First and foremost, my compliments go to our caretakers in the Grand Restaurant. Ketut had a difficult job taking care of several Chinese ladies who spoke no English, and who frequently changed their orders when they saw what they received. Ketut handled this frustrating situation with grace, poise and kindness each time, and ensured we were well cared-for in the process.

Shunny maintained the dignity of our table and was a constant presence, making sure that drinks were topped off, bread was plentiful and the tablecloth was clean for us between courses. He ensured that the table was cleared in a timely manner, and he remembered each one of us and our drink preferences without ever asking twice. We ordered drinks on the first night of our cruise and he made sure we received them every night afterwards without so much as asking.

Jorge, our room attendant, was our silent and invisible caretaker. I only met him twice, at the beginning and end of the cruise, but the evidence of his work was always there. Our rooms were unfailingly tidy, our beds immaculate and a chocolate waiting for us. His job was not an easy one, as my roommate and I are not tidy people.

My sincere thanks and compliments go out to all the crew of the Celebrity Century, but especially to Ketut, Shunny and Jorge for their excellent care of us.

Sincerely,
Jordan

It is my sincere hope that these comments make it to someone in a position to reward these three for their outstanding service. We managed to get a picture of our table with them, minus the Chinese ladies, who were absent for dinner tonight. We also got contact information for the couple from Malta so we can keep in touch, though I suspect we’ll have little to talk about . Still, it’s a nice gesture, and I appreciated it.

The day began late as we rolled out of bed around noon and got ourselves some lunch at the buffet, some really delicious garlic chicken with spiced rice and a few other select delicacies, like cookies. Vincci decided that she wanted to walk around the ship and film the interior on her camcorder, so with nothing else to do I followed and assisted with commentary wherever possible, putting forward my best effort to provide as little useful insight into her journalism as I could. We also managed to sneak into the Grand Restaurant between sittings and photograph the place while it was empty, and I can’t wait to show you what it looks like. What a place!

Our mission accomplished, we retired with Yao to our favourite place, the Rendezvous lounge, where they typically have some kind of big band style live entertainment playing, usually accompanied by families dancing with their toddlers. There was a girl there in a puffy white dress who looked like she was going for the Disney princess angle and pulling it off beautifully. Moments like that where she was bouncing along with her mom make me certain that I want kids of my own one day. Yao and Vincci ordered expensive non-alcoholic drinks while I enjoyed watching the debris float by on the waves, as we were just entering the inner passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and driftwood and seaweed were there in abundance. With no ports of call today, it was an excessively lazy afternoon and we spent far more time than necessary filling out the customs sheets and tagging our luggage for tomorrow’s docking. Yao managed to fulfill his goal for the trip, which was to beat the StarCraft II campaign (a computer game, for those unfamiliar) on the highest difficulty setting. A waste of 15+ hours on a cruise, if you ask me, but to each his own!

Dinner at the Grand Restaurant was as incredible as it always is, and our courses were a sampler platter from a Tuscan restaurant, lobster bisque (because it was amazing the first time) and incredibly tender and juicy pork chops served with diced potatoes and mushrooms. It wasn’t that much food, but was it ever good. Dessert was a chocolate and vanilla marbled cheesecake, and an extra little chocolate cake for the couple from Malta, since they were celebrating their honeymoon. They shared with us, much to our delight and gratitude.

We rounded out the night (and the trip) at the Crystal lounge watching karaoke performances that ranged from surprisingly good to intentionally miserable. I made the mistake of yelling “Encore” at the worst performer by far, and apparently he took me seriously because he came back twice more. There were some genuinely good singers there, though, including one young man who sang “I believe I can fly.” He started out really strong, but his voice all but gave out at the end. I never got to look at the selection of songs, but I heard someone mention that “Hakuna Matada” from the Lion King was on the list and I was ever-so-tempted to sing that. I couldn’t get any backup vocals from Vincci or Yao, though, as neither one was interested in getting up on stage. So, we spent the night watching instead, and took our leave when the intentionally miserable singer decided to take to the stage for the third time.

Like I did with my China/Vietnam/Cambodia trip, I’ll write up a closing post for the whole of the journey, including my thoughts and lessons learned, within the next few days. I won’t be getting back to Victoria until Monday, since I’m spending the day tomorrow with Yao and Vincci in Vancouver before our final farewells. If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate your dedication! As always, thanks for reading!

So, today was Ketchikan, which is a name so clever I don’t even need to try to create elaborate puns around it. We docked around 2:00 pm after an exceedingly lazy morning that consisted of eating and attempting sleepy conversation, which gradually improved as the three of us all regained our senses. Our original plan for today was to go snorkeling, wet suit and all, and look at some of the marine life around here. I should qualify, when I say “our” original plan, I meant “myself and Yao’s” original plans. Vincci wasn’t hearing anything about snorkeling, and was going to go see a cultural exhibit or something like that. Ultimately, sheer laziness won out and we all decided to just wander aimlessly around Ketchikan. This led us immediately to the nearest souveneir shop, which was also a jewelery store.

I try to make a habit of collecting something from everywhere in my travels, and because I am a male young adult, I tend to make it something dangerous. So, while we were looking around the store, I took notice of a very nice looking knife with a genuine bone handle. The handle itself has an eagle’s face carved into it, which adds a nice touch of authentic nativity to what is otherwise just a very interesting, very mean looking blade. It also comes with a sweet stand, perfect for display purposes, which was its greatest selling point since that is exactly what I am going to use it for. I ended up coming away with that, and the three of us also paused to look at all the pretty jewelery.

I think it’s time that someone revoked my man card, because I honestly enjoy looking at jewelery. So many of the pieces are immensely beautiful and the fact that they are so far beyond my price range doesn’t stop me from admiring them. Some of the things in the store were not so far beyond my price range, and despite the fact that Marie doesn’t wear a lot of jewelery and will probably admonish me upon reading this (too bad!), I bought something that I’m hoping to give her when she comes up to visit me. It’s a pretty blue topaz piece that I will write no more about so I don’t spoil the surprise for her.

The salesman had his work cut out for him with Vincci, who was looking at all kinds of pretty and expensive sets and rings, just like in Hoonah, and in Juneau. She found a few things she liked on the cheap and snatched them up for a great bargain, but a few things in the diamond section caught her eye and she was soon trying on half a dozen chocolate and blue diamond rings with all sorts of intricate designs in them. The salesman was slashing prices for her literally by over 70% trying to make the sale, dropping prices from $1800 to $500 on a whim while she hemmed and hawed. Ultimately she decided against spending that kind of money but you could tell by the pained expression on her face that she didn’t like leaving it behind. The ring, earrings and pendant that she ended up with suit her beautifully, and the jeweler in charge of fitting her ring said that in 11 years in the business, he had never fitted a ring so small. I forget what the exact measurement was but she probably has the smallest hands in all of creation.

Naturally, we were back in time for dinner at the Grand Restaurant, where we were served another ridiculously delicious meal, starting with a curry chicken salad, followed by a caesar, followed by an entree of spiced spaghetti with turkey- and mozzarela-stuffed meatballs, and holy lord was it ever good. Our evening took on a bit of a somber turn when we realized that we had only one more meal in the Grand Restaurant before they’d be kicking us off the ship Sunday morning, so we toasted Celebrity cruises and their exceptional food and service. We took down the names of our servers (Ketut, Shunny) so that when we fill out our experience survey, we can be sure to mention their heroics by name. We only get a few lines to do so on the feedback form but I’m going to type out something longer and attach it as a printout when I hand it in. I will likely post that here, since it’s going to include a lot of the details of the cruise that people might be interested in knowing. Truly, it’s been the service here that has made this cruise exceptional. We are treated like celebrities.

