Powder baby!


Montreal :: Canada

Fun in the snow.

Places: Calgary, Banff & Montreal.

Coolest thing I did: Sat in an outdoor hot tub while it was -5 degrees and snowing. Very invigorating, yah?

Coolest thing I didn´t know:

Since last we spoke I've been mostly snowboarding.

After a quick flight out to Calgary on Canada's only remaining cheap airline (thank got we chose Westjet over Jetsgo, who went bankrupt last week) we got a nice 1.5 hour drive through the flattest suburbs on Earth and into some of the nicest scenery I'm ever likely to see. More on that in a sec. Watching the rockies disappear beneath the plane as it came into Calgary we were confronted with what must be one of the longest plains I've ever seen. You can see the Calgary skyline from miles and miles away, a jagged square silhouette jutting out of the infinite horizon. I'm sure if you had good enough binoculars you could probably see Toronto from there, it's that flat. However, off into the other direction, from whence we'd come, you could see the majesty that is the Rockies.

The drive up is everything you want from Canada: fir trees, mountains, frozen waterways and snow, lots of snow. It was an excelent reward from the trip through the estates of identical 3 story houses you see for miles before (one family per 6 bed house apparently, they call them Mc Mansions over here). The only thing that could have made it more perfect if there were mooses (is that the plural?) strutting over the road. This is why we came to Canada, and it was only going to get better.

We met Grantos at the Sunshine village, a remote little ski resort that he's currently doing fine work in. The place is nestled in a valley between several mountains that must be reached via a 20 min gondala ride. Most people come up from the town of Banff to come do snow sports there, but thanks to the Friends of Sunshine program, Grant got us a place to stay in the lodge for next to nicks. We did get a lovely room first up looking over the water filtration plant, but with that much snow, who cares? It was tops.

So, we spent the next few days on a bit of drinking, a few sessions in the outdoor hot tub and, of course, lots of snowboarding. Yvette had to take a lesson on the first day we got there so I went out with Grant and he was quite paitent as I tried to regain my balance, then composure, then courage to turn the board. He had to work a fair bit, so we'd hook up with him on his time off and either eat, drink or board with him and go out riding ourselves. Yvette did very well and we were pretty much going down the green runs (for us beginners) at about the same speed by the end of the week. Silly grins on both our faces.

We had a fair bit of snow, but only two mornings when there was freshly fallen powder snow overnight. It was so much better to ride on and I had a ball. Grant and his mates have become what they like to call snow snobs, only really being happy if half a metre fell overnight and towards the end we were both getting a bit like that. We were very lucky though. We overheard a few blokes at Calgary airport saying they were off to another local resort, Fernie and there was so little snow their mates had passed mountain bikers going up the slopes. With what we heard of the conditions in Whistler too I think we were extremely fortunate. I hope the option comes up again to go this winter, but if not, there will have to be another next winter for sure.

Being such a small village, we found the nightlife was mostly the people who live on the mountain, as the hotel guests who can afford to stay there are mostly too old or boring to be out on the booze. After a big night on Sunshine Lager (as good as it sounds) we converted to something called Honey brown, and then coke and Rye whiskey. Between that and eating in the staff cafateria we got a good look at who works up here and why. There seems to be a certain crowd attracted by the idea of spending half a year doing nothing but working and snow sports. Almost appeals to me too.

It was a very young crowd. Gap year brits, aussies and kiwis dominate so it looks like alot of fun. We even got to see the world famous DJ Weasal play, who is a kitchen hand that smokes weed with Grants room mate. At least I think we saw him play, too much Sunshine larger in between the afternoon and going to bed that day. I like to think it was the altitude but I'm assured by Yvette that I was just too drunk.

So since then we got on a plane and came to Montreal. From what I can tell flying over the country in about two weeks it can be summed up as thus: Rainy, Mountains, flat, cold, lakes, french, more lakes, Newfies. I'm sure there's more to it but you get the gist.

Leftovers.


Vancouver :: Canada

Things I couldn't write in an hour yesterday.

Places: Vancouver.

Coolest thing I did: Saw lots of waterfalls at Vancouver's 2nd longest suspension bridge, the one you don't have to pay $21 to cross.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Even though tipping is expected here, if you get it wrong people will just tell you instead of trying to glass you to death like in America.

Our big trip yesterday was out to the Capilano suspension bridge, a single man bridge over a gorge north of Vancouver which is a tourist mecca. Thank god we never made it. On the way over we decided to try out the shorter, but cheaper (ie free instead of $21) one over the Lynn Valley. This was a better pick, as the hordes from Nippon all headed the other way with their tour busses. I have a thing with heights but handled this ok as it's a modern take on the original rope suspension foot bridge that the hero always ends handing off once the baddie cuts the ropes. It crosses a narrow gorge that cuts through the forrest (not called the bush here) and has a rather impresive amount of water passing below it. Crystal clear and freezing cold, just like its supposed to be in these places.

How do I know it's cold? Well, back in the Stevil days I would have just followed all the school kids we saw jumping off the rocks into the 30ft pool (i'll take their word for it that it's that deep) but after seeing them surface gasping obscenities that their empty lungs wouldn't allow them to yell, the new, more sensible me decided against it. Pissweak. Add to that we saw a few Canadian blokes walking around in thongs and shorts while I'm in 3 layers and I get the feeling they breed them either real tough or real dumb around here.

Beer. Let's talk about drinking around here. We've had a few quiet ones in the local brewpubs in the afternoon because the other pubs and bars a either closed or a bit too seedy for the missus. The beer in these places is passable but suffers from the same problem most of the Canadian beer is giving me: lack of booze. I'm not sure what the percentage is but I'm not getting very drunk or waking up very hungover. This is not such a good sign. Still, I like the fact they have pints instead of those stupid schmiddy things they sell in Sydney now. The brewpubs have a pint that uses the same tricks of glass creation the schmiddy uses to look bigger than it actually is (it's really about 1/2 a litre). I've christened this the schint. Of the local mass produced drops, Kelowna is my current tip.

Our experience with the rest of the pubs in Vancouver is split between the joint attached to the hostel (those of you who've backpacked know what I'm talking about here) or seriously strange interpretations of Irish pubs. How can you call yourself an Irish pub, have 20 beers on tap and none of them be Guiness? It boggles the mind. To be fair we've not been so adventurous here as we expect heavy lifting on the booze front being at a ski resort all next week during the St Patricks day week.

I'm still finding I like this place, despite the rapid Pyrmont-isation going on just over the road from us. Yaletown is the next big thing and it's sending 40 storey towers of glass out of the ground in rapid succession. It's still a nice looking city, but alot of the smaller, older places will soon have the sun blocked out by these things most of the day. It's like two extremes, untouched nature at one end of town and rapid building over of the other end.

One final note for anyone traveling to North America, this is a godsend: maps.google.com. All cites and it can actually find addresses you type in, not like the Australian ones.

Now in X-Files country.


Vancouver :: Canada

And someone thought we'd get fat on this trip?

Places: Vancouver.

Coolest thing I did: Rode a bike around the 30-odd km of waterfrount that it's possible to ride bikes around here.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The world's thinnest office building is utter crap.

If you can get a plane that goes to Sydney to Vancouver without stopping anywhere on US soil, I'd strongly recommend it. Why they decided to pull us all off the plane at very early in the morning, fingerprint and photograph us then send us all back onto the same plane is beyond me. Stupid orwellian nightmare bloody countries we have to pass through.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

Anyway, so after a jetlagged trip back in time (we got on the plane at 11:30 in Sydney and arrived 9:30 the same morning in the 'couve) we find our good selves in what must be the most brilliant sunny day this place has seen in months. Everyone is raving about it, but all we can do is go to bed. Thank god there was just enough left by the time we woke up to make us appreciate what a nice place we've arrived in. People are maddeningly friendly, cars in the middle of the city stop for pedestrians and you can get a bagel with Chilli con carne on it for 4 bucks. What more could you want?

I have to say it's like bizaro world Sydney. Everything is very, very similar, but just a little bit different. I can see why Vancouver gets such good wraps as a livable city, but I get this feeling that thats changing. You can't help but notice just how much of this city is being covered in giant glass appartment complexes. A full quarter of the city seems to be under construction, but not in that good, energetic way, rather in a staid, bland, 2-income-no-kids kind of way. Still, I can't help but love this place

Stanely Park is a very, very good idea. Lets take what must be the most valuable piece of real estate left on the whole island and fence it off for public use. Trails run all through the old growth forrest and it's so easy to forget just how close you are to the downtown. This is the Canada you come to see, the parallel trees rising out of the pine needle carpets, moss on everything that moss can poissibly grow on and just a beaten earth path to follow through it all. Even the old stumps with their frozen tendrils sticking up into the air have been reclaimed by nature. It's something else to see.

We hired a couple of bikes and rode the 30odd km of cycle path around the waterfront and it a) reminded me just how long its been since I last rode a bike and b) gave you such a feel for the amount of work that has been done to keep the inhabitants of this place fit. It's like rush hour with skinny fit people running, biking and blading everywhere. I like the looks of this ice hockey on roller blades but I'm so crap at blading I'd just make a fool of myself. Maybe by the end of 12 months.

The only trouble I'm having here is the idea that most of the tourist stuff here is not like the tourist stuff in Europe. While I'm used to being able to plant myself in a city and walk to all the stuff I need to see, the tourist stuff in town is, well, not worth it. Gastown is the rocks style area that is famous for a clock that shoots steam as far as I can tell. This quickly becomes junkie town, just before it becomes Chinatown. In Chinatown is the worlds skinniest office building. It's really just a kind of annex on the side of an appartement building and we walked past it several times before we found it. Very, very gay. We havent bothered with the Lookout! (always written with an exclamation mark for some reason)as its not very high so we're not sure what we'd see.

