CBrzustoski's Blogs and Travelogues

Ko Samui: Ending our SE Asia trip on an island paradise

2010-08-05T16:52:00.000+02:00

Very little could have gotten me to say goodbye to the magnificent city of Bangkok after only one day. One of these things was the promise of a paradise on the tiny island of Ko Samui in the South China Sea. So we begrudgingly packed our bags for the final leg of our SE Asian adventure.

We hopped in a taxi that got us straight to the airport without hitting any of Bangkok's notorious traffic. In just an hour, our little plane had deposited us at one of the most beautiful airports I had ever seen. We were ferried from the plane to the terminal via a golf-cart-like bus with big open windows. There was lush vegetation all around the tarmac and for the first time ever, I found myself wishing my camera was easily accessible rather than stuffed at the bottom of my bag before we had even left the airport. Weird.

More open walls greeted us at the main terminal, which looked more like a cabana than anything remotely connected to the typical Kafkaesque hell of an airport. As we waited for our bags, we were greeted with a warm sea breeze and butterflies fluttering around the topiary plants within the "terminal."

A taxi took us to our beachside hotel with the very Thai-sounding name of Bill's Resort on Lamai Beach. It was about a half an hour journey, which seemed long for such a tiny island. However the lack of any main streets certainly added to the time. Jon and I were looking out the window with the faint hope of finding an English language school where we could drop off our resumes, and avoid the bitter winter that waited for us back in Korea.

We had big plans for Ko Samui. After out blitzkrieg vacation of three SE Asian countries in ten days, we planned to continue our "do-and-see-everything-we-can" momentum with an elephant ride up to a waterfall. There was a large Buddha on another side of the island too. But once we reached our little bungalow that was just a two minute walk from this pristine shore, we decided the only thing we wanted to do was lounge on the sand, eating the fresh pineapples that vendors provided at regular intervals and watch the jade-green waters of the South China Sea. We spent a little time in the pool and jacuzzi that were just alongside the hotel restaurant, which offered great ocean views.

Happily, our beach time was leisurely, with no instances of "missing time" where five hours evaporate at the blink of an eye. Instead, the slow pace of island life engulfed us and the hours stretched on for what seemed like much longer. We watched the vendors walk to and from, with their elaborate pineapple carving stations, coolers filled with ice cream and hangers filled with brightly colored fluttering beach dresses (after three times, I finally gave in and bought this cute blue dress decorated with elephants).

Our dinner was probably the worst we had had during our time in SE Asia. After the fresh herbs, coconut drinks and banana flowers of Vietnam, the delectable amok coconut curry of Cambodia and peanut-y comfort food of pad thai in Bangkok, our overpriced pizza and too-sweet fruit shakes couldn't quite hold up.

We had just one more morning and half an afternoon to spend on the beach for our final days. Again, time was kind to us by not rushing along too quickly. Our dreams of elephant rides and Buddha adventures were dissipating, but we were perfectly content on our beach loungers, listening to the sounds of the sea, marveling again at the jade-green waters.

Getting into the taxi to go back to the airport was one of the hardest things ever. We had seen the blizzard-like conditions that awaited us in Korea on the news in Bangkok, and also had to begin teaching winter camps the day after we got back. We were hoping just a little that maybe the flight would be canceled, buying us another day or two of tropical weather and beach time. Alas, the flight wasn't even delayed (until we reached Bangkok where we had a 2 hour delay, ugh). And so we bid farewell to this lovely little piece of paradise, with hopes of returning again one day.

The Bangkok Blitz Part 2: The city where a 150-ft golden Buddha isn't even the most impressive thing you've seen today

2010-07-17T05:04:00.000+02:00

One day in Bangkok is somehow longer than most. After avoiding a catastrophe that would have lost us several hours of our single day here, we explored the Grand Palace as quickly as we could without dropping dead of heat stroke. Our next stop was the magnificent Wat Pho temple.

Once again, the array of bright colors and intricate designs assaulted our senses. As a former art history student, I just wanted to sit and take in all the geometrical patterns that adorned these chess pawn-shaped buildings that were unlike anything I had every seen before. Sadly, I tore my eyes away and continued on the way.

Just when I was certain that Bangkok could no longer overwhelm me with such a sensory attack, we arrived at the interior of Wat Pho, home of the golden reclining Buddha. Words failed us as we gazed up at this massive,150 foot long, 50 foot high Buddha. Our eyes were simply unable to see the entire thing at once, much less appreciate the artistry of each detail. The feet and eyes are engraved with mother-of-pearl, while the bottoms of his feet show the 108 auspicious signs of the Buddha. The moment was lost a bit by the hordes of tourists who gazed upon Buddha with us, pushing and shoving their way to the place where the best photo ops were. From everything I know about Buddhism, I just don't think Buddha would approve of anything in the room. But it was nonetheless, breathtaking to behold and one of the most amazing monuments I've ever seen in my years of travel.

You know you're in Bangkok when a gigantic 150 foot long golden Buddha isn't the most impressive thing you've seen today. We finally tore ourselves away from the glorious Wat Pho to continue our blitz through this crazy, wonderful city. After a quick lunch and some real fruit smoothies to cool us down in the blazing heat and swampy humidity, we tried to get in just one more temple, the Wat Arun or Temple of the Dawn.

A quick ferry boat ride through Bangkok's river, the Chao Phraya and we arrived at the Temple of the Dawn. It just started to rain as we boarded the boat, which made the humidity even more unbearable. Wat Arun, which looked quite impressive from across the river with its multiple prang-shaped towers, was simply glorious upon closer inspection. From the gargoyle-esque characters that surrounded the tower, to the intricate flower designs on the exterior, to the sound of chirping birds and small bells chiming in the slight breeze, everything here seemed simply sublime, peaceful and perfect.

Jon climbed the incredibly steep stairs as I sat down below, listening to the bells and trying to memorize the shapes and patterns on the outside walls.

We left the temple by four or five o'clock, returning to the hotel to cool off, hydrate and start packing our bags again. We had barely even scratched the surface of this phenomenal place, and added to our list of "must-return" destinations. The following day, we were leaving early for our flight to the island paradise of Ko Samui!

The Bangkok Blitz Part 1: The Tuk Tuk Touts

2010-06-23T04:02:00.001+02:00

Bangkok is one of those cities that could take weeks to properly explore. Because of our work schedule - having to return to Korea for the dreaded "Winter Camp" - we had just one day. Wow. So we decided to do the Bangkok tour, blitzkrieg style.

The first thing that was against us, apart from time, was the weather. Bangkok in the winter still means temperatures in the high 90s with the most oppressive humidity I've ever experienced. But we set out anyways into the polluted steam bath that is Bangkok.

The only words I can use to properly describe the city are "sensory overload." We had so little time to take it all in and that only exacerbated the this feeling of overwhelming. We made our way to the Grand Palace, only to be sidetracked by two spectacular temples that weren't even on our map. This is a city with so much spectacular art and architecture that these unbelievably gorgeous buildings didn't even merit a small dot on our city map.

After our brief but enjoyable side trips, we finally reached the Grand Palace. Just as we pulled out our map to verify our location -making sure that somewhere behind this enormous compound, there wasn't some larger, grander palace - a friendly Thai man began to talk with us. He asked the usual questions about where we were from, how long we were staying, what we wanted to see. We told him we were just heading to the Grand Palace. He looked at us, and said, "Oh, but don't you know? The palace is closed this morning. It is Lucky Buddha Day!" He then charted out a path on our map to take us to some of the city's other treasures. He recommended we go by tuk tuk, a kind of motorized rickshaw, and told us not to pay more than 60 baht ($2) for a ride. "If they try to charge you more, you tell them, 'I have Thai friend and he tell me not to pay more than 60 baht!'" The previous night, it had cost us 200 baht to get back to the hotel from our restaurant.

Just as the man smiled and walked away, as if in perfect synchronization, a tuk tuk driver approached us, told us again that the Palace was closed, then looked at the route our new Thai friend had marked for us. "For this, I charge you 60 baht!" says the tuk tuk driver. At this point, some alarm bells started going off in my head. Why was he charging us such a reasonable rate, after what we had paid the night before, without even haggling? I was getting uncomfortable with the bit of pressure to get in his tuk tuk. And, Lucky Buddha Day? Jon and I had celebrated Buddha's birthday in April of the year before, and it was now January. Even with the lunar calendar year, it wouldn't come around again so soon. I also noted our new Thai "friend" had stopped walking and was looking back at us. I looked at Jon and could tell he had the same growing distrust. So, I told the tuk tuk driver that we were just going to go look at the Palace, take some pictures and then maybe go for the excursion, without any intention of coming back.

As we walked along the perimeter, the driver followed us a bit but finally relented. But even as he retreated, the other tuk tuk drivers lined up all around the palace shouted at us: "No palace! Is Lucky Buddha Day today!" "Palace is closed!" We listened to them all the way up to the Palace entrance, muttering to ourselves. "Wouldn't it be so funny if the palace wasn't actually closed?"

As we got closer, a random lady in a baseball hat tried to sell us a ticket to the allegedly-closed palace.

We finally reached the entrance and the ticket booth with bated breath. It was packed with tourists and most decidedly not closed.

To be continued...Giant Gold Buddhas, River Ferries and The Temple of the Dawn still to come.

The Floating Villages of Tonle Sap

2010-03-27T03:29:00.012+01:00

When we first got our Intrepid tour itinerary, I was somewhat disappointed to see that most of our time would be spent in Cambodia. Now, that our time in the country was fast coming to a close, I didn't want to leave to continue on to Thailand. Cambodia exceeded any possible expectation I could have had. There was the undisputed highlight and wonder of the world, the magnificent Angkor Wat. Even the tourist town of Siem Reap was charming and lovely. Phnom Penh was another unexpected delight. Then there was the delicious cuisine and the super-friendly people, especially the children. For a country that has suffered so much unspeakable horror, the children were happy and sweet and seemed to have little knowledge of what had gone on before they were born.

So we were on the last leg of the Cambodia part of our trip. We sadly left Angkor and Siem Reap on a minivan to get to a boat that would take us across the Tonle Sap Lake to the town of Battambang. With my stomach still a bit sick from the previous day, I was relieved that there would at least be a bathroom on board for the 4-5 hour trip. When I actually saw what boat we were taking, with its "bathroom" that was nothing more than a small hole in the floor, I was a little less happy.

Our boat was not very big at all. Worse, we had to carry all of our luggage with us because our van couldn't meet us at the other side. So there were 12-14 of us, slightly cramped with as many suitcases and backpacks in the narrow aisle of the boat. Once the boat started moving, it really felt like we were on a Disney jungle cruise ride. There was a narrow path between the reeds and long grass that you could touch it if you reached outside of the boat.

Tonle Sap is a freshwater lake in the middle of the country that actually swells and shrinks each year. It can expand to 16,000 square km (10,000 square mi) during the summer monsoon season. In the dry season, it is just about 2,700 square km (1,700 square mi). We were just barely able to take this boat trip. When the lake shrinks too much, a minibus drives the tour from Siem Reap to Battambang in just a couple of hours. But whenever they can, they take the tours via the lake, since it obviously provides a much more unusual and memorable experience than a couple of hours on a bus.

There was a slight tourist-y feel to some of the villages we saw, particularly the first one that was closest to Siem Reap. First, there was a tour boat in front of us. (I didn't really consider the boat we were in as a "tour boat.") And this city was the largest with more people and buildings. No one seemed too surprised to see a bunch of westerners with their cameras snapping photos. But, there was still an authenticity to the experience. It certainly didn't seem like they were putting on a show of any kind. Just that they were carrying on their everyday lives as usual, ignoring the big boats of people.

The villages got smaller as the trip went on, and while each time we saw a new one was slightly less exciting, the villages themselves seemed to be more authentic and less accustomed to visitors. We watched children run out of their floating school to wave at us and yell "Hello!" There were even two little boys that mooned our boat as we floated by. But most of the kids seemed happy to see a boat of foreigners, waving madly, some even running after our boat for as long as they could.

Not all of the trip was so pleasant. There was the aforementioned hole that led me to stay dehydrated during the trip (and it could get HOT on that boat, especially as we slowed down to look at the villages). Of course, there was the heat. The boat did have a canopy, but as we turned in different directions, you could have the sun beating right down on you. There was also the 5 minutes or so where our boat got caught in some brambles underneath. After a minute or two of sheer terror of being stranded in the middle of a fricking Cambodian jungle river, we pulled free and continued on our way.

Apart from those discomforts, it was really lucky we were able to take the boat. By using it to travel all the way to Battambang, we saw more than the tourist boats that just float out for a few hours, then head back to Siem Reap. Probably the most lasting impression of these villages was both the abject poverty of some of the people living within (particularly the villages further out from Siem Reap), but also how even these places can't avoid the encroachment of modern technology. In the middle of out tour, we saw three or four huge cellular towers, and this picture above is one of my favorites. It shows one of those classic, and almost cliche juxtapositions of the old and new. There's the traditional barge house, looking rather rickety, with the hi-tech satellite dish hung on the outside porch.

And so ended another day of wonderful adventures in Cambodia. We had another traveling-in-a-third-world-country moment as the van for our hotel met us on the other side in Battambang. There was just one van to seat all thirteen of us, so we crowded in Turkish dolmus style, sitting on laps and standing inside the car, as it drove us to the city of Battambang.

And here's a video of part of the boat trip. You might have to go onto my Blogger site if you're reading this from Facebook, it doesn't seem to import the videos :-(

Angkor Wat: Day Two

2010-03-23T04:52:00.011+01:00

After an exhausting first day in Angkor Wat, mostly from the oppressive humidity, we had a 4 am wake-up call on day two so that we could watch the sun rise. Of course, I prefer sunsets to sunrises and found myself feeling ill all day long, just like I did after our sunrise viewing at Mount Nemrut in Turkey.

We were among the first to arrive and were sitting just by the reflecting pool for the optimum photo-op of the temple and rising sun. Jon was getting restless and cranky over the early wakeup, and the feeling of being herded with hundreds of other tourists, so, on my suggestion, he borrowed a flashlight and set off on his own Indiana Jones-like adventure inside the mostly-deserted temple. As I watched the sky gradually lighten (sunrise always seems to take much longer than it should), taking a new picture every minute or so, he came back and guided me through the deserted halls. We got back in time to see the sun break over the towers and then met up with the rest of our group again.

We were pleasantly surprised that most of the crowds didn't make their way into the temple when they were finished watching the sunrise. It was probably the extended bathroom break we took just afterwards that helped us out. So we found ourselves mostly alone in the cavernous halls with our wonderful Intrepid group and guides. Again, an amazing Indiana Jones-esque experience of intricate wall friezes, vaulted archways, big holes that were once swimming pools and some unbelievably steep steps that I never would have climbed without the fear of getting left behind the group and therefore, lost forever in Cambodia.

The early wakeup also had the added benefit of slightly cooler temperatures. The humidity wasn't too bad yet and the temps were probably just in the 80s. It was so nice to walk around this amazing place without the discomfort and stickiness of sweating profusely.

After the leisurely tour around the main temple, we headed to a restaurant with one of the best locations on the planet, just across the causeway and with a magnificent view. We had another delicious Cambodian breakfast - fresh fruit, banana pancakes and some coffee.