After dinner we decided to go catch a show at the Grand Theater, where we were fortunate enough to see some live music, followed by a very talented and amusing ventriloquist. The jokes were excellent, but the ventriloquism was flawless. I couldn’t ever see him speaking for his doll, and he took on the wholly unnecessary challenge at the end of the show by repeatedly saying words with the letter P in them without ever moving his lips. The cruise director said a few words as well, and then we were off to check out the Chocolate Extravaganza Buffet, which turned out to be less chocolatey and extravagant than I had suspected and hoped. There were a couple of decent snacks, including one that a guy lit on fire with an acetalyne torch before giving to you. It turned out to be chocolate pudding, but it was alright. The presentation was all aces though.

Tomorrow will be our last day on the cruise, as our ship docks at 7 am Sunday and it’s likely they’ll want us out by 9, since they’re boarding for the next cruise at noon. On one hand, I’ll be glad to get away from all this incredible food so that I can stop gaining weight. I didn’t weigh myself before coming on this cruise but I am certain that I’ve packed on a few pounds I didn’t have before. On the other hand, I am going to miss everything about it, from the absolute relaxation to the exciting ports of call to the incredible service and the unbelievable food.

It hasn’t been that exciting to write about, and I’m sure it hasn’t been that exciting to read about either, since I am certainly doing less than I was in China, where there were activities lined up for me every day. For those of you who have made it this far, thanks for sticking with it! If nothing else, I hope my account has made you hungry.

As always, thanks for reading!

Still, like extremely privileged and decadent soldiers, we found where our group was meeting and headed out via bus to the valley where we were taking our ride. Mercifully, the rain was isolated to downtown Juneau and didn’t follow us into the valley. Low clouds aside, it was actually a very pleasant and relatively warm day.

Our bus driver, Leah, told us a little about herself and about Juneau during the trip. She was originally from Wisconsin and found this place by googling “cool summer jobs.” She kept up a pretty steady dialogue throughout the bus trip, pointing out important things like the governor’s house where Sarah Palin lived and where her underaged daughter threw a drinking party, the capital building which looked like an old school yard until they put up four columns in front of it in an effort to make it look authentic (so now it looks like an old school yard with some columns), and the town library, located on top of a parking garage. She also pointed out that the high school was rated the most dangerous place in Alaska because it was at simultaneous risk of earthquake, tsunami and avalanche, having been built directly on a fault line, on the water, and at the base of a mountain.

Like Hoonah, it was easy to tell that Juneau flourished based on its tourism, despite being the state capital. The first thing you saw when exiting the cruise ship was the other cruise ship that was there. I’ve already forgotten the name, but it wasn’t another Celebrity ship, so it must be a pretty common stop. Downtown Juneau appeared to have been built around the pier with tourists in mind, because literally every shop except one that I saw sold either jewelery or souveneirs. Apparently jewelery is a big thing in Alaska, I suppose due to the gold rush or what have you. The one shop that didn’t sell jewelery or souveneirs was a Gelato stand, and it was abandoned due to the rainy weather. We learned on the same bus trip that Juneau sees rain about 300 days out of the year, so it’s kind of a wonder that it stay in business at all.

We learned a few other things about Juneau from the bus trip as well. Apparently, they don’t like Wal-Mart, at all. A Wal-Mart was built there a few years ago, after being fought for years by the fine citizens of Juneau, but as we drove by, the parking lot had maybe six cars in it. Leah said those probably belong to employees. Apparently, everyone here shops at Fred Meyer, so she said basically everyone in Juneau looks the same, since they all wear the same clothes from the same place. We also learned that McDonald’s is absurdly popular here, and it’s a story so crazy it deserves a paragraph of its own.

A couple of years ago, the first ever McDonald’s was opened in Juneau, and this became pretty big news for many of the places around. In fact, it became such big news that people were literally flying in on float planes and small personal craft for the opening day. Many of these people placed orders for 30 or more meals, which they would then bring back to their home towns and families. The line to get in to the restaurant was a mile long and you had to wait four hours to get your food. Based on sales figures from other franchises, they stocked the Juneau McDonald’s with what they projected to be enough food to last them a month. They were sold out by 5:00 pm on the opening day, and had to shut down for three days while more food was being flown in.

Subsequently, exactly the same thing happened three days later, and the Juneau McDonalds still never sleeps to this very day. Indeed, as we drove by on the bus, we saw a dozen cars lined up at the drive-through. This was at about 12:45 pm, so to be fair, it was around lunch time. It was no less busy on the way back, which was around 4:30. It is in the Guiness book of world records for one of the most successful grand openings of all time, I don’t know if it’s just for the chain or for everything, everywhere.

Anyways, when we finally arrived at our destination, we were greeted by one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met. His name was Kenny, but everyone he worked with simply called him “Irish.” He was indeed from Ireland and had an awesome Irish accent, and he absolutely loved to talk. He read us out the waiver, had us all sign it, and got us set up with rain slicks and boots. Yao, Vincci and I were fortunate enough to be in his boat, and I call that good fortune because he really made the float worth doing.

The float itself began where the Medenhall Glacier ended. The glacier itself had been retreating at a rate of about 100 feet per year, though last year it apparently lost 700. While we were getting all of our stuff ready, Kenny pointed out to us that you could see how the glacier retreated based on how the trees grew at its base. Close to the base of the glacier, you could see only saplings and new trees, whereas the further away you got, the larger they became. He later informed us that he was going to college for outdoor leisure activities and geological science, and his knowledge made the trip a lot more interesting.

He also explained to us why the water we were entering was uniformly cloudy and grey. The glacier apparently grinds rocks underneath it into dust as it moves, and runoff from the glacier itself will capture this dust and bring it down into the glacial lake, where our journey began. This was the basis for what was once a major industry in Juneau: gravel. The Medenhall glacier river carried so much of this silt downstream that it actually became a viable source for gravel production, and a huge profit was made until some environmental damage was done by a harvest and from what I understand, the plant was then shut down.

Anyways, kicking off the float, he asked who among us wanted to row. Yao and I volunteered while Vincci decided she’d rather sit in the middle. Then Kenny asked who wanted to get wet. There was a moment of hesitation while everyone looked at each other, and then I volunteered us, much to Vincci’s dismay. Yao didn’t seem to mind much and we were seated at the front of the boat, with the best view of everything. I entrusted my camera to Vincci since I was rowing. Kenny sat the rest of us and showed us how to row in synchronization, then made the effort to remember the names of all 11 of us. He was pretty successful, only forgetting the names of a couple of his passengers once or twice through the three hour float. We crossed a mile-long lake fed by the glacier and got some really good pictures, then headed downstream into the Medenhall river.

The river is where the real fun began, and Kenny guided us through some stage II and III rapids. Stage I rapids essentially means moving water. Stage II rapids means moving water with some obstructions. Stage III means rough moving water with rocks and things like that which a boat can get caught on. Stage IV means chance of injury, rapidly moving water, frequent obstructions. Stage V means injury is likely. There is technically a stage VI, which means that death is fairly likely. Some people are crazy enough to do these rapids for kicks, and if enough people survive these rapids, they’ll be downgraded to Stage V. The example he gave us of a Stage VI rapids is Niagara Falls.

Overall we didn’t get too wet, though Yao ate a pretty good wave in the face on the final stretch. Most of the journey was just us floating down a calm river while Kenny explained some of the history of Juneau and the glaciers to us, putting to good use his geology education as he explained the strata we could see and the effects of erosion on the banks and things like that. He explained that erosion was such a problem on the Medenhall river banks that they were looking for any kind of way they could to make it stop, and at some point decided that they needed to just throw things in the river along the banks to make sure that the erosion didn’t eat away at any more of the soil. What did they have in abundance at that time? Junk cars. So there was actually a stretch of the river where the banks were lined with the carcasses of ancient cars that had been pushed into the river to stop erosion along the banks. Now that is a forward-thinking solution!