So, we've had to make some new choices we thought we wouldn't have to. We've found out medical professionals are strictly not allowed to work on the working holiday visa, so unless the mad typing and web surfing Yvette is doing right now turns up something new, she may be looking for a new career choice. This is not such good news, but it does mean we may not have to decide now where to live. I'm able to see Vancouver as a place to live and I can be more flexible about working in any of the big cities. We have decided pretty much to do a few weeks of odd work in Toronto in April/May before going on a summer trip back here in the west and may now cosider living in Vancouver over the winter instead. It's still very early so we're not sure.

Right, so I'm now fully hooked on WestJet. We've got the flights booked for cheap to Calgary then onto Banff on Thursday then a week later onto Montreal. It's good to have no plans like this. Grant tells us it's snowing big style at the moment in Sunshine at the moment so we're both pumped for the wintersports ahead.

The time has come!


Sydney :: Australia

Last day of work. woo hoo!

Places: Sydney.

Coolest thing I did: Made it to the very end of my 12 month contract with IBM without going mad.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: My entire life fits into 8 cubic metres

Nearly two years to the day after I started my last big trip into the unknown and a whole year later than I expected, we are finally leaving Sydney once more to go and explore the wilds of North America. I think it hasn't yet sunk in that we're finally going due to the fact that it has been on the cards for so long. Until this very morning (which is the last day of my contract with IBM) I don't it's been real, but right now I'm on top of the world. I'm as prepared as I'm ever going to be (and far more prepared than when I moved to the UK almost 5 years ago) and just a little bit excited about the whole thing (ok, so A LOT bit excited).

So, what's in store?

Well to start off our plane lands in Vancouver (because that's the closest place to Australia in Canada) a couple of hours before we take off and then we think we'll be there for a week or so. I have to admit to being a bit naive about all of what there is to do in Canada. I know it's cold, as every man and his dog has been walking around all week going "have you got your warm clothes? ha ha ha" and stuff like that. I also know that there are mooses (meese?) and mounties. That's about it.

Oh, and snow. We're flying to Calgary about a week and a half after getting to Canada in order to stay with Grantos at Sunshine where he now works and lives, after (I assume) he got bored of ensuring that drunk backpackers could get around Europe with a minimum of fuss. I haven't been snowboarding since that big week in Bulgaria so I'm very looking forward to that too (I'm saying that a lot, aren't I?). They apparently have 1.5m of snow, which seems like a lot seeing as there was about 1.5cm of snow in Bulgaria the year I went. It's going to be tops. Yvette has got all her snow gear ready and is learning for the first time. This will be good because it means I'll feel like I'm an experienced pro, even when falling on my arse.

After this we're at a bit of a loss. We might stay on, as the next cheap flight east of Calgary isn't until 3 days later and we're not sure if Calgary will amuse us enough or not. We're going to try and make it over to Toronto (our eventual home) before Dee crosses our path somewhere in the middle. She's on a massive tour of North America and this is the most likely place we'll get to meet her. She'll also be the last person we see that we know for quite some time too so it will be good for all involved.

So now, all that is left is to clear the contents of our house up and put everything that isn't Markies into storage. Like I said in the intro, the accumulation of possessions over my lifetime fits neatly into 8 cubic metres. Some may say this is depressing but I think it's something to be proud of. Shows I still know how to travel light.

So expect more of these again. Next one should be from Canada somewhere!

News about Christiania


Sydney :: Australia

Oh the places I've been.

Places: Sydney.

Coolest thing I did: Bought a little girls car.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The opinion section of the Sydney Morning Herald is just rife with generational bickering. And I seem to fall into the category somewhere between Generations X and Y, depending on who is writing the column.

As an interesting postscript to my trip, the autonomous enclave of Christiania in Copenhagen has again been in the news. I can't be bothered finding the original link back to what I wrote, so to give you a background, Christiania was an old military base that a bunch of liberal leftist types took over in the 70s and declared an autonomous enclave, seperate from the nation state of Denmark. The Danish government has been rather blase about leaving the hippies and alternative greenie vegetarian types who live there to go about their lives, growing and selling copious amounts of canibus without too much hassling. All that was required was an understanding that they would not move into harder drugs and that they would pay for the utilities that they use. Sounds pretty sweet, and the more cynical would belive that the government was quite happy to have all this going on in one place. As I can also attest to, it's a bit of a tourist haven, so I'm sure they aren't too worried about lots of 20-somethings jetting into Copenhagen and spending their money.

However, it appears that some of the nastier things that go along with the large scale vending of narcotics worry the police. The bikers that were apparently acting as the muscle behind the scenes are into some nastier kinds of criminal enterprise, and the local police are cracking down on harder drugs in a big way. The politicians appear to belive it hypocritical to allow one kind of dealing to go on while trying to discorage others. So a new deal has been struck to allow the community to continue, but to stamp out the drugs trade there. The locals, not wanting their lifestyle hampered, appear to have agreed.

Will it work? Having been there at several times over a week, it seems that canibus is quite intertwined with what the tourists come to Christiania to see. If people just wanted to gawk at a colourful freakish environment I'm sure they'd not bother to cross the canal and go to the Tivolli amusement park. Perhaps the other aspects of the culture, such as art, will become the main drawcard, but while I was there working artists were not anywhere to be seen. There was a bit of a nightlife around, but again, alot of that has to do with the availablity of green stuff rather than the atmosphere of the place. I'm not sure it'll still attract the same crowd, but then again, perhaps that's what the residents want.

Having seen that article this morning made me travel sick again. It seems like such a dull life in comparison I'm leading at the moment, even though it's nice. Most of the time I'd rather be somewhere with a backpack than working. Thank god I (hell, we...hi 'vette) have Canada to look forward too. Otherwise I would have gone mad by now.

I always get this twinge when somewhere I've been is in the news (the Danish royal wedding was full of recognisable places) and it keeps my interest up. Damn, I want to be out there again.

Life after the big trip


Sydney :: Australia

Back to real life.

Places: Sydney.

Coolest thing I did: Invite Yvette back to Sydney and had her say "yes".

Coolest thing I didn´t know: (This makes less sense after such a long break) You can charge people $4.50 for a cup of juice worth about 50cents. Why didn't I think of that?

Why did I decide, after all this time to add a postscript to this? Well, for one thing, I've got a whole lot of free time on my hands (more on that in a moment) and two, I have decided it's worth re-using this for my further adventures. You see, thanks to those fine people from Canada, I'm all set to do a working holiday in their fine country starting March 5 2005. Not only that, but I have an incredible ego that allows me to belive people are still intereted in what I'm doing even though it's not travel to exotic places. Humor me.

So, after Egypt, what happened next? As I mentioned, I managed to get my flight back to London via the good people at Romanian Air Transport. Despite the 3am start and my prejudice against anything from Romania, the plane was new and the staff spoke a decent amount of English. The bad side was being stuck in Bucharest airport for an extra 5 hours due to snow. There isn't much to do in Bucharest international, and it's made even worse by having to exchange money for lei, which you have no hope of returning to something convertible on your way out. Thank god the good people at the Relay newsagent took euros so I could each chips and drink coke.

My return to London was not as I expected it. When you spend alot of time with yourself, you do alot of thinking and start to build up some strange, fantastical worldviews in your head about things. I remembered my farewell with all my friends about and sort of imagined everything would be the exact same. You forget that other people's lives move on and they go and do other things. As a result, probably a 1/4 of the people I left were still there. It was good to catch up with all the different people I could, but there were no massive debaucherous gatherings, as there would have been in the past. This is probably a good thing as there is no way I would have been able to keep up with seasoned London drinkers after so many dry or semi-dry countries. Ramadan did nothing for my alcholol tolerance.

I stayed with Yvette while I was there and in talking about the Canada plan, she decided to join me in it. This is very good news, and this also means she's on her way to Sydney over Easter to stay until we go. In fairness to her, the original plan to be in Sydney til July or August has now changed to early next year so she can have at least one summer in the next 12 months. She stayed in London to finish off her working holiday there, which was smart as she won't get another one. However, the last few months have been pretty hard on us both and it will be good to be re-united soon.

This was not the only reason I felt such a sense of loss leaving London, but it was a big part of it.

Leaving London was harder than I thought. It's been such a big part of some of the best years of my life that it seems almost inconceivable that I won't be living there for the near future. Despite it's bad weather, shocking food, high prices & rude people, the place has a soul all of it's own. I miss all that history, culture and nightlife, having to now find subsitutes in my own home city. While it was time to move on, I do feel a twinge of envy for all those still there and those going back.

Returning to Sydney was a bit of a shock. While the weather has been spectacular, and seeing all my friends and family I've missed while being overseas, I would challenge anyone to tell me Sydney has improved over the last 5 years. House prices, for one, are demoralisingly high. While I entertained some hopes of putting down some stakes in Sydney, buying a house would lead to inconceivable abouts of debt. I will have to face this one day, but not now, buying a house for the kind of money people want these days would be downright nutty. I also belive the level of pretension in the social circles of Sydney has risen somewhat. As pointed out recently, all the new bars are blandly identical, picky about sneakers (a mortal sin in my book), give you your change on a plate (a tip?!? for pouring a beer? Get stuffed) and sell something called a "skiddy". A skiddy is the invention of some genius who decided that people would pay more money for less beer. What's worse is everyone has just accepted it. So when I left the (non-gst) price of a schooner was about $3.40 (425ml) and the price of a skiddy now is $5 (345ml). Bargain.

Still, bitch as I may, Sydney, she is home.

