Saturday, January 5, 2008
Finally finished
P.S. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Soon it will be over
Drinking apple tea in a cave hotel in the Cappadocia region of Turkey (from left: Hua, my brother Mike, Eva, and Carly):
A group photo in the wind and rain on top of the city walls of Dubrovnik, Croatia (from left, top row: Mike, Emily, Jamie, Eva, Me; from left, bottom: Kelly, and Tawnya (a.k.a. T-Money):
Spain - The last port
A few days before we were to arrive in Spain, our last port, one of the Spanish inter-port lecturers gave a lecture on 20th century Spanish history. He began his lecture by telling us about the assassination of Jose Calvo-Sotelo, the head of the opposition in parliament in Republic Spain in 1936. Jose had known he was in danger for some time and he knew that eventually someone would kill him but he did what he felt was necessary. One day when he was at home with his family the police came to his house and escorted him away. He told his young daughter that he would be back in a few hours and assured her that everything would be all right. He was assassinated a few hours later. A few days after his assassination the Spanish Civil War broke out. The young girl was the mother of our inter-port lecturer and Jose Calvo-Sotelo was his grandfather.
At around 11:00 P.M. Mike, Eva, Carly, Depeeka, Rekha, and I hopped into taxis (this was the first time we had seen metered taxis in months) and off we went. When we got to the venue, which had a strange façade on the front but was little more than a warehouse, there was barely anyone there. It was close to midnight and there was no sign that they were letting anyone inside. Eva, Mike, and I had to beg the people working at a nightclub nearby to let us use their bathroom which was difficult since we barely spoke Spanish. By the time they started letting everyone in the venue sometime after midnight there was a large crowd jostling and bumping up against one another to get ahead in line. Eventually our group got inside, got some drinks at the bar, and found an empty spot to stand in and talk as the place filled to capacity.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Croatia
Croatia would have been nicer if we had gone a few months earlier. November is the worst month to go to Croatia because it rains constantly, so much that there is, on average, only 3 hours of sunlight per day. So, it was unsurprising when I went with Mike and some friends to walk around “Old Town” in Dubrovnik and it was raining. Old town is the section of Dubrovnik enclosed in walls; the oldest sections of it date back to the late 1200’s. We went with Eva, Emily, Tanya, Jamie, and Kelly and browsed the expensive boutique stores and had lunch at an Italian restaurant. It was strange to see the blend of contemporary culture (high-end clothing stores) inside medieval stone buildings. At the Italian restaurant some of us had the cheesiest four-cheese lasagna ever. For the remainder of my time in Croatia I would have stomach problems, probably related to that first meal.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Turkey
Originally I wasn’t particularly excited about visiting Turkey. However, since Egypt was not as impressive as I expected and after I learned more about what Mike had planned for our independent travel I began to really look forward to Turkey. Mike and I were planning to go to Cappadocia, a region of Turkey famous for wine and its beautiful scenery which includes strange geological formations and thousands of man-made caves, some of which date back a thousand years. We were traveling with Hua, Eva, and Carly, the latter two were, like Mike, from Canada. We were planning on staying in a cave hotel and then taking a guided tour around Cappadocia. After two nights in Cappadocia we would fly back to Istanbul and spend a few days exploring the city.
At another point he told Hua that he looked like a cow, and at another point he kept laughing and saying things to us in Turkish as if we knew what he was saying. Suddenly he decided he wanted to play a card game but all he knew were Turkish card games. He decided to play with Carly but since he couldn’t explain the rules she had no idea what was going on. As we were all watching them play, the manager of the hotel walked in. He looked at Happy, then at us, and then said a few words to Happy. He sat down next to us and tried to explain the card game they were playing. When Carly appeared to have won a few games Happy got upset and exclaimed, "I can't believe I lose to a girl!" Hua asked the manager what kind of music he listened to and he said he liked hip-hop so we put on some Dr. Dre to which he exclaimed, “I like this song”. Who would have thought we would go half-way around the world only to drink and listen to hip-hop with middle-aged Turkish men?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Egypt
Our voyage is over and I’m still far behind in my blog so I’m going to be doing slightly shorter summaries from now on. Egypt would be the last country with warm weather that we would experience on this voyage. The dry desert heat was a nice break from the ridiculous humidity in the tropics. Our ship had made port at Alexandria and since Mike and I had a trip to Cairo & Sharm El Sheikh we would not get the chance to see the city. In the morning of our arrival we packed, met Hua (who we had traveled with independently in Japan and Vietnam), and went to the designated meeting place for our group.
