In many ways, I felt at home in Thailand...or at least closer to home. As we begin to enter East Asia, I begin to feel closer to the culture, the people, and certainly the food =). For the first time in the voyage, I can get off the ship and not stand out...I could blend in relatively well and was often mistaken to be Thai, which I kind of liked. Perhaps it was related to my ongoing struggle with being a constant tourist, stereotypical "american", an...

We stopped off the coast of Singapore today to bunker for fuel... or "petrol" as they say overseas. This process usually takes a few hours depending on how much we fuel up, so we had a chance to look out and see a bit of the skyline and surrounding islands.Today, Friday the 13th of March was the HALF WAY POINT of our voyage in terms of days. Fifty four days passed, and fifty more days to go. Many of the 800 voyagers have sentiments of sadness upon he...

I'm finding it more and more difficult to find the words to describe my experiences both in each of these countries and overall on this voyage. In my five days and four nights in India I took in a lot of sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. I have been thinking about the great contrast that the country has to offer.Like many of the other ports, my experience in India was heavily impacted by how I traveled and who I spent time with. This was the first port tha...

The same evening that we re-boarded the ship in Mauritius, we had our opening ceremonies for SAS's long standing tradition of our Sea Olympics. There's no classes for a day and each of the ten seas compete against each other in a variety of competitions such as work out relays, mash potatoe sculpting, paper boat float contests, poker, and it's all capped off with the popular synchronized swimming competition.My coworker Ben did an amazing job with this event. H...

Four days after departing Cape Town, we arrived at Port Louis, Mauritius for a brief visit. I woke up in time for pulling into port at sunrise around 6:20am and it was worth it. We pulled into the harbor surrounded by green lush mountains and a beautiful sunrise. Our stay in Mauritius was only for about 10 hours, and so we all knew that it would go by quickly. I went for a run with a bunch of students from the "in port running club" as soon as we co...