So after a fine summer, including a road trip to Brisvegas to see Rob Lowe (my mate, not the actor), I set myself the serious tasks of finding a place to live and work. This dragged on because of severe inefficiencies in the IT market in Australia and my lack of a job causing real estate agents to laugh out loud at my applications to rent a house. Recently, both these problems were solved.

My rental house is a 2 bedroom terrace on the end of the row with a spare block next door as a yard. It's located in Newtown, which has changed from it's smack addict, crusty student feel to housing advertising executives and dot.com refugees like me. It is still very trendy, but with a more upper market clientelle. I will be sharing with Yvette alone, but there's a spare bed for anyone falling into Sydney in the next 12 months. Right now I'm by myself, with no TV so I've taken to watching sport in the Union Hotel on the corner, which is nice. I miss having a good local.

My job, well I got myself a 12 month contract with IBM GSA as a "Storage Consultant". As far as I can tell this has nothing to do with designing efficent use of space with flatpack furniture. Right now, as I have no laptop, access or ID card, it appears that my job is to read the paper. Hey, if they want to pay me by the hour to surf the web, that's their business, not mine. The contract and house work out well because we'll be off to Canada right after both end.

In short, I'm treating life in Sydney like I used to treat life in London. I'm living somewhere different, working somewhere different and have a shelf life here of 12 months. It helps put things in perspective if I treat this like just another stopover on the great voyage. I have in the past been accused of having a fear of commitment but I'd rather see it more as a fear of abject bordem. I could take the route of getting an infinte mortgage, a job I'm attached to and the like, but it just dosen't appeal to me. I like this life and fears about my future aren't strong enough to make me stop living it the way I want. Well, not yet anyway. I can see myself on and off the road at least until the free work visas dry up.

We shall see what come next.

Pyramids & Fatimids


Cairo :: Egypt

Day 243 and it all started to sink in.

Places: Edfu, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Kom Ombo & Cairo.

Coolest thing I did: Spent 2 days with 3 very good friends on a felucca on the Nile.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Coptic cathederals sometimes have an anamatronic Mary out the front.

The banknotes in Egypt all have two sides (der), one showing things from the Ancient Egypt people think about (sphinxes and whatnot) and the other side showing the current, more Muslim present. It amazed me that it's so possible to forget that you are actually in a Muslim country here. We managed to change that by going to Edfu. The temple at Edfu was built by the hiers to Alexander the Great's empire in the Pharonic style so it's the last and most intact of all the temples we've seen. We spent the afternoon checking this out, but found ourselves stranded in this small town due to the fact you can't just get on a bus aanywhere south of Luxor. Due to the Luxor massacre of tourists in 1997, all tourists have to travel in a twice daily convoy so we had to wait for the next morning. This meant staying in one of the scummist hotels on my whole trip (thought the breakfast was outstanding) and trying to amuse ourselves. We walked through the chaotic souq and were helped to purchase bananas by a bloke who ended up inviting us back for diner at his nearby house. We broke the daily Ramadan fast on his bedroom floor with his wife and young son (3 years old), who was pretty happy with the new attention. He then took us out to old man coffeehouse to play dominos and smoke shisha pipes. We found out women like Yvette look pretty out of place there, shisha that the Arabs smoke is way stronger than the stuff they give the tourists and some of these blokes play way too much dominoes.

On the way home they took us to see the local Coptic church and it was something else. Chandeliers inside and on the outside an anamatronic statue of Mary, complete with angels who flap their wings. Pretty cool stuff.

The next day was supposed to be watching the Rugby day (and all you Poms can keep your bloody opinions to yourselves) but instead we spent it at a military checkpoint waiting for the convoy. Rather confusingly, one of the soldiers made a bouquete of flowers which he gave to Tim, rather than Yvette. We think Tim has that special something that attracts Arab men. The elevator guy in the hotel in Luxor also called him beautiful on more than one occasion.

We found Aswan to be a nice place, but the hassle factor is a bit higher than Luxor. This is the place to get on a felucca and the felucca-pimps (the guy whose English is the best tends to outsource the actual sailing to his brothers/cousins/nephews) are always trying to get you into a boat everytime you walk past. We managed to get a day trip which the guy got a bit too pushy with the wanting a tip at the end and got very upset when we tipped the guy that drove the boat and not him. Something to watch for.

Thanks to Lee's arrival from Cairo we moved from the budget digs across town to the New Cataract Hotel. It's the more modern annex to the Old Cataract, where Agatha Christie wrote a couple of novels. On Tim's birthday night, when we were putting away cocktails in the Old Cataract bar the bartender got us up to see the suite where she stayed. For $US600 a night you can have a Nile view from either her writing table or the bathroom where she did her business (which is the size of most appartments I've ever lived in). The treat of this luxury was a good end to my staying in hotels for this trip. Lee get's residents rates so we could split the cost of the 2 rooms between 4. Knowing these expat teachers has it's perks.

We did a very early convoy (4am) to Abu Simbel to see THE temple in Egypt. This is worth the effort just to see the four (well 3 and a half now) seated Ramses II colossi guarding the front. When the Nile was damed in the 60s the whole thing was cut into big pieces and relocated to higher ground. You wouldn't have a clue from looking at it. Amazing stuff.

The next day we left our new comfortable digs and got on a felucca for 2 days. This is a smallish, canvas sailed boat and despite that description, we found it the perfect size for us and the three crew. They couldn't remember our names so the gave us Nubian names, of which they could then only remember Tim's. I can't remember what the called me. Anyway, it was 2 days of cards, reading, watching the nile go by, drinking beer, drinking vodka, smoking shisha and singing very badly and knowing the words to not many songs. I think between us we never managed to sing a song all the way through. This amused the Egyptians no end.

After an overnight train ride we moved into Lee's very nice house in Cairo's expat friendly Ma'adi district. We're seeing what expats do with their time (drinking seems popular) as well as ticking some boxes on the tourist trail.

The Pyramids are big, pointy and old. There's nothing that hasn't already been written about them at some point in history that I could add.

The Sphinx, however, suffers from the Mona Lisa Syndrome. There was a whole lot of "is that it? I thought it would be bigger" going on.

It's become very real that I'm going home soon this week. I've just confirmed with (ironically enough) Romanian Air Transport my flight at stupid oclock tomorrow morning and there's now less than a week til I'm on the flight back to Australia. Good Lord.

Hot & wet


Luxor :: Egypt

First some water, then some desert with big rock things in it.

Places: Dahab, Hurgurda & Luxor.

Coolest thing I did: Regained my love of diving.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Too many things. I learned how to make a Karnak temple. It takes alot of time, slaves and mud bricks.

After the tense edge of Israel, Egypt was a nice change. Well, when I say Egypt, I mean Dahab. The only thing of note on my way in was it was so quiet at the land border with Israel that I had to wait 10 mins while they warmed up the xray machine to scan my bags. Oh, and the border guard had no idea where Aqaba was, even though we could see it from where we were standing.

Dahab was and wasn't what I expected. It was once a Bedouin village that a few people used to stay in and get stoned alot. But that was before anyone I've ever met went there. It's lost it's hippy edge and now is a beach front of identical cafes, cheap hotels and dive clubs. It is, however, not as bad as it sounds from that last sentence. People are friendly without being overbearing, you can spend an afternoon doing nothing if you want and no one cares if you eat or drink during Ramadan.

I think I've also been feeling alot less tense because of the presence of familiar faces. On the day I arrived in Dahab, Tim came down from Cairo to meet me. He'd been there the week before to get his dive license so he'd negotiated good prices for dives, hotels and the like in advance. Everyone at the hotel knew who I was and why I was there so it was nice. They were good to us, and it seemed not only because we gave them enough money to educate another 3 generations of their children. A couple of days later, I also managed to get a cab out to pick Yvette up from Sharm airport so there are now three of us wandering about Egypt. After months of hardly seeing anyone I know it;s good to have all these familar faces again.

The diving in the Red Sea is as good as anyone had led me to belive. I was in two minds about going diving again after a four year gap but it all came back to me very quickly. We did six dives over the days we were there and it was all as good as anything I did on the Barrier Reef. My favourite was a spot called the fishbowl, where you go into a cave and all these schools of little glass fish (clear ones you can see the skeleton of) swim around you, lit by shafts of blue light from the outside. If you dive (or have four days to learn) this is the place to come. I'm back loving it again and can't wait to get another chance to go.

The day before we left we decided to climb Mt Sinai at night and watch the sun rise over the desert. This is a good idea, except you don't start climbing until 11pm and it's bloody cold. We made it to the top before 3 so decided to have a sleep at the top and wait. We rented some matresses, lay down in our sleeping bags and shivered to sleep. We were awoken by the sounds of the several thousand (ok, I probably exadurate) Russians that had come up on tour busses behind us. They seem to have the same lack of personal space skills as they do at home so there were Russian women walking on us where we slept. The sunrise was spectacular, but the lack of sleep made the monastery where the burning bush less impressive. All three of us had a case of the angries and all those Russians didn't help when we got down there. It was a bit of a write off of a day.

We caught the ferry to Hurgurda on the other side of the Red Sea that afternoon. We manged to get ripped off by a taxi driver and wander around yelling "NO!" everyone who spoke to us while we looked for a place to stay. Thank god we all slept well and were in a better mood the next day.

We caught the bus to Luxor and that's been all good. Luxor is nothing short of amazing. Temples you can't see over, big tall statues of gods and lots of picture writing. This Ramses bloke was a bit of a raving ego maniac and seems to have decided to put 12 m tall statues of himself up everywhere, which make for good pictures.

We saw alot of tombs where the highlights are the carvings and paintings on the walls. And the odd stone coffin. We even saw into a burrial chamber where the remains of the Pharohs kids were still in there, one with his mummified guts hanging out. At bit gross, but I took a picture anywho.

