4/29/2007- Reflections from Hiroshima (Hiroshima, Japan)

I’ve been away from home for over three months now. I’m physically and mentally exhausted, ready to keel over at any moment and give up on this entire voyage. I am run into the ground with emotions and work and experiences and expectations. In a day here I wake up and roll over not knowing where in the world I am or what I’m doing, how long my hair is, or if the vivid dreams I’m having are real or not. Sometimes I’m not even sure what reality is—how can one determine if dreams or life is real, when your dreams seem more real than your everyday life? Last night, or instance, I dreamed that I was home, heading off to school in Rhode Island with long hair and many dreams. Then I woke up to a country on the other side of the world, about to get on a 200 mile per hour train in order to go to the spot where the first atomic bomb was dropped and over 140,000 people died less than seventy years ago. Tell me, which seems more real to you?

I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m doing these things, I’ve done what I’ve done and I’ve changed like I’ve changed. It’s as though the old world I once loved is a thousand years ago on a world far from here; a world with no suffering and pain and death. A world which housed worries such as who had the better car and who had the hotter boyfriend is dead to me now, replaced by a world in which less money than I spend on snacks in a week can feed and house a child in Mauritius for an entire year. There are times in which I have wanted desperately to go back to being ignorant of these things, but moments later I realize that there is no going back and that it is better that way. I am a different person than I was back then, and it is all for the better.

On the ride to Hiroshima these thoughts haunted me. As I watched unfamiliar landscapes become familiar, I thought of all I had both lost and gained on this voyage. I didn’t understand a single word that was being said around me, but strangely enough, it didn’t matter. I felt as though I understood these people more than I understood the people from my own country simply because I can make up conversations they are having. To the best of my knowledge they are talking about how to help those starving and being murdered, though inside I know that they are probably talking about the same things my classmates are talking about back at the bars. As I said before, ignorance is bliss.

I chose to experience Hiroshima alone because I knew it was the final large trip of this voyage for me. I needed to try and sort out some things because it was the last chance I had—on the ship there is no time or place to be alone and reflect, and that was all there was left before being thrown into the lion’s den back at home. “What was your favorite port,” they’ll ask. “-and what did you learn? Did you have fun? Was it worth it? Did you see anything crazy?”

“What was your favorite port?”—there wasn’t one. All but a few touched my heart in ways that are unexplainable in words. “What did you learn?”—I learned that everything I’ve lived for has been a lie and a joke. That all the things I’ve held dear to me have no value. That everything I’ve ever known is nothing at all. “Did you have fun?”—yes. No. Maybe. God, how can you answer this question? I loved this voyage with every fiber of my heart while hating it at the exact same time. There were days when I couldn’t stop laughing and days when I couldn’t stop crying. Fun? That wasn’t part of the description of Semester at Sea. It isn’t about fun, although I’ll admit to having some of it. No, this wasn’t about fun. It was about torture. It was about the way in which you torture yourself by growing more than a normal person does in a lifetime or more in the course of three months.

“Did you see anything crazy?” No, I saw nothing crazy. I only saw people sleeping in puddles of mud and missing limbs and carrying their near-dead babies and sobbing and praying to God or Allah or Shiva or whatever they may or may not believe in. I only saw babies deformed and parents gone and AIDS ripping the world apart, but the people still thankful for every damned breath they took. I saw nothing crazy at all in this time. After all, the majority of people I saw were actually happy to be living in these conditions. How can it be something crazy when people are actually smiling when they are dying? It isn’t crazy that people are so thankful simply being alive that they can live in these conditions day after day and still be thankful to be alive.

Hiroshima. Reality. Where I was, rather than where I’d been. As everything else on this voyage, it was something out of a dream. The dome in front of me, the paper crane memorial to the side, Japanese children running all around as though there were no worries in the world—this is what I saw. It’s hard to imagine that this was one of the last wars that we were in; in what seems like no time ago, these people were our enemies and our targets. Now here I am, helping the children practice their English as they gleefully laugh at my accent when I say my name. I can’t help but wonder, though, if this is what life will be like for us in fifty or sixty years. I’m watching the children laugh and play on the monuments as their elders look on with sad eyes as they see their friend’s faces reflected in the shimmer of the sky—will I be these elders in time, watching as the children of the former Taliban take pictures of Ground Zero while my own grandchildren chat with them and laugh? Will I see Andrew and Candace’s faces crying and begging for her plane to stop and his body to be caught from his fall as I watch the children of our country swing on the replicas of the twin towers, not knowing what it was like to experience both watching that day and losing friends? Is that how these people feel, remembering the sudden heat and the crying voices and those they left behind?