Thankfully there were far less people on this SAS-sponsored trip than there were on the Phuket/Bangkok one in Thailand (40 versus 120). The bus ride to Cairo was not notable except for the fact that our tour guide was exceedingly annoying. She talked for most of the 3 hour ride when all any of us wanted to do was listen to our ipods and sleep. She would occasionally raise her voice and say, “Attention, attention!” What she had to say about the history and geography of Egypt was certainly interesting but no one wanted to hear it then. By the end of the trip we would all warm up to her a bit.
Once in Cairo we went immediately to the Pyramids at Giza which sit on a plateau overlooking the city. Everyone else wanted to ride camels but I decided against it, the fifteen minute ride was not worth the price and I wanted the time to take some pictures of the pyramids. The pyramids were really cool to see but I have to say that Angkor Wat is still so much more impressive. The pyramids definitely have grandeur and a classic shape that is very aesthetically pleasing. Despite all of that I just didn’t feel as impressed by them as I was expecting. Maybe I’ve been spoiled? Later in Turkey when I would go to Cappadocia to see the natural geological formations and man-made caves and underground cities I felt that same sense of awe that was present when I visited Angkor Wat. Perhaps the pyramids are just overrated.
After the pyramids we had some free time so we went to buy tickets to walk in one of the pyramids but after seeing the lines and heeding the warnings of our tour guide (she said that if we wanted to pay to crawl through a tiny passage and get dirty just to see a bare chamber it was fine by her but she didn’t recommend it) we turned back to see the Sphinx instead. Hua, Mike and I hung out near the Sphinx for a bit making fun of the scantily clad Europeans. It was made very clear to us on the ship that Egyptians keep their legs and shoulders covered at all times, they are very conservative dressers. So while everyone on SAS were dressed properly there were Europeans dressed in some of the skimpiest clothing I have ever seen, including pre-teen girls with their parents! People often make a big deal out of the way that Americans supposedly dress, very scantily and lewdly, but that image is quickly shattered once you see how Europeans dress. Dignified they are not.
Throughout our entire Egypt trip I felt close to starvation since they kept feeding us at odd hours. Our first day in Cairo we skipped lunch, so when it came time for a (not-so-Egyptian) buffet in the evening we ate as much as we possibly could. We then returned to the Giza plateau at nightfall to watch a laser light show that was tacky, amusing, and very cheesy. We finally checked into our hotel where Mike and I stayed in an executive suite on the 23rd floor. It was probably the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in and it was really not necessary at all. I invited Hua up to check it out and he told me that he wasn’t even allowed to take the elevator that far, we were exclusive. After coming down to get him he told us that when he opened the door to his room he found boxes stacked everywhere, dozens of lamps on the floor, and mattresses lining the walls. Apparently they gave him a storage room by accident. The contrast between our room and his was so big, it was really funny.
The following morning we endured an early wake-up call and shuffled sleepily downstairs to pick up our boxed breakfasts and headed to the bus for our ride to the airport. I tried to enjoy the breakfast as much as I could with the knowledge that there would be no lunch yet again. The flight to Sharm El Sheik was short and full of Europeans on their way to the resort town for vacation. Sharm El Sheik had been an Israeli resort town since they captured the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1982 it was returned to Egyptian control as part of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979. Egypt has since developed it further and it remains, aside from Cairo, one of the top travel destinations in Egypt.