I think Yvette was laughing at my Egyptian maths jokes (does anyone know their bird times tables? Bird times eye is bird, bird time hook is water) just to be polite. I thought I was being rather witty.

When you go to the west bank of the Nile here, the best temples are those in the Valley of the Nobles, where they burried scribes, high priets and other blokes with alot of cash. These tombs haven't had many tourists in them and as a result the colours on the walls are still intact without restoration. Tim told me this and I didn't belive him. You won't belive me either and you'll go around the Valley of the Kings with all the other tourists, just like I did. It's good to carry on a tradition.

The temple at Karnak is the big one. It's the most intact and the guide we got made it a whole lot better. I have to say I'm adverse to guides since Morocco and all those blokes who took me around without knowing anything more than I did, but the others convinced me in the end. This bloke knew lots of stuff and we learned a very small part of it for the princely sum of 5 pounds sterling. You can't get over the scale of some of these things. As a result I reckon given several thousand tonnes of stone, lots of mud bricks and close to a million migrant labourers I could build the exact same thing in Doonside. I'm considering it as a project for when I get back home.

The concept of "Back home" is now a bit too close and it scares me. What will I do when I don't have to pack all my stuff into a backpack every morning. I can't remember what that was like.

From here we are off to the South (which they confusinly refer to upper egypt) to see more old stuff. We're meeting Lee too, which is yet another familiar face to add to the group. Then it's back to London on the 3rd of December, via Bucharest. So I will get to visit Romania after all, even if it's only for the time it takes to change planes. All the Londoners brace yourselves for a imminent Steviling. Sydney gets its turn the week after.

Holy and that


Eliat :: Israel

Drinking, floating, crap places, new religions & lots of funny hats.

Places: Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Haifa & En Gedi.

Coolest thing I did: Floated in the Dead Sea. What a tourist.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Ultra Orthadox Jews (the ones with strange hats and ZZ top beards) don't have to serve in the army, despite the fact they are the key party pushing for forced military service. Hmmmm...

Tel Aviv was a breath of fresh, secular air after Jerusalem. Not only did I manage to get drunk, but I got on a surburban bus and no one blew it up. Hooray! There is a serious side to this. I just got back from a backpacker drinking joint called Mike's Place and was talking to receptionist at the hostel. She joked that the owner gave discounts to Hizbolah, and the reason for this was two blokes who walked into Mike's Place and blew themselves up stayed in that very hostel. That's a bit close to reality for me. The fact people were so blaise about the whole thing made me realise the violence has dulled people's reactions to things like death. There is also the story of a bloke who stayed in the hostel for 3 years, woke up one day with a headache, went to hospital and wound up dead. They refered to that as him checking into the big hostel in the sky. I also noticed that once people get out of the army in Tel Aviv they all become left wing pacifists and very non religious. It's all the return disporates that walk around with yamakes and learn Hebrew. The Israelis born here seem to just want a normal life.

So, I went to see the home place of Big JC, Nazareth. I don't recommend it. Not only is it a complete pain in the arse to get into and out of, but there is nothing there of any religious significance. The church of the Assumption (where Mary supposedly got the word she was up the duff with our saviour) was only rebuilt in 1970, so there's older churches in Sydney. A complete waste of time.

Haifa was something a bit different. There are Jewish, Arab and Christian communities living shoulder to shoulder without too many issues (only one bombing in the current uprising). There is also the Shrine of Bab. I had no idea who Bab was, so I asked. Bab was a Baha'i. I had no idea who the Baha'is were, so I asked. Baha was a bloke who was supposed to be the messiah who showed up in Persian (modern Iran) in the 1800s. He was the last prophet, and they recognise Mohammed and JC as prophets too. This didn't go over well with the Persian authorities and Baha got martyred. Bab was a later disciple who also got martyred. They moved his remains to Haifa and built a big shrine and some nice gardens. Besides this, Elijah's cave is the other big attraction. It's a nice idea, but it probably wasn't the cave Elijah hid in and today it kind of smells of urine. Still, one more holy thing to tick off.

I was quite pleased with meeting some liberal thinking young Israelis on Tel Aviv. I was starting to wonder if everyone my age in this country wanted to knock down the Dome of the Rock and build a Third Hebrew Temple in it's place. Yeah, that'd bring peace to the Middle East. Seriously though, there are enough people who are sick of bombings, compulsory military service and are not so one sided that they can't see that maybe the root of the Palesitinans complaints are not so unfounded. I learned alot about what people learn in school (that God gave them the promised land and it's ok for that reason to kick the Arabs out) and who says what in the whole thing. I was amazed to learn that the kids of the hard line, ultra orthadox jews don't have to do military service. So people who don't belive this is the right way to solve things fight for people who do that don't have to send their kids to fight. That really annoyed me. I also found out most Israelis have no idea why the hell anyone would want to come to Israel as a tourist. That explains why everyone in Jerusalem looked at me like I had 2 heads when I told them I didn't have Jewish roots, I was just looking around.

The whole kibbutz thing amazes me. There are no end of young Westerners willing to work for nothing but food and board in these communes. You hear about settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, well these were the forerunners. When the government was encouraging the European Jews to come into the country after the holocaust, they settled them on Arab villages abandoned during the war of 1948. They were set up to be self sufficient, though that's changed alot since, now quite a few of them engage in commercial farming and high tech manufacturing. A generation of Westerners have volunteered to work for nothing on these things, and I can't figure out why. I guess it's like summer camp for 20 somethings except you have to do arts and crafts for 8 hours instead of 2. Add to that the political wrongness of the whole thing and I don't think I'll be doing my part for kibbutzhood anytime soon. I do, however, seem to be the only one.

I've had a good time here, but I think I'll feel a whole lot more comfortable once I'm over that border into Egypt tomorrow. This place still has far too many problems to make you feel relaxed here. I'm getting sick of having my stuff searched everytime I enter a bus station, supermarket, shopping mall or falafel stand. I'm currently sitting 2km from Aqaba in Jordan and 3km from the Egyptian border. After my last effort crossing a land border I've decided to give myself a whole day to do it. Here's hoping that's enough.

The Jerusalem syndrome


Jerusalem :: Israel

I will not bitch about Israeli customs. I will not bitch about Israel customs. I will...

Places: Jerusalem.

Coolest thing I did: Saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or some of them anyway.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Falafels are better in Israel than even in Lebanon. Viva life!

Ok, I lied. It took me 10 mins to get out of Jordan and walk to the Israeli border. It took 20 mins for an army of babes (due to compulsory military conscription for both sexes there are alot of very fit women with guns walking the streets of this country) to dismantle my luggage and go through my dirty underwear. These things I can understand. It then took 1.5 hours from the time I handed over my passport to the time I got a stamp. Any explaination? No. I just stood in the sun at the window and waited. Whenever I asked what was going on I got told to stand to one side. Man, was I pissed off at the other end. I think they made me wait 30 mins for every Arabic country I'd visited. Arse.

Jerusalem. So much history, most of it involving words like "bloody" and "destruction" and sometimes "religion". As home to the three biggest monothesic religions in the world, and being in a stategic crossroads between empires for a very long time, little Jeru has been destroyed by many interesting peoples. While some were good and left the people alone to do as they pleased, the owners of the big J have included Canaanites, Egyptians, Hittites, Mesopatamians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Egyptians, Turks, Britans and finally Israelis. That's alot of people.

There's too much to detail, read your guidebooks. Every spot in the city has a shrine to something or other and it has to be said the Christians are the most over the top about it. Here's the church where Mary was born. Here's the one where she died. Here's the one where Mary's mum Anne was born. Here's the chruch where Jesus stubbed his big toe. It goes on and on. My favourite story is about the Church of the Holy Sepulture. It's the church the Byzantines built when they converted the Roman empire to Christianity. Constatine the emperor wanted a tour of the big event spots of Jesus' life. He was, after all, the emperor of Rome, and that means you pretty much get what you want. He sent his mum to check it out for him. The local priests didn't know where the big J had been buried and they told Mrs Constatine so. Knowing an answer like that was going to get someone thrown to the lions, she had to come up with something. She had a dream the spot was under an old Roman temple (which makes no sense because the big J was buried outside the city walls) so they did some digging. Lo and behold, they found a lot of wood. "Pieces of the true cross!" they decided. When Consta showed up he was so impressed he founded the chruch that has been there in some form ever since. A couple of hundred years ago an Greek was digging in his garden just outside the walls and found a stone tomb that had never been used. Nearby, archeologists found a hill with the shape of a skull visible on it's side, matching Golgotha in the bible (meaning place of the skull, where they nailed Big J to the Cross). The C o E recognises this place as the probable Sepulture, whereas every other Christian sect has too much riding on the original church. So illustrates how irrelevant religious tradition is. Who cares where he was burried?

I also find the Muslims claim to the Dome of the Rock pretty tenuous too. Jerusalem is never named, only that Mohamed went from the "big mosque" (mecca) to the far mosque (Jeru?) on his winged horse? Oh come on...

Anyway, say what you want about the past, the Jews are firmly in control now. I mean that as no understatement. There are police and troops on every corner practically, and thanks to the 18-22 band for conscription, most of them are boys and girls with very big guns. The entire population, from my parents age down has spent 4 years in the armed forces and retains a bloody great big firearm in their house or on their possesion. I have to look at all this and wonder how they live in this state. I don't want to get too deep into politics, but surely the current actions of the government here are going to prolong the time these people must live in this constant state of fear. The trouble is, it seems to be accepted as normal. It's quite simply terrifying.

