to get turned down for not having my passport (the ship keeps it), flat out denied, or walking back out again due to lines and the intimidation of the language barrier. It’s really odd being somewhere totally foreign with absolutely no understanding of their language. There was a good deal of English writing around, but when so many signs and ads are totally in mandarin characters, it’s hard not to feel out of place. One of the banks handed me a form to fill out for the money exchange while asking me if I spoke any Mandarin…the form didn’t have a single English word on it. I didn’t get the money at that bank. I did find a place though that accepted my passport photocopy and didn’t require me to understand any Chinese at all, so that was and exciting victory, both because I found a place and could now eat.
I started out at a great looking bakery that caught my eye as I walked by. For whatever reason, they have hard core bakeries in Taiwan, and Hong Kong for that matter, but they’d be selling pastries I’ve never even thought would exist. The variety was really unbelievable, and everything looked great. I ended up with some bun with a hug slice of ham in the middle of it filled with cheese and a loaf of some raisin-custard thing, both of which were amazing. Now I like bread and have pretty high standards, so believe me when I say these cheap little snacks were really good, and completely different from anything I’ve ever had.
From there I continued on looking for something to eat that was more of a meal, and in usual tradition, try to find something local and authentic looking. Now, I try to be careful in picking these locations in Asia due to things like bird flu, so don’t worry that I’m just ducking into any old uninviting hole in the wall. But that being said, this was maybe one step above an uninviting hole in the wall, so we’ll call it a cave. They kindof had signs though that described my options, of which I communicated by pointing to my choice. It turned out to be some really odd noodle soup with an array of seafood items mixed in. I’m not a big seafood person, there are very few fish I’ll actually eat, especially if they have a fishy taste. Well, this soup didn’t make that cut. There were strange bacon looking strips mixed in at a fairly high quantity, each of which had an awful fish taste. So I ate around my fish bacon, focused on getting the noodles down quickly, dealt with the other items in my seafood grab bag, and left. To be fair, it wasn’t maybe as bad as I make it seem, but I was really hoping for an amazing meal at this place, so I was somewhat disappointed.
Following that, I made a very out of character move…buy a 7-11 slurpee. 7-11 seems to have taken over the east, they are seriously everywhere, and as a inside joke with some of my friends from school, I had to get a slurpee, so I enjoyed being the American walking through the city getting brain freezes from my cheap strawberry flavored frozen drink – good times.
Then I simply made my way back to the tower where I was to meet my friends again to take a cab back home. That all went to plan, and we made it back to the ship with about 2 hours to spare. I’m not one to get on the ship early, so I left my group again to explore the port city to a greater extent, something that turned out to be a great idea. Aside from being really busy as well, at night, certain streets close off, fill with mobile cooking stations, and the street get packed with locals, mini food stops, and street market items. The atmosphere was so cool, this is a market like you’d see on the travel channel, something that I’m sure has been going on for years and years. Some food looked less appetizing than other options, and it didn’t take much debate to walk past the chicken feet or the large pickle jar packed with gigantic living frogs, I can only imagine what for. I ended up with some simple noodle thing, pot stickers, and spring roll type thing, all of which were decent. And then from there, I was about out of time for exploring and eating and made my way back to the ship, which just about does it for the day. Great day though filled with some really amazing places!
Keelung (Taipei)
Today was my first stop in Taiwan on a cruise that we’ll only do once while I’m aboard, so I had to make the most of the day. Keelung is the port where the ship docks, and a fairly busy city as well. It’s really nice when we can dock right there in the middle of the city, walk off the ship, and have so much right in front of you. My plan for the day, however, was to travel to Taipei to check out the Taipei 101 building, the tallest building in the world as of today, along with just see what a modern Taiwanese city looks like. I got off the ship with the intentions of finding the train that would take me into the city, a plan that was developed after a couple people told me there was a cheap train I could take into the city. Well, as soon as I stepped off the ship, I ran into some friends who were preparing to go to Taipei via taxi, and after assessing my situation and the fact I neither knew where the station was nor knew any Chinese to help me get there, decided splitting a cab is probably a great idea. So that’s what I did, and after 25 minutes, we were all in downtown Taipei at the base of the 101 building. My friends were in town for the shopping at the malls in the area, so they went their way as I decided to start my exploration by getting to the top of the tower, and after $400 Taiwan dollars, or about 15 bucks, I did just that.
