Grading papers on the SS. Universe Explorer---really! Photo: Dennis Galletta

Hi folks, Writing from Penang, Malaysia: I'm in a Chinese internet cafe; the proprietress is playing mahjong on the next workstation. The evening call to prayer is blasting out of the Kapitan Kling Mosque next door. As soon as I finish here, I'm going to eat Tamil Indian food from street carts lined up next to Fort Cornwallis, next to the onion-domed clocktower built to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. It's that sort of place--and a tremendous breezy relief after Saigon.

The whole last day in Saigon I wanted in the worst sort of way to be back on the open sea, in the lovely sunshine and breeze, my berth rocking gently as the ship cut through the blue waves. Everyone I confided to confessed to similar longing for fresh air, in all senses of the term. Not that Saigon wasn't interesting--it's interesting, OK, it's interesting--but it's claustrophobic, and for someone my age, it's frankly creepy. After five days of atrocities and ghosts, I badly wanted to change the channel. My new rule: NO MORE THAN ONE ATROCITY MUSEUM PER PORT. There was vast satisfaction as we cleared the last fishing boats at the entrance to the Saigon River and felt the ship settle at last into its familiar gentle rhythm. So no more atrocities for now. Instead, I thought I'd tell you about our ship, and the beautiful seas we're sailing through.

The SS Universe Explorer is a lovely old ship, 1958, built in Pascagoula, Miss., with a long list of previous names and a Panamanian registry. It is 617 1/2 feet long, with an 84 foot beam, draws 27 feet 3 inches, and displaces 23,000 tons--the students were required to know this for the first Core exam. Who owns this ship? Well, Semester at Sea is housed at U. Pitt, but run by the semi-independent Institute of Shipboard Education, which in turn is financed by the Sea-Wise Foundation, which was founded by the Tung family that now runs Hong Kong, with a hotel staff from Commodore Cruises in Florida and a crew from V-Ships in New York. Got that? The previous ship, SS Universe, broke down regularly and never did make it to the end of her final voyage a few years ago; they had to fly the students home after its final spasm. Well, the story goes, at one point Mr Tung Sr. actually bought the Queen Elizabeth 1 for them, and it was while being refitted as the Semester at Sea ship that the QE1 caught fire in Hong Kong harbor, sank, and was destroyed. So here we are in the little SS Universe Explorer instead. It's a handsome, sturdy thing--apparently built to be convertable for wartime use, and so has a double-strength hull and is loaded with arcane emergency features.

This all sounds very well; but like all ships, it flexes in heavy seas, and the various pipes break regularly, flooding cabins. We've been forbidden to leave appliances plugged in, or to leave books and computers sitting on cabin floors. (My favorite student journal entry: "I came back to my cabin and found all of the socks in my closet wet. I don't know why.") We've also been forbidden to hang laundry on the smoke detectors, which are set off by the steam from the showers. Yes, really. But we love it! The dean refers to it fondly as the "Great White Mother", and it does have classic appeal. My cabin is plain and square and aqua-blue, with a square fixed window, a tiny tiled bathroom and shower, two narrow berths, two tiny dressers and two tiny closets--all raised above the potential flood line. Archie my Philippine cabin steward dutifully makes my bed every morning, and then turns it back every evening. How can I ever go home again? I've covered over the silly pastel wall art with a map of Southeast Asia, hung a Cambodian flag from my TV monitor, stuck a spray of purple orchids in a celadon pot, and feel very cosy. Everyone has a different creative solution to the lack of bookshelves and the dangers of the wet floors. My books and my slide library sit on the spare berth in my two suitcases, which I tie to the wall hooks when the seas get heavy.

And they do! Third day out of Vancouver, we were treated to a storm at sea, the passing tail of the typhoon that clobbered Hong Kong. Students and staff staggered down the halls; cabin stewards swarmed with mops and buckets. We were cheerfully informed that we'd reached "8" on the Beaufort scale of 12, a “fresh gale”with swells topping 30 feet. Teaching in such conditions is unusual, to say the least. Blackboards, unsecured, go over first--what were they thinking? AV carts roll around. The pull-down slide screen sways forward and aft, while I sway side to side. Clinging to the unsecured podium is not much help; one finds oneself sitting down suddenly in unexpected places. The classrooms with windows are better for tender tummies, since watching the horizon is a palliative for sea-sickness, but since I use slides my classes are stuck in the windowless rooms. So we learn not to ask questions when students dive for the door and disappear. As an unrepentant romantic I loved the storm, of course, but with so much of the ship miserable for two days one had to be discreet in one's glee. But a small secret society of us discovered eachother; we spent free time all the way forward, all the way up, in the faculty lounge, cheering the really big ones, the ones that managed to wash the windows some eight stories up.