Our first day in Sharm was spent on a Jeep safari through the Sinai desert. The Sinai desert is a wasteland devoid of any life. Lone acacia trees dot the landscape every few miles or so and sterile lifeless rocks posing as mountains fill the horizon in every direction. As we made our way through a landscape that would look better on Mars than on Earth one of our guides explained that it is easy to get lost in the desert, only the Bedouins know their way around it, and in fact they were lost right now. After we stopped on one occasion to consult with other drivers and then made dramatic changes in direction I realized we really were lost.
After an hour or so of driving through the desert we stopped in front of 40 camels that we would be riding through the desert (technically they are dromedaries since they only have one hump). Everyone else had ridden camels the day before but I hadn’t and I was a bit nervous. Before I left for SAS I had read an amazing book about three Canadians who rode camels through the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, the world’s driest desert (it hadn’t rained in 10 years when they arrived there). Throughout that book I read about the pain of riding a camel for 14 hours a day in 120F heat, how it felt to get used to riding a camel, Bedouin hospitality, and the feeling of being in such an inhospitable place for months.
Because of that book I was really looking forward to the camel ride and the Bedouin camp that awaited us at the end. I was a bit nervous about the six-year-old child that had the reigns of my camel but he seemed to know what he was doing (until later when he insisted on whipping one of the other kids holding the reigns of another camel). The slow ride through the desert was fun though the swaying motion was not as smooth as the elephants we rode in Thailand. After almost an hour of riding we stopped, dismounted, and gratefully stretched our legs. When I woke up the next morning my thighs would be so sore I could barely walk.
We had come to a Bedouin tent where they were awaiting our arrival with traditional tea and unleavened bread. The shade of the tent was a welcomed relief from the sun and the Bedouin tea was absolutely amazing. They take a normal black tea and add a green herb to it that looks like dried basil but has a very sweet taste to it. The Bedouin men cooking bread over the fire let some of the girls in our group roll the dough and cook it while the rest of us learned about Bedouin culture from our tour guide. Afterwards I bought some of the herbs they use for the tea and then walked around nearby for a bit.
We had the remainder of the day to ourselves so Hua, Mike, and I decided to go to the beach near our hotel. There was a small coral reef right next to the shore that you can stand next to and watch all of the tropical fish swim around you. I loved it and wanted to stay for hours but Hua seemed bored so we decided to go to the swimming pool until we realized the water was too cold for a swim at 5 P.M. when the air begins to cool significantly. That night we ate dinner at an excellent Egyptian restaurant. Hua had pigeon which is a delicacy in Egypt; it was very similar to quail.
After dinner we smoked a hookah which is a water pipe that you smoke flavored tobacco out of. It is a tradition in much of Middle East (as well as Turkey) and as they say: When in Rome (or Egypt) do as the locals do. It makes you feel really relaxed and I can certainly see why they consider it a good way to unwind at the end of the day. Unfortunately it’s terrible for your health. It was nice to try a few times though. We walked around the tourist area for a bit marveling at all of the Russians who had come to Sharm for winter vacation. Like the Europeans we had seen in Cairo the women had no sense of decency when it came to clothing (which was fine by me), luckily in Sharm El Sheikh the locals don’t care.
I woke up on our second day in Sharm El Sheikh feeling horrible. I was so dizzy I could barely stand and I was having really bad stomach pains. I couldn’t believe I had gotten through all of Southeast Asia and India without getting sick only to get sick in a resort town in Egypt! I tried to take a shower without passing out and then went down to breakfast even though I wasn’t able to eat anything. I really didn’t want to miss out on the snorkeling we were going to do that day so I decided I would try to come along even though I knew I should stay in bed. During the 15 minute ride to the place where we picked out our snorkeling gear I began to feel worse and worse and realized that if I didn’t go back to the hotel I would have to come along with everyone else and wouldn’t be able to rest. I told our guide Iman that I needed to go home and she arranged to get a cab for me and even offered to pay for the ride herself.