We had just one more temple after seeing the main one. This one was called "The Ladies Temple" and was about a 40 minute drive away. If I wasn't in full temple-hopping gear, I might have gone back to the hotel. The 4 am wakeup and possibly some undercooked kangaroo (or crocodile, or maybe ostrich) meat from the night before left me feeling woozy, and now that midday was approaching, the 95 degree temperatures with 100% humidity had returned (and it still boggled my mind that we were visiting in WINTER).

The temple was worth the trip. My camera also decided to die at this point (so the pictures you see here were taken by Lynda and Jon, some of our wonderful Intrepid tour mates, were nice enough to share their pictures with me.) The temple was again just a bit different from the others. The carvings were so intricate and the color of all the buildings was a rusty reddish color.

We made it back to the hotel after the long schlep here and were finally able to enjoy some quality time in the pool. We ordered our meal to the poolside, slept and swam. It was great to have some time to actually relax, something that got just a bit pushed aside on our 10 day sprint through three Southeast Asian countries.

Angkor Wat: The Lost City in the Jungle, Day One

2010-03-14T08:33:00.012+01:00

My vacations this year had already brought me to one Wonder of the World, the Great Wall, and now on our sixth day of the tour, we came to the second. It's so difficult to capture the wonder-ous-ness of these places in words. But there's a tingle you can feel in your body and a sense of awe that takes over. There's the incredible craftsmanship that went into the building, which was constructed in the 12th century, a time when Europe was still in the Dark Ages, and the incredible jungle scenery surrounding it. But also, for two days, I was able to feel like Indiana Jones and it was fantastic.

The most famous building (above), the one you see in all the postcards, is of the Angkor Wat temple and it is magnificent. However, the complex of Angkor Wat is huge and consists of dozens of temples spread out over 400 square km of land. Each temple has its own "theme," so to speak. Some focus on preserving the architecture and stone carvings (like Bayan and the Ladies Temple) from the jungle growth while others let nature take its course, even if it means some of the temples suffer from invading tree roots and such.

Bayan in Angkor Thom was the most architecturally impressive, but also the least enjoyable. The crowds were a bit crazy and we were led around by our tour guide at a little brisker pace than we wanted. He was probably trying to escape the tourist hordes too. So while the Buddha faces hewed into the rock were great fun, it was a bit of a relief to move on to the next temple. Also, it was at least 35 C/ 100 F with about 95% humidity, so being pressed in with so many people was that more unpleasant.

We passed through some really cool elephant terraces, where the trunks were used as a decorative column, on our way to the next temple of Preah Khan.

Preak Khan was much, much less crowded than Bayan. The architecture was less stunning but the ambiance was better. The lack of tourists really made you feel like you were an explorer in the jungle who had just stumbled upon this wondrous ancient place (which, btw is actually how Angkor Wat was "rediscovered" in the mid-1800s when a French explorer published his travel notes about the place). The dilapidated state of the temple - which is on purpose - really added to the experience of wandering through the lost city in the jungle.

By now it was midday and we were drenched from the humidity and all the climbing around. Our excellent tour planned well by letting us go back to the hotel for a leisurely lunch (in that it took them over an hour to serve us) and a quick dip in the hotel pool, a shower and change of clothes and we were off again to the Ta Phrom temple, aka the Angelina Jolie.

Yes, this is the temple where they shot part of the Tomb Raider movie. And here was where you could really see the battle between nature and civilization. There were so many gnarled trees that had broken through the walls of the temple and become intertwined with them. Many of the temple's preservers wanted to knock the trees down to save the buildings, only to realize that if they did so, they would also destroy the temple. Here's a video clip of one part of the temple. You can hear all the birds/weird bugs in the background. So jungle-y.

In what felt like an Indiana Jones movie plot, we had to rush through Ta Phrom to make it to our last temple before sunset, or the consequences would be dire. Actually, we just planned to watch the sunset from there and needed to move along or miss it. Soon we were at another spectacular temple, with several other tourists. We sat with some other members of our tour and chatted with a cute, whip-smart Cambodian girl who was trying to sell us some tour books. We finally relented after she aced a geography quiz given to her by an Irishman from the tour, when she correctly answered "Bern" for the capital of Switzerland. She nailed all the other answers, and was even able to greet us with an "Annyeong haseyo" when we told her we were living in Korea.

Finally, after the long day, we had a fantastic dinner with some tour-mates at a Cambodian barbecue place, where we ate crocodile, kangaroo, ostrich, prawns, and some less interesting chicken and beef. We then made our way back to the hotel for as much sleep as we could get before the four a.m wake-up call for tomorrow's sunrise over the temple of Angkor Wat.

On the road in Cambodia

2010-03-01T04:19:00.012+01:00

The long drive from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, the closest city to the temples of Angkor Wat, was more enjoyable than I was expecting. One of our scheduled stops was at "spider town," where we politely declined the fried tarantula but were surprised at how tasty the fried crickets were. They were doused in oil and if you closed your eyes, you might have thought you were eating a potato chip. That was of course, only after our guide, Haing, pulled the feet and head off for me. We also were introduced to the wonderfully-strange-looking lychee berry. (You peel off the spiky skin before eating the juicy white fruit inside, then spit out the pit.)

One of the highlights of the tour came when we stopped along the side of the road to view some traditional Khmer stilt houses. Apparently these houses, despite being along the Cambodian highway don't get many visitors, so several people came out to look at the foreigners. They were very friendly, and smiled warmly as we greeted them with a "Su-az-day" (Hello). One of our tour mates, Lynda from Australia, gave stuffed kangaroos to an adorable cute little boy and his sister. The kid was radiant, with a beaming smile that I will never forget, at such a wonderful gift. We liked to imagine that he'll be telling the story of the sweet Australian woman who gave him a toy for years to come.

When we arrived in Siem Reap, our guide Haing (whose family lived in the town) took us out for a night on the town, Cambodian-style. We visited a kind of carnival where all the locals hang out. They had fair-style games like ring tosses, and the prizes were things like a (warm) can of beer or bottle of (imitation) coke. Jon went for a ride on the bumper cars, which did not seem to function properly. The smells of meat roasting on a stick were all around us. Haing bought us some fried frog, which he pocketed for everyone to try at the restaurant where we were having dinner.

Dinner was again delicious and unbelievably cheap. The roasted frog was ok, but a little difficult to eat. I again indulged in that wonderful coconut curry and a fruit smoothie for the extravagant cost of $10 or so. While we ate, we were treated to a performance of Apsara dancers. It was very different from any ethnic dances (like belly dance or flamenco) I had seen. The movements of their hands and feet were carefully controlled and so elegant (check out the 10 second video clip at the bottom). The costumes consisted of elaborate headdresses and beautifully decorated dresses. It was a great end to another unforgettable day in Cambodia.

SE Asia: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge

2010-01-31T02:45:00.004+01:00

New Year's Day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia had a decidedly less festive feeling than New Year's Eve. Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Pol Pot began his career as a Buddhist monk before turning to revolutionary communism. My knowledge of the Khmer Rouge was pretty limited before visiting Cambodia, but they certainly deserve a spot in the list of most evil regimes ever. Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of Cambodia's population was killed during this time, either by execution or from starvation. You can still see the effects of this today. Half of Cambodia's current population is under 18 years old.

Tuol Sleng was a high school-turned-prison that held about 17,000 men, women and children during its 4-year history. Out of that number, only 7 survived. The inmates were massacred just before the North Vietnamese (yes, that other local oppressive regime) liberated the prison in 1974. The stories were unbelievably grisly, pretty much everything you'd expect from such a place - torture, starvation, rape and worse. The cells are still standing, so you could see the tiny rooms they were forced into. They weren't allowed to talk to their neighbors or do anything without the permission of their guards. Most of their "crimes" ranged from being an intellectual or other undesirable to simply being related to one of the former. The stories were heartbreaking and displayed all around the museum. During our visit, we saw a man standing in one of the cells, speaking through a tour guide/translator. He was one of the seven survivors, and he visits the jail regularly to share his experience and make sure that what he and thousands of others suffered here is not forgotten.

After the Genocide Museum, we went to the Killing Fields. A large stupa monument to the victims was built just at the entrance in the typical ornate Khmer style. It is only when you get closer that you can see through the glass. All the human remains found on the Fields are housed within, a gruesome collection of skulls and bones. This was done in accordance with the Buddhist belief that all the body can't find peace unless all its remains are together.

Despite all the bones within the stupa, not all of the remains have yet been recovered. Walking through the peaceful meadow, our guide found a tooth in the path. There are bits of cloth strewn around everywhere and the occasional bone can be seen sticking up from the ground. There are sunken pits all around that were once filled with dead and dying bodies, even newborn babies (Pol Pot didn't want them to grow up with a sense of vengeance against his government after their parents were killed). If all this wasn't heartbreaking enough, there is the fact that most of the Khmer Rouge still have not been brought to justice. Pol Pot escaped to the jungle and lived there as a fugitive until his death in the 1990s. Many other prominent members are in the current Cambodian government, our guide told us, as he looked around to make sure there was no one to overhear him. In the last year, the UN has brought some of them to trial, but there's still a long way to go before this country can truly recover from such a horrific history.

SE Asia: New Year's in Phnom Penh

2010-01-27T07:58:00.006+01:00

Leaving behind Ho Chi Minh's hordes of mopeds, we boarded a public bus for Phnom Penh, Cambodia with the Intrepid tour. The journey takes about 7-8 hours, although the distance is only about 300 miles. The landscape became much more jungle-y as we got further away from the traffic of Ho Chi Minh. The apartment buildings changed to small houses supported by stilts, surrounded by flooded rice fields and spotted with water buffaloes. The biggest difference could be seen at the border - where apparently we were the first to use their e-visa system because no one knew what to do with them. Vietnam's border crossing building was cold and communist with no decoration. The Cambodian side featured a glittering roof with spires soaring up in the air.

I didn't really know what to expect from Cambodia, but little could have prepared me for the wonderful city of Phnom Penh. Our hotel was just around the corner from the Royal Palace and National Museum. Everywhere we looked were gorgeous Khmer-style buildings. I wonder how long it will take until this city is as clogged with tourists and foreigners as Bangkok.

Our first glimpse of the city was a quick walk outside the hotel along the river, where we walked into a Buddhist ceremony of some kind with lots of incense and singing. We got a better look around just before dinner with a group cyclo tour. The cyclos are like a cheap taxi, where they push around a seat using their bicycles. Their business has been hurt by the motorized tuk-tuk cars, so this was a way to support them and a more leisurely way to sightsee. We passed even more amazing buildings, monuments and temples. Again, I was struck by the fact that most people have never even heard of this place, and there was so much wonderful stuff to see here!

After our cyclo tour, we had a group dinner at a local NGO-sponsored restaurant. This is where we first discovered the delicious Cambodian cuisine and their special dish - fish amok. Amok is the coconut curry sauce they make with the kaffir lime leaves and other spices. Simply mouth-watering and unbelievably cheap. I think our dish cost $5 at this "expensive" foreigner restaurant. My total bill, which included the amok, half a bottle of wine and a soft drink was $13!

Since it was New Year's, we decided to eschew our usual habit of heading back to the hotel to rest up for the next day of travel. We went to the Temple downtown where there were also celebrations going on for Phnom Penh's 650th anniversary. The most famous singer in Cambodia was even there, giving a concert. After going to a bar for about 10 minutes, Jon and I and Lynda and John, an Aussie couple from our tour, decided to head to the river for some fresh air and quiet. It was hot and humid, despite the fact that it was the dead of winter. We enjoyed some nice conversation - comparing Australia and America, and Europe - and watched the firework show over the Mekong River. It certainly beat watching the ball drop on a TV screen in America.

Southeast Asia: Memories of Saigon

2010-01-23T02:53:00.013+01:00

The 5-hour flight from Seoul got us into Vietnam a bit late - almost midnight - but the warm, humid air of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) was such a wonderful contrast to the bitter cold of 5F that we left behind in Korea. In our cab ride to the hotel, it was immediately apparent that we also left behind the high-tech, first-world, super-modern Asia that was Seoul. Motorbikes were everywhere, streets were torn up from construction and even the power lines looked overburdened and sagged precariously close to the sidewalks. Our cabbie only ripped us off slightly -it was after midnight, after all - and we arrived at the Hong Vy3 hotel where the friendly staff took us to my first-ever windowless hotel room. At least the A/C was working!

We woke up super-early at seven a.m., both from the excitement of being in a new city, and the jet lag where we were 2 hours ahead of Vietnam time. Breakfast was a real treat - no kimchi! - and included lots of fresh pineapple and baguette as well as one of the most delicious yogurt drinks I've ever had, and the famous Vietnamese coffee. Yum.

Our first stop was the Jade Emperor Pagoda. Despite Jon's superior navigating ability and our fairly decent map, we managed to get lost in the heavily under-construction streets. Crossing the road was the first huge obstacle - as well as the most memorable thing about the city. If I thought the traffic was crazy in Istanbul or Moscow, they had nothing on the sea of motorbikes that rode about on these crowded streets, which by the way, didn't have any traffic signals. Trying to cross at first was a leap of faith, hoping that the sea of motos would swerve around you as you gingerly made your way to the other side. We were lucky that they did.

After a half hour of walking through the streets which smelled of fresh-fruit, incense and gasoline from the thousands of motorbikes, we finally found our Pagoda. It was smoky from incense and the humidity inside and intricately decorated. Offerings of coconut milk and fruit were on the altars in front of these grotesque demonic Buddha statues. Outside, we watched a woman pray over a cage of birds with incense sticks, until finally her friend released the birds by placing them in the hands of the praying, kneeling woman and they flew away.

Our next stop was the War Remnants Museum, formerly known by the less politically-correct title of the Museum of American War Atrocities. Lots of pictures of the people affected by Agent Orange and nasty descriptions of torture techniques. Outside were some of the cages they used for political prisoners. We tried to wash the propaganda out of our heads with a tasty lunch of banana flower shrimp salad, spiced rabbit and spring rolls before we headed for our next dose of anti-Americanism at the Re-unification Palace.

We took a tour led by Vietnamese tour guides dressed in these gorgeous silk long-sleeved, flowing shirts and pants. The decor was very kitschy, 1950s Cold War-style conference rooms and bunkers. We again heard about all the terrible things the Americans did - quite reminiscent of the Russians' diatribes against the Germans at the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg. Apart from all that, it was still an interesting place and history that I knew little about. We saw the tanks that "liberated" the palace from the South Vietnamese and escape routes used by the parties in power at the time.

Our second day here was a bit more laid back. We visited the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, which had a wide assortment of historical stuff on display. After a quick trip to the Indian mosque and some spicy Indian food for lunch, we next we headed to the Saigon River, which was much browner and dirtier than I expected. We sat and had ice cream out of a coconut while watching the river.

All in all, Saigon was incredibly interesting, if not the prettiest place I've ever been to. You can already see the signs of capitalism and growth in the area around the city center, which is already looking more like 5th Avenue and where the prices are starting to match it. They even have traffic lights.

China: The Great Wall

2009-12-27T06:26:00.007+01:00

The Great Wall of China. How can you adequately describe such a place in words? It began with feelings of great anticipation... the drive from Robin's apartment to Mutianyu, the section of the Wall we decided to visit. That was one of the first surprises, that you don't just go to "the Wall" but to a certain part of it. Badaling is the closest to Beijing but was described as such a tourist's hell that we opted to go further out for a more authentic experience.

My anticipation turned to fear when I saw that in order to "climb" the Wall, we'd have to take a chairlift to reach it. With my fear of heights, I had prepared myself for closing my eyes while in a cable car, but the chairlift was far more terrifying. Very little other than the Great Wall of China could make me get on that thing. With my eyes closed til we reached the top, Jon snapped some pictures of the trip up.