I don’t know what will happen when I get home. I don’t know what will happen when I grow old. I don’t know what will happen when the years pass by and the world changes once again, leaving my generation for forgotten and what once mattered in the dust. I don’t know if any of this matters at all in the long run; but looking at the Peace Park and the Townships and the Dalit villages and the indigenous people from all around the world, I know for absolute sure that everything will be alright. As long as there is life, everything will be alright.

4/20/2007- China's Paradox (Beijing, China)

China is the biggest paradox that I have ever experienced.

You hear about their great and long history dating back to before written time before hearing that it is expected to be the world’s greatest hope for a technological future. You eat food that is from the most basic of supplies, only to taste the some of the greatest flavors you have can imagine in your life. You see these temples and palaces where less than a hundred years ago only royalty was permitted, only to be shoved by the twenty thousand tourists on their phones and yelling to one another.

Unfortunately, this last aspect is the one which I will take with me in my stories of this voyage. When reflecting on Beijing, there are no memories of feeling as though I was a part of something much as I did in each of the other ports. Here I felt as though I was one of the masses, forced into the lemming-like state of crowding. The creations that rose out of the world which should have been the most amazing sights of my life were nothing more than walkways filled with unappreciating bodies alongside spots of newly painted color and plaques with cheesy metal figures. It was hard for me to see this, and even harder to discuss it with a faulty member upon returning to the ship. “It’s my thought that in the years to come, China will burst with population. They will spill over to the other countries, but in the meantime, they are so used to being crowded that their monuments will be torn apart by misuse.”

In truth, to some extent this bothers me far more than does the hunger and poverty we’ve seen. Strides have been made in the world to eradicate such disasters and help the victims, however there are no efforts to aid the much quicker destruction of the history of China. Some of the people in danger in other parts of the world such as South Africa and India are known about and cared for as aid and cures are being worked on. By the time that the destruction of the monuments in China is realized by the government, it will be too late. Unlike the populations, however, history cannot be recreated or revitalized. You simply cannot bring back the throne of the first emperor or books written by the ancient historians after they have been destroyed by the people who take nothing but a photograph away from these relics.

Perhaps more disturbing to me was the amount of importance there was on revenue on these historical sites. We had a lecture the night before our sight seeing began in the city, and rather than speak about the historical impacts of the Forbidden City, our PhD lecturer spoke about the Starbucks hidden in the city and challenged us to wander around and find it. This simply encouraged the students to spend the time we had in this centuries old monument searching for a shop that can be found in any city on the globe, only to buy their products and shirts proudly emblazoning the words ‘Starbucks in the Forbidden City!’ for all to see. Hawkers and stalls lined the way, some more pushy than the people in India and Vietnam. They bought their way into the monuments with stolen goods and stood in the way of our reading the run down plaques to sell knock-off Olympic t-shirts and Mao watches. You could not get two feet (which was a hassle anyhow with the crowds in every space available) without having goods shoved in your face, only to cover your ears when the police blew into their whistles and chased the hawkers around in circles.

As terrible as this sounds, the hawkers were the highlight of my time in Beijing. At one point outside Tiananmen Square, the seventy Semester at Sea students on our tour were gathered waiting for the busses to arrive and take us to lunch. Within moments of realizing that there were more blondes than there were anywhere else in the city gathered in the same spot, around thirty sellers surrounded us and took their wares out in hilarious fashions—some opened briefcases or messenger bags, tilting them so that only the person they were harassing was able to see the merchandise. The most amusing of all were the Mao watch sellers who had their supplies tied inside their trench coats, exposing himself much as a flasher would in a run-by nude show. As we bargained and argued with them, yells suddenly filled the sidewalk. Within moments there were twenty policemen in full uniform, chasing the hawkers as they scattered like ants from their hill. One of the men caught turned to his capturer and shoved numerous toys and bags into his arms, paying the uniformed officer to walk away. Somehow, it worked—the man turned his back as the hawker ran in the other direction.

After a few minutes when the police had wandered off to catch more sellers in action, some of them returned to us. They were far more cautious this time, passing money and supplies only when they were inches away from us and looking over our shoulders the entire time. The man who had paid the cop off grinned weakly towards us, pointing to the police in the distance and making gestures that clearly showed a decapitation had he been caught. Not sure what to make of the entire situation and excited over the sudden drop in price due to the need to dump their supplies, we got onto our busses and exchanged stories of what we had seen in and out of the gates. These men, it seemed, were the perfect reflection of what we had seen in Beijing—willing to take any risks of loss in order to make a quick dollar.

