Rachel Hampton

Holy waves, Batman! April 6, 2009

So, my first open sea voyage is behind me and I’m sure everyone wants to know…were you seasick? Hmm, should I tell you now or make you wait until later? Everyone enjoys a little bit of suspense so let me first just tell you how the voyage was. We sailed from Manila to Kaohshiung, Taiwan and it took a few days. The seas were angry about something, not sure what…but we sure felt it on board. If you’ve been on a cruise, it was nothing like this! Our ship is much smaller and you can much more deeply feel the movement of waves. In fact, we would go up steps and go from feeling really heavy to really light. You would feel like you couldn’t lift your leg and a few moments later be able to jump four steps in one lurch. It was the funniest feeling! And we would go outside and try to jump when the ship was going down off of a wave to catch extra air time. We may have gotten fussed at for the dangerousness of this, however. Walking in the dining room without holding onto something was nearly impossible. I’ve never been drunk but I’m thinking that’s what it would feel like. As much as you try, it is impossible to walk in a straight line. And you would often find yourself running when the ship was positioned a certain way. You just couldn’t help it. The main lounge (the most calm area of the ship) was like a morgue. Everyone was laid out in there moaning and sleeping. Though I guess you wouldn’t see much moaning in a morgue. At least I hope not.  Most everyone was sick on board.  Except me! Yay! No seasickness. I’m not sure if my love of roller coasters contributed to this blessing. The dining room was a virtual ghost town which was kind of nice. No fighting for a table or food. There were a few others who weren’t sick and hung out with me. Honestly, it was an enjoyable experience. I only hope my lack of seasickness will continue on future voyages. 

Now we are in Taiwan and my Mandarin is horrible! Today is my off day and we decided to go to Outback Steakhouse for lunch since we heard there was one nearby. We walked for an hour and a half until we found it! We had one Chinese-speaker with us which was a blessing but no one seemed to know where the restaurant was. And yes, I had cheesefries. Maybe I can have a goal of having some in each country we go to, haha. It’ll be “my thing” Anyway, we had a great time just exploring the city. Then we went to a street with all the electronics imaginable. I was on the search for an external hard drive and praise the Lord that I had Adam, self-professed tech geek, with me. He led me to one he felt was the best deal and I snatched it up. And he says I saved about $50-$80 US dollars. Works for me.  Tonight we plan on going to some night markets for some shopping and eating. That’s what I enjoy, really hanging out with the locals in the spots they frequent. The language here is tough. I’ve got “hello” and “thank you” down but the others are much more difficult. But I will work on it. It won’t slay me yet!

I plan on uploading a video of some waves we encountered but the internet was not working with me and we are about to go out again. I’ll try again later. But never fear, after an hour of non-tech geek efforts, I’ve figured out a way to put a link to my flickr site on the sidebar so check it out! Photos…FINALLY!!!