The hostel I'm staying in (oddly enough, the Petra Hostel) is a study in Jerusalem Syndrome. This is the name given to people who come to this place and go a bit over the top religious-wise. Psychiatrists have named it it's that common. There are South Africans learning Hebrew, more devout Catholics than you can poke a stick at and a whole lot of African Jews that quite simply scare me a little. I've not had a conversation that dosen't dive into the deep end of someone's beliefs very, very quickly. While I'm all for freedom of religion, I'm a child of the Western al-la-carte style spiritualism that's so common today. Anyone who holds views that are this extreme make me uncomfortable. It's a good learning experience to watch but man, I'm quite keen to get into the secular world I've been promised in Tel Aviv.

I've had to put into words more than once my views on the "solution" to this countries problems. Everyone wants and opinion and many won't let you just be polite and say "hey, not my bag to tell you what to do". I'm quite a big fan of states founded with no ethnic or religious grounds, because that's what I see working in Australia. This is NOT a popular view here. Everyone want's you to say either "2 state solution" or one of the sides is right and should wipe the other one off the face of the Earth. I find this later view particularly worrying coming from the Jews. Ever hear of the Nazis? What did they do to you? Egads.

Having said all this, Jerusalem is unique. I'd say, seeing as some 2/3rds of the Earths poluation have been aligned with one of the religions represented here at some part of their lives should visit it. If nothing else it gives you a first hand view of the realities on the ground all that history has brought this part of the world. Not alot of it is good.

The truth about Bedouins


Aqaba :: Jordan

Lots and lots of places starting with the word "Wadi".

Places: Damascus, Amman, Jeresh, Petra, Wadi Araba, Wadi Rum & Aqaba.

Coolest thing I did: Petra. Say no more.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The snorkeling on the Jordan side of the Red Sea is better than the diving.

The trip from Beirut to Amman via Damascus should take 4 hours. It was closer to 12 for me. After getting on a bus that was 2 hours late, being held up as a family got turfed from the bus for not having papers, being dumped in the outer reaches of Damascus and having to make my own way to the bus station I ended up having to share a taxi to Jordan. This was ok because 2 of my fellow passengers were Jordinians who helped me out, but we were stuck at the border because our other taximate, a Syrian was trying to take too much booze and alcohol into Jordan and wanted to try and sell it at the border instead of dumping it. Gah.

Amman is a big city. Jeresh has ruins. There's not a whole lot more I can say really. I did, however, managed to arrive at the start of Ramadan and that makes cities a less fun place to be in. Even if you can get food during daylight hours, you can't eat it without people calling you insensitive or spitting on you. On the upside though, the huge meal that takes place just after sunset prayers is something to behold. Most of the cafes drag rows and rows of tables out into the streets and blokes line up shoulder to shoulder to tuck into their first meal of the day. I say blokes because I didn't see any women that weren't tourists. Apparently it's more common to eat at home during Ramadan and it's only the workers and shopkeepers who can't make it back in time that eat on the street. Those and us hungry infadels.

It was on the bus from Amman to Petra that my trip started to get interesting. I met a couple of Japanese guys Keisuke & Shigeru while we were waiting for the bus, and soon were also talking to a yubbie (Young Urban Bedouin) named Ahmed. His family used to live in caves in the ruins in Petra until the goverment built them a village 15 years ago and moved them out. He offered to let us stay on his parents floor, which was cool.

Lets say something about staying with the Bedouins. From what they've told me if you are sleeping in a tent in the desert these days, you are staying with the Disneyland version of the locals. Most of them live in concrete houses with running cold water. Ahmed's family showed us great hospitality, but the conditions became cramped when the three of us were added to their already expansive family (at least 10 siblings!). His parents can't speak English, his father is partially deaf from time spent in an Iraqi jail during the Iran-Iraq war (long story), but they managed to grin at everything we said. For the cost of food we were shown a great deal of love. Ahmed's older brother also showed us a copy of National Geographic from 1998 where his mother is shown cooking bread for the photograhpers in the desert. It's nice to stay with famous people.

Petra is amazing. Even Indiana Jones movies don't prepare you for the legacy that the little known Nabeatens left here. Natural formations of sandstone in many red and yellow hues gave these arabs a plethora of soft stone to carve in. At the peak of their rule here, they carved massive stone temple and tomb fascades into the cliff faces, quite often exposing bands of contrasting colour that only adds to the effect. While much restoration work is going on, I found the tombs that had been left to the elements more amazing. The Nabeatens used to control the trade route between the Greek and Arab worlds, making them pretty big wigs in their time. They tamed the conditions by carving water resivouirs into the tops of the cliffs and designing a system of drainage that wouldn't be seen in Rome for another couple of hundred years. Pretty cool stuff. However, the Romans weren't real keen on competing powers so took over Arabia and moved the trade routes by force. The place fell into ruin until a Swiss bloke in the 1800s stumbed onto it. Then some other stuff happened and then Harrison Ford came here to play Indiana Jones. I've skipped some bits but you get the gist.

We were taken out to sleep under the stars in the desert of Wadi Araba. This involved 2 Bedoiuns, 2 Japanese and 1 Aussie all drunk on Arak (kind of like Turkish Raki) in a jeep. The more famous desert of Wadi Rum is more spectacular but to get to Wadi Araba you drive through some spectacular basalt mountains and then sleep on proper sand dunes, as opposed to the stoney kind Rum has. You also get the nice fact that it's very hard to get to and we had the whole place to ourselves.

After a second day in Petra (you could spend a week there easily) we hooked up with Ahmed's cousin Jafar who took us to the aforementioned Wadi Rum. He hoons around the desert like a man possessed and the fact that we'd already polished off some whiskey kind of helped his confidence. Like most Jordinians I've met, he's got a pretty lax attitude towards the Holy Month of Fasting. Due to being a bit late we jetted around the famous rock formations at top speed. These include a Sphinx, Romeo and Juliet kissing, two stone bridges and a sheer cliff where stones to build houses were cut from still showing ancient Aremaic, Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions. It's there that we watched the sun go down over the almost lunar landscape.

Due to Keisuke freezing his arse off the night before, he was not too keen to sleep out under the stars again, so Jafar took us to a "Bedouin Tent" his father's cousin ran for the tourists. There we met, well, tourists. While both the boys from Japan and the Arabs were good to me and lots of laughs, sometimes you have to converse with native English speakers just to keep your sanity. I get the feeling that these guys were paying hand over fist for the privilege of sleeping out there. Like I said, it's Bedouin Disneyland.

Later the next day we stopped off a Jafar's place in the Bedouin village on the Red Sea port of Aqaba, so he could change. Like the one in Petra, the government resettled the Bedouin in concrete houses, but these seemed a bit less shabby. Perhaps all those rich divers pay better.

Speaking of money, the understanding I came to with both our guides was obviously not extended to the Japanese guys. Whilst I came out of the whole encounter a whole lot better than if I'd had to organise all these tours and accomadation seperately, the yubbies were sure to make sure I was alone before we haggled over the cost of things. I pretty much got away with food and peterol money plus a few extra Dinars. I could see from the looks on the Japanese boys faces later on that a very valuable lesson had been learned about negotiating price before embarking on a trip. It's one thing to be offered free accomadation, but there always has to be an angle. These guys don't have other jobs so have to make their money from the tourists. How much depends on the tourist. It is definetly a sliding scale that does not favour East Asians. I found the continued overt racism a bit hard to deal with, but I have to admit I was treated like a king so I was a little more forgiving that I would normally have been. Looking back I was probably a valuable part of their scam from the start, as if I'd not gone with Ahmed in the first place I doubt the other guys would too. Still, I think what they paid for was a life lesson. And before the bill came out, they were having a ball.

Aqaba is amazing. We staying at a campsite over the road from the main dive beach and you would walk out of your hut, over the road then onto the coral. At maybe 10m offshore, the coral is good, at 20m offshore it's on par with anything I saw on the Barrier Reef. I saw so many kinds of fish, eels and even a turtle. Add to that the dropped a Russian tank (the treaded kind) down 5m 20 years ago and you have something unique. The tank is too small to swim into, but the doors have been prised open and the hatches removed. The magazines for the main guns are even still in place. The coral is starting to take over, and in another 20 years I think it will look even more bizzare.

So, I'm off into "occupied Palestine" just as soon as the Egyptians visa my passport. I've met enough people who have just come from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to put my fears at ease, but I still can't help but be a bit worried due to fact the word "bomb" gets used alot in news stories about the place. However, it would be a shame to have come all this way and not done it.

Such a little country


Beirut :: Lebanon

What's good about Lebanon.

Places: Beirut, Baalbek, Sidon, Tyre & Tripolli.

Coolest thing I did: Saw the best Roman ruins ever at Baalbek. Better than Rome.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Phonecians used to bury statues of their babies when they belived the gods had healed them. The Museum here has loads of marble statues of little fellas.

Lebanon is an interesting place. Thanks to the massive amount of bombing that went on during the civil war and Israeli incursions of the 70s and 80s, much of the city of Beirut has been rebuilt over the last decade. This gives the place a very glitzy feel, even if most of the people here live below the poverty line. There is a definite dual ecconomy here, with young, well-to-do things spending up big in the boutiques whilst even a 10 min walk into the suburbs will yeild people with dirt dreadlocked beards living in bombed out shells of buildings. It gives some interesting cultural clashes. I spend a whole day buming about in cafes near the university here and I found most of the young arabs speak English to each other in a think American accent whilst watching Egyptian pop music on MTV. There are groups of girls wearning about 10kg of gold each, sunglasses inside whilst smoking apple tobacco through waterpipes. I was told by a Lebanese Canadian staying in our hostel that it's just not seen as cool to be too arabic.

Like most of the Middle East, the things to do are see old ruins and learn things about the people of the country tou are in. I'll start with the ruins.

