We arrived in Shanghai after dark and it was about an hour drive from the airport to the port where the MV Explorer was docked. While we were hiking and seeing Beijing, the ship moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Since we had no classes between these two ports, you could choose to take the ship or travel over land on your own to Shanghai. When we got back to the ship we were told that we had to turn in our passports so that they could be stamped by the port immig...

Where do we even begin to describe the trip we took to Beijing and The Great Wall of China? We flew from Hong Kong to Beijing and the first order of business was to make it through customs. Well, everyone in the airport was trying to get through customs, so you have to take a look at the picture we took. After getting through customs we took a 2 ½ hour bus ride to Miyun County, which is outside Beijing. We had a wonderful traditional Chinese meal and then stayed...

We have had a very unfortunate event happen on our ship. One of our students, Andre Ramadan, passed away in his cabin on Saturday evening. Geno and I returned home from our Hanoi/Ha Long Bay trip on Saturday evening to find that the fire doors on our hallway were closed. These doors enclose about 15-20 cabins in different sections throughout the ship in the case of a fire. We didn't think anything of it and opened the fire door and went in our cabin. Several mome...