Everyone wants to climb and walk along the Wall for as long as they can. I just wanted to keep going and going, but it turns out this is easier said than done. The Wall is STEEP! When we got to the base of it, our guide informed us we could turn right or left, with the right turn being more difficult but a bit less crowded, and the left having more people but an easier climb. We opted for the left, which wasn't particularly crowded that day.

In the spirit of China's embrace of capitalism, there were old men sitting along the Wall selling everything from ice cream and drinks to little souvenirs. Jon was able to haggle for a beautifully-carved wooden egg with an friendly old man who was just great fun to talk with. He claimed to love Americans and was an expert haggler. Mostly the experience was just taking in the sheer immensity of the Wall as well as the natural beauty of the surrounding hills and mountains. We were lucky that the crowds seemed to stay away that day and were even able to have parts of the Wall to ourselves.

Although I wanted to climb forever, eventually the tiny steps that sloped deeply along the Wall began to make me dizzy. So I stopped where I was and sat down with Robin, gazing at the mountains and people-watching, as Jon continued on, happy as a clam, to explore more. It was one of those rare and treasured travel experiences where the site that you were so anticipating seeing, for such a long time, manages to be even better than you could have imagined it.

We left the Wall, had a nice lunch and then headed to the Ming Tombs. With such an evocative name, we expected a bit more than the spartan underground chambers with very little to actually see among the ridiculous hordes of tourists. But after the incredible Great Wall experience, it didn't really matter all that much to us.

China: The Summer Palace and Hot Pot

2009-12-27T05:14:00.014+01:00

Well, since we are leaving on our second big vacation tomorrow, this seems like the perfect time to finish my China blog ;-)

This was quite a long trip for us. We took the metro from Robin's apartment to the end of the line, then had to catch a cab from there. I can only imagine what a schlep it must have been in the time of the emperor. But it was worth the trip. The Summer Palace grounds were a peaceful escape from the crazy urban life of central Beijing - except for the omnipresent policemen who I feared would ask us for the foreigner registration we didn't have every time we walked by.

We enjoyed a nice picnic by the lake of our 7-11 take out noodles and watched a colony of ants attempt to bring our fallen peanut bits back to their home. So wonderfully peaceful!

Unfortunately, we didn't plan this trip too well. We decided to walk from the entrance to the palace proper, and once again were reminded of the sheer size of the place. Everything is really bigger in China. So while we enjoyed a lazy stroll through the grounds, our poor feet were pretty tired by the time we reached the other side.

And to make matters worse, it was close to 4:00, which is when the last of the dragon boats ran to take us back to the entrance, AND the sky had just turned the ugly, dark grey that precedes a big rainstorm. So we missed the opportunity to explore the huge palace complex, but did enjoy our leisurely walk and the pleasant dragon boat ride back to the entrance. We took a cab back to the metro and paid twice as much as the earlier ride due to what must have been a "rain tax" and went back to Robin's.

Our dinner plans tonight were for Mongolian hot pot. It might not sound too tempting to boil your own food in the soupy, muggy air of Beijing, but this was one of the most enjoyable meals we had here. First, we chose the broth for our pot, then got a selection of different kinds of raw meat - ostrich, lamb, beef and crab, then went to make our own little dips at the counter. We used our chopsticks to drop the strips of meat into the boiling water. It was a delicious meal and one of those experiences you could never have in the USA.

China: Temple Hopping

2009-09-30T12:51:00.007+02:00

After such a long day at the Temple of Heaven, we decided that Day 5 of our China trip would be an easy day. There were two temples just across the street from each other, a Confucian temple and a Tibetan Buddhist one. With thoughts of Seoul's Jongyesa Temple in our minds (a small but gorgeous little Buddhist temple smack in the middle of the city), we set off on the metro.

Luckily we were on the mend because it was still oppressively humid outside. The air looked and felt like pea soup. As we made our way through the entrance of Yonghe Gong Lama Temple, we remembered once again that we were in China, where everything is bigger. The little temple that we were expecting to visit in 15 minutes was an enormous palatial complex where we could easily spend three hours.

The architecture was so vibrant and colorful that exploring it was so much fun, even in the steamy weather. There were a few air-conditioned rooms that provided some relief, only to have the outdoors feel five times worse than it did before. We walked through scores of rooms with many different depictions and representations of Buddha and some weird freaky and grotesque gods. It was so much fun, and a welcome change from the European cathedrals, which had all started to blend into one. And just like the Forbidden Palace, each room grew more impressive and ornate as we got deeper into the temple.

Finally, we could go no further and got ready to enter the last building. Its roof was much higher than the others, and we were soon to see why. As we stepped inside, we were at first confused by what appeared to be only a large foot, only to have our jaws drop as we got closer. A 60-meter statue of Buddha stood before us, carved out of a single piece of sandalwood. It was simply awe-inspiring. When traveling, you always have to put up with so many inconveniences, large and small, from poisonous hot dogs to the Kafkaesque threat of government quarantine. One look at this stunning statue was all I needed to remind myself why I do. If it weren't for the terrible heat, I could easily have spent the afternoon gazing at the Buddha. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, and even though I saw others doing it, I wanted to respect the sanctity of the temple and restrained myself. The image will be burned in my mind forever, but that didn't stop me from googling it and posting it here for others to see.

The Confucian Temple was also great fun and very interesting. It was the first place we had visited that wasn't completely mobbed with tourists. After another hour or so of looking around and exploring the picturesque grounds, our short stint had extended into a 5-hour trip. It was time to head back and rest up for another long day of sightseeing in China.

Here's some other fun pictures from the temples

China: The Temple of Heaven

2009-09-24T13:40:00.007+02:00

These blogs about my summer vacations always take longer than I expect to write. So here is Part Two of ??? of our China Adventure.

After the first couple days of hot-dog-induced stomach ailments, we were finally able to stagger out of Robin's apartment again. It was hotter than hell with 800% humidity but we managed to make our way to the Temple of Heaven. As we exited the subway, we naturally chose the wrong way and ended up looping around the giant wall that surrounds the complex (the Chinese are quite fond of walls as it would appear). So we didn't get the greatest vantage point for our first view of the temple's backside but it was still simply beautiful.

As we made our way to the front side of the temple, it became even more stunning. The brightly colored facades and intricate decorations, all adorned with the dragon and phoenix motif were surrounded by a marble white gate. The biggest disappointment was that we weren't allowed inside!

You could only walk along the perimeter of the actual temple and peek inside an even more brilliantly colored and lavishly decorated interior. It was jaw-droppingly ornate. I had to fight the urge to jump inside to gaze at the ceiling (one of my favorite sightseeing activities as the art history nerd I am), but I think they can execute you for that in this country so I remained safely outside. And soon a mob of tourists descended on us, so it was time to make an escape anyways.

There were other things to check out besides the Temple of Heaven, but as we were just recently recovered from food poisoning - plus the unbearable humidity and smog - we made a quick pass through the rest. The line for the whispering gallery was simply ridiculous so we skipped it. There's just so much tourist shoving you can put up with in a day, so we had a "quick" outing of just 5-6 hours before heading back to the air-conditioned comfort of Robin's apartment.

Trazzler Trips

2009-08-20T10:21:00.000+02:00

Some links to the 20 mini-articles I did on Trazzler a while back. Too busy to post them before. :-)

Answering the Muezzin's Call in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Buying Fish Sandwiches Along the Ferry Docks in Istanbul, Turkey

Catching a First Glimpse of Red Square in Moscow, Russia

Celebrating Buddha's Birthday in Seoul, South Korea

Climbing Rocks and Water Tubing in Saklikent Gorge, Turkey

Delighting in Picturesque Charm in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Eating Beyti Kebab Alongside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey

Exploring the Real-Life Mines of Moria in Wieliczka, Poland

Finding Religion(s) in One of Europe's Crossroads in Mostar, Bosnia

Following the Semana Santa Worshippers in Granada, Spain

Haggling in the Bazaars of the Old Medina in Tangiers, Morocco

Haunting the Ghost Village of Kayaköy in Turkey

Listening to Duet Calls to Prayer in Istanbul, Turkey

Reliving a Sad History in Sarajevo's Sniper Alley, Bosnia

Riding the Ferry from Kadıköy to Eminönü in Istanbul, Turkey

Sampling the Local Flavor at the Fruit Market in Split, Croatia

Stopping to Smell the Flowers in Córdoba, Spain

Taking a Twilight Stroll Over Charles Bridge in Prague

Watching Folk Dancers at the Buddhist Street Fair in Seoul, Korea

Watching the Sun Rise Over the Euphrates River in Mt Nemrut, Turkey

China: What a wonderful, terrible place!

2009-08-15T10:02:00.006+02:00

Every time I go to the airport, I get that familiar sense of nausea. It is a purely Kafkaesque experience. So many things can go wrong, but you can never quite pinpoint what it could be. Your backpack can be 1 pound overweight and you're forced to check it (This happened to me in Budapest when the woman decided to weigh my hand luggage!). You can arrive to find out that your flight that was canceled, then rescheduled, was indeed canceled. (Damn you Iberia and Barajas airport!) Or your flight can be delayed indefinitely, and you never find out that it was canceled except by word of mouth from the other passengers. (I'm looking at you Olympic Airways. First and last trip to Athens.)

But nothing could compare to the fear I felt before boarding the plane from Seoul to Beijing. We queued up in order to start boarding the flight, and a man with a thermometer gun stood ready. He scanned each of us with a quick shot to the head (via laser) to see if anyone had a temperature. When I heard mine beep, I felt an icy hand grip my stomach, but all seemed ok since I was allowed to get on board.

All these security measures have been put in place to safeguard China from the swine flu, H1N1 virus. One the plane we were treated to a ridiculously, almost propaganda-like video about it. Check it out here (youtube, is there anything you don't have??)

We filled out quarantine forms stating that we didn't have nausea, fever or cold-like symptoms (even though I was feeling many of those just from nerves.) The scariest and again, most Kafkaesque aspect to it was that you could be thrown in quarantine simply for sitting NEXT to a person who maybe, possibly could have a fever that may or may not be swine flu. Once we finally arrived, my stomach in knots, we passed through the enormous thermal scanners. And since we didn't feel any hands on our shoulders, we figured we were finally safe. To make matters even better, we saw Robin waiting for us with a cute sign that said "Lady Christina and Sir Jon."

Our second day was a bit better with a trip to the Forbidden City and Tian'amen Square. First stop was the Square where we had to put our bags through X-ray scanners in the underground tunnel before reaching the surface. Then, as you walk up and out of the underground, there it is. That famous red gate with the enormous portrait of Chairman Mao. And then it finally hits you: I AM IN FREAKIN' CHINA!!!

That is a touched-up photo that shows what it SHOULD look like. Here is the actual picture that includes that infamous Beijing smog.

Tian'amen Square is massive. It's the largest public square in the world, reportedly holding up to a million people. While it wasn't quite at capacity that day, it was still pretty damn crowded. It's very hard to capture the enormity of a place like that in pictures, so I did my best with a 360 degree pan on my camera.

Finally, we made our way back underground to the other side of the street where the Forbidden City awaited us. Fought our way is a more apt term, actually. It was a Sunday and absolutely mobbed with people.

I was initially disappointed to see that the famous gate, after Mao's was under construction.

However, I wasn't then aware of just how immensely huge this palace complex was. It actually didn't matter at all that this gate was covered in scaffolding because there were at least eight more that we passed through afterwards, each one growing bigger and more elaborate than the next. It reminded me of a Russian matryoshka doll, except in reverse. (You can see all the pictures on my facebook page here. Blogger is giving me problems with uploading the rest of the images now!)

We again fought our way through the crowds for an elusive glimpse of the throne rooms. You weren't allowed inside, but could only peek through open windows and doors. Unfortunately around this time, Jon and I started to feel a bit ill. After all, it's not a vacation for us until we get some kind of food poisoning. We believe the culprit this time was a bad hot dog from a vendor out in the front courtyard. So we limped back to the subway and Robin's apartment. The next day was spent inside Robin's trying to recover from our sickness and hoping no one called the quarantine police on us, for exhibiting symptoms of swine flu. After a full day's rest, we were ready for our next excursion: The Temple of Heaven!

(New blog to follow soon!)

Initial Thoughts on Korea

2009-05-06T02:44:00.001+02:00

Food

It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Suwon-city and we are still in the transitioning phase. If we didn’t have to eat, it would be a mostly pleasurable experience. And it’s not even the Korean cuisine that’s the problem – I’ve had several tasty dishes that I could almost identify – but rather our lack of vocabulary to order successfully in a restaurant without a picture menu. Our main dietary staples come from the small bakery across the street where we can point and see a clear price. There’s the hot dog in a sweet roll that’s become a once-or-twice-a-weeker. Then there’s the pizza with pickles embedded in the crust that was less of a keeper. There seems to be a strange desire to add pickles to the most un-pickle-friendly food imaginable.

Luckily, the school serves a free lunch which means I get some authentic non-hot dog Korean food. (Although we did have a Korean corn dog at lunch the other day. My Korean co-workers offered me the last of it, probably figuring the American would appreciate the hot dog more than them.) Many times, the food is so hot that my lips are burning by the end of the meal. Almost every day we have kimchi, that fermented cabbage with hot pepper dish that is absolutely ubiquitous here. And I actually kind of like it, but my poor lips suffer after the fact. The principal watches me as I eat some days and chides me teasingly (at least I hope teasingly) for not finishing the last two kernels of my bap (that is, rice. Just showing off one of the four Korean words I know).

The Kids

I was mostly worried about making the jump from teaching small classes of upper intermediate engineers and managers in the business world to large groups of young kids in a public school with the absolute lowest level of English. But so far, it’s been quite fun. We sing and play games – which I often did with my adult classes anyways. Some of the kids are whip-smart and so eager to learn. Others are a bit cloddish. It’s finding the balance between the curious ones and the not-so-curious in a class of 25-30 students that’s the hardest. I’d love to just cherry-pick the good ones and have one class with them. They could learn so much so quickly and be on their way to fluency by the time they’re teenagers.

When I first got here, I felt a bit like Jesus. Some students just stared at me, like they’d never seen anything like me before. Some of them touched the hair on my arm and said “whoa!” (Apparently, Asian women have completely bald arms.) Some have crowded around me at my desk, said “Hello! How are you?” and then just stare, seemingly having exhausted their English vocabulary. They ask me to speak Korean, which I still know so little of, then say “Very good!” or shriek with laughter as I spit out an “Anyeong haseyo.” Several classes have asked me to “Sign! Sign!” their English books with my autograph. Surreal.

Some are already my favorites. One little girl, Song-ee comes to me after class and tries to teach me Korean. We point at things and I say the word in English, she repeats it and she tells me the Korean word which I can never remember. She brought her little group of friends, Jungye-on, Aram and Candy-Boy (that’s what he says his name is!) too and now they clean my room every afternoon and put on little puppet shows in the mini-theater in my class. They’re downright adoptable.

The School

From what I’ve heard from my co-teachers and other native English teachers from other schools, I hit the jackpot at Go-Hyun Elementary. The classes are beautiful, and the school even won an award for being so. My own classroom is palatial. There’s ten round little desks, a white board that slides to reveal an enormous wide-screen TV, which is hooked into my computer. All of our lessons are multi-media with a CD-Rom and a magic pen that acts like a mouse on the TV. Instead of running to my computer to click “next,” I use the magic pen on the huge TV and it does it for me. I don’t know how, so magic is my best guess.