The building was really amazing though. First, they have the fastest elevators in the world in use there, and the car got us up to the top in 37 seconds, so that was cool. Then, at the top, aside from looking out over the city, you’re provided with an audio guide and presented with numerous displays illustrating the technological achievements of the building’s construction and design. The city was gorgeous from the observatory, and the perspective allowed me to plot out my course for when I got down to street level. But I spent a good deal of time up there, and eventually headed back down to street level to find some food and a bank to exchange some more money seeing as I’d just spent a good deal of my original 20 riding an elevator.
The city was unbelievable. It was amazing how busy the roads were and how insane all the people on motorbikes would drive. Mopeds certainly seem the vehicle of choice, and with good reason considering the density of the city, and I saw a full spectrum of moped riders, from teens to little old women. But despite the hustle of everything, I had the hardest time getting money changed over. I must have walked into 5 banks, either to get turned down for not having my passport (the ship keeps it), flat out denied, or walking back out again due to lines and the intimidation of the language barrier. It’s really odd being somewhere totally foreign with absolutely no understanding of their language. There was a good deal of English writing around, but when so many signs and ads are totally in mandarin characters, it’s hard not to feel out of place. One of the banks handed me a form to fill out for the money exchange while asking me if I spoke any Mandarin…the form didn’t have a single English word on it. I didn’t get the money at that bank. I did find a place though that accepted my passport photocopy and didn’t require me to understand any Chinese at all, so that was and exciting victory, both because I found a place and could now eat.
I started out at a great looking bakery that caught my eye as I walked by. For whatever reason, they have hard core bakeries in Taiwan, and Hong Kong for that matter, but they’d be selling pastries I’ve never even thought would exist. The variety was really unbelievable, and everything looked great. I ended up with some bun with a hug slice of ham in the middle of it filled with cheese and a loaf of some raisin-custard thing, both of which were amazing. Now I like bread and have pretty high standards, so believe me when I say these cheap little snacks were really good, and completely different from anything I’ve ever had.
From there I continued on looking for something to eat that was more of a meal, and in usual tradition, try to find something local and authentic looking. Now, I try to be careful in picking these locations in Asia due to things like bird flu, so don’t worry that I’m just ducking into any old uninviting hole in the wall. But that being said, this was maybe one step above an uninviting hole in the wall, so we’ll call it a cave. They kindof had signs though that described my options, of which I communicated by pointing to my choice. It turned out to be some really odd noodle soup with an array of seafood items mixed in. I’m not a big seafood person, there are very few fish I’ll actually eat, especially if they have a fishy taste. Well, this soup didn’t make that cut. There were strange bacon looking strips mixed in at a fairly high quantity, each of which had an awful fish taste. So I ate around my fish bacon, focused on getting the noodles down quickly, dealt with the other items in my seafood grab bag, and left. To be fair, it wasn’t maybe as bad as I make it seem, but I was really hoping for an amazing meal at this place, so I was somewhat disappointed.
Following that, I made a very out of character move…buy a 7-11 slurpee. 7-11 seems to have taken over the east, they are seriously everywhere, and as a inside joke with some of my friends from school, I had to get a slurpee, so I enjoyed being the American walking through the city getting brain freezes from my cheap strawberry flavored frozen drink – good times.
Then I simply made my way back to the tower where I was to meet my friends again to take a cab back home. That all went to plan, and we made it back to the ship with about 2 hours to spare. I’m not one to get on the ship early, so I left my group again to explore the port city to a greater extent, something that turned out to be a great idea. Aside from being really busy as well, at night, certain streets close off, fill with mobile cooking stations, and the street get packed with locals, mini food stops, and street market items. The atmosphere was so cool, this is a market like you’d see on the travel channel, something that I’m sure has been going on for years and years. Some food looked less appetizing than other options, and it didn’t take much debate to walk past the chicken feet or the large pickle jar packed with gigantic living frogs, I can only imagine what for. I ended up with some simple noodle thing, pot stickers, and spring roll type thing, all of which were decent. And then from there, I was about out of time for exploring and eating and made my way back to the ship, which just about does it for the day. Great day though filled with some really amazing places!
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