I went back to the hotel and slept all morning. When everyone came back in the early afternoon for lunch I came along but again could not eat. I felt so dizzy and feverish that I could barely keep my head up. There have been only a few occasions where I felt as sick as I did then. Iman called for the hotel doctor and he took me to his office. He took my temperature which was up to 102F. After describing my symptoms he told me that the constant change in food and environment probably upset the amount of bacteria in my stomach and my immune system responded as if it were being invaded. He injected me with an anti-spasmodic to calm my stomach and an anti-inflammatory drug to keep the fever down. Within 15 minutes I was feeling much better. He was extremely nice and helpful; he even had someone from the hotel deliver anti-biotics and stomach medicine to my room later in the afternoon.
Mike and Hua went out for the afternoon and I slept more or less the rest of the day and into the next. The following day, our fourth in Egypt, I was feeling much better. We drove to the southern Sinai desert to visit St. Catherine’s monastery which contains what is supposed to be the burning bush that spoke to Moses. It is the oldest Christian monastery still in use in the entire world. The monastery itself was impressive. It contains a room of paintings of saints and religious icons, the only of its kind in the entire Muslim word. Idols and icons are banned in Islam; all depictions of religious figures have been destroyed in past centuries. The only reason the paintings in the monastery survived, some of which date as far back as the 6th century C.E., is because of the remoteness of the monastery.
We visited the library which contains the second-largest collection of Christian manuscripts in the entire world (the Vatican has the largest collection). It was amazing to see all of these ancient texts, some 1500 years old, in very good condition due to the dry heat of the desert. We were given a tour of the library by an American monk who was from Texas and had been living at the monastery for 11 years. I asked him some questions about the manuscripts in the library, I have an interest in some early forms of Christianity that were suppressed by the church after the fall of the Roman Empire and I was interested in whether or not the library had any manuscripts from these early Christians.
On our last day in Egypt we flew back to Cairo and visited the National Museum which has a huge collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. Unfortunately, the museum was packed and we had to go slowly as we followed our guide Iman who spent time explaining various objects. Hua, Mike, and I were impatient so we wandered from room to room but mostly stood around waiting for our tour to end. Being forced to go on a guided tour of a museum is inherently boring; if we had had two hours to wander around on our own we would have enjoyed it more.
When we first got to the museum I had to use a toilet so badly. In Egypt there are always men in the public restrooms who stand there doing nothing and then expect you to pay them “baksheesh” which is essentially a tip. It is custom in Egypt that you pay these men even if they have rendered no services. The smallest bill I had was a 20 pound note, but because I had to go so badly I ended up paying the man in the restroom the equivalent of $4 for doing absolutely nothing. I’m sure I made his day.
After we got back to Alexandria Hua, Mike, and I decided we wanted one more Egyptian meal before we had to get back on the ship. We met up with some friends and two of them, Greg and Katie, decided to join us for dinner. As the call to prayer rang out across the city we wandered around aimlessly trying to find a restaurant. An Egyptian man approached us asking us what we were looking for. He had been following behind me asking me if I wanted to go shopping or if I wanted food. I had already learned from Thailand and India that when someone approaches you on the street you do your best to ignore them.
The man approached Greg who had just spent the day with an Egyptian guy he met randomly on the train. He had taken Greg to his house and made him food. He probably had that encounter in mind when this other guy approached him and he agreed to let him take us to a restaurant. We walked through a bunch of twisting streets and made our way through a market. I’ve never felt as out of place as I did then. We drew more than a few stares at the weird sight of four white men and a woman (with a poorly arranged headscarf) being led by an Egyptian man. For all we knew he was taking us to a dark street somewhere where 5 guys would beat us with bats.
Instead he led us to a tiny street-side “restaurant” just like the ones I had eaten at in Vietnam on several occasions. We sat