Seeing 'Round the World' in the rear view

'Round-the-World' in the rearview

I think I may be suffering severe post-ship separation anxiety.  I made it back to my gym today and could have sworn I saw two of our students and one of my fellow faculty members there working out!!  To make matters worse, the announcements at the car wash sounded a lot like “the voice”.  I guess I shouldn’t have played hooky during those “Re-entry and Reflection” sessions the last week of our voyage!!  I think they were supposed to keep us from going nuts when we got back home. 

Of course, it could be just withdrawal from the peanut butter addiction I developed over the past few months on the ship and I’ll be fine once I kick that habit.

Seriously, my participation in the Spring 2011 voyage of Semester at Sea will always be memorable because of the great people I met on the ship and along the way.  The people and the places were the experience of a lifetime!  Although I met many when I was off the ship that I liked interacting with and learning from, I must say that it was some of the great folks I met ON the ship that I hope will be life-long friends.  Some of my students, some of my fellow faculty members, and many of the ‘Life Long Learners’ (as they were known), I will never forget.  They were from such different backgrounds, experiences, and personalities, that the meals we shared, the meetings, and just shootin’ the breeze, all, were forever fun.  I am certain that I laughed more during our 3.5 month voyage than I have in any other such period in my life!  Thanks to many of my shipmates for those, the best of times.

Everyone asks me what my favorite country was of the eleven we visited.  Since I have been to most of the Asian ports several times before, it would be hard to say that Singapore, Vietnam, China, or Taiwan was my favorite since they were not as “new and exciting”.  Many of our other ports going around the globe were places that I had only before dreamed of going: Brazil, Africa (Ghana and South Africa), India.  I really enjoyed all of those countries.  So, here, exactly one month after my return home from the voyage are my most memorable impressions of some of the ports we spent time in:

** Rio, Brazil:  Getting to go to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain here and seeing the panorama of Rio below was worth the trip.  I also liked seeing the Favelas (slums) there and people watching on the famous Ipanema Beach.

** Takoradi, Ghana:  The kids.  They loved having us visit wherever we went and we had a great time figuring out how to interact with them without a common language, which never seemed to take more than a few minutes.  I also was intrigued by the fact that most all of the small enterprises there had religious-oriented names that were often quite comical.

** Capetown, South Africa:  Arriving in the picturesque harbor here was so amazing, surrounded by the oddly-shaped mountains with clouds skimming over the top of them.  Of course, the safari in Kruger and getting to see all of the “Big Five’ was the chance of a lifetime!

** India:  Literally everything here was interesting to me.  Looking into the faces of the people, especially those I encountered in the street or the train station was shocking.  Sometimes looks of great sadness, but other times looks of contentment with life in general.  The Taj Mahal was everything I thought it would be, but my second safari of the voyage, in Ranthambore National Park, was my biggest and best surprise of the trip.

**Saigon:  I am not sure why, but staying in the Dong Khoi area of central Saigon felt like home.  The tree-lined streets, friendly cafes, talkative street vendors, all made me comfortable and allowed me to relax for the first time in the voyage.  Shopping in that area was good, bought lots of art.  It was also great to spend some time with old friends there.

** Shanghai:  Well, the skyline and the shopping here are probably second to none, but what I will remember about this trip to the city was getting “Shanghaied” in the infamous ‘karaoke room scam’. 

I had read about it on the internet but I was in the middle of it before I realized it.  Some friendly, well-dressed stranger strikes up a conversation with you in a bar, then insists to take you to another ‘more exciting’ place near your hotel.  The red flags first went off when the new venue was sparsely populated as we led by the friendly manager to a private karaoke room in the rear.  I ordered a Coke that the menu showed to be 48 RMB or about 7 bucks (red flag #2).  Then the waiter appeared not only with my Coke, but shots of liquor, and full platter of food!  So, ten minutes into this “new fun”, I faked a phone call to step out in the hall and decide how the hell to get out of this mess.  I noticed that my being on the phone made both the manager and my new friend very nervous as they watched from several feet away (red flag #3).  So, I purposefully said ‘police’ and ‘karaoke room’ in this (non-existent) conversation several times hoping to making them think before trying to prevent me from leaving as they were about to do.  Before returning to the room to inform my friend that I was leaving, I checked the emergency exit doors to the stairwell leading down the 21 floors we had ascended to this place.  Much to my disappointment, there was a home-made bamboo barricade there to prevent such escapes.  This was not only a red flag, but where I fully recognized that I might be screwed in getting out of this easily. 

As I went to place where I entered the club to leave, two Chinese guys stepped in front of me and told me “you must pay”!  I told them I would be happy to pay them 48 RMB for the Coke (that I had not taken drink of), but they said I must also pay for the rental of the room and the food and liquor.  I told them that they should ask my “friend” for that as I had only ordered one Coke and spent, maybe 15 minutes total, there.  I threatened to call the police and they said “good, go ahead”.  It was only then when the brainstorm came to me to tell them that I had already called the police in my recent phone conversation, and that the police and my local friend were to meet me downstairs right away.  It was an odd few minutes as they conversed in Chinese, evaluating the possibility of my lie.  This time also gave me the opportunity to notice that the few Chinese door men/bouncers were not stepping in to help my combatants.  So, finally, I decided to make the bold move of slamming my 48 yuan on the counter, pushing them out of the way and quickly exiting (actually, running) down the stairs.

When I got to the ground floor, the guy who took me there to begin with had come down to see what I was going to do, most likely at the urging of the two bosses.  I pointed my finger in his face, calling him a “bad man” and a “criminal”.  He opened a waiting taxi door there for me and told me to go back to my hotel.  I bluffed, “No, I will wait here for the police to arrive”.  He then grabbed my arm to pull me to the taxi when my second brainstorm of the event came.  I said, “not only will I stay here until the police arrive, but they told me to take a picture of you with my cell phone”, as I pulled it from my pocket and snapped his photo as he turned and ran down the street. When he was comfortably out of sight, I smiled, climbed into that waiting taxi, and said “Park Hotel, please”.