The rapids were enjoyable, and overall the trip was just extremely relaxing. Kenny was an incredibly entertaining guide and I would recommend the excursion to anyone going on the same trip, especially if they can get in his boat.

Once we got back to Juneau, we decided to give the city a brief wander, now that we were in the rain and had the low cloud cover again. Leah advised against taking the tram up to the top of the mountain, since the clouds killed any visibility we may have had, so what we did instead was tour the incredibly touristy jewelery and souveneir shops. I like to collect souveneirs from the places I go, but there was nothing really interesting in Juneau that I couldn’t live without. I was looking at some of the knives they had there for skinning and scaling and other things, but ultimately decided against, since I am willing to bet that trying to explain why I am bringing a six inch blade onto the cruise ship would be a pain.

So we reverted to our default activity, returned to the ship and ate. This was about at 5:00. The buffet has this pasta customization place where you can choose whatever you want to put on it (squid, shrimp, chicken, a pile of veggies), choose the pasta you want, and then choose what kind of sauce you wanted. With that tucked safely away, we decided a nap was in order, and napped until about 8:00. Tonight was our second formal night on the cruise, so I managed to tie my tie acceptably on the first try and be down there in time for dinner. It started with an appetizer of (barely) smoked salmon, followed by a really delicious corn and chicken cream soup, and the main course of beef tenderloin and potatoed. Dessert was a special production this time, as the chefs and servers were all paraded before us and introduced so we could cheer at them for the incredible food and service we’d been receiving since we arrived. Everyone picked up their napkins and spun them, and I am guessing that’s kind of like a high-class applause or something. Afterwards, we were all served Baked Alaska, which was essentially a layer of icing covering a thin layer of cake, and some ice cream (chocolate, vanilla and strawberry) all underneath that. To describe the meal as amazing would be an egregious understatement.

We retreated to the Crystal Room, where I am now typing out this post, which is a very classy lounge with some live entertainment where they butchered classics such as “Fly me to the moon” and “Lady is a Tramp”. Dad would have been furious, but we were just talking and enjoying ourselves and watching the island forests pass by out the window. It’s hard to believe that there are only two full days left on this cruise. Yao is already worried that going back to work is going to be next to impossible; however, he is looking forward to having cell phone reception and internet access at the constant ready. I’ve been doing alright on two minutes of internet per day. The fact that I live a life of constant luxury helps mitigate the inconvenience somewhat. Still, I make my home on the information superhighway, and I miss Marie something fierce, so I’ll be grateful to have it back.

We have another port of call tomorrow, but nothing in the way of excursions arranged just yet. We’re going to see what’s available when we wake up, but so far it’s a mystery even to me! I’ll keep you informed (in too much detail, it’s very likely), and as always, thanks for reading!

Losing my wallet, camera, shirt and sandals, I lined up with the other polar bear hopefuls and we were introduced to the crowd. To add a little excitement to the polar bear swim, we were each brought up individually and once our name and home town was announced, we were to kiss a 12-pound atlantic salmon (held by the cruise director, who was the master of ceremony for the whole thing) and dive in. Most people tentatively pecked the salmon’s forehead and a few outright refused. One person tried to kiss the cruise director instead. One kid gave it a full on French kiss, tongue and all, before taking the plunge. When it was my turn up there, I gave it a little loving caress before the kiss and dove in a moment later. Two things about the water struck me immediately: One, it wasn’t that cold. It felt like a lake in Victoria in spring. Two, it was actually ocean water, so I spent the next minute or two trying to spit out the taste. I’m not sure where they took the water from, since the water near the Hubbard glacier was murky and dirty, but it was by far the toastiest polar bear swim I’ve ever taken part in. It helped that the weather was sunny and gorgeous the entire time.

The Hubbard glacier is actually the turn-around point for the cruise, and our next two ports of call are further south from our current location. I expected more cold out of Alaska than this, and the weather here, within spitting distance of the glacier, was actually warmer than most summer days in Victoria. It was the same in Hoonah, where I had to take my jacket off because it was distressingly warm. We arrive in our next port of call, Juneau, tomorrow morning at the hour of 7:15, at which time I will be blissfully and assuredly unconscious and won’t be waking up until probably 11:00, so I can get some breakfast before we go on our rafting tour. Vincci, Yao and myself have signed up for a rafting tour beginning at 12:30 on the pier that will take three and a half hours, most of which will probably be us getting to the point where the actual rafting starts. We’ll be going down a river that runs directly along a glacier, and will be encountering some stage II and III white-water rapids along the way. From what I can tell, this basically means that the water will not be completely flat, because in the introductory video for the excursion, it showed the raft sort of drifting gently in some water that looked like it might have been moving.

“You may encounter some white-water rapids on the way down, adding excitement to the journey,” it said. It showed a picture of a very bored-looking eight year old at the bow of a raft as it drifted over a swell of water. Vincci did not appreciate the obvious comparison.

On the way back down the coast from the glacier, we went a bit further out to sea and actually began to feel the boat pitching a little bit. Vincci had a look of constant worry on her face, but she wasn’t the only one, as most of the guests aboard the Century were walking with their arms out and commenting to each other as the ship gently rocked back and forth. It was nice to have the reminder that we weren’t on dry land for a change, as with the accommodations available on this ship, it’s hard not to believe that you’re at some all-inclusive resort somewhere. I suppose we are, it just happens to be out at sea. The couple from Malta were there at dinner this evening and the young lady of the pair was not doing well. It was easy to tell how ill she was feeling because she allowed herself the indignity of leaning her head on her hand and looking miserable. Our server brought her sliced green apples, since that apparently helps with sea-sickness. Vincci did surprisingly well, finishing her entire meal and not really giving any indication that she was sick. She later revealed her secret, which is that she was on her second bottle of Gravol since the trip started.

Dinner tonight, you ask? There were so many good things on the menu it was really difficult to choose which one I wanted, but I ended up going for an entree of sirloin steak served on penne with garlic cream sauce, preceeded by an appetizer of shrimp and cocktail sauce and a strawberry soup. The soup was something of an experiment. I looked at it and thought “That is quite odd, I wonder if it is what I think it probably is.” So I ordered it, and it turned out to basically be liquified strawberries, served cold, and diluted enough to be considered a soup. It was quite odd in exactly the fashion that I thought it would be, and I’m still not sure how I feel about that. The penne was absolutely phenomenal though, and dessert was a chocolate soufflé that was to die for. And really, it will probably be my cause of death, because nothing that delicious can be any good for you.

Just prior to dinner, Yao and I caught the tail end of a magic show while Vincci was enjoying some hair treatment at the spa, which worked out fairly well for her. The show was a joint comedy/magic show and the performer was truly excellent. His style of magic was all sleight of hand, and he combined it with a slapstick comedy style that made the entire presentation extremely enjoyable to watch. If I can get his name for you, I will, because he’s definitely worth the recommendation.

After dinner, we headed up to our usual haunt in the buffet to curl up like beached whales and chat for a while. The sun doesn’t go down until about 10:00 up here, so we watched a very pretty sunset before talking the rest of the night away and retiring for the evening. Even now, at 2:30 in the morming, I can see partially-lit sky through a break in the clouds outside. I guess we’re far enough north that the sky doesn’t ever get truly dark during the summer, even in the dead of night.

It’s time for me to sign off for now, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. As always, thanks for reading!

