Category Archives: Semester at Sea, Fall 2011

From August through December of 2011, my family and I traveled around the world on Semester at Sea’s Fall 2011 Voyage. During that time, this blog was devoted to photographic endeavors in 14 countries over those 111 days, though we are now back to reality after an amazing adventure!

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10/31/11: Vietnam in the rear view

Vietnam is one of the countries I’d looked forward to most, after hearing we’d be traveling on the Fall 2011 Voyage. I can’t say that I had any expectations (at least none very specific), although […]

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10/30/11: Saigon’s Ben Thanh Market

Our last day in Vietnam, last chance to take advantage of the dirt-cheap (‘cheap-cheap’?) prices before heading to China. The four of us hopped the shuttle downtown to the indoor Ben Thanh market, a huge […]

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10/29/11: Vietnam Day 5: Mekong Delta

Heading for a day trip on the Mekong Delta with Reade, Tate and their buddy Scott Baker (Heidi was on call), I couldn’t help but think about the terrible flooding we’ve been hearing about in […]

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10/28/11: Hanoi, again

Our wonderful guide ‘Hung’ got us up and out early to get moving to the Halong Bay boat cruise. The immediate area around downtown Halong Bay where our hotel was located is not notable; there […]

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10/27/11: Halong Bay

Our wonderful guide ‘Hung’ got us up and out early to get moving to the Halong Bay boat cruise. The immediate area around downtown Halong Bay where our hotel was located is not notable; there […]

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10/26/11: Hanoi, Vietnam

The four of us left the ship at 0415 to catch a flight to Hanoi, about 1:40 flight time north of Saigon. The destination of our 3-day trip would be Halong Bay, one of the […]

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10/25/11: Vietnam Day 1: Cu Chi Tunnels

After the previous night’s combined cultural/logistical pre-port, I found myself wondering what it would be like to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of tunnels the Viet Cong used in ‘The American War’ (as […]

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10/21/11: Last day in Panang, Malaysia

Today Heidi took the boys downtown while I walked to an old cemetery that we’d previously driven by, and having become immediately transfixed by its ethereal allure, I knew I had to go. The graves […]

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10/20/11: Panang National Park

Since Heidi was here back in 1988, she figured it would be a good place to take call, especially since it’s relatively easy to get around, since the port is essentially right downtown. Dr. Phil […]

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10/19/11: Georgetown, Malaysia

We awoke in some weird time warp, having gained 2.5 hours on the clock in the previous 3 days’ voyage. Normally when traveling eastbound we only gain an hour every two days at most, but […]

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10/15/11: Bala Mandir Kamaraj orphanage

Our last day in India, and the boys are a’hankering to do some shopping, so first thing in the AM we headed out via auto-rickshaw to Spencer Mall, a huge, multi-level, American-style mall with everything […]

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10/14/11: Socioeconomics in India

So Jeff, you’re in one of the ‘classically’ impoverished countries on the other side of the earth, and we haven’t heard a single word about the ‘starving kids in India’, people begging on the streets, […]