My room has so many fun materials for the kids. There’s the little puppet theater mentioned above. In the back of the room, it’s partitioned into another two small rooms, a “department store” and a “restaurant.” The restaurant has a small table, chairs, a menu and even a display case of plastic food. The store has a cash register and lots of stuff to buy – hot chocolate, plastic fruits, Campbell’s Soup cans, candy, umbrellas, and the works. There’s a bookcase filled with fun children’s books, including all seven Harry Potters in the original English. (Score! Now I can re-read them all!) I would go crazy as a kid in a class like that.

Well, I meant this to be a short article about my first impressions, but there’s been a lot to write about. More to come soon…

Dublin, Ireland

2008-12-30T05:05:00.000+01:00

Coming soon...

Cesky Krumlov

2008-11-03T16:43:00.010+01:00

It is rare to visit a place that exceeds the high expectations surrounding it, but Cesky Krumlov managed to do just that. At a time when I’d grown tired of quaint Central European towns with their winding rivers and highly-perched castles, Cesky Krumlov was a breath of fresh air, even in spite of its river, castle and general quaintness. The simple, natural beauty of this region – the gold-tinted foliage, rolling hills and the untouched, frozen-in-time buildings – are made to be printed on a postcard.

The castle was the biggest surprise. Unlike its more staid and stately cousins in Karlstein and Konopiste, the wild colors of Krumlov Castle give it a real uniqueness.

Our hostel also added to the captivating coziness of the town. With the barely-above-freezing temperatures and a nasty bone-chilling rain outside, our comfy spot at the Dilettante’s Hangout couldn’t have been more welcoming. We were treated to a warm, roaring fire not only in the “lobby” of this house-cum-hotel, but also our own personal fireplace in our private room, the Buddha Suite.

The second day was kinder to us. Apart from some threatening clouds, we had glimpses of sun and even a little warmth. We visited the sister museums – of Torture, then of Wax – for a fun change of pace. The Torture Museum was legitimately creepy and was even housed in what could have been an old dungeon (or a wine cellar.) The lighting was dark and some really macabre displays and photos were showcased. Added to the atmospheric music and occasional shrieks of a special effects CD, it was great spooky fun. The Wax Museum had its share of spookiness too, mostly from the “Woman in White” display. The woman figure disappears mysteriously and is replaced by a white owl over and over on a loop. It was all tricks of the light for sure, but nevertheless impressive. The other figures on display were, for the most part, less scary and ranged from 18th century royalty to modern-day personages like Vaclav Havel and Bill Clinton.

We spent the rest of our time exploring the castle grounds (it was too cost-prohibitive to visit the interior) and taking in some of the beautiful scenery. There was a bear moat that people were crowding around, eager for a look at the two bears that live there.

The tower was open so we shelled out a few crowns to climb to the top and were treated to some gorgeous views, at least once the annoying tour guide and his 35 tourists moved out of the way of the one and only door to the top.

By the time we had to catch our bus, the bad weather was returning as we were on our way back to gloomy Prague.

Balkans Tour - Split

2008-10-28T20:45:00.014+01:00

After our melancholic trip through

Bosnia

, with its war scars visible for all to see, it was nice to return to sun-drenched, beach-filled

Croatia

, which has shrugged off any remaining signs of the Balkan conflict.

Split was wonderfully warm at 9pm as our bus pulled in to the lovely harbor-side station. We were again accosted by little old ladies offering us rooms, but pushed them aside as we sweated through the twisty streets in search of our final hostel. When we found it, we were greeted by a super-enthusiastic host who had more energy than anyone should on such a balmy, humid night. Our room thankfully had A/C but instead of a wall unit, there were these giant tubes that had to stick out of the open windows. Miraculously, it still managed to cool down the place.

We got up, picked up some breakfast at the local fruit market and headed to the center. The highlight here was the Diocletian Palace. It is a huge structure that has somehow grown to be a part of the city itself as hotels and shops are housed in its old marble-white buildings that glitter in the sunshine.

We visited its labyrinthine-like basement

and (attempted) to climb to the top of its bell tower.

Jon made it to the top and took some lovely photos. My acrophobia kicked in as I saw its wiry, open staircase

and I decided to admire the half-way-up view instead.

The rest of the city is also quite lovely. There were beautiful flower gardens

and interesting museums with old statues. One of them cost an extra 10kn to see, only you could catch a glimpse of it from the regularly-priced museum so it was a bit of a rip-off. The statue was found by a tourist – or a fisherman – or a tourist who was fishing (?) – completely by accident. Now it’s the star feature of the museum.

We spent our last day as typical Czech tourists vacationing in Croatia – at the beach, soaking up as much sun as possible before returning to a grey, gloomy and much colder Prague. It was a perfect end to a relaxing and intriguing vacation.

Balkans Tour - Sarajevo: Part Two

2008-10-28T11:51:00.005+01:00

Sarajevo’s sad history didn’t begin with the Balkan conflict of the early 90s. Much of the city has some sorrowful connection to the past. Our first sightseeing stop after our arrival was the Latin (or Spanish) Bridge, the site of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and the camel’s-back-breaking-straw of the First World War. A museum now memorializes the spot with personal effects of the Archduke and his wife Sophie – also a victim of the shooting – and their assassin, the Serbian Gavrilo Princip as well as a reenactment video of the event.

Sarajevo was lucky to survive the Second World War without significant damage or fighting in its environs. The exception of course was its Jewish population which was persecuted, sent off to camps and killed. In a touching (and rare) sign of inter-religious cooperation, a sacred and valuable Jewish relic (a Torah that is one of only three ancient copies in the world) was moved to a mosque for safekeeping during this tumultuous time. It is now housed behind walls of glass in the National Museum.

While much of Sarajevo is still recovering from a decade of war, much of the city shows signs of rejuvenation. The Turkish quarter, Baščaršija was shelled during the siege but there were few scars to be seen in this wonderfully bustling section of the city.

It is filled with kebaberies and shops selling souvenirs and leather goods, beautiful mosques and elegant minarets, some of which use actual muezzins. We were lucky enough to see one real-life, human muezzin give the call the prayer without aid of a loudspeaker from one of the mosque’s minarets.

Tourists were not as plentiful as they were in the beach-filled Croatia but a few could be spotted here and there, including a terrible American singer/guitarist. He seemed to follow us wherever we were in the city to “entertain” us and anyone in listening range with his off-key warbling and forgotten notes and lyrics of popular American soft rock songs.

One of his favorite haunts was near one of the churches. In the park just in front, there were old Bosnian men playing chess with giant pieces that would never last a day in the US before being stolen. It was hard to tell if these were retirees or maybe unemployed upper-middle-aged men who had no other way to spend their days. But they did seem to be enjoying themselves (the players and the bystanders who would shout occasional advice at them). While melancholic, some signs of hope and happier times have returned to this intriguing Bosnian capital city.

Wieliczka Salt Mines, Poland

2008-10-18T12:47:00.005+02:00

I am posting my travelogues a bit out of order. I haven't quite finished my Balkans one, but then never got around to posting my Poland trip either. So here is my blog on the Wieliczka Salt Mines, just outside of Krakow. We were there earlier this year for the May holiday.

Krakow is a picturesque little town, reminiscent of other eastern European cities such as Prague and Ljubljana. Wieliczka and its world-famous, UNESCO-acknowledged Salt Mines. with its obligatory castle, cathedral(s) and pronunciation-defying street names. There’s the winding river, narrow cobblestone streets and the smell of kielbasa in the air. However, there is one unique attraction that you’d be hard-pressed to find in any of these other cities. Journey just about ten kilometers outside the city and you’ll come to the city of Wieliczka.

And Wieliczka certainly realizes its uniqueness. The admission price was shockingly high – we paid 100 zloty for round-trip transportation and a guided tour (required) inside. Our tour guide had a wonderfully stereotypical Slavic accent. He sounded a bit like Dracula, and his accent echoed and boomed atmospherically in the dark mines. He led us down a seemingly endless staircase that plummeted down for about 150 meters. Thankfully, the staircase is one-way and an elevator will return us to the surface!

Wieliczka had been a functioning mine for 900 years but stopped production in 2007. Many of the “exhibits” (i.e., dummy dioramas for the most part) in this place are a testament to the hardships endured by the mine’s employees. It was interesting but also frustrating considering the $50 we had paid for entrance. We were hoping for something a bit more than a glorified model of mine work. Luckily we were soon treated to some of the spectacular salt sculptures –

a ring bearer

and what could have been an ode to the seven dwarves, a scene of little gnomes working the mines. All that was missing was the tune to “Hi-Ho” playing in the background. My picture came out quite dark so here is a better one I stole from Wikipedia.

Finally, we arrived at the crown jewel of this historical site, and indeed, the reason for its UNESCO certification (and also to charge an additional 10 zloty for the right to take pictures) – the salt chapel.

This chapel is extraordinary for many reasons: its unusual underground location and the sheer size and beauty of its sculptures and bas reliefs. However, the most astounding thing is that this artistic marvel was carved by simple, ordinary miners. It is truly magnificent. Even the exquisite chandeliers

are made from salt. The other sculptures are all of a religious nature, of course.

The Last Supper,

the holy family in Bethlehem

and a life-size sculpture of one of Poland’s greatest hero, Pope John Paul II,

are all represented. While the chapel is definitely the highlight of the tour, there were more pleasant surprises to follow.

There were pools of water that were reminiscent of Tolkien and the Mines of Moria

and dizzying staircases that seemed suspended in the air.

There was the sad story of Austrian tourists who drowned in a boat ride that used to be offered in the lower depths of the mines. Their bodies were never recovered, and the boat rides have never resumed.

The elevator ride back to the surface was also quite unforgettable. We waited in line since the capacity is only about ten people and it takes a full 30 seconds to get back to the top. It was like an amusement park ride where you were never quite sure of making it out alive.

All in all, the Mines were a memorable, fascinating and sometimes eerie tourist attraction. It also remains the highest-priced attraction I have ever visited, surpassing even the ridiculously expensive (but equally remarkable) Tower of London’s 15£ admission. Was it worth it? Until I find some other site comparable to the impressiveness and uniqueness, I have no regrets – apart from the emptiness of my wallet.

Balkans Tour - Sarajevo: The War Years

2008-09-17T23:09:00.000+02:00

The ride from Mostar to Sarajevo was simply breathtaking. I had never expected Bosnia to be so beautiful. There were dramatic mountains and cliffs on both sides of the narrow road we travelled, and we followed to my favorite green river for a good part of the journey.

So when we actually arrived in Sarajevo, it was a bit underwhelming. Of course, this was through the outskirts of a poor and recently war-ravaged city, it was an unfair judgment. Sarajevo is attempting to reinvent itself as a thriving, cosmopolitan city but the scars of war are still literally visible. One of the most startling is the Sarajevo Rose. These are the impressions left behind of mortar explosions that resulted in someone's death. (This picture was taken from Wikipedia).

There are also visible "pockmarks" on many of the buildings, some more heavily than others. For example, the Holiday Inn in Sniper Alley was shelled quite extensively.

There's also some formerly glorious buildings, like the Town Hall/Library. It was once a gorgeous, Moorish-looking landmark but was bombed during the war. Apparently, there were papers blowing around everywhere afterward, remnants of the once-impressive library it contained. Now it is sadly boarded up and in disrepair, along with many other buildings.

Although it's not our usual practice, Jon and I decided to take a local tour. We asked about seeing the difficult-to-reach Tunnel Museum at the travel agency next to our hostel and booked the one about 20th Century Wars. It (supposedly) included a visit to the Tunnel Museum and some other information about the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, which we remembered very little about. When our guide came to meet us however, he told us that it wasn't possible to do the War tour and the Tunnel Museum because of the amount of waiting time at the tunnel, so we had to choose only one. So we decided on the 20th century tour.

Our guide was very insightful, if not entirely impartial. He referred to Bosnia as the "Palestine of Europe," a place where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in harmony until the Serbian aggressors came, hell-bent on annihilating them. (His description of the Serbs made me think of Lord of the Rings' orcs who had no other mission but to destroy the world of men.) He took us to Sniper Alley, showed us the (in)famous Holiday Inn that was home to the likes of Christianne Amanpour during the early 90s,

and the apartments on the other side of Sniper Alley, from where the snipers holed up and launched their shell attacks. (Visible just beyond the facade of the National Museum)

It was extremely interesting, if unbelievably depressing to listen to his stories. He talked about ordinary people, not military men, fighting for their survival. (Young civilian men battling to save the existence of their city again evoked images of Tolkien and the Battle of Helm's Deep.) He said that while some stayed to fight, many fled and that to him, it was one of the worst forms of cowardice. He sees many young men now in the city who are healthy with no signs of war injuries and wonders about where they were during the war and why they didn't stay to defend their home. For us in the western world, the Balkan conflict has ended. We have moved on to wars in different parts of the world, and have mostly forgotten about the siege of Sarajevo.

While the city assuredly shows signs of recovery, our guide warned us that it was a very fragile peace. "Another war could happen in 48 hours," he told us, the Serbian border was moving ever closer to Sarajevo and he pointed out mountains in the distance that were actually Serbian territory. Serbia has always believed Bosnia to be part of it, not unlike the Russians with Georgia. He was angry and upset at the ineffectual EU and how they have delayed talks with Bosnia and done nothing to preserve the peace. Bosnia currently has three presidents - a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb who serve rotating terms to maintain the balance of power. While he believes none of this was effective, he did actually praise the United States for their role in the war. The United States was the closest thing Bosnia had to a friend, he remarked especially when the US bombed targets in Serbia. It took me aback for a moment, because no one has had any kind words for the US foreign policy in quite a few years, particularly when it involves the bombing of another nation.

We ended this tour at a scenic but melancholic view of the city. The beauty of the natural surroundings contrasted with the ruined buildings and an disproportionate amount of graveyards for a city of only 300,000 (11,000 of whom were killed during the war). While the remnants of the siege are unavoidable, there's a lot more to this fascinating and poignant city, which I'll write more about in my next blog.

Balkans Tour - Mostar

2008-09-15T23:07:00.000+02:00

It was a relief to leave the tourist hordes of the Croatian coast behind for the somewhat sleepier town of Mostar in Bosnia. Our lovely Croatian host family sent us off with a wonderful breakfast ("You cannot go hungry!" she said). Full and loaded up with burek for the three hour trip, we were ready to go. The bus ride was hellishly warm, the a/c never did much more than "leak air," as Jon put it. I was never so happy for a bus stop as I was here. We paid a ridiculous amount of money for cold water and were ecstatic for any air we could get. The worst part was we were driving by the sea for most of the trip, tantalized by the thought of a cold swim and fresh sea breeze.

When we thankfully drove into Mostar, the first thing we noticed was the war damage. There were scores of signs reading "Dangerous ruin: Do not enter!"

There were other reminders of the destruction of the 1990s. At one graveyard, virtually every year of death was between 1992 and 1996. It was heartbreakingly sad to see the pictures on the stones of men in their 20s and 30s who had died before their time.

We were unexpectedly met at the bus station by a guide from our hostel. We stayed right in the center between the bus station and Old Town, so it was a perfect location. The only downside was the shared bathroom which was outside of the building. But for $15/each a night, we couldn't complain too much!