We had a 45-minute bus ride, two minutes of which were through the actual town of Hoonah, and 43 minutes of which were on a logging road that wound up the side of the mountain. Our guide was a comedian and had a much easier time getting a rise out of his people than our presenter did on the first day. We got a small amount of Hoonah’s history on the way through, which was mostly the history of the native tribe that founded the small town. Aside from the world’s longest zipline, we learned that the small community also had the seventh friendliest bar in the United States, according to Esquire magazine. Hoonah also has an “international” airport. I imagine that the only reason that it is called an international airport is because you can reach Canada with a single-engine plane from there.

Because the island itself was relatively untouched (and bear-filled), it made for some great scenery to get pictures of, and I’ll be uploading those when I get back, since I neglected to bring my camera’s USB connector. We had a brief opportunity for a nature walk after the 45-minute bus ride, along what appeared to be another old logging trail that was too narrow and windy for any bus to make it down. This was about the time when Vincci started making whining sounds and shifting from foot to foot, since you could see the town of Hoonah in the distance through breaks in the trees, way down below us and very far away. She was apprehensive about the world’s longest zipline initially, but now that she could actually see the distance that it was intended to travel, she was getting downright scared. Knowing that there was no turning back now, Yao dropped the pretense of sympathy and had a little fun at her expense hyping up the entire scenario. We were the third group in line, so Vincci got to see two other groups go in front of us, wailing and howling the entire way down. This didn’t help her state of mind.

I was fortunate enough to get the harness meant for little people, so I was hunched over something fierce initially. I’m not sure how I ended up that way but they felt no need to swap me with anyone. I had my camera, and Vincci her camcorder out for the duration of the trip. It was some kind of crazy exhilerating when they did the countdown and hit the button that released the gates. Within seconds we were cruising four hundred feet above the trees below, wind whipping at us as the zipline screamed above us, drowned out by our own shouts. Vincci was surprisingly quiet while Yao and I yelled like a pair of deranged howler monkies for most of the trip. It turns out that 90 seconds, while it sounds pretty short, is actually a pretty long time to be suspended in the air above the world, and it was definitely time enough to get some decent pictures and run out of breath once or twice. Vincci was dutifully trying to film the entire thing using her camcorder, but we were later to learn that the powers that be frowned on her efforts, which was a disappointment, especially to her. At the end of the ride, her camcorder showed no data, maybe due to all the jostling or the wind, or because mini-DVDs are a silly form of media.

At the bottom, they showed us pictures that we could by for an exorbitant price, considering what it costs to produce them. Vincci looked about as stunned as anyone might have predicted in the final seconds of her descent, whereas Yao apparently found enlightenment in that 90-second trip and looked about as serene as one could possibly imagine, knowing the deepest secrets of life, love and the universe. I looked like I had a license to kill, and will be scanning this picture the first opportunity I get. It will be attached to my application to MI6.

WIth the most exhilerating part of our shore time out of the way, we headed back to the museum/everything shop and had a look at their goods, which included some hats that we were absolutely forbidden to photograph, and a goldsmith with some really interesting stuff. We looked at a certified Brazilian Alexandrite ring that cost $26,000. The salesman asked us what we thought it was worth, and we ballparked it at $6,000 initially. He kept saying “up” as our estimate clawed its way towards the $20,000 mark and I wasn’t sure if he was serious, considering the smile that was growing on his face. But he was, and the ring is actually worth that much, because apparently Alexandrite is the rarest stone in the world, moreso when certified from a mine that no longer produces. He showed it to us under a few different colours of lights and it was very neat how the stone appeared to change colour, but for the price it seems like you could actually just buy six or seven other very expensive rings and swap them out whenever you felt like it. I suppose if you’ve got that kind of money, it’s no big deal.

We also looked at some of the other jewelery in there, including a few rings that had moving parts. One was a diamond center with a diamond-studded moon that rotated around it. Vincci tried a couple on and looked like she was on the verge of buying one, but it was a bit too much for her. The salesperson, persuasive as ever, looked at me and said “She is wondering if you’ll buy it for her,” and I had to laugh and tell them that she wasn’t mine, so I was off the hook. “You can still buy it for her!” they suggested. Have to admire that persistence! Yao was nowhere to be found.

We didn’t stay too much longer in port and returned to the ship where we wandered the deck for a while, enjoying the stillness of the air now that the ship wasn’t moving. Earlier, we were up on deck when the Century was moving at full speed, and Vincci looked like she was barely keeping her feet on the ground. Naturally, this was funny to us, and Yao managed to make a brief recording with his iPhone. Despite the fact that we have traveled north and are now in Alaska, it seems like it was warmer than ever, and I couldn’t even wear my jacket in the port.

We caught dinner at our usual time of 8:30, and tonight’s delicacies included pork medallions in a dijon mustard sauce on a bed of rice with some assorted vegetables, prefaced by Asian Consommé and veal appetizer. The others at our table must have still been in port, so dinner went by very quickly and we spent some time talking Vincci into our next excursion, which is a glacier tour by raft as we travel down a river that is flanked by them, which will be on Thursday. With that done, Vincci decided it was time to visit the casino and waste some money. Yao was kind enough to provide $40 to the excursion, $20 of which Vincci managed to blow on quarter slots, and some amount of which was blown on a machine where quarters that are added push money towards a ledge, where they fall and can be collected.

Vincci managed to get triple-bar on her first pull, which we all found greatly amusing. We started with 80 quarters and she managed to get up to 115 before losing them all with a continuous string of what I would call average luck, considering the way the machines are designed to benefit the house. Yao casually chose a new machine for his next hit, dropped two quarters into it, pulled the arm and made $20. He immediately cashed out, took his quarters, and… blew them on the second machine. I’d have taken the winnings and headed for the hills, but he shrugged and said that the money was lost the moment it was converted into quarters, and he was determined to see it through. The process took about two hours, and it was admittedly pretty fun.

A little earlier in the day, Vincci and I partook in some of the live entertainment offered in the various lounges about the ship, including a big band in one lounge, and a very nice piano in another. Three days in and I’m still learning about the ship’s various services and attractions. There we saw the cutest little girl in the entire world dancing with her mom and dad, and she kept calling Vincci “big sister” in Chinese. It was so sweet I think I got a cavity.

Tomorrow starts off with a polar bear swim for me, and hopefully one or the other of Yao and Vincci will get some decent footage of me flailing about in the icy water. Unfortunately, it isn’t a swim in the ocean, even though I would be totally down for that. It appears to be on deck 11, where the pool is, so I imagine they’re just going to throw some ice in there and call it close enough. Lame, but I can imagine that encouraging people to swim in the deepest, coldest parts of the open ocean is not the wisest idea for a cruise line.

All in all, today was probably the best of the cruise so far, but I would chalk that up to the port of call. This vacation is very different from the one in China, Vietnam and Cambodia, in that it basically could not be more different. Instead of having something new and mind-blowing to do every day, I am encouraged to sleep in, get up when I feel like, it, eat food and stare out at the featureless open ocean as much as my heart desires.

The other suffering I do is in the name of trying everything, and by that I mean food. Today I woke up at about 10:00, netting about seven hours of sleep after writing my last blog post and failing to post it because of the internet thing. We weren’t expecting to have lunch in the Grand Restaurant until noon, so we came up to the buffet and had a modest plate of breakfast and turkey sausage, two types of hash browns, eggs, french toast and pancakes with maple syrup. With that snack safely tucked away, we proceeded to the Grand Restaurant where I had an appetizer of fried mozza sticks, followed by a meal of prawn scampi in cream sauce, and a dessert of strawberry shortcake. Vincci wasn’t feeling too well at the beginning of lunch, so she went back to her room and slept most of the day while Yao and I attempted to walk off the food. Somehow I doubt we were successful.