Baalbek has the best Roman ruins I've seen ever. And I've been to Rome. The site itself is made even more impresive by the fact the foundation of the temple is shrouded in mystery. There are huge stones that form the base of the temples that people can't agree on the origin of. Some people say Babylonians, other Assyrians. Some say little green men. Anyway, they were ancient before the Greeks or Romans took over Phoneica (the old name of the lands that make up Lebanon). None the less, the temple of Baccus there has survived wars, floods and earthquakes to remain mostly intact. Before the whole PR debacle of the first world war, the Kaiser of Germany paid for it to be excavated and there is a plaque commemorating his visit in 1898. It was taken down by the French after WW1, bought by a hotel owner who kept it in his lobby until the 70s and finaly rehung in the temple after the civil war when the Krauts gave the Lebs more money for restorations. The Germans really are paying alot for the bad press all those world wars gave them.

Tyre and Sidon are in the bible. There are ruins there, but they aren't very impresive. However, Tyre has one of the biggest remaining Palestinean refugee camps in Lebanon. That was an eye opener. Guarded by Syrian troops, the place is a shanty town surrounded by barbed wire and anti tank traps. For the first time in either Syria or Lebanon I felt a bit threatened. These people have had a bad run of things over the last 50 years and they aren't too keen on Westerners wandering about looking for ruins. While I can understand their frustrations with the world, it dosen't make me feel anymore comfortable when people start yelling at me for no apparent reason. At least the Syrians had all the guns, so nothing too bad could happen.

I have made myself a promise not to write anything about Israeli-Palestinean politics here. It's too complex and I'm no expert. It's one thing to give opinions with impunity about the politics of the Byzantine Empire, people are not likely to contradict you. However, everyone here knows way more about modern Middle Eastern politics than I do and aren't afraid to express it. I'm a bit sick of hearing about baby eating Israelis and their conspiracy to take over the world.

I was shocked to see soldiers on nearly every street corner armed to the teeth with assult rifles. I was even more shocked to find out most of them are Syrian. Since the Lebanese government asked for Syrian help during their civil war Lebanon has become a vassal state of their cousins over the border. It's never a healthy sign when there are UN staff and foreign military personel walking the streets of your country. In the near future, the Lebs will have to do something to regain their country.

So, the nightlife. Beirut is one of the only places in the Middle East with a nightlife and they know it. I restricted myself to one night out on the town and I think I'm going to have to award myself the "take a long hard look at yourself" award this morning. Beers cost 5 (british) pounds and spirits are 10, so it was all fancy stuff last night. I haven't been at my peak since I've lost alot of weight and have barely drunk since Budapest, but last night I was a shell. Add to this the fact the bartender was very generous with his servings and I made a bit of a dick of myself. I don't have real solid memories but I do recal running out of the bar screaming without paying my bill. I also left a snail trail of vomit pretty much up to my bed in the hostel and managed to wake the whole building trying to get into an unlocked door. Clap clap. It won't be the last time I say this, but I'm getting too old for this shit. Not so much because of the fact I can no longer hold my alcohol, but because I care when I make a fool of myself. I can no longer build up my self respect only to have it dashed on the rocks of wastedness repeateldy like I used to.

This may also explain the crimes against spelling, grammar and the truth in this entry. I can't be arsed editing this morning. Right, I'm off to crawl into a corner and shake for a while.

Little bits of Damascus


Beirut :: Lebanon

My best day was my last one. Also, the severe differences on crossing into Lebanon.

Places: Damascus & Beirut.

Coolest thing I did: Watched an old bloke tell stories in Arabic whilst drinking tea and smoking the narghila.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: "If you don't have a girlfriend, you can use prostitutes. They are very pretty but expensive." - Direct quote from a tips book written by travelers visiting a guesthouse in Damascus.

My last day in Damascus turned out to be one of the best ones in all of Syria. I was pretty much over the place and decided to start my last day with a sleep in. This was a good idea, as it allowed my ever ill guts to settle. I then had a light breakfast and negotiated a haircut and shave with the bloke at the end of the street my hotel was on.

The old bloke must have been about 70, with no teeth showing and dentures that were missing about half the replacements. He used hand clippers with his partial arthritis to give me my second haircut of the journey, the first being in Morocco 6 months ago. The #2 all over finished, he then began with what was a very shaky hand on a cut throat razor shave, which worried me a bit. However, he managed the whole thing without cutting me once and was overjoyed when another regular customer of this came in and could translate for him. He managed to get some basic information out of me and was instantly my best mate. Everytime I walked past from then on there would be that toothless grin, and invite for tea or at least a "Salam" (which means hello/welcome).

I did more tourism, seeing mosques, palaces and churches. I took my own pace and managed to meet a Shia from Iraq who tried his best to convince me that it was now safe to visit. He pointed out what they needed more than ever there was tourist money. I pointed out people are still getting shot for looking like westerners, especially with the US military style haircut I'd just got. The last thing I wanted to do was wander the streets of Baghdad looking like a US marine off duty. My bravery dosen't extend that far.

I spent the afternoon reading the paper at a cafe near the Omayyid Mosque, the key landmark of the old city. After a couple of teas I decided to do what the locals do and smoke a waterpipe of apple tobacco, the narghila made famous by Jabba the Hutt. Whilst sitting there I struck up a conversation with two 20 year old Syrian blokes who have just entered the I.T. industry and have wide eyed dreams of going to work with one of their older brothers in Las Vegas. With a vast knowledge of Western music (via mp3 downloads) and basketball I had one of the more close-to-normal conversations of my trip. They told me narghilas had only become trendy again recently, and used to be only for the old blokes. They also mentioned they liked to fill the thing with whiskey instead of water for added effect. Thought the translation was off, I think they also soak the tobacco in LSD as well sometimes. I don't trust that stuff, and as a result don't know the chemistry well enough, but I don't think that would work.

While we were sitting there, this old guy in a fez gets up on a special chair looking over the cafe and takes up a sword in one hand and a book in the other. The boys explained to me he tells stories of Arab history every night to great effect. While it was quite confusing (as it was all in Arabic), he likes to yell alot, bang his sword on a metal table to cheers from the crowd and often has them in stitches. I think he was making an example of me by pointed at me everytime he mentioned "infadels" (which made everyone laugh), but it was in no way anything but a bit of fun. I loved it.

One thing I liked about Syria is all the hotels and guesthouses catering to backpackers have bound exercise books where travelers can write tips to each other about everywhere between Istanbul and Cairo. They range from very useful to side splitingly funny to illegible to political. I tend to find anyone who picks a forum like that to tell their political views only picked them up 10 minuites ago. My favourite onesider was a tip telling people not to go to Israel and thus "...give money to Sharon (the butcher) to kill Palestinean babies." Anyone who has been following Middle Eastern politics for more than 10 mins knows Sharon's nickname is "The Bulldozer", not "The Butcher". Ametuers.

Here's a tip, if you go to Syria, you fill out a card of your personal details like in every country in the world. Keep this, don't throw it out like I did. While it only costs $US2 to replace at the border, it sends bus drivers into fits and they threaten to not let you on their bus because they think you will hold it up.

Another tip, everytime you are in a toilet that has paper in the Middle East, steal as much as you can carry. While I know this is probably why most don't have paper, you don't want to be the last one sitting with no paper when the music stops. It's a dog eat dog world.

Today, I got to Beirut. It's a stark contrast. You can get papers published today in English (instead of 5 days ago), the food places are more recongnisable and clean & people seem to have money. Seeing as they are coming out of a huge civil war and have been the victims of a proxy war waged between Israel and Syria for the last 2 decades, things feel better here. While that unstopable Syrian hospitality isn't as strong with the hip, urban Lebanese here, it feels a whole lot less repressed. While Assad the younger ni Syria has been far more liberal than his papa was, there's still a certain tension in the air. Despite the fact half of Beirut's buildings are still waiting to be rebuilt, and the cops look like soldiers, it feels so much safer.

The only place I can compare to Beirut is Sarajevo, and even then it's hard to make. There are loads of buildings still in a state of ruin here, but instead of faceless communist blocks like Bosnia, the buildings here are shells of beautiful French-Arabic townhouses and shops. The eyesocket windows are all covered by twisted wrought iron balconies. In some cases, shops have opened up on the ground floor even if the next 4 are a hollow shell. Trendy cafes have been built next to bullet pocked shells. Seeing as Beirut itself stopped being involved directly in the wars in the 80s, it's taken a long time to rebuild, but it's getting there. It's nice to see alot of restorations rather than ultra modern concrete things. It will help avoid another Skopje (my absolute least favorite capital in the world).

Alot for such a small gap, but I had a very good last couple of days. I didn't want to get them lost in stories of weak bowels. Things are most wonderful.

Real cool old stuff


Damascus :: Syria

However, Israel should have picked a better time for their cross border incursions. First time in 30 years they've been into Syria and I just happen to be here.

Places: Palmyra & Damascus.

Coolest thing I did: Found the nightlife that the Lonely Planet said didn't exist in Damascus. Oh, and Palmyra was pretty good too.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The King of Spain is going to be here this week.

Sorry if I don't edit this too much, the stupid computer keeps changing back to Arabic on me.

Syria continues to surprise me. I thought the worst possible thing that could happen while I was here was more bad mouthing of the evil Syrians by the Yanks and military incursions by Israel. Instead of people burning Westerners in the street, as the helpful travel advice from the Australian government suggests, there is a stream of intelligent discussion on the thing. Papers debate everything, the TVs are on the news all the time and you can sit in a barbershop, bus or tea house and get a heated conversation on events. Still, it makes that whole Jewish US conspiracy theory I talked about last time a little easier for them to belive. Why does Mr Bush keep opening his mouth on TV?