I was immediately struck by the Turkishness of the town. The little bazaars and multitude of mosques that lined the narrow, cobblestone streets were simply lovely. It felt both exotic and familiar to hear the call to prayer again after so long.

We immediately set out to view the famous bridge for which the town is named. It is a very elegant arched bridge (and wonderful to see that it wasn't completely mobbed with people a la Charles Bridge in Prague.) I was also taken aback by the beautiful green hue of the river. I felt like I'd been transported to some fairy tale kingdom. Unfortunately the color doesn't come across as strongly in the photos.

The next day we hit the Turkish tourist sites, two historical Ottoman houses. The first was a tour-on-request with a rather reluctant guide. But we had the place to ourselves and a very intimate viewing. The second was the more touristed Turkish house where we got sandwiched between a large group of Russians, Germans and finally Italians. But the view was lovely. We tried to escape the group tours and went back to the bridge.

The bridge is known for its divers. I had seen this on a Travel Channel program and was hoping we'd get the opportunity to see one in action. The next morning we again went to the bridge for a last glimpse when we saw a guy in a speedo standing on the railing. Excited, we made our way closer to the bridge. We stood around for 15 minutes or so but the guy just kept pacing back and forth. Finally a woman (his PR agent perhaps) said that we had to pay in order to see him jump. We were tight on cash since we needed to buy lunch before hopping the bus to Sarajevo. Surprisingly no one else was coughing up the cash either so finally we left, disappointed that we had apparently missed our chance to see the Mostar bridge divers. As we headed back to the hostel, we glanced back one last time to look at the bridge. Our timing was perfect. Just as we turned, we saw the reluctant diver take the plunge and jump off the bridge. It was a perfect way to leave this memorable and picturesque town. I didn't manage to get a shot of our diver but here's the postcard that shows another one.

Balkans Tour - Dubrovnik

2008-09-11T23:06:00.000+02:00

Our flight was from Prague to Split, then the next morning we hopped a bus to Dubrovnik. Since our outgoing flight was also from Split, we figured we'd spend our time there at the end. After some initial bad luck (at the airport there were 1000 people waiting to pass thru passport control and only 2 people on duty, then Jon's ATM card got eaten, our hostel host texted us to tell us to take a cab to his place since he couldn't wait to pick us up any longer, the cabbies pretended they didn't know where the hostel was, the hostel was a bit meh but was to be expected since it was only $22/night, we almost got kicked off of the local bus heading to the center since one of our tickets didn't validate, then there was no time or place to find coffee). And all that happened from 9pm the night before til our bus at 11:30am.

The bus at least offered some relaxation from the dramas of the previous 12 hours. It was a spectacular ride along the Adriatic coast although it was difficult to stay awake for some of it due to my lack of coffee. It was about 220 km (140 miles) and we expected it to take about 4 hours because their roads aren't very good. Unfortunately for us, we hadn't factored in the extra bus stops (which could be anywhere at any time along the "highway" we travelled on), and also the fact that we somehow crossed the border three times despite the fact we were going from Croatia to Croatia. There was a small part of Bosnia that we had to pass through, yet we still got checked more than what it should add up to.

When we finally arrived in Dubrovnik, there was a horde of little old women outside our bus, ready to offer us a place to stay. We had pre-booked a guesthouse already, so we followed the host's directions to a bus stop where his wife waited for us with her baby daughter. The host family was wonderful to us throughout our stay. They gave us ice cream when we arrived, wine at night, other assorted treats during the day and were always super helpful with directions, even offering to walk us to the places we were trying to find. If anyone is planning a trip to Dubrovnik, I highly recommend them! (Family Glavinic guesthouse)

The highlight of Dubrovnik, apart from the charming Old Town and gorgeous rocky beaches is undoubtedly the city walls. They charge you 50HRK to walk around them (about $10) but you do get lots of wall for your money. It took us about two hours to make the loop around the 2km length. Apart from the unbelievably pretty views of the Adriatic

and the red roofs (all of which are new. They had to be replaced after the Balkan wars since Dubrovnik was one of the most heavily bombed sites. There's virtually no reminders of that now, except for a map that shows where the city was hit),

,

the most interesting part was to see how integrated the houses are with the wall. As we made the trek around, we were literally in people's "backyards." You could see laundry drying

and people cooking inside their houses. As the city booms with tourism, so too do these citizens lose their privacy. Although they can probably make a killing renting it out to foreigners on holiday.

The Old Town is simply charming with its marble-esque streets and impossibly narrow alleys.

There's the Rector's Palace,

the D'Onofrio fountain, a godsend of cold, clean water on the 90 degree days

and assorted churches
,

fortresses

and harbors.

After a day at the beach (which was hidden among a labyrinth of twisty streets), we were ready to move on to our next destination, the UNESCO site of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Culture without the Shock

2008-07-16T23:05:00.000+02:00

As I approach the sixth month of living in Prague, the inevitable souring of my opinion towards the city is beginning. In Spain, it happened not too long after moving to Madrid, where 90 minute commutes and buses that came whenever they felt like it, left a bitter taste in my mouth. In Turkey, while it did have some minor annoyances like 6 day work weeks and large crowds with no sense of personal space, I didn’t really experience that end of the honeymoon feeling. Probably the imam bayildi and iskender kebab and our lovely neighborhood of Kadikoy managed to keep me in a good mood.

There isn’t really one thing I can point to in Prague that drives me nuts or frustrates me. Rather, it is the lack of any of these things that has been getting under my skin. The fact that, on a weekend, we can walk through the centre of the city and hear nothing but loud obnoxious English speakers makes me feel like I could be anywhere in America. We shop at an overpriced supermarket rather than buying fresh produce from a little fruit stand down the street. The weather is worse than what I am used to in Connecticut, where at least it is warm in the summer. Sunny days with temperatures in the 80s are peppered in between long periods of rain where the cold and wet gets into your bones.

There is a lot to do and see in Prague, but somehow it doesn’t seem that way. While in Istanbul we could spend a day doing “nothing” but taking a stroll along the Bosporus and watch the cargo ships and ferries floating by, with the occasional dolphin sighting – both bustling and peaceful at the same time. A few weekends back, we took a walk by the Vltava River, which has a stunning view of the castle, but yet lacks the same dynamism that I felt in Istanbul. Maybe it isn’t fair to compare Prague, which has a rich history of its own, with the ancient Istanbul. But as far as culture, there seems to be very little that sets Prague apart. Spain had its siestas and tapas. Turkey had a multitude of the strange and exotic – mosques and the call of the muezzin, labyrinthine bazaars and the smell of oriental spices in the air. Even Germany, where I just visited a few weeks ago, seemed to be bubbling with culture as we smelled the beer, wurst and mustard in the streets. In fact, really good and plentiful street food is sorely lacking here in Prague and maybe that is one of the things I use to gauge a foreign culture.

I will probably be lamenting about how I miss Prague next year, particularly if we wind up in the Land of Culture Shock aka Japan. But at the moment, I feel like I am living in an American colony in Eastern Europe, just with more consonants (e.g., ice cream is zmrzlina) and prettier buildings.

The grass is greener, the sky is bluer

2008-04-22T23:03:00.000+02:00

I arrived in Prague just over two months ago with dreams of Gothic cathedrals and beautiful gardens with a dash of the mysterious and macabre, and the hope of writing dozens of blogs about all the cool places we visit. And while the city itself is gorgeous, boasting so many different and unique kinds of architecture on even the most mundane buildings, I can’t say that I’ve yet experienced that same jaw-dropping sense of awe or did-I-really-just-see-that-ness of Istanbul.

Is it that Prague is inherently less interesting than Istanbul, or just a case of the grass is always greener syndrome? I think, in this case, it’s not the grass that is greener but the sky that is bluer or the sun is… shinier. We are currently in our second solid week of grey dreariness with only occasional glimpses of the sun. And while I was expecting the cold, which hasn’t taken its leave despite the supposed advent of spring, it is the gloominess that has been most affecting.

Prague seems to thrive on darkness. Never is the city so impressive than at night. The castle is lit up and you can almost feel Dracula beckoning to you from it. It is simply stunning and at its most impressive in the twilight. And while the mysteriousness and shadows are fabulous for enjoying the night, the lack of sunlight during the day has the opposite effect. We visited the lovely park of Vysehrad with a cool neo-Gothic cathedral and some gorgeous shots of the Vltava and the Castle. However, the day was overcast, windy and just a bit cold. That was fine for our stroll through a graveyard there but made what would have been a fabulous day with the sun, just a kinda nice, kinda meh excursion.

Sure, Istanbul wasn’t all good. We worked more than we wanted, and it always seemed to rain on our single day off. But the time we snuck in during our gaps in classes, like going to the Gulhane Tea Gardens to watch the ships on the Bosphorus while soaking up the sun, or watching a sunset over Sultanahmet, is the most memorable. Maybe I have spent too much time in Mediterranean countries with their 300 days of sunshine to make such a drastic move to the 3-days-of-sunshine Central Europe.

And while the absence of the sun is difficult, so are the similarities to life in the United States. I have yet to experience the slightest bit of culture shock here, but have gotten a bit of sticker shock. We live in a big, lovely apartment in the city center for much less money than it would cost in the U.S. But everything else, except the beer, is surprisingly expensive. How I’ve missed the 1YTL lamacuns we used to pick up for dinner. Here, when you can find a Turkish restaurant (lucky for us, we live quite close to one) lamacun costs something like $4! Even the ubiquitous sausage is about $3 from a street vendor. And restaurants charge even more for their daily specials. Eating at a restaurant in Istanbul was always cheaper than the street food but still not a bad bargain, and certainly cheaper than most restaurants here.

So maybe things will get better with warmer weather, a little bit of sunlight and after we get our second paycheck and are able to do some traveling (inshallah). I am hopeful that next year when we are in Japan, I’ll look back and be able to kvetch about all the things I miss in Prague. Until then, I may just be writing blogs about everything I miss in the sunnier lands of the Mediterranean.

Day One in Prague

2008-02-19T23:02:00.000+01:00

“Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.” ~Regina Nadelson

It began with the obligatory jet lag, as 95% of USA to Europe flights land in the middle of the night (according to your body time). You arrive in a strange new place, completely disoriented by lack of sleep, unable to communicate in your own language, much less another, and with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach brought on by either nerves or the airplane breakfast you ate at 3am.

I was feeling rather less nervous than usual because we had arranged a transfer from the airport to the hotel. The idea of being shepherded from one scary, cold place to a nice, warm hotel was comforting. Our driver was a little late, which caused a little flurry of nerves but showed up after about ten minutes. He spoke not a single word of English, not even a hello. But no worries, it’s a simple task to drive from one place to another and I was calming down as we entered the van.

The hotel wasn’t far. I spotted it on the side of the road as the driver blazed by it, realized he had passed it, then made a U-turn to the other side of the street. It was a sweet sight. I couldn’t wait to unload my two suitcases and backpack and then be able to stretch out on a cozy bed. The driver let us out of the car and hopped back into the driver’s seat. I motioned to him and pointed at the back of the van, where our luggage remained. I gestured, gesticulated, tried several words for luggage hoping one of them might be a cognate in Czech (Bag? Baggage? Luggage? Suitcase?) He just said tam tam tam (or something like that) and smiled. I remembered tam in Russian means “there” but was he trying to tell me that the hotel was there or that he would be taking our stuff there?

Again, I pointed, made a steering wheel gesture with my hands and again pointed at the hotel. Again he smiled and nodded. Then he drove away. I was stunned. Had this man just driven off with all of our belongings? Hoping for the best, we crossed the street and watched him drive off out of sight. The streets in Prague are quite narrow, and this one had a tram line running through the middle, so it wasn’t really possible for him to turn on the spot in front of the hotel. And he had smiled at me. Would a man who was about to rob you do that? We waited out in the cold for a good five minutes (maybe less. Time seems to stand still in situations like these.) And the icy feeling in the pit of my stomach grew and I knew it was more than the nasty airline breakfast.

The logical part of my brain kept trying to convince me that there was no way the driver would have run off with our things. We were standing right there and let him go. Were we really that stupid? What would we tell the hotel reception, or the police if he didn’t return? “Well, you see, he smiled at us and we let him drive away with all our things without a fight…” Jon told me to go inside, check in and ask the hotel staff if anything like this had happened before, while he waited outside for the driver. In my panicked state, I tried to describe the situation and asked if it was normal, but obviously couldn’t do a good job of explaining what had happened. The guy just nodded and smiled and said, “Yes, it is normal” even though I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a clue of what I was talking about.

Almost shaking at this point, I went back out into the cold, and now Jon was missing too! I turned to the left and saw him standing there, unloading our suitcases with the driver. Well, of course! What would the driver do with our underwear, socks, Steven Colbert book and deodorant anyways? But for ten terrifying minutes, in a strange new place, anything seems possible.

Fez Tour - SanliUrfa and the End

2008-01-26T23:00:00.000+01:00

Well, it’s only taken six months but here is the last installment of my Fez tour blog. It makes me nostalgic for Turkey and everything I left behind there – great friends, fun students and all that delicious Turkish food, but it’s exciting to start on a new adventure for 2008. I only hope we have at least half as much fun in the Czech Republic as we did in Turkey. (And if only the temperatures were comparable too…)

SanliUrfa, the final destination of our Fez Tour.

We made it to this city the same day as Nemrut, so our day began at 4AM and continued til almost 9PM. I was exhausted and hot, wishing only to return to a (different) hotel for a mid-afternoon siesta but didn’t know when or if that would happen. Once again, there was a complete lack of communication about where we were going. I only knew that Urfa was listed on our basic itinerary, but really had no expectations or knowledge of what we would see there.

We arrived just in time for lunch, (although since our day started at 4, it seemed like it should have been dinner.) It was immediately apparent that we had entered another Turkey than the one we were so familiar with. I noticed that we were the only tourists in town and that the people didn’t seem too accustomed to visitors because they were staring at us like we had just walked off a UFO. Little boys congregated around us as our guide gave us a bit of history about the place. When we walked through a city square to the restaurant, they followed us, staring and pointing. A couple times, our tour guide had to shoo them away as if they were flies buzzing around our heads.

As we made our way through the twisting streets, I had the feeling that we had really made it to the Middle East. The town looked like it was the movie set from some biblical epic: the women in full, black veils glaring at my semi-exposed arms, the men in traditional Muslim dress and hats, the blacksmiths in the bazaar working over open flames and the fact that no one was speaking a word of English to us in the markets. The population is, in fact. made up of not only Turks, but many Arabs (we were only a few miles from the Syrian border) and Kurds.

In Istanbul, the Grand Bazaar has a very exotic, Middle Eastern quality to it, but is simultaneously a very modern, cosmopolitan place. Every person who works there knows some basic English phrases, and usually a handful of other languages. But this market, while similar to the Grand Bazaar, had a totally different vibe. The stares we got from the locals made me feel really nervous and out of place. Despite the 40C heat, I had wrapped my scarf around my neck and my upper arms, yet still felt very exposed (and also increasingly warm.)

SanliUrfa is a very holy place for Muslims. It is the site of a cave that is reportedly the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, and a spring inside is supposed to have miraculous properties. And it was even open to visitors, so of course we had to go inside. Because it is a “holy” place, Jon and I had to be segregated as if we were going to mosque so I went through the special women’s entrance. Apparently, I was not dressed appropriately, despite the scarf covering my head, chest and upper arms. The woman at the entrance handed me a long overcoat which covered my whole arms and went down to my feet. Now, even more overheated than before, I entered the cave. It was quite crowded inside with many women kneeling on the ground in intense prayers. I felt uncomfortable for watching them in such a private moment, and also was sweating from the heat and the crowd, so I quickly left the place.