4/14/2007- Snake's Beating Heart (Hanoi, Vietnam)

“Snake palace next,” Doan said firmly. “Look at book, Americans like!” He pulled out the tattered leather book from his jacket and shoved it into my hands, opening to a signature from a man from Arizona a few years back. It was nearly indecipherable due to age and untidy scrawl, but this didn’t bother our motorcycle drivers. “We go there now. You like. Promise.”

Ana went white as she saw the cobra out of the corner of her eye. It hissed and fought as though it knew what was coming next, attempting in vain to kill the both the man holding her and the people watching in horror. The snake’s skull crunched like a walnut under the pressure of his handler’s foot. Its body went limp quickly, and I had a profound sense of dread. We are taught to value life in every form, yet here in front of us this life had been ended with a sudden step. I wanted nothing more than to apologize to the being, although inside I knew that I was more than excited about what was to come. In my classes and my frequent travel channel viewings I had come across this practice; and although Ana had no idea what was about to happen, I was sure I was prepared.

Three men came from the side of the room to each grab a section of the cobra, their hands moving with the sort of expertise that comes with years of practice. I watched from behind the lens of my camcorder as they made a small slice about a third of the way down the animal, taking the heart out and draining the blood into a glass below containing alcohol. Once the two glasses were filled with blood, they moved down a foot to another section and named to us something that we either consciously or unconsciously didn’t understand. Taking the body with some care down the stairs to the side they ushered us to a table and sat us down, gesturing to the glasses with blood and alcohol with huge grins on their faces. Doan had the biggest grin of all.

The taste of snake blood and alcohol is like nothing you can imagine unless you have had it before. It isn’t as much the effect it has on your taste buds, but rather the effect it has on your mind. As the warm liquid slid down my throat all I could envision was the live cobra that had been in front of us only moments before. Although in actuality it tasted like a strong Bacardi mix, when the mind got involved it didn’t matter much the actual taste. All that mattered was the fact that it had been supporting the life of one of my most feared animals seconds before.

Then came the part that, for the first time in my life, made me want nothing more than for my stomach to empty itself right then and there. With a satisfying plop and laugh from the men around the table, Doan dropped the still-beating heart into my refilled glass of snake blood and alcohol.

I am by no means a virgin when it comes to exotic foods. I have eaten crocodile, rabbit, octopus and many other dishes that most Americans would find revolting. I have never in my life shied away from a dish offered to me; however when I looked at the sloshing blood in my glass I felt a wave of nausea pass over me. White as a ghost and shivering, I closed my eyes and tilted the glass back. Unfortunately, my throat was tense from the fear, and chose to become a bit to small for the heart to pass through. The waiters must have been used to this reaction because all of them ran for cover as Doan began to yell for me to calm down. I put my head in my hands and willed myself to just swallow the throbbing mass stuck halfway down my throat and not instead pass it up.

By the time that I had recovered and drank more water than I had consumed in the past month, the men returned with an odd looking dish. The other driver, the same evil grin on his face, pointed at a menu translated into English—‘grilled snake meat’, it read boldly. Before we could look at one another and make a move, another dish was placed before us; this time rice cooked in snake fat. To top it off, they brought out two more glasses of alcohol and happily cut open the unknown appendage and mixed the green liquid into them. Although Ana didn’t look too happy, I figured it couldn’t be worse than the beating heart of doom I’d consumed earlier, so I downed the drink in one swallow in order to get it out of sight. Bad idea—I later found out it was bile, and it tasted about as good as it sounds. I never though that I would be trying to get a taste out of my mouth with cobra liver wrapped in omelets, but I found myself doing it after quite possibly the most interesting drink of my life.

In all the owners managed to make our snake into twelve dishes and two drinks, some innovative (snake skin fried in butter and bone crushed with rice cakes to make pancakes) and others more conventional (fried snake meat and cobra soup). We passed on the cooked snake *appendages* (and no, I am not kidding) and happily paid our $40 USD. I wasn’t terribly anxious to get back on a motorcycle in the traffic of Hanoi, especially with my stomach waging war on a full cobra, so we looked around the so-called kitchen and cages where they kept both the cobras and the other animals that they cooked up. Although I was curious about the porcupine (are they even indigenous to Asia?) and the mongoose, the cobra gave a nasty lurch inside my stomach and I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to feed it. So we hoped on our rides and left Snake Palace and our money behind, heading for a day filled with adventures that we knew couldn’t top what we had just experienced.