We didn’t really let that stop us, though, and a couple of hours later we headed back to the buffet to try the smokies that we had seen people walking around with. They turned out to be startlingly good, and it will be difficult for me in the coming days not to spoil my appetite for the gourmet dishes with these things. We returned to our room where Yao and I talked for most of the remainder of the afternoon, and at some point managed to negotiate a working internet connection for four minutes, enough time to post yesterday’s journal entry and check my email. Yao and I both remarked on how cut off we feel without constant access to the information highway. It’s like a hivemind, and the world is very quiet without it. Not necessarily a bad thing, but challenging to get used to, especially when you are surrounded by the ocean.

Tonight was formal night at the Grand Restaurant, and as anyone who has seen me wear a suit before knows, I enjoy it tremendously and never miss an opportunity to whip it out. The suit, that is. I was relieved to note that it still fits me, which does come as somewhat of a surprise considering the dietary misadventures of the last couple of days. We’ll see if it fits me at the end of the cruise for the second formal night on our way back. We were the first ones at our table to show up. Vincci was feeling better by then and wore a very nice beige getup that included a shawl and skirt, plus some heels that upgraded her from “tiny” to merely “short.” Being men, Yao and I had an easy time with our clothes – suits. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to tie a tie, trying to work from memory since the internet is prohibitively expensive and I needed something to do anyways. I eventually worked out something that looked approximately like a half-Windsor, even though I’m almost certain it was all wrong. It looked convincing and it held for the evening, so I am pleased with the result. Yao had a clip-on or something, so he merely watched my struggles with amusement and inserted a snarky comment here and there.

Our table companions arrived in short order and the couple from Malta blew everyone away, as expected. Actually, that isn’t exactly fair. The guy wasn’t really dressed any better than me, but the girl looked like a trillion dollars and probably had spent about half that on her makeup. The professional photographer paid some extra-special attention to her when she stopped by our table. Service in the Grand Restaurant is a bit slow, but we started off with a selection of breads, followed by an appetizer of our choice. I can’t remember the name of mine, but it actually turned out to be thin slices of raw beef (unexpected) under a spicy white sauce with some lettuce leaves scattered on it. It turned out to be pretty good, as did the caesar salad that followed. For the entree, it was rack of lamb for me with garlic spiked mashed potatoes and broccoli, which I actually ate, to my mom’s assured delight. Dessert was a rich chocolate cake concoction that I’ve never tasted before, but was probably the closest thing I’ve experienced to heaven on earth so far.

Yao was eager to get out of his suit by the end of dinner, since his doesn’t fit quite as well as mine does, so back to the state rooms we went, and then came up to the buffet, which is our de facto hangout spot due to the accessibility of drinks and food, if for some reason we should require additional food. I tried out their pizza and it was extremely average, probably the first average food I’ve tasted on this cruise. The rest of the evening was spent in conversation, drawing leery glances from bystandars who didn’t necessarily understand that when we are discussing stabbing, shooting, killing and other acts of extreme violence, we are talking about video games here, and we are actually harmless. Especially Vincci, who was out of her high heels and back down to “tiny” status.

As my friend Keith mentioned, the ship is essentially made of food, and you cannot go more than ten feet without running into someone that will dispense incredible food to you free of additonal charge. So, this is what I am doing for you, readers. This is an example of what I must endure to bring you this account.

Tomorrow I will hopefully have something to write about other than food, though I’m sure there’ll be lots of that too. We’re stopping at our first Port of Call, and I’ll have a full account of our adventures there for you by the middle of the night when nobody is awake to read it.

As always, thanks for reading!

This time, about Alaska.

Right now it’s day one of our Alaskan cruise, and this time when I say “our,” I don’t mean my parents and I. This time I’ve gone with two of my friends, Yao and Vincci, both of whom I met playing World of Warcraft (not strictly accurate, I met Yao playing a different game some years prior). Sometimes, you just want your internet friends to become real friends, so with that goal in mind, we decided not only on a visit, but on a celebtratory cruise. If we’re all going to visit, we might as well do something spectacular. Yao is flying all the way from Maryland to be here, and I took the short, $14 CAD ferry ride over to Vancouver to join the two of them for the weekend before we left.

Since the weekend isn’t technically me being far from home, I’ll summarize it by saying that we stayed at the Travelodge airport hotel, ate too much food at too many good restaurants, didn’t play laser tag, didn’t go to Stanley park, and definitely were not lost at any point. Yao and Vincci are turning out to be a lot of fun to hang out with, but since I’ve known them both for something like ten and five years, respectively, that isn’t a big surprise to me.

So, today was the big day, and in the morning Yao and I decided to do some investigating about our ship, the Celebrity Century. Celebrity is touted to be one of the best cruise lines going, which was promising. It also explains the cost, but we weren’t about to let that bother us. The discovery that we made that startled us is their arrangements vis a vis the internet. As it turns out, internet is not free anywhere on the ship. In fact, internet costs a mean $0.75 per minute, which means that we aren’t going to get more than a glimpse of it for a week. Both being internet addicts, Yao and I exchanged looks that said “God help us all” before checking out of the hotel and bidding the internet a fond farewell.

Vincci’s dad was kind enough to drive us down to the port, where we passed through something like six checkpoints that operated something like an old-style adventure game. As we progressed, we gave items to people in exchange for other items and documents that allowed us to pass later checkpoints. The entire process took us maybe an hour, and we had to go through the usual rigamarole concerning customs, the US border, metal detectors and passports. There were also hand sanitizing stations every few feet, in case you felt that your hands were not sterile enough after using the last one, or the one before that.

Finally, we were allowed onto the ship where we were were immediately given a glass of champagne and sent to drop our stuff in our state room. The rooms themselves are humble, but we did elect to take one of the cheapest ones since we didn’t anticipate spending an awful lot of time in there. On a cruise ship with fifteen decks, the last one you want to be on is the one with your room on it. That’s where exactly none of the interesting things are located. Two beds, an itty bitty TV where you can rent bad movies for exorbitant prices, and a bathroom that makes me glad I am a relatively thin person (which I expect will change by the end of the week). If this is the lap of luxury (as people seem to suggest the Celebrity is), I’m curious to know what the accommodations are like on some of the other lines, like Princess or Carnival.

I don’t have a lot of complaints about the accommodations, though. My only real complaint is the lack of internet, but that’s to be expected from someone who virtually lives on it. It makes it somewhat more difficult to get what I’m typing now to a place where you, loyal readers, can see it.

As the ship left port, Vincci was trying to film it and explain what was going on in a video journal in both English and in Cantonese. Her efforts were thoroughly ruined by myself and Yao, loudly commenting on anything we found interesting in English, regardless of her language of choice at the time. As the wind picked up, Vincci (who weighs something like 90 pounds) ended up getting too cold to hold the camera steady, so I helped her out not only by filming, but by adding my own irreverent commentary to the mix. Somehow I doubt it will make the final cut.

We started off the cruise with a quick presentation on the various ports of call and the activities we could participate therein, which I immediately regretted attending because it was like watching paint dry. The poor speaker kept trying to get a reaction out of the crowd, but we were all basically there because we felt we had to be and weren’t putting our backs into anything he asked of us. As it turns out, the various activities are generally priced somewhere between expensive and outrageous, but the three of us managed to pick out one actiivty at each port that we could afford and would enjoy. I’ll write more about those as we get to them.

With that presentation done, we had a few minutes to investigate the real attraction of the cruise before the mandatory safety meeting. Off to the buffet with us, where we enjoyed a few select things. They had a very promising mushroom soup, and a million little things I would have loved to get my hands on, but I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for dinner, which was at 8:30. The safety meeting wasn’t worth writing about – I certainly didn’t find it interesting and I wouldn’t subject you to that. Fast-forward a little while to the highlight of the day!