It was now about mid-afternoon but our extended day wasn’t over yet. I was happy to leave SanliUrfa and remove the sweaty scarf from my head and neck, but sad that my camera batteries had not cooperated with me and that I would have no pictures to remind me of this uncomfortably beautiful place.

Our final stop before the much-needed return to the hotel, was a place called Harran. Harran is another border town, where we could actually see land that was part of Syria. Our guide pointed out a hill in the distance, said that we were only about 10 miles away, and that the hill on the edge of the horizon was Syria. I thought immediately of the scene from Lord of the Rings, with Frodo and Sam looking over the horizon onto Mordor and felt an irrational sense of foreboding. I half-expected to see the Eye of Sauron searching us out, or sudden lightning strikes on the hill as the Syrians carried out their evil deeds. But there wasn’t any of that and I was a little disappointed. And actually jealous as two Australians on our tour told us they were going to Damascus the next day. If only we weren’t ugly Americans…

But Harran is better known as the home of the beehive houses, than as a lookout point to the Gates of Mordor. These houses are traditional mud-brick, adobe houses like those that have been built for thousands of years. Our tour took us to one where a family were living who opened their home to visitors. It was another surreal experience. Here, the family members spoke perfect English and gave us tours around their home. Usually I would avoid being led around by a child, but they were so sweet that I let them show me around, and a good way for them to practice their English. Only to find out at the end of my minute-long “tour” that they wanted a tip for it! So much for just being sweet kids and trying to improve their language skills.

It is difficult to describe this place, both the physical aspect and also the people there. It was like one of the beehive houses, but much bigger. Inside there were many traditional costumes, which seemed to be there only for tourists to try on. One of them got Jon into this sheik outfit (which luckily my camera came back to life for!) and didn’t even ask for a tip.

Mostly, we just hung around and talked to the large family. There was a hint of sadness around them, but I can’t place exactly what was the cause. Maybe that to support themselves, they have to invite tourists to invade their home. Maybe the women who I spoke to, seemed to have no real hopes or dreams for the future. They seemed to be stuck in this time and place with no hope of escaping. There was a real dream-like quality to this place where I can’t separate what actually happened from what could have been a surreal daydream I had while napping on the bus. Maybe we ventured closer to the land of Mordor or Oz than I thought.

Finally, we left this strange place to watch the sun set over the hills. This single day that seemed to be at least three was exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying, wondrous, uncomfortable, but absolutely unforgettable.

We still had the long journey back to Istanbul, via Cappadocia, via Ankara, with a growing sadness that our time in this crazy and fascinating country was almost over.

Fez Tour - Mt Nemrut

2008-01-23T22:57:00.000+01:00

Although we were excited about Nemrut, it was sad to think that our amazing trip was almost over. The Nemrut tour didn’t start off so well. There was a lot of confusion, starting with our tour guide. We had one, but he ended up leaving us at some awful road-side restaurant for another tour guide. There was no information about our lunch here – was it included or extra? They told us we could choose from a set menu, but not whether we had one choice – only rice or chicken kebab with rice? We sat down in this fly-infested, dank place and the waiters brought me a lovely chicken kebab. But as I tried to bite into it, it was all bones. I’d had close to about 600 chicken kebabs while in Turkey but NEVER, EVER had I been served bone kebab.

It was going to take a while to drive to Nemrut, but not because of the distance as much as the infrastructure. Once out of Cappadocia, you really felt like you were leaving civilization behind. A highway would start off paved, only to disintegrate into gravel and dirt for several miles, then back to pavement. There wasn’t a sign of a tourist trap bus stop where you could buy overpriced water and Turkish knick knacks. But perhaps the biggest change was the complete absence of the “modern” toilet. I cringed upon entering bathrooms with nothing but a hole in the ground, and usually avoided using them. Here, there was no alternative.

We made a quick stop at another caravanserai, and then continued on to the foot of Nemrut. We learned from our tour guide that we would be visiting the mountain before dawn in order to see the sunrise. That was a wonderful idea, but the thought of leaving the hotel at 4AM wasn’t so appealing. The hotel was the closest to the site, and apparently they felt this was enough of an amenity and that they could have shabby rooms with no ventilation and no one would complain. What a dump. The funniest part of it was that this was an actual hotel, and we had been staying at $25/night hostels that put this place to shame.

A knock on the door at 3:30AM woke us out of our not-so-restful sleep. Despite the fact that we were halfway up a mountain, and that there was an abundance of cool nighttime mountain air just outside our window, none of it seemed to penetrate into our stuffy, overheated room. Grouchy, hungry and exhausted, we trudged from our despised room to the waiting minivan. It was too dark to see much, which I was thankful for because of my fear of heights. The less I saw of how far from the ground we were, the better.

We got to the gates and it was still pitch black. However, from the gates we were told that there was a 15-20 minute “climb” up to the actual site. They told us to be careful because the air was much thinner 6,000 feet up and that we could lose our breath more easily. The path was also not paved, but just lots of rocky gravel, which was difficult enough to walk on, much more so in the complete darkness. Heights are one of my main irrational fears and I was close to terrified as we made our way slowly up the mountain. Luckily the path was wide, at least until we reached the summit, where you had to hop over this narrow part with (what I imagined to be) a sheer drop just beside it. Legs shaking, I managed to make it over and was treated with my first glimpse of the magnificent Nemrut.

Were the heads really that small? I felt a bit of disappointment at first. While it was still a really interesting site, I remembered looking at pictures of the “giant” heads on the menu of the Turkish restaurant in Granada – named Nemrut of course – and they had appeared so much bigger. So, after this underwhelming first impression, I took a seat on one of the rocks, peered out over the Euphrates River and waited for the sunrise.

It was a beautiful sight to behold, but it did take a long time! I don’t really know why we had to be woken up at such an early hour only to wait around for another hour for the sun to come up. But, in hindsight as I write in my heated, sun-lit house, I am glad I braved the cold and the height to see it.

Our guide began to tell us a bit about the site. It was the tumulus of King Antiochus, blah blah blah and then he mentioned something about another terrace, where ANOTHER identical but larger sculpture was. This is when my disappointment began to dissipate and I realized the true magnificence of the place. The smaller side we were on was impressive after the initial viewing, but to learn that there were TWO sides was what made it unforgettable.

Nemrut, Side One

We walked along another gravelly path to the western terrace and – behold! – there were the larger than life heads I had gazed at while eating doner kebabs in Granada! Unfortunately it had gotten a bit more crowded now that the sun was up and some rude tourist got in my way as I was trying to photograph the heads. So unfortunately, the shot of me and the head didn’t work. But here is the next best one, although the scale is difficult to make out from the picture alone. It was about the same size as me.

With more bad luck after the rude tourist, my camera battery, purchased just two days before, had started to die. I was able to get a few shots of the remainder of our day. There was a cool old bridge built by the Seljuk Turks,

another cool bridge built by the Romans and still in use today (!)

and the impressive Ataturk Dam, one of the biggest in the world.

The next part of our trip was the strangest, the most interesting, the scariest and the most memorable. This is when the camera decided to die completely, so unfortunately, I have no pictures of the intriguing city of SanliUrfa, the next and final blog of my Fez Bus tour…

Fez tour - Cappadocia

2008-01-18T22:56:00.000+01:00

We arrived at Cappadocia at sunset, which granted us really cool views of the shadows playing on the crazy rock houses and fairy chimneys. Cappadocia is really a place that one needs to visit to truly appreciate. It sounds a bit lame to keep writing about the cool rocks, but there really is an air of mystery to the place that doesn't come across in pictures, or by describing the weirdly shaped landscape.

This time we stayed at another great hostel, the Rock Valley. It was a little disappointing because they didn't have a cave house to stay in, which is one of the main attractions of the region, but it was cozy, comfortable and had 24-hour hot water (quite a luxury in Turkish hostels!), so we were happy. Our time in Cappadocia was actually split by a side trip to Mt Nemrut and some other places in Eastern Turkey, but more about those in my final blogs.

We got to our hostel just in time for Turkish night! I was looking forward to this because I had done it on my last trip to Turkey in 2003 and it was such a fun, memorable night filled with unlimited alcohol, Turkish folk music and belly dancers, all set in an old caravanserai that had been transformed into a restaurant. They had made some changes since then. We were treated to some Whirling Dervishes (but no live band, unfortunately) as well as the usual dancing. One of the novelties was, surprisingly, the belly dancer. I've seen quite a few belly dance shows after the several months of living in Istanbul, and on two separate trips to Morocco, but this was the first time I had ever seen a male belly dancer and he was simply spectacular. He managed to outshine his inferior female counterpart. Unfortunately, Jon's nose got in the way of my best picture of him.

We struggled to get up in time the following day for a tour of southern Cappadocia. One of the places we visited was an area called Yaprakhisar, which looked a little bit familiar, not because I had been there before but because it was used as a background in the Star Wars films. Maybe that was part of what added to the mystical quality of Cappadocia – the fact that you could almost expect to see Luke Skywalker in his speeder come flying through the desert-like scenery.

One of my favorite things about Turkey is its apparent identity crisis. There are many Turks who long to be part of Europe. They wear blue jeans, listen to Tupac Shakur and study English. You could drop many of them into the middle of Manhattan and it would be hard to immediately identify them as a "foreigner." But for all the Turkish aspirations of modernity, there is still such a rustic, simple side to the country, which is most evident while traveling in the east with the omnipresent sheep herders. There was something so quaint, yet exotic about seeing a herd of sheep crossing an otherwise modern road and shows that Turkey hasn't yet lost touch with its traditional way of life.

After our brief venture into the fantasy land of a galaxy far, far away and some more sheep sightings, we headed to the Ihlara Valley for a pre-lunch hike. Unfortunately, I was again suffering from slight heat exhaustion, so the idea of trekking two miles through a gorge with no bathrooms or refreshments before lunchtime wasn't too thrilling. Luckily, the Valley was beautiful, filled with gentle streams, more sheep,

and great vistas of the surrounding mountains. And again, with no regard for safety, our Turkish guide walked far in front of the tour group, never stopping to count to make sure everyone was there and no one was left behind with a twisted ankle or keeled over from dehydration. But we made it to lunch with no major calamities and enjoyed some nice conversation with our fellow travelers.

The highlight of the day came after lunch as we pulled into the parking lot of the Derinkuyu Underground City. Cappadocia is filled with these subterranean abodes because of the soft volcanic rock that permeates the region. This is where the Christians came to hide from the Romans, the Arabs, and anyone else who happened to be persecuting them at the time. Whenever they were threatened, they fled to these labyrinthine underground cities, complete with stables, wineries, and a defense system of large stones that could be used to seal off an entrance for an advancing enemy. Although I'm not really a claustrophobic person, the thought of living underground for weeks or months on end is quite frightening. There are plenty of air shafts and places where the sun may shine through, but there was a real sense of fear that still permeates Derinkuyu.

Cappadocia is home to such an interesting and diverse set of attractions. After the excitement of our southern tour, we decided to spend the next day on our own at the Open-Air Museum of Goreme. It's another fascinating, one-of-a-kind place that showcases monasteries and churches that were carved out of the rock. It was surprisingly crowded too! In the summer, I would have thought most tourists would stay along the coastal areas and not venture into the dry, waterless Anatolian plains. We had to wait in line to get into some of the more popular churches.

There are some amazing frescoes in these places that were painted by the Christians living there at the time. A lot of them are quite crude compared to something you'd see in Constantinople or another European cathedral, but it's really the location that makes them interesting. Some are faded and barely discernible, while others, like the Dark Church are amazingly well-preserved.

Like Saklikent, one of the most fun things about Goreme is the complete lack of safety. While some of the caves have steel steps leading you to the upper levels, there are still many caves just outside the main complex that haven't yet been "tourist-ized." You can climb around these caves as much as you like, safety be damned. This was another time when I found a nice, shady spot to sit as Jon played Indiana Jones and climbed on the rocks.

We had planned on spending the whole day at Goreme so we were kind of surprised to be finished at 1PM or so. So we decided to do some exploring. We wandered along some of the hiking trails, taking in some amusingly-shaped rocks

and some breath-taking views of the area.

As we kept walking, Jon wanted a novelty shot of him standing in what the Turks called "Love Valley." (They do have a great sense of humor!)

It was a hot day so we stopped for some ice cream on the way back to the hostel and enjoyed a delicious barbeque dinner there. Once again, we were preparing to leave. This time, it was for the final leg of our journey. We were on our way to the slightly dangerous region of Southeastern Turkey and the legendary Mt. Nemrut.

Fez tour - On the road to Cappadocia

2008-01-16T22:54:00.000+01:00

Turkey is quite a large country, so the schlep to Cappadocia took about two days, with some stops in between. The first stopover was Olympos, which sounds so fantastic and mythical from its name alone. Unfortunately, there is no heavenly abode of the gods in this place, just some treehouse-style hostels, which we came to call the "Hippy-Dippy Treehouses" because of the obvious clientele they catered to. Olympos was the hottest place on our journey. We were still close to the Mediterranean, but it was in a valley surrounded by high mountains, meaning there was NO air movement, no wind, no refreshing sea breeze. So whoever thought of putting accommodation in trees, where the heat RISES, was probably smoking too much nargile. Because of the insufferable heat, paying extra for a treehouse with A/C, and the communal nature of the place that caused Jon to go into Cartman-esque anti-hippy tirades, this was far from an enjoyable day. The one attraction the place does offer is the Chimaera eternal flame but we were so frustrated and exhausted that we stayed in our overpriced 30YTL air-conditioned treehouse instead.

We spent the day driving to our next overnight stop at Lake Egirdir. This town was quite the opposite of Olympos. The air was cooler, the atmosphere more relaxed and quiet. There wasn't much to do apart from walking around some lovely gardens. We used the time to rest up for the last leg of our journey towards Cappadocia, via Konya.

My planning skills failed me the following day. Knowing full well that Konya was a conservative Muslim town, I pulled my cute blue halter dress out of my luggage to wear and spent the day trying to keep my knees and shoulders covered in the 40 degree heat. But they did let me in to the Mevlana Mausoleum with no problems, where we saw some interesting religious artifacts. We also snuck a peek into the nearby mosque, although I was never quite sure of the protocol – do I use the women's entrance, am I covered up enough, etc. But the mosque and mausoleum/museum were a fascinating look into the lives of the Mevlana Whirling Dervishes.

We were back on the bus after a few hours, with one more stop at a large caravanserai and then another several hours of driving. The thought of being along the Silk Road was so exotic and fascinating. We did have to pay a small fee to get inside, but you could really get a feel of what the Silk Road traders experienced so many centuries ago.

You might think a tour with so many hours on a bus would be boring, but the landscape is so interesting and always changing. From the olive groves of the coast to the scattered caravanserais on the Anatolian plains and finally to the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, there was always something new to see. The Turks even had fake police car cut-outs along some of the stretches of highway to discourage speeding, which were really amusing, We drove by farmers selling their fruits, veggies and nuts, craftswomen with specially-made dolls bought mostly by tourists, and many sprinklers that appeared to be watering the pavement, which considering the drought-like conditions of the area, was actually a bit disturbing. Finally we began to see the landscape change yet again with some unusual rock formations, and knew we had finally reached our destination.