Anyhow, back to the tourism. Palmyra is something spectacular. You want to see ruins? How about a desert landscape dotted with Assyrian burial chambers, muslim castles, Babylonian temples and streets of Roman ruins you don't see in Rome itself. It's also in the middle of nowhere, so despite a few tour busses everynow and then, you have the place to yourself most of the time. While I was feeling a bit ruined-out I have to say this was well worth the trek out to the desert to see. As the stone has all yellowed and decayed by the constant ravages of 1500 years of desert weather it is an eerie place that has to be seen to belived, especially at sunset. For once, when the Lonely Planet told me "If you have to see one site in the country..." it was telling the truth. I'd use my usual line of words not doing it justice, but neither do the pictures I took. It's too big to even photograph well.

Due to my continuing stomach bug woes (and I'm not alone, you should see the state of the shared squat toilet in the hotel, eeewww) I was quite wrecked when I got onto the bus for Damascus and wanted nothing more than to sleep. However, as I got on two very enthusiastic young blokes (one turned out to be a Palestinean born in Syria and the other a local) waved for me to share the back seat with them. They were two weeks away from an English exam they had to pass to go and work for the Syrian Petroleum Company. They were also very happy when they heard my Australian accent as their English teacher was also from Sydney and it was easy for them to understand me. They wanted to discuss anything and everything, and it put me in an excellent mood. I dare say they will be going to work in 2 weeks with no problem, judging by how much they were trying to get every sentence correct. They also got me onto the minibus into town from the bus station and dropped me off in front of my hotel. It would have been a whole lot harder myself and I couldn't thank them enough, especially with my crook guts.

So Damascus is everything Aleppo is not. It's a city that houses 3 million at night but swells to 7 million as everyone pours in to work. It is a huge modern city with one of the world's oldest constantly inhabited old cities smack bang in the middle of it. In fact, it's only real contender to the title is Aleppo, so Syria is pretty old. The old city has the stuff you expect mosques, palaces, souqs and whatnot, with the most notable thing being the resting place of Saladin (whose story I told last time).

When I got in, I managed to meet up with Paul, who I was traveling down from Istanbul with again. He and a couple of other blokes were on their way out on the town, of which I was skeptical. A big night out here is tea, a hookah pipe and bed by 11, so I didn't like their chances of finding anywhere to drink that didn't have it's fair share of Romanian prostitutes as clientele. After following some dud leads, talking to the younger blokes on the street and by the good graces of a Syrian guy who lived in Texas, we found ourselves in a fairly exclusive looking club. Drink prices made it feel more exclusive that it probably was. However, western fern bar decor and a mix of Egyptian and Western pop had loads of non-be-headscarfed girls and guys all drinking and dancing away. I dare say they weren't real happy with a bunch of ragged looking backpackers casing about the joint, but they did let us in. I should have had a shower and shave after truding around the desert all day. Ooops.

They rest of the guys and out much bigger party left a big later to go onto another club. I decided to give it a rest (I spent more time in the toilet than on the dance floor) and go back early. The story I heard this morning involved cocktails that were 3/4 alcohol, barfights that involved bleeding and military looking police with assult rifles. I'm pretty glad I wasn't there to be Stevil in a situation like that, seeing the inside of a Syrian jail is not on my list of things to do here.

As it's Friday today (the muslim equivalent of Sunday) most things are closed, so the bulk of my tourism will be tomorrow. I thought I'd have a quite day today reading the papers, but the newest English newspaper is 4 days old and the news magazines I saw in Greece, so we're talking 3 weeks back. I've been told that's so the censors can tear out any pro-American takes on Middle Eastern politics, but I've seen no evidence so far. Instead, I just looked at the pictures in the Arab newspaper instead. I also wanted to see something of the Rugby world cup, but no one even seems to know what rugby is here. I don't usually get these urges for the comforts of home, but not holding in food is making me feel a bit weak and washed out. I hope it improves.

I think I will be off into Lebanon on Monday or Tuesday.

Safe as houses


Hama :: Syria

Pleasant surprises all round.

Places: Aleppo, The Dead Cities, Hama & Crac des Chevaliers.

Coolest thing I did: Took the taxi out to the ruined Byzantine cities in the desert around Aleppo.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: You can turn a single entry visa into a multiple entry one by writing "TWO" over the "ONE" printed on it. That's all the woman did when I got a dual entry and paid extra for it.

So, what do you know about Syria? If you are like me, you'd half have in the back of your mind that it was some kind of totalitarian military dictatorship full of terrorists and the like. It has a pretty bad rep, but just getting here, I've had to change that perception. It's a truly amazing place, made all the more so by the fact that there are not hundreds of Aussies getting drunk everywhere like there are in Turkey. I think the novelty of Westerners is still setting in here, because you don't get ripped off as regularly as you do in Turkey and everyone is so nice. I mean, very, very nice. People have been stopping me in the street asking where I'm from, do I need any help and then if I say no, just saying "welcome to Syria". In Morocco or Turkey, this would be a prelude to wanting to sell me a carpet. It's a nice change.

The other good thing is it's stupidly cheap, even more so than say Poland or Slovakia. This is due to the fact that people are pretty poor here, and mass tourism hasn't arrived yet. I've been here for 5 days now and I'm still on my first 50 euros! Having said that, I have been pretty sick from eating something (I'm not sure what) and I spent most of yesterday in bed with a fever and diarrhea (too much information?) and am avoiding too much of the stranger local food. I was having a pretty good run up until now, but I think yesterday's rest did me good. I think the heavy run from Greece into Istanbul the direct to Syria was taking it's toll a bit.

So, what's there to see? Well Aleppo isn't a real pretty place. It has some spectacular things in it (a mosque built under the first Muslim dynasty, a cidatel that's never been captured) but as a settlement that's been constantly inhabited for close to 10,000 years, all the layers are showing their age. Add to that some genius French city planner decided to run straight roads through it and destroy much of the old town hasn't helped. Add to this the fact that the Ba'ath party have been in power for long enough to turn it into a pseudo socialist paridise (ie lots of concrete and posters of President Assad everywhere) and it's probably seen better days. Still, the people are very nice and you make do. The souq here is a whole lot more real than the one in Marrakesh, as it seems to sell nothing a tourist could want. With motor cycles and donkeys running back and forth through the winding, irregularly paved streets you find yourself looking over your shoulder alot.

Myself, Paul (whose been traveling with me since Istanbul) and another bloke from the hostel hired a taxi off the street to take us out to some of the Dead Cities outside Aleppo. As this is the land crossroads from Istanbul (old Constantinople) into the Middle East, it used to be a a strategic point for the Byzantine empire. Many old cities and churches were built in the first 600 years after Christ but fell into ruin during the reign of the Turks, due mostly to a move to sea bound trade. This has left several hundred ruins all over the desert here, which you can see by day trip from Aleppo. The most famous is St Simeon, which is a huge Orthadox chruch dedicated to a monk who lived on top of a pillar. It's a long story.

Our taxi driver, Mad Mohammed was pretty good to us, even though the inspector at St Simeon reckons we were getting our ride around for about half of the going rate. He didn't mind waiting as we wandered around and took photos of the overgrown pillars and arches like proper tourists. However, driving with him is an experience. His use of the horn was not at all sparing and wild gesticulations at other drivers, usually with both hands were a little nerve wracking. He spoke next to no English but was highly amused by us knowing the words falaffel and kebab. He'd yell "falafel kebab!" at the top of his lungs and go into giggling fits for minuites on end.

I'm currently in Hama, which is famous for having water wheels in the river. That's it. Water wheels. It's also within striking distance of Crac des Chevaliers, the best preserved of the Crusader castles and possibly one of the best remaing castles in the world. It comes from the time when the hordes of Catholic Western Europe managed to retake much of modern day Syria and Israel/Palestine from the armies of Islam. When much of the Byzatine empire was taken from them by these uppity arabs, the emperor of the East asked the pope in Rome for a hand. He proclaimed a crusade to reconquer the holy land from the Muslims. The first 2 crusades were hapazard affairs, but managed to get a foothold into much of the coast. The real thing started with the 3rd crusade, which pitted the armies of Christianity under Richard the Lionheart of England (of Robin Hood fame) against Saladin, a Kurdish warlord. Unlike the resistance they'd met before, Saladin's army were professionals and this showed in the stalemate that ended the conflict. Big Ricky Lionheart knew he could retake Jerusalem, but did not have enough me to garrison it. This was the peak of the crusades and it ended with the reconquest by the Muslim armies. Crac des Chevaliers should have had 2000 men in it but had 50 when the Muslims arrived. They could have held out for 5 years, but abandoned it for safe passage. It was never taken and thus is in immaculate condition (with minor restorations over the years).

Saladin does play a big part in the Arab psyche too. Witness the fact that many of the propaganda posters in Iraq showed Saddam dressed as Saladin on horseback, holding off the Crusaders, which he equates with the armies of "Little Bush".

While everyone here likes to have a talk, it can turn quickly into politics with no warning. This is not such a problem, it's good to hear the other side of the story, but the following themes keep reoccuring:

• America is controlled by a Jewish consipracy.
  
• The Arabs have been persecuted by the whole world, whcih is why they are so poor here
  
• Only those with military power can shape their own desitinies.
  
• The recent history of the middle east is a divide and conquer tactic by the West.
  

Given this is a totalitarian state, there are secret police and state controlled media, it's easy to see how these conspiracy theories form, but I'm amazed at how uniformly accepted they are. Like anywhere, governments look for someone to blame when their own ineptitude gets them into trouble (look at the Australian government and those evil migrants), but we tend to have a liberal media to allow us to make more informed decisions. This makes George and his Axis of Evil making just that much more dangerous. People here are not hating their government more than America because they brought sanctions upon them.