Dinner in the Grand Restaurant was actually intimidating because I wasn’t immediately sure if it was going to cost extra – and if it did cost extra, I’m not sure I could afford it. We started off by being sat at a table with eight seats total, and were grouped up with five other people – A couple from Europe and a group of three Chinese women, who enjoyed talking to Vincci and did their best to make conversation with us in English. The couple from Europe embarrassed the rest of us by looking incredibly smart, especially the lady, who was entirely made up and wearing an absolutely beautiful dress. I felt under-dressed for the occasion, even though there was a 15-year old kid behind me wearing a Metallica t-shirt and a baseball cap (mercifully, not backawards or sideways). Tomorrow is formal night, so hopefully I can redeem myself by wearing the suit that I lugged all the way here. I at least know that I look awesome in it. Also, I am humble.

There were a lot of things to choose from on the menu, but ultimately I had to go with an appetizer of select meats and cheeses, a soup of lobster bisque, an entree of lamb shank, and a dessert of… something I couldn’t pronounce, but it had chocolate, ice cream, and some kind of wafer shell. We began the evening with three forks, three spoons, and yes, three knives. Foolishly, I attempted to preserve these utensils, since I am used to having one or less of each, but the staff kept taking them away from me and bringing new ones. I am fairly certain that I did not use the correct fork for anything I ate, but that did not diminish the fact that it was incredibly delicious.
Like last time, most of this journal is probably going to be about food.

We learned at the end of the meal that we’re doing this every day, and also that the buffet was open until midnight, and also that the Grand Restaurant held free-seating breakfasts and lunches at certain hours, ensuring that under no circumstances would we ever get to take advantage of the buffet because the restaurant would be serving us incredible food three times a day. I honestly am not sure how I am supposed to fit in eating at the buffet when they are cramming food down my throat at every opportunity. It’s 2:23 in the morning as I write this now, but the buffet is sadly closed, so what little space I have left in my stomach will remain empty until morning, when I take advantage of the breakfast they offer in the grand restaurant.

I don’t even know why they have a buffet. It is probably for the sole purpose of being excessive. They also have restaurants that you pay money to eat in. This baffles me. Why in the world would you pay money to eat in a restaurant on board a cruise ship? It’s like going to the beach and buying sand off a guy. There are two questions to be asked: First of all, why did you buy sand? And second of all, how is that guy selling sand actually in business? I would say maybe he sells especially high-quality sand, but the sand you are walking in is already gourmet as hell. It is designer sand, and if you looked at it through a microscope, you would probably see a tiny Gucci label.
I am concerned, though. In terms of activities, the cruise seems to offer little. We paid a visit to the “X-treme Video Arcade” and found that it was populated by arcade games at least 20 years old, all of which had their prices jacked up from $0.25 per play to $1.25 per play. We also discovered, at the cost of $3.00, that one of the machines didn’t even work to the best of our knowledge. The rest of the money we tossed away on another machine, which had a gun that was terribly misaligned, making aiming at the screen tremendously difficult. Beyond that, it has a swimming pool, basketball court, some tape on the ground that passes for a jogging track (which is 1/14th of a mile around, based on a helpful sign), and some things that cost money, like spas, bars and a casino.

It may well be that the only thing to do on this cruise is eat, which means that this travel journal may turn into a food column. I’ll try to learn a few things about our ports of call while I’m there, but since we won’t have any kind of guided tours, it may be mostly wandering and reading plaques. I probably won’t upload pictures until I get home due to the price of the internets, but once I do I’ll provide a link where you’ll be able to view the best ones like last time!

Thanks for reading!

LESSONS LEARNED

Packing: Packing light is a must, especially on a trip where you move around as much as we did.  I succeeded in carrying about 13 kgs of luggage, and a backpack with another 5 in it maybe.  While I was the lightest of the three of us, I still carried a lot of unnecessary stuff.  So, what did I learn about packing?

Clothes: Okay, what would be appropriate to pack on a trip to southeast Asia?  Your answer is: NOT PANTS.  You should pack exactly one pair of pants to southeast Asia and places of similar temperature, and they should be made of something ligher than air if at all possible.  The only reason you will ever wear these pants is because your legs are sunburned to all hell and you need to cover them up so they don’t wither into dessicated husks and die.  This is especially true if you are taking a trip in May, instead of in February like a reasonable human being, when it isn’t 35 degrees in the shade (not even kidding).

If you actually find that you need something you did not pack, clothes wise, you can buy it for a fraction of what it would cost in North America at any of ten million stores over here.

However do make sure that you have at least one pair of shorts that extends down further than your knees.  Many temples and places of worship require that your knees be covered as a sign of respect, and you don’t want to get stuck outside those places.  Similarly, make sure that you pack a collared shirt or two with short sleeves, for the same reason.  Sometimes you want to look sort of okayish when you’re going out to see shows and stuff.  Or maybe you want the local girls crawling all over you, and it can’t hurt to look presentable there either.

Before I left Victoria, I was pressured by my mom to bring a fleece vest, just in case it got cold.  Pro tip: IT DOESN’T GET COLD.  Here in Cambodia, the “cold months” experience temperatures of 16-26 celcius, where 16 is the low at night.  So unless there’s a monsoon or typhoon coming or whatever, the weather is going to be pretty consistently hotter than the surface of the sun.  Leave your fleece at home, where the temperature sometime dips below 15.  It will do everyone more good that way, and allow you to bring back more goodies in the space it isn’t taking up in your luggage.

Gear: This netbook has been a godsend.  It is capable of operating without a power converter using the 220 volt outlets here; however, it has a ground wire, so it doesn’t actually fit any of them.  Figure out where you’re going and get an appropriate adapter before you leave.  These things cost a couple of bucks at London Drugs.  If you forget, you can usually borrow or buy one from whatever hotel you’re staying at.

Hand sanitizer is a good thing to have, especially if you aren’t on a guided tour.  Our guides were handing us disinfectant wipes all over the place, so make sure you go get a bottle of the stuff and wrap it in plastic before you throw it in your bag.  Carry it around with you and use it before you eat and stuff.  Mine exploded, fortunately it was in its own compartment so it didn’t make too much of a mess.  The end result is that my bag now smells like pretty flowers and is probably germ-free.  Also, bring a face cloth with you everywhere, loop it over your belt or something.  You’ll be grateful for it when you are wiping rivulets of sweat off your face.

For those of you who can’t live without your cell phone – tough !@#$!  It probably doesn’t work here, and even if it does you don’t want to use it to do anything more than tell the time.  Roaming charges will kill your bank account.  Do yourself a favour, bring a watch and leave the phone at home.  Or, if you can’t abide that, just buy one here.  There are entire streets in China dedicated to selling phones.

The water here is not safe to drink, so I strongly recommend getting yourself a water bottle harness.  Basically, it goes around your shoulder and has a place for a water bottle, leaving you hands-free to do other things, like take pictures or not carry a damn water bottle around everywhere.  I brought it on my hike in Dali and it was a godsend.  You will be much happier not having to worry about carrying something around, and it will stay colder for longer when not gripped by your sweaty, disgusting hand.

Electric razors from North America run on 110 volts, so they do not work in the sockets here and will probably explode; ergo, unless your name is Grizzly Adams you probably want to bring some disposables and shaving cream.  If you actually sprung for a power converter instead of just an adapter, you can use the electric one if you really want.

Cameras: Unless you are a photographer for National Geographic or something and expect your shots to be published on glossy paper in an important magazine, you probably want to bring a little hand-camera instead of one with a lens that extends a foot from your body at all times.  Sometimes, like when you’re climbing ancient structures in Angkor Thom, you don’t want a bigass camera dangling from your neck, smashing into stuff.  I was damn glad for my little Canon PowerShot A750 IS because it goes in a little pouch on my belt and never got in my way.  The same cannot be said for my mom’s somewhat larger Sony SteadyShot DSC-H5 with filter lens, which is a fair bit more unwieldy.