Fez tour - Fethiye

2008-01-15T22:52:00.000+01:00

Now that I am planning my next trip to Prague in a few weeks, and am no longer working, it is probably time to finish up my blogs about my Turkish adventures. Such terrible procrastination…

After our Greek city adventures, we began heading south. We stopped for the night in quaint Koycegiz and then made our way to Fethiye. Before we arrived in the city, we had a four hour stop in Saklikent Gorge. Saklikent Gorge was formed during one of the many Turkish earthquakes when a mountain literally split in half.

This is one of those places that you just can't find at home. In safety-obsessed America, no one would be allowed to go hiking through a mountain with no sturdy paths where you had to cross a rushing, glacial river that was about waist-deep (for short people like me, anyways!) and then clamber around, climbing up rocks, trudging through muddy water.

But the highlight was a tubing ride down the frigid river. The water was quite shallow, which made it easy to get stuck, which of course I did. Apart from the one incident where I couldn't stop my tube and plowed into a poor fellow tuber who had also gotten stuck, it was great fun!

At the end, there was a natural mud bath that we played around in and put all over our bodies. It may have been a great natural cleanser, but I was finding caked bits of mud for days afterwards.

We had planned to spend quite a few days in Fethiye to spend time with our lovely friend Jane, who we had lived with for a brief time in Istanbul and was our unofficial guide to the city when we first arrived. Jane showed us true Turkish hospitality by driving us around, arranging Jon's paragliding and scuba diving trips, taking us on a lovely gullet cruise, and going to fabulous local restaurants where you order by weight and cook your own meat at a little grill by the table. Tesekkuler Jane!

Fethiye is a gorgeous Mediterranean harbor town in southern Turkey. We were treated to yet another coulda-been-a-five-star-hotel hostel. This hostel's main problem was the steep, mountainous climb to get to and from the city center.

But there was air-conditioning, which was absolutely essential in the humid, 40 C weather.

Jon had a great time scuba diving and para-sailing,

which I gladly watched from a safe place on the ground. We also had time for a day-long gulet cruise, where, again with no regard for safety, you could jump off from any part of the boat into the warm, Mediterranean sea.

We docked in some shallow places too where you could gently wade into the water, which was more of my preference. It was so relaxing and wonderful, except for the actual boarding on and off the boat. Apparently, some Turkish law prevents the building of docks in this area, so you had to board the boat in the waviest, most turbulent part of the water. They had a catwalk that would bounce up and down in the air as you tried to get on,

which was luckily quiet when we got on, but decidedly more violent for the disembarking. We watched as fellow cruisers fell head first into the water. When my turn came up, I stupidly brought my purse along, waiting for the Turkish boys who were helping people off the boat cry "Gel! Gel! Gel!" (Come! Come! Come!) and while I managed to get off somewhat gracefully, I then got hot by a wave and fell with my purse into the sea. My camera somehow escaped unharmed but my faithful cell phone didn't make it.

There was so much to see and do here. We hiked up to the Indiana Jones-esque Lycian Rock Tombs at the edge of the city,

visited the ghost town of Kayakoy, which was abandoned after a forced resettlement agreement between Turkey and Greece,

sunbathed on the unbelievably beautiful beach of Oludeniz

and wandered around the typical Turkish bazaars and markets. I was sad to leave behind the beautiful coastline of Turkey as we made our way inland to the mysterious region of Cappadocia.

Fez Tour - Ephesus

2007-11-20T22:50:00.000+01:00

After the teasing Greek cities of Troy and Pergamum, we were quite excited to finally make it to Ephesus, famously known as the best preserved city of the ancient Greeks. Its reputation surely preceded it. As we arrived at the site – a short drive from Kusadasi – we were greeted by swarms of tourist buses. But it is a large place, so we were hoping to still enjoy the experience without feeling like we were back on an Istanbul dolmus.

Our tour leader this time around, in stark contrast to the unforgettable Captain Ali and the competent Pergamum escort with the cool stories about the origins of clapping, we were a bit underwhelmed by our Ephesus guide. Rather than bill herself as an art historian, archeologist or some other type of academic authority, she described herself as "the best finder of shade." Hmm. While this was undoubtedly useful on a hot August day with temps topping 100 degrees, after such stellar guides with impeccable credentials, this didn't seem as reassuring.

Sadly, what I most recall now from the tour isn't the spectacular, just-short-of-being-a-world-wonder Library of Celsus, or the breathtakingly enormous amphitheatre but rather the shortcomings of both our guide and the rushed pace of the tour. Jon was being uncharacteristically photogenic and wanted a funny shot of him sitting on the public toilets. Unfortunately, about 100 other people had this same idea and it actually became logistically impossible to backtrack where I could get a picture of him. (He was lagging behind a bit as usual ha ha.) So we rushed to the Library, where the group had evidently been waiting for us and then moved on after about two minutes, which isn't nearly enough time to take in the amazing condition of this ancient building.

Our tour guide also erroneously told us that one of the four statues outside the Library was "Sense of Humor" and not Knowledge or Wisdom. She was completely wrong. What does sense of humor have to do with a library? But we were at least in a shady spot as she related this inaccurate bit of trivia.

So we left Ephesus feeling quite disappointed, not at anything in the city itself (except for the several thousand tourists) but at the general shoddiness of the tour.

And to add insult to injury, after the tour was finished our tour guide took us to an exorbitantly overpriced and touristy restaurant. Since lunch was included we didn't bother to think about the cost of the drinks – the only part of lunch we needed to pay for. Our guide informed us (again mistakenly) that it was a law in Turkey that you couldn't bring outside drinks into a restaurant. What a scam to get us to buy drinks that we might not have gotten otherwise since we still had a big bottle of water from the morning. The restaurant was overwhelmed by several buses arriving at once so we had a wait a loooong time for our cop sis. Jon ordered an extra drink because we were waiting for so long. When we got our bill at the end we found out that they charged 4 YTL for cherry juice! So he paid 8 YTL for two small cans when you could've gotten gallons of cherry juice for the same price in a local grocery store. What a different Ephesus experience from when I went in November 2003. We had the place to ourselves and maybe one other tour group. It was fabulous to take as much time as we wanted to marvel at the architecture as we imagined walking through the agoras of ancient Greece.

Fez Tour - Troy and Pergamum

2007-11-20T22:47:00.000+01:00

The Aegean coast of Turkey is filled with ancient Greek cities. It's difficult to differentiate them in your mind after the fact - was that cool amphitheatre at Aspendos or Aphrodisias? - but these three stick out in my mind. This is partly because I've now been them twice but also because they are among the most visited by tourists.

Let's start with Troy. Troy is certainly the most famous of the three. I never knew Troy existed in real life until my first Turkey tour in 2003. There is so much allure and appeal to Troy because of its well-known history. I was so excited to visit the set of one of history's most well-known stories. Unfortunately for us there is little left to show that Helen, Paris, Hector and Achilles once dwelled in this place. Apart from an endearingly cheesy life-size replica of the infamous Horse,

all that remains are old foundations, a couple of walls and a large ramp that was used for chariots (and alas, historians are sure that it wasn't used to pull the horse into the city).

Our tour guide Captain Ali, who also showed us around Gallipoli (and had plenty more jokes about his wife and his short stature) did a nice job of pointing out some of the interesting details of the place like the difference between Greek and Roman walls. (Greeks had more emphasis on aesthetics for those of you dying to know.)

While Troy is notable for its famous myth/history, the site of Pergamum offers more, well, sights and quite a few interesting tales of its own, told to us by another very interesting and knowledgeable guide . As a weary traveler Pergamum lets you take in more of its history without struggling to imagine what it must have looked like in each of its nine different incarnations. There's the Temple of Trajan, albeit in a ruined state,

and a breath-taking old theatre that could hold about 10,000 people. It is breath-taking merely in its steepness. I felt my legs wobble as I looked down upon it.

This is where, reportedly, the act of clapping first came into existence. Apparently, the Emperor used to come to see shows at this place and at the end of the performance, the Emperor got first dibs on leaving the place to avoid the gridlock that follows such an event. Unfortunately for the attendees, one Emperor didn't have such a great attention span and used to fall asleep during the performances, forcing the poor spectators to spend the night until he awoke. As this continued to happen, the clever theatre-goers began clapping at the end of the performance in order to wake up the sleepy Emperor, which is a practice we've now continued to this day.

Pergamum is also where parchment was invented, after the Greeks were no longer able to acquire papyrus. The creation of this parchment was highly successful, and as a direct result or not, Pergamum also became home to the second largest library in the ancient world, only after Alexandria. However, no books remain from that library because the whole collection was given to Cleopatra as a wedding gift. The Pergamumians (?) were seemingly quite generous because they not only gave up their lovely library but also their entire kingdom. The last king of Pergamum, before it became Roman territory, actually just handed over his whole empire to the Romans. Apparently, he had no heirs or was off his rocker at the time of death. This region of Turkey is one of the few areas of the Roman world that wasn't taken by force.

Ironically, what was taken from the Turks was an important part of Pergamum's history and it wasn't the Romans who were to blame. The exquisite Altar of Zeus

with its marble friezes of an epic battle between the gods and the giants, is nowhere to be found. Where it used to be, there is nothing left but some foundations and an old tree. You have to travel to Berlin, Germany to see this ancient altar at the Pergamum Museum. There is of course much controversy over this, much like Elgin's Marbles at the Acropolis in Athens. It is unlikely that these will be returned, as the Germans would have to change the name of an entire museum to do so.

While both Troy and Pergamum are fascinating and beautiful, the ancient city of Ephesus is simply spectacular. And, not realizing that I could write this much about both Troy and Pergamum, Ephesus truly deserves its own separate blog.

Fez Tour - Gallipoli

2007-09-10T23:05:00.000+02:00

Here is the first of my Turkey tour blogs - insha'allah. It was such an amazing experience and we saw so much that I can't hope to remember all of it, so this is my best way of remembering all the little details that made the trip so unforgettable.

If you ask the average American to tell you about the battle of Gallipoli in World War, there's a fair chance all you'll get is a shoulder shrug or a well-articulated "Huh? Gallipo-wha?" Some may recall it as a footnote in Mel Gibson's early career before he went crazy and became a raging anti-Semite. However, if you ask an Aussie or Kiwi, you'll not only get a resounding "of course!" but also a story about the defining event of their countries' history. A Turk will start speaking in a reverenced tone about a young general named Mustafa Kemal, later known only as Ataturk and the founder of modern Turkey. What the Revolutionary War was for Americans, Gallipoli is for Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. The Revolutionary War asserted independence and ingenuity as the true ideals of the new country. Gallipoli brought about the "ANZAC spirit" of bravery and fighting despite impossible odds. For the Turks, who fought against the Australians and New Zealanders, it was a chance for a visionary new leader to emerge from the battlefields.

While today the Turks still have much animosity towards those they have fought in recent memory (i.e., the Greeks), the feeling towards the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Armed Corps) forces is quite an anomaly. Rather than harboring any sort of ill-feeling or disdain for those who sought to invade their country, there is an amazing camaraderie between them. The Turks and ANZAC forces were not truly fighting each other the way the Turks fought the Greeks, or the British fought the Nazis. Both were brought into the war by more powerful forces and simply ended up on opposite sides of the battlefield, more by circumstance than any other reason. The Turks aligned with Germany, mostly because they didn't want to be allied with the Russians, who were in turn allied with the British. The ANZACs were part of the British Empire and didn't have much of a choice in their friends.

The battle of Gallipoli was one of the bloodiest of the First World War. This was partly because of a rather large mistake on the part of the British. The ANZAC troops were supposed to land at an easily-accessible place where they could fight their way to the high ground with minimal difficulty. Unfortunately for them, something went wrong and they landed at one of the most impenetrable coasts in the entire region. The area wasn't even well-guarded because it was a natural defensive point with high cliffs that would prove tricky for a modern-day rock climber.

The ANZACs and Turks fought for months, with their trenches unbelievably close to each other. They had "gentleman agreements" where the ANZACs would be allowed to go swimming in the nearby cove without fear of being shot at. The respect between the two armies was quite astounding, especially when compared to modern-day warfare. (Imagine an al-Qaeda operative not shooting at an American soldier because he was not on duty!) When the ANZAC troops finally retreated permanently, they encountered no resistance from the Turks, who considered shooting a fleeing enemy as low and degrading. The British simply thought they had outsmarted the Turks and had made a getaway without the Turks catching on.

At the end of it all, Ataturk made a moving speech praising the bravery and fighting spirit of the ANZACs and said that they had become brothers to their Turkish counterparts.

"Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives… you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours… You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well."

Nowadays, Aussies and Kiwis flock to Gallipoli every year to visit this immensely important part of their cultural identity. There's the Anzac Cove where you can see the utter futility of the ANZAC's invasion with its impenetrable cliffs. The Lone Pine now sits among a sea of white grave stones. Monuments are everywhere that praise the bravery of both the Turks and their "enemies" of the battle. The most telling of these is that of a Turkish "Mehmet" carrying a wounded "Johnny" soldier in his arms as a symbol of the brotherhood between their countries.

It was far more interesting to visit this place (as an American) as part of a group of mostly Australian backpackers, and a guide who had lost his grandfather to the battle and was still clearly angry at the British because of this. To see the war through their eyes and experiences helped to bring the history of this picturesque peninsula alive.

Thoughts on Istanbul

2007-08-03T22:44:00.000+02:00

My time is finally drawing to a close in Istanbul. We have only a few weeks left here, then a Turkey tour and then back home. Here are some of my best and worst of this schizophrenic city.

+The ferry commute. If you have to commute, I can’t imagine a better way than the intercontinental journey across the Bosporus. On any given day, you can see seagulls dive-bombing for simit (Turkish bagels), dolphins jumping in and out of the Marmara Sea or in the water near the Dolmabahce Palace, ocean liners that are the size of several city blocks, massive cargo ships from China, Ukraine and other exotic locales or imposing Turkish military ships sailing by. Not to mention the other ferries and sea buses which always seem to just narrowly avoid collision in the early morning sea traffic. I had to wake up before the sun was up, but these sights made the journey, at the very least, tolerable and occasionally unforgettable.

-The bus commute. Any positive experience from the ferry was quickly wiped out by the connecting bus I had to take into the business center, Sisli. In the midst of Turks squeezing onto buses like sardines and riding in the door as if we were wannabe firefighters, it was less than than an enjoyable way to get to work. The funniest and most absurd part was that if you waited only five or ten minutes, the same bus would come around but with half the number of people. Some things are worth the wait.

+/- The commute back home. Unfortunately to get home, I had to walk for a good 15 minutes to a different bus because the ferry only left twice an hour. My favorite sight in the busy bustling business center was the man and his fruit-filled horse cart driving through the traffic-jammed streets like it was 100 years ago, completely incognizant of the modern world surrounding him. Unfortunately, while lost in reverie gazing at the fruit man, I was once almost hit by a car driving on the sidewalk, in typical Istanbul fashion, going in the opposite direction of the street traffic.