Right, I think I've had to change of plan. I don't know how much I trust this multiple entry visa I've been given, so I'm going south to Damascus and seeing everything else I want to see in Syria before going into Lebanon. That way, if I have issues with my visa I can get a transit one at the border and go direct to Jordan.

How to cook a Syrian visa


Istanbul :: Turkey

Straight puttin' it down for Anatol-I-Ay.

Places: Istanbul.

Coolest thing I did: Realised I'd missed the best bits of Istanbul last time and got to see them for the first time now.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Australias are the biggest beetroot consumers in the world (thanks Khim, you're a babe). We even beat Borsch land, or Russia as the locals call it.

Man, do I hate 22 hour bus rides or what? Thank God it only took 20 instead of the advertised 22 to go from Athens to Istanbul. Bring a very long book and don't expect too much in the way of sleep. Every 3 hours the stupid driver decided he was going to turn on the lights and stop the bus because he wanted a smoke. Bastard.

So, here I am, back in old Constantinople. The best thing about being here this time is I don't have to rush about and do all the touristy stuff like I did last time I was here. I've seen the Grand Bazaar, Palace and all the mosques, so I'm working more on my kebab eating skills, hookah pipe smoking skills and cosuming beer that is far cheaper than in Greece. Thanks to the fact they've slowed inflation from 120% last time I was here to a mere 30%, things still cost roughly the same as they did last time. Kebab is still 1,000,000. Viva life.

My big adventure so far has been attempting to aquire a Syrian visa. One of the blokes in the hostel wanted to do the same, so we split a cab as it's miles into the suburbs. Not only did the taxi driver decide by Syria we meant the Czech Republic, but no one on the street could tell us where the address was, even though it turned out to be on the next street. Not only that, but when we did find it, we discover that you need a "letter of introduction" from your embassy. So we catch a bus to the Australian consulate, which is even further away and managed to bay about 20 euros for a piece of paper that has exactly the same information on it as my passport. So by this time, it's too late to go back and I have to return to the Syrians tomorrow. Oh, how I love bureaucracy. I'm almost afriad to ask what extra I'll have to do to get a multiple entry one if I want to visit Lebanon and go back through Syria to Jordan. That may go into the "too hard" basket.

However, I'm loving Istanbul again. This time there's less being hassled on the street as I know it's ok to say "no thanks", then "I said no" and then swear if necessary. The usually give up after that. I've also, quite by accident, seen some of the best views of the huge Ottoman mosques rising out of the skyline over the Bosphorus, which I didn't see last time. I think this place is unique in that regard. I tried to see similar things all over Morocco, but nothing comes close to that silhouette of minaretes rising over urbania like this place has. It's made me decide to stay on a few more days and just do not too much. I may even go rile up the carpet sellers, just to see how small a price I can get. I don't want a carpet, just to play the haggling game.

So, if all goes well, I'll be off to Syria later this week. I've met an Aussie whose just done my trip backwards (Egypt up to Istanbul overland) and he's reassured me over my (slight) fears of suicide bombings in Israel (or Occupied Palestine as the Syrian visa form calls it). He said he felt "safe as houses" the whole time he was there, so I do feel a bit better. Before him, I'd not met anyone who'd been there in the last 2 years, and in the Middle East, that's a lifetime.

By staying at the world famous Orient Hostel, I'm surrounded by Aussies for the first time in recent memory. Besides a few token Kiwis and Canadians, I haven't seen anyone else (except the Korean dude I was on the bus with from Athens). I think this may be due to the fact Americans now have to pay USD$100 (!!!) to get into Turkey. Man, I bet you they vote for the other guy now (or girl, I'm putting money on Hillary Clinton running for president next year, mark my words).

Short, but not so much time has passed since last time. Right, I'm off to happy hour (which goes for 3 hours...God I love this place).

Lots of old stuff


Athens :: Greece

Theres alot of this Greek history stuff.

Places: Litohoro (Mt Olympus), Kalambaka (Meteora), Athens, Delphi, Nafplio, Mycenea, Sparta, Mystras & Olympia.

Coolest thing I did: Ran a lap of THE olympic track the ancient Greeks used. Don't ask my time.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The greeks have more than one word for love. Awww. Agape.

This has been a big couple of weeks. I won't go into the usual tirade but rather treat each spot separately. Here goes:

Litohoro: It appears that the Greek gods got sick of their old home on Mt Olympus and decided to leave it to hikers and skiers. While I didn't do the 2 day hike to the summit (time is starting to get the better of me) I did go half a day to the point where you can see all of the 7 peaks of the mountain. It was made a bit better by the fact that there were no other tourists that got off my bus, so I wasn't surrounded by flash bulbs everytime I turned a corner. This has become a problem in places I've been since.

Meteora: This has to rate as one of the best places I've been, ever. Full stop. Scientists think (how come they never know, always think?) that the huge stone pillars that make the place unique were formed by the rushing water of an ancient sea that isn't there anymore. Thanks to the marauding Turks (always marauding those pesky Turks) the Byzantines decided it would be a cool idea to put their monestaries places that were hard to get at. So they built them on the top of the sheer stone pillars that dot the landscape at Meteora. If you are a photographer, you'll be in heaven when you see this place. Turn a corner and you see something that looks just a whole lot cooler than the very cool thing you just saw. I can't do this place justice in words, you have to see it. It is, however,easily accesed by tour busses. I walked the 17 km round trip to see all the 6 monestaries that still work, but it involves sharing it with the teeming hordes who caught the bus up. I don't usually get on my high horse about mass tourism, but this place would be so much cooler if it was only accessible by foot trail. At least my photos the stones wouldn't look like anthills.

Athens: Last time I came to Greece for my go-to-the-islands-and-get-drunk trip, I was in Athens for a total of 6 hours. It managed to leave me with a severe dislike of the place. That has now moved up a couple of notches into the low hatred level. How on Earth this place expects to host an Olympics next year is beyond me. The roads are chaos, there are two seperate bus stations linked by suburban busses where the signs are only in Greek (which most tourists that show up next year won't speak) and take a good 30 to 40 mins to reach from the centre. Add to this the fact there seems to have been super inflation since drachmas became euros and I'm not real enamoured of the place. Still, I only stopped here due to the fact it's the transport hub for the rest of the country.

Delphi: This was the best classical site I saw, despite promises of Olympia being better. You just can't beat it for location. The main temples and stuff overlook a huge rift in the mountains that open up to the sea. Even if there was nothing old and Greek here, this would be the place to come for scenery. The temple of Athena, where the Oracle used to do her thing is the pick of the bunch. I like the story of the oracle. Just say you're an ancient greek bloke, let's call you Jason. You want to go nick some golden fleece, but your mates, the Argonauts, aren't so keen. The best thing you could have done is gone to the Oracle and asked to check out if the trip would all be cool. She'd then gut a chicken, read the bits inside and say yay or nay. For the rest, read the ramblings of an old blind Greek guy called Homer. Who is not Bart's Dad.

Nafplio/Mycenea: This is a nice combo. Nafplio is an old Byzantine/Venetian town that has been restored to tourism level pristinedness. It's nice, but not somewhere you'd stay unless it wasn't the best place to stay to see Mycenea. Crete was the first place in Europe to have culture, but Mycenea was the first place on the mainland to do so. Now it's been stripped of most of it's treasures, which are in musemums, but it's a pretty cool place to visit none the less. It's the supposed home of Agamemnon, who was the bloke who led the Greek armies to attack Troy. Don't worry if you don't know the story, it's going to be a movie staring Brad Pitt next year. Urgh.

Sparta/Mystras: Sparta was the other big city state in ancient Greece, alongside Athens. While Athens is now the capital of the new country, Sparta hasn't got much to offer. No real ruins either. But it's 30 mins from Mystras, which is way cool. It was an old hill fort and town during Byzantine times and was the last place to fall to the Turks, even outlasting the old Captial Constantinople (Istanbul today). What's left is an impressive amount of ruins clinging to a hillside with one restored, operating Nunnery. Again, only pictures can do it justice.

Olympia: Prepare to be underwhelmed. It is a good site with some interesting things, but overall it's alot of rocks arranged with some imagination. The best bits were the coloums that used to line the temple of Zeus, which have been lefted in their toppled state, and the cleared olympic track, which, as I said earlier, I ran around. Man, you don't run for 6 months and this can be very tiring. I think I've lost alot of fitness. OK, maybe I'm being a girl. Anyway, the town of Olympia is a single street of tourist shops. This dosen't make for a huge Saturday night. I spent most of it playing the card game arsehole and talking about things travelers seem to talk about. These consist of where I've been, where I'm going, visas, train passes, showering in your thongs (flip flops for you Northern Hemispherers, not underpants) and tales of extreme stinginess. While this can been cool for your first month on the road, it's now approaching 6 months and I'd love to have just one conversation about something more meaningful, or even just different.

So, here I am, back in Athens. I have felt the bruising pace of the last couple of weeks should have been taking more toll on me, but if anything I feel better than I have in at least a month or so. I think it's been helped by the endless supply of Greeks who have been willing to talk to me about their life, even with no provocation at all. I've met expat Greeks who live all over Europe, North America and Oceania, most of them well over 50. I've found the expats to be rather open minded, in contrast to the younger types I met in Thessas, most of whom had never been overseas before. More proof that travel broadens the mind. However, the reality of the whole trip is now reaching me. I have now fixed dates for when I will be in Egypt and when I'm flying back to the UK, so I know exactly how much time I have left. I've also decided to go overland to Egypt, as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan sound safe enough. I'm a little concerned about the regular suicide bombings in Israel, but I'm going to take that decision much closer to the time. At the moment I'm leaning towards going there, leaving enough time to do so. We shall see. Now it gets pretty interesting. Tomorrow I'm off to Istanbul, so I should be out of Europe by the time you next see something here.