Seeing stuff: Museums are boring.  There is no value to seeing old pottery in glass cases.  That is the kind of thing you can see easily enough on the internet.  History you can use Wikipedia for, and it’s probably a good idea to look that kind of thing up beforehand so you know what you’re seeing when you visit things that aren’t boring.  Maybe you don’t agree with me here, perhaps you find old pointy rocks fascinating, and if that’s your thing, more power to you.  There are lots of places out there for you.

Time of year: There’s a reason that May is considered to be “off season.”  Because it’s freaking hot.  November to February are the good months; on the other hand, everything is crowded, daylight is shorter and hotels are more expensive.  It’s a compromise, but you should at least be aware that you are making it.

Top Five

It’s tough to order these in some cases, but the top five sights I would recommend seeing in this region are as follows:

Great Wall of China.  We saw this in Beijing, but since it stretches on for 6,000 km, you can see it in a lot of places.
Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.  The boat tour of this place was just amazing.
Angkor Wat/Angkor Thom, Cambodia.  A must-see, even if it’s the only thing you do in Cambodia.  The country is littered with these ruins, but Angkor Wat is truly amazing.
Terra Cotta Warriors, Xi’an.  Some people might disagree and suggest that this falls under the category of old pottery, but I thought it was pretty amazing.
Nationalities village, Kunming.  This has nothing to do with me getting pounced by girls, it’s a really cool place independent of that incident.

The good, the bad, the ugly

Best moment: Standing strong atop the highest point of the Great Wall (that I could see) through a gust of wind that probably could have knocked me off, had I been off balance.

Worst moment: Having to watch our navigator bribe the police on the river in Vietnam to get by, while the police were sitting in their motor boat reading the paper.  Twice.  Alternatively, turning away the begging Vietnamese woman on the lake in Cambodia.  Far worse than being sick.

I am not necessarily done with this post, but it’s overdue and all my tired mind can think of right at the moment.  This may well be the last one until I have another little adventure.  So until then, thanks for reading!  Those of you who actually made it to the end, I commend your dedication.

Similar to our river trip in Vietnam, the water seems to be poor man’s land in Cambodia.  We arrived at our destination, which was basically a ramp down into the muddiest water I have ever seen, with a few ricketey boats there, one of which was ours.  Our navigators were two locals, who were very good at traversing the muddy river, which was only a meter deep in most places.  The engine on our boat was loud enough to shatter our eardrums, and the drum was constant, made worse by the shallow water, which required that the propeller be balanced just beneath the surface so it didn’t strike the muddy bottom.  Most of the time it was just spraying disgusting water in all directions.

The trip down the river actually took about 25 minutes, which was unfortunate because talking over the roar of the engine was absolutely impossible, so all you had to do was watch as you passed the dwellings of some of the poorest souls in the region, and feel terrible for them.  There were children playing in the water, knocking each other over and splashing each other and stuff, and while normally that is a heart-warming sight, it was just horrifying because of the water quality.  There were inch-wide algae blooms and bacterial colonies growing on the surface, and green tendrils of some unidentifiable liquid throughout.

It wasn’t any better when we got out of the river.  Since it’s dry season currently and the water level is so low, the lake is shallow for a couple of kilometers, still only a meter deep in most places.  The water is also still absolutely vile.  There are little floating colonies on the lake, groups of boats forming makeshift housing clusters, and Nin told us that many of the people who live here on the lake are illegal immigrants from Vietnam.  There was actually a Vietnamese school there, floating on the lake with a whole bunch of rowboats docked to it, and children inside.

While we were watching this, a man and his daughter drew up alongside us, the girl (who was perhaps seven) with a python draped over her shoulders.  The snake seemed completely unconcerned with the noise and its current status, though if it ever became hungry, it probably could have ruined that girl’s day in a hurry.  We couldn’t hear anything they were saying over the roar of the engine, but Nin later told us that they were begging, and that it’s not good for us to give them anything.  The reason it isn’t good is because if the families are able to use their children as bait to beg from tourists, they will force them to continue doing that instead of sending them to school, where they will hopefully learn enough in the way of useful skills to move beyond that.

We learned some stuff about the lake and how they fish on it, but the real reason we were there had nothing to do with any of that.  It was to see how people lived, which is to say barely.  They make their living out of that filthy water, meager as it is.  They live on it and from it.  I would never eat anything that had come from those waters, but for them it’s as good as it needs to be.  I feel like a very lucky man for not having to do the same.  On the way out, we were approached by another family in a boat, this time a Vietnamese woman and her daughter, who also had a python.  She, the mother, held the side of our boat and begged in just such a way as to be absolutely heartbreaking, but Nin once again warned us against giving them anything.

We wound our way back up the river a little more sullen than before, after once again seeing what poverty in countries with absolutely no social support system looks like.

We had a few minutes to shake off that feeling before we were brought to the Angkor Artisan’s school, which is aimed at assisting the very impoverished people we had just encountered by teaching them one of a few trades, these being painting, sculpting (with sandstone), carving, lacquering, and silk weaving.  Once taught these skills, they are allowed to sell their works in the school store, and eventually open their own workshops with the proceeds.  We received a quick tour from a guide who spoke too softly for anyone, even myself, to hear a single word of what he said, so we mostly figured it out from hand gestures and written advertisements and stuff.  For all we know, he might have been speaking Khmer the entire time.

Maybe because we felt so badly for the people we had just left behind, and maybe because it is effectively the last day of tours before we go home, we bought a pile of stuff before leaving for lunch at a place that was outside and not air conditioned.  The food was delicious, as it all seems to be here.  Cambodian cuisine seems to involve a lot of seafood, which is some cause for concern now that I have seen where their seafood comes from.  Can’t argue with taste, though.

We were dropped back at the hotel to pass the most uneventful afternoon ever.  Mom slept, dad read by the pool, and I played a few games of solitaire – solitaire – before remembering that I had a bunch of pictures that needed uploading.  I uploaded everything up to today’s tours on the photobucket site, so you should be able to view pictures of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat now.  By the time I was finished with that mess, my dad and I went to see the Apsara in action over dinner while mom took a pass due to feeling awful.  I can’t blame her, I feel pretty wrung out by now, even staying at this five-star hotel where everyone is waiting on you hand and foot.  30 days is a long time to be away from home.

The food there was pretty good, but the performance was excellent.  Though I don’t think it was quite as well done as the one we saw in China, it was still very well choreographed and showed a few scenes that we recognized due to Nin’s expert guidance prior.  The first scene was an Apsara confronted by a demon, who had a little tiny axe and seemed pretty intent upon causing her some harm.  She danced around for a while as the demon struggled with the attempts bring himself to do harm to this nymph before he finally gave up, then she fluttered off and left the demon feeling stupid until he, too, exited the stage.  The second dance was another Apsara fluttering around delicately, while a monkey soldier (who we learned about earlier, involved in a story about Vishnu) followed her around.  While she appeared to pay absolutely no attention to him during the course of her dance, even when he laid monkey paws upon her, they danced off together after a little while, so I guess the monkey was luckier than the demon.

The third dance was related to fishing.  We learned while we were out today that men fish with a cage-like structure, slapping it down in the water, then reaching into a hole in the top and rooting around for fish.  Women have some kind of counterpart basket thing to this, and the story was of two people out of a group of fishermen who fall in love while fishing together.  The female lead was tiny and adorable, while the male lead was tall and extremely lanky, so it made for a good pairing and was probably my favourite of the performances.  The next dance was a very traditional Apsara dance with seven of the girls dressed in ornate finery.  Nin mentioned to us that the Apsara basically cram their hands into jars growing up so that they are able to bend their fingers backwards, because that is thought to be extremely attractive, and is depicted a great deal in the carvings of the Apsara on the various temples and stuff around Cambodia.  The girls who were up there on stage today definitely did this, because their hands did things that looked wholly unnatural to my eye.