- The traffic. You have never experienced traffic until you have been to Istanbul. The Turks would appear to be the world’s worst drivers, but amazingly, I have never seen one accident in all our six months. There was the aforementioned driving-on-the-sidewalk, which is a daily event here. There is also a lot of backwards and wrong way driving. One of my favorite moments was just outside of our apartment, a narrow and (supposedly) one-way road cluttered with parked cars. The cars were stopped in line and waiting to turn onto the main road. However one of the cars in the middle was facing the opposite direction and driving slowly backwards as they inched out onto the main street. How he got turned backwards in the middle of a row of traffic is a mystery I will leave for the physics police. And this isn’t even the worst (or best?) of Istanbul driving. When crossing another alleged one-way street, we were almost hit by a scooter who was passing on the other side of a bus – in the wrong direction. The dolmus (a shared taxi-minibus) drivers speed so erratically down these narrow, cobble stoned streets that it feels like most of your trip is spent airborne. All street signs and road rules are optional here.

It is sad to leave behind such a fascinating place. I feel that there are few other places in the world could quite capture the chaotic beauty of this ancient city.

Gule Gule Istanbul

2007-08-02T22:39:00.000+02:00

Our six months in Istanbul have come to a close. It's amazing how the time has flown! When we arrived, it felt like six months was an eternity. While I am happy to go and actually be able to TRAVEL again (3 day border runs aside), I will truly miss this amazing, schizophrenic city, with a few exceptions that mainly have to do with the 15 million people squished in such a small area.

Cancelled Flights and Harry Potter

2007-07-23T22:33:00.000+02:00

After the Parthenon, the most exciting thing I saw in Athens was the "Harry Potter - July 21st" signs hanging in several bookshops. It was so tantalizing and cruel as we were flying back to Istanbul - where I had already scouted out several book stores but none of them mentioned Harry - at 7pm on July 20th, . I was half-hoping for something to happen where we'd have to stay an extra day and even considered bribing some of the bookshop owners. So we made our way to the airport on Friday afternoon.

Our flight was to board at 6:30, which came and went without any Olympic Airlines announcements about delays or anything else. Seven o'clock rolled around and there was still nothing. No sign of an airline rep, except at the other counter where another flight had been delayed. Jon's friend Matt went to question her and she assured him there would be an announcement in the next few minutes. But that announcement never came. Finally at 7:45, the board read "Late" for our flight as if we couldn't have figured it out at that point. The ominous part was that there was no estimated time. So again we waited, with no announcements, no reps and no flight.

There was a group of Canadian guys near us who were also trying to get updates. Matt had checked the board again and told us and them that our flight was no longer listed! Five minutes later and one of the Canadians came back from upstairs to tell us the flight had been cancelled! Again, no reps, no announcements and now no flight! Everything we found out was from the other passengers. We now had to make our way backwards through passport control and collect our baggage. They finally made an announcement about 15 minutes after we learned it was cancelled. And of course there must have been an Olympic rep to guide us through this, you ask. Who the hell knows how to go backwards through passport control? It turns out there was no rep and even the passport guys weren't really sure what to do. They basically scribbled over our stamps in blue ink to "cancel" them.

So we and our fellow disgruntled passengers - not mad at the cancelled flight as much as the complete lack of information about it and what to do. We waited on line at customer service for an hour, only to find out we should have been in another line, which we found out from another passenger who started screaming at the rep that he was going to kill someone. There was a rumor about a bus that would take us to a hotel, which we again found out from other passengers. They had heard we's leave the hotel at 6am and get on a "special" flight at 8am just for us.

They took us to what turned out to be a spectacular hotel, after our jokes of having to sleep in the Olympic warehouse on cots or in military barracks. So we got four hours of sleep - it was about 12 midnight when we arrived and were woken up at 5 for our journey back.

And sadly, this is only half of the Olympic ordeal. I will leave you in suspense to find out what happened next in another blog. Did the bus leave on time? Did we make our 8am flight? Am I still in Athens as I write this???

The long-awaited PART 2....

We thought we were early for the bus. It was 5 minutes before it was supposed to leave. Unfortunately the rest of the passengers were a bit faster than us so we couldn't get on the first bus and had to wait for the second. We not only had to wait for the second bus but for all the slow lazy passengers who couldn't be on time. The second bus left a good half hour after the first, mostly because of some Mexican travelers (terrible stereotype but it was unfortunately true for these people!). Fellow travelers were yelling at them that we were on European time, not Mexican. So we arrived at the airport much later than anticipated. But it shouldn't be a problem since we apparently had a special Olympic flight waiting for us, ha ha.

Upon arrival once again there was no Olympic representative showing us where to go or leading us to a special line. We saw some fellow passengers in a special line, although we were told that we had to wait in the regular check in line! So we divided our forces. Matt and I waited in the regular check in line, only to be told to wait in the other line. Meanwhile Jon is told that he is also in the wrong line. After several minutes of digruntled chatter among our fellow travelers, a woman appears like a beacon of light and tells us to follow her if we ever hope to get back to Istanbul.

We follow her to yet another counter where she then disappears. At this point, I am starving, dehydrated and also dying to see if the book stores are open. So I leave Jon my passport and boarding card on the pretense of going to buy some water. I walked by the news agent and see my beloved Harry Potter books piled up by the entrance. Without even thinking, I get in line with the book and pay with a credit card. The cashier asked me for my passport, which I had left with Jon! Thank god he was happy with my CT drivers license and I returned happily to the Olympic counter, with no water or food but the only sustenence I need to get me through the day.

So while I was away, Matt, Jon and two British guys are told we are going to be put on a direct flight to Istanbul, or a flight through Bucharest, or a flight through Kazakhstan or somewhere else. Finally she hands us a scribbled piece of paper with no info on it that we can discern. We ask her politely what flight we are on and she, unsurprisingly, has no clue.

So the five of us, who are now travelling together, think we may be on the Bucharest flight that is leaving in a half hour. We run to try to find the gate but since we aren't sure if we are even on this flight, we miraculously manage to find an airport rep and hand her our very "official" scrap of paper. She translates it for us and we discover that we are on the 11am Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. We go to the Turkish Airlines counter and they confirm us for the flight and tell us when we can check in. The fact that we have been given actual useful information is just too much to handle so we go and have a nice, if rather expensive breakfast and wait for our flight.

I waited complacently with my book, oblivious to the outside world and all the bureaucratic nonsense that we had just experienced. Such is the magic of Harry Potter. And in the end, I found the book in Istanbul anyways, but that wouldn't have made as good a story.

Escaping Istanbul

2007-04-23T19:29:00.000+02:00

I'm not quite sick of Istanbul yet, but after working these crazy hours six days a week, I am so ready for a vacation. So Jon and I are taking off for the tongue-twisting city of Ljubljana in Slovenia for a mini-holiday (i.e., our border run). It looks lovely! And we are also very close to Venice and Zagreb, Croatia so I'm hoping to get the country count up a little higher.

Things I'll Miss About America

2007-01-09T19:26:00.000+01:00

As I start to think about heading back to Europe (or Asia or wherever in the world will give me a job), I've made a list of all the things that I'll miss about home. Since I'm not entirely sure where I'm headed yet, I can only draw on all the stuff that was lacking in Spain, a WESTERN European country, and it's unlikely I'll be spending more time in that "advanced" part of the world.

First, of course there is the obvious - family, the puppy, friends, and TiVo.

Let me take this moment to complain about the fact that all the shows are starting their "second" season premieres. When did this happen? Lost does not start again until February, but I may be lucky enough to see the beginnings of the JLA on Smallville (Bring on Aquaman baby!). Then there's the two cool new shows that I know I shouldn't have started watching but did anyways and now I will just be mad that I can't see them overseas - Ugly Betty (brilliant show! She is my new hero) and Heroes. And all the old faves will still be missed - South Park, Daily Show, The Soup, and all those cheesy VH1 countdown shows (The Biggest Baddest Hair Bands of the 80s and such), etc.

Ok, enough about the beloved TV and my boyfriend TiVo. SHOWERS. Did anyone over the pond ever think that maybe someone would like to spend more than 15 minutes in hot water? Does anyone like to take frigidly cold showers, even when it is 100 F outside? They hurt! And what about the water pressure? Some of us have long, thick, curly hair that requires lots of scrubbing under *hot* water to wash out all the shampoo.

24 hour stores. Not that I ever go shopping that late, but it is nice to have the option. This is more of a Spain complaint. What would I do if I run out of mac n cheese at 3am?

Cheap take-out food (again, blame Spain). I would have starved if not for the 107 kebab stands in Granada. Putting a pizza in a paper bag does not count. Neither do bocadillos, the national cuisine of stale bread and cheese with absolutely no condiments. And do I even mention the "to-go" coffee that doesn't have a lid? Yes, I think I do.

Variety of products. Well, this can be kind of a negative in American culture. Yesterday at Wal-Mart I spent 45 minutes in the skin care aisle trying to decide what kind of lotion to buy. Cocoa butter? Aloe Vera? Extra dry or severely dry skin? Or should I just buy the one that smells pretty? But I guess that is better than having only one choice, no?

Ok, still waking up out of the morning stupor so I will end the deep thoughts for now.

Culture Shock

2006-12-03T19:21:00.000+01:00

Granada, Spain is a quintessential Andalucian town. It has the charming pueblos blancos, those quaint, white-washed houses climbing up the hillsides and the obligatory castle which no Andalucian city is complete without. And Granada's obligatory castle just happens to be Spain's biggest tourist attraction, the legendary and breath-taking old palace of the Moors, the Alhambra. When I decided to quit my steady job at a mortgage company for adventure, excitement and teaching English in Europe, I unhesitatingly chose Granada.

I had had just a taste of Granada the previous year while on a whirlwind tour of Spain. Determined to see as much of the south as possible, we had rushed through Malaga, Benalmadena, Seville, and Granada in five days. We had only enough time in Granada for a quick tour of the Alhambra and whatever we could see out the window on the journey between the Alhambra and Granada's bus station. Apart from the palace and gardens, which was forever burned in my memory (and in 200 + pictures on my digital camera) as a spectacularly beautiful place especially considering it was still the winter, I only remember a sense of loss at everything else I was missing through the bus window. I knew that I would have to return to the city one day.

I arrived for my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course in February and was taken to my apartment there. After trudging up a seemingly endless hill, I arrived at a small white house that was only a few hundred feet from the famous pomegranate gate of the Alhambra. From my balcony, I could see one of its towers as well as a stunning view of the Cathedral. Although I was a little apprehensive at living alone with my Spanish landlady (most of the other students had shared apartments), the location was certainly a consolation. Every morning while brushing my teeth, I could look out at one of the wonders of the world. It was definitely an improvement over the old 9 to 5 grind.

Before leaving Connecticut, I often spoke to my co-workers about my plans in Spain.

They were stories filled with Mediterranean beaches, tapas bars and siestas. I showed them pictures of my time there – views of the pueblos blancos from the tower of the Alhambra, the peaceful courtyards filled with intricate Islamic tiles and fountains, and the sunsets over the Mediterranean. Every day on the job, we experienced the "3 o'clock slump" when we would need a coffee break or walk outside for some rejuvenation. After years of struggling to stay awake past 3:00 to finish my workday, I was looking forward to siesta the most. The idea of a country that institutionalized the mid-afternoon nap couldn't be anymore appealing.

Of course, the novelty can only last so long. My time on the TEFL course was stressful and I had limited amounts of time for beaches and siestas. Lesson planning was usually three hours a day, in addition to daily classes on various teaching methodologies. My apartment was a ten-minute walk from the school. With only an hour-long break during the day, it seemed pointless to walk home, sleep for thirty minutes and run back for more lesson planning or classes. So siestas were few and far between. Granada, although certainly warmer than Connecticut is in February, was gray and rainy and didn't inspire much desire for an hour long bus ride to the coast. Spanish homes also aren't equipped with the kind of heating that we are used to in the States. Because it doesn't get very cold, most Spaniards (especially in the usually balmy south) will have limited, if any, heating devices. The heat in my apartment was regulated by my landlady. Every couple of days, she would come into my room and ask kindly, "Tienes frio?" When I responded with a yes, hoping she would turn on the as-yet-unseen-and-unfelt heating system, she would open a large trunk and hand me an extra blanket.

As someone who has lived in the Northeastern United States for all of her life, the cold wasn't unbearable as much as a nuisance. I had expected temperatures in the 60s but in reality, it never made it much higher than the low 50s. But of course, 50 degree weather in February in Connecticut is considered a heat wave! No, the hardest thing with the weather was washing clothes. Although I had been to Europe several times, I was entirely unprepared for this reality. In contrast to the United States, almost every Spanish house or apartment is equipped with its own washing machine. However, from what I could see, there were no more than two dryers in all of southern Spain. In the hot, sunny summers of Andalucia, it is easy to see why they are unneeded. But in the damp cold of the winter months, it becomes much more problematic. I had socks that hung up in my room for days without ever getting really dry. And there is nothing worse than waking up cold, putting on a not-entirely-dry pair of underwear and venturing outside into the rain. My American classmates and I would commiserate and talk longingly of nice warm socks, fresh out of the dryer.

If you needed to buy laundry detergent or anything else, the siesta made this process very difficult. On my walk to the school every day, I passed some stores that were literally never open. I don't know if they went out of business and no one had bothered to take down the signs, or if it was just that I was never there at the right time of day. Siesta could last from anytime between 1:00 and 5:30. With our busy class and teaching schedules, the simple act of buying groceries became almost impossible. We had a break between 1:30 and 3:00 but we couldn't go during that time since the stores were closed. We finished teaching at 10:00 most nights, which was after the stores had closed for the day. As for the weekends, you could get lucky on a Saturday but on a Sunday everything in the city was closed, except for McDonalds and kebab stands. I had never fully appreciated American capitalism and convenience as much as I did on those days.

These are small inconveniences that one can easily deal with and make allowances for. As I washed up every morning while gazing at the Alhambra, the damp socks I was wearing bothered me just a little less. I missed home but was still generally happy until about halfway through the course. One Friday, while in the beautiful Plaza Nueva, just a five minute walk from my apartment, my wallet was stolen. I didn't even know it had happened until I went for a coffee and noticed that my purse seemed awfully light. I was very close with the other students on the course and they did everything they could to help. A few offered to go back to see if they could find it, while others stayed with me and tried to calm me down. When it became apparent that it was pick pocketed, we immediately went to the police office. My classmate Amy, proficient in Spanish, began speaking to an officer just outside of the building. My Spanish was shaky in the best circumstances and in my panicked state, it was non-existent. I couldn't understand a word that was said. When I asked what he had said, she said, "Well, um, actually he said he can't do anything because the station is closed for siesta."

I was distraught. Having gone to college just outside New York City and being so accustomed to 24-hour services, this was completely shocking. I began ranting to everyone that if they felt the urge to commit a crime, now was the time to do it since the police were closed. It was a terrible day, one of the worst I've ever experienced. Yet I still consider this month in Granada as one of the best times of my life. The people I met on the course and in the English classes, the teaching experience I gained and the travels in and around Granada were simply unforgettable. My decision to go abroad was undoubtedly one of the best choices I had ever made. However, I had arranged to go home for a few weeks before I began working as a teacher in Madrid to visit family and friends. I couldn't wait to do a load of laundry and then put my clothes dryer. I had dreams about walking through the 24-hour Super Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon, which filled me with happiness.

When I finally did make it home, one of my first orders of business was reclaiming my identity after the stolen wallet. I needed to hit the Social Security office for a replacement card, the CCSU campus for a new student ID card and most importantly, the DMV to reissue my driver's license. As I drove in my car, elated at being back home in the Land of Conveniences and Home of Normal Opening Hours, I pulled up to the DMV office in New Britain. The parking lot was strangely empty. I got out of the car and went up to the door and remembered what day it was and for a moment, felt like I was back in

Spain

. The sign in the window said "Closed on Mondays."