Most days the seas are calm, and endlessly beautiful to watch. There are many vantage points; the ship is complex. I've taken to doing my t'ai chi on the pool deck at sunrise, if no one's looking, since it has a nice bare teak surface and faces the rising sun aft. If people are around, though, I move my graceless gyrations one deck lower to be inconspicuous, Carrying Tiger to the Mountain on astroturf full in the smelly blast of the galley ventilators. My t'ai chi teacher would be proud, maybe (when she quit laughing) to see me balancing on one leg, and then the other, doing my whips and my kicks as the ship sways back and forth. Actually, the t'ai chi has proved an ideal exercise for shipboard living, since the motions approximate the rolling, flexible gait one needs to walk erect on ship. Really, of course it wouldn't matter who sees my geriatric t'ai chi. Living close with a thousand people for months together on a small ship means developing selective vision and a lot of tact. Students sleep all over the decks each night to watch the stars, clustered under the ladders like piles of kittens, wherever they can shelter from the wind. Shipboard wisdom from previous years assures us that "there is no new place on the ship to have sex. It's all been done before, no matter how original you think you are." Jars of condoms are placed strategically all over the ship. In stormy weather, the condoms are supplemented by saltines for seasickness. Whatever works in whatever situation. Life at sea is like that: an alternation between the wildly romantic and the relentlessly practical.

A shipboard announcement at noon, somewhere in the Sea of Japan: "Attention please, attention please: Prof. von Hippel reports that four species of flying fish are visible right now off the starboard side, including some very rare blue ones." Cheers go up; class is abandoned--another drawback to teaching in a windowless classroom. There have been whale sightings as well, but no announcements, for fear of pandemonium.

We rarely see another craft on the open water except as a distant point of light. The captain says ships like to stay two nautical miles apart, at the closest. This made our grand parade through the middle of Hong Kong harbor, or plowing (literally) through the mud and floating villages of the crowded Saigon River, seem like even greater adventures. But these were nothing compared with nautical mob scene in Singapore! As we entered the Straits we found ourselves in a jostling crowd of ships, all racing and dodging past the tall, chilly skyscrapers, passing close enough to see into other vessels' portholes. One oil barge had been hit, and was low at the bows. Our captain's comment: "He won't sink; they have watertight compartments. But the poor bastard's going to spend the next six weeks filling out paperwork."

And pirates! On the Saigon River, old wooden sampans with eyes painted on their prows had motored along side to sell us bananas and post-cards, very benign. But these are pirate waters, from Singapore through the Straits of Malacca. For two nights, our crew stood vigil on deck with fire hoses ready to repel boarders. We fueled at anchor off Singapore; and sure enough, just as the fueling barge uncoupled and started off, a small boat with two scruffy types came roaring up to our ship. They were driven away with a pressure hose, to the thrill of all watching. Hooray, pirates, just what we wanted! What did they really intend? To board us and ravage us? Trade in virgins, or terrible drugs? Stow away? We'll never know. Probably they just wanted to sell us bananas and postcards. The current ship mania--rumors and manias travel fast on shipboard--is for flowered and batik shirts. They might have had better luck with those.

Two uneventful days' sailing through the Straits of Malacca brought us here to pleasant, sleepy Penang, where we anchored this morning. We history types were thrilled, of course--to teach a class on the spice trade at Malacca while cruising past it at noon! I'm happy to report that the smoke of last year's forest fires has cleared from the Straits. We cruised the busy channel between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra in weather that can only be called perfect: warm, breezy, crystalline, with pungent air, towering clouds turning crimson twice a day, sharp green peaks and islands at intervals.

We never tire of the islands--Aleutian, Okinawan, Vietnamese, whatever, each heralded by its own kind of fishing boats. By the end of the Pacific crossing, which took twelve days, I already had the answer to one question I'd begun this voyage with: Doesn't one get bored at sea? Answer: NO. Even out of sight of land or other ships or even flying fish? No no no no no! Of all the experiences I'm having on this trip, none is more beautiful or more memorable or more important to me than the days we spend in our sturdy old ship on the beautiful, beautiful shining sea. I cannot imagine a more magical time in my life.

Off to tour Kuala Lumpur and Malacca for a few days; then back to the Mothership to cross the Andaman Sea to Madras. Wish me continued gastrointestinal success-----------------larry.