They posed afterwards for pictures with whoever wanted to get up on stage with them.  Dad observed earlier that Cambodian girls may be even shorter than those from China and Vietnam, so I figured some science was in order and got up on stage to do a comparison.  Yep, they’re tiny alright.  The tallest ones came up to my shoulders, not counting their head dresses, which gave them at least another six inches.  They were bare-footed, however, so give them some shoes and they’d be up another half-inch to… higher on my shoulder.  I don’t think that really confirms anything other than that they are very very small.

On the way back to the hotel, we were propositioned by pimps a full three times in the two blocks we had to walk.  One was offering a “full woman massage,” while the other asked if we wanted a happy ending to the night.  I don’t know exactly what a full woman massage is, but I guess I can use my imagination.

Tomorrow we begin the absurdly long flight back home, beginning with a flight to Bangkok, then to Hong Kong, then to Vancouver, then to Victoria.  We will be in the air for about a day, and will arrive home a little after midnight, Thursday morning, Victoria time.  It took me about 20 minutes to piece that together in my head because we cross the international date line again, and a bunch of funky stuff happens when you do that.

Consequently, this is one of what will probably be the last two or three posts on this travel blog until I decide to take another gigantic trip somewhere, which probably won’t be for quite a while.  I’ll make a closing thoughts post later on, once I report that I am home in one piece, and for right now, I just want to thank you for reading, as always.

Prior to the van, though, we had a breakfast like we hadn’t seen since Shanghai.  I missed the vast spread of food, all of which is safe to eat.  This hotel is luxury like I’ve never experienced before, which makes sense, because I just figured out today that it’s five stars.  More on that later.

Our first stop was Angkor Thom, which was located past Angkor Wat, which is the place that I was really dying to see, so it was kind of heartbreaking to drive right past it.  As it turns out, it was nothing to be too worried about beacuse Angkor Thom was actually the capital city of Cambodia several hundred years ago.  The specific temple we visited, Bayon, was built in late 12th century AD and was almost as impressive.  Bayon was built by a guy who was way ahead of his time, allowing people to worship freely, despite his own convictions as a Buddhist.  Everyone was happy under this guy, who we called J7 because his name was too long and had a 7 at the end of it.  J8, the next king, turned out to be a dick and ruined everything for the entire nation by attempting to force a country-wide religion change to Hinduism, resulting in civil war, which the Thai took advantage of to claim a huge pile of territory formerly belonging to Cambodia.

I relate this bit of history to you now because this is how the temple was presented to me.  We were on the steps, literally on the walkway up, and we just stopped and talked about the temple for at least half an hour, without moving an inch.  It was maddening.

We eventually got into the temple proper, being stopped by our absurdly helpful guide, Mr. Nin.  He really knows his stuff, and the depth of his knowledge about the sites he’s showing to us is extraordinary.  Unfortunately it was not until much later in the day that Mr. Nin remembered how to walk while talking, so the extensive knowledge came at the expense of sight-seeing for the first hour.  I wandered off on my own a couple of times because I was impatient to see the incredible structure for myself.

And make no mistake, it was damned incredible.  The reason Mr. Nin chose to bring us to Bayon first is because Bayon faces to the east, like every other temple in the city of Angkor Thom.  Therefore, it’s best to see in the morning, when the sun is on it.  Angkor Wat, on the other hand, faces west because it was built as a mausoleum, thus faces the setting sun to symbolize the ending of a life.  Angkor Wat apparently doesn’t look like much in the morning when the sun is behind it, and it’s a bitch to take pictures of that way, so ultimately it was a very good decision.

Truth be known, Bayon may have been just as impressive as Angkor Wat, if not quite as grand in scale.  The carvings and architecture were breathtaking.  The place just looks awesome, black and forbidding in many places as the sandstone turns dark with age and weathering.  It was smaller in size because it was built in a hurry from pre-existing materials, shaved down at the king’s order to save on building costs and time.  For a throw-together project, it sure is impressive.  The reason that the king responsible for its construction was in a hurry is that he was already sick and ailing when it began, so he wanted it to be done by the time he croaked in the not too distant future.

One thing that the Cambodian people had not yet mastered in the days of the Angkor temple was stairs.  Stairs here go up at about a 75 degree incline, and each stair is about two feet high, so climbing these things is actually comparable to scaling a rough, vertical surface.  Fun for me, less so for my traveling companions over the age of 50 years.  Climbing down was perhaps even more difficult, and I usually just jumped the last several feet if the landing area was more or less smooth and even, which it often was not.

These pictures I will post as soon as I can, as the architecture simply defies description.

Around noon we got back into the van and headed back into town for lunch, following a brief incident where a poisonous, stinging insect that looked very similar to a hornet on steroids was trapped in the van and wanted out very badly.  We managed to wave him towards an open window, and then everyone decided to hit theselves with another shot of bug spray, because that thing was no joke.  Lunch, which included four courses, was had at an upscale restaurant and I’ll be damned if the food was not delicious again.  There was some kind of chicken thing with roasted cashew nuts that I basically couldn’t stop eating for any reason.

We elected to take a bit of a breather before going to see Angkor Wat in the afternoon, hoping to catch it at sunset.  Plus, everyone was feeling pretty tired after the morning tour and decided to partake in the local custom of the siesta, or afternoon nap.  As far as I’m concerned, this is a pretty wicked custom and I think we should adopt it.

At 3:00, we headed back out in the van to see Angkor Wat, which is right up there with the Great Wall and Ha Long Bay for tour highlights for me.  I’ve been anticipating it for ages, and it was not a disappointment.  The temple grounds are huge.  There are actually bullet holes, or indentations, in the front gate of Angkor Wat due to the brief Vietnam occupation.  Cambodian troops were eventually able to drive them out of Angkor Wat, but not before shooting the place up a little bit.

This temple is home to what must be some of the most incredible wall carvings in the world, though I’ve yet to see the ones in Egypt in person.  Every wall has some stuff on it, and some of the walls have gigantic sprawling depictions of huge battles between various factions that stretch on for a hundred meters or more.  Many of the walls on the inside have Apsara carved on them, which were basically incredibly beautiful female dancers who were evidently thought to be a little greater than humans, if not quite immortals or gods or what have you.  The Apsara are still everywhere in Cambodian society, and we’re going to see some modern ones in action tomorrow night over dinner.  Where there were not ropes restricting them from being touched, most of them had extremely well-worn breasts from being felt up by decades of tourists on the way by.  They’ve been groped so many times that the stone has actually begun to wear.

We’ve been very used to Buddhist worship by now, so nothing we see surprises us there.  What did surprise us was to learn a little about Hindu practice, wherein they apparently have a giant phallic symbol representing three of the major Hindu dieties (Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma), and which they pour water upon, which then becomes holy water that they use in various ceremonies and things.  The phallic symbol rests upon a pedestal intended to resemble female genitalia, from where the water runs off.  Well, who am I to judge?

From east to west gate, Angkor Wat took a little over two and a half hours to tour.  There are literally hundreds of temples surrounding Siem Reap, and the possibilities for exploration are virtually endless.  I managed to get myself a rock from the grounds, a piece of sandstone recently broken off from one of the pillars, so it shows a new-ish side that is clean and bright, and an old side that is dark and weathered.  It’ll go next to my Great Wall pebble, and sea shell from China Beach in Vietnam.  All in all, today was an incredible day, and since we have a lazy afternoon tomorrow, I’ll try to get caught up in posting pictures.  They will show you Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom in a way I could never effectively describe.

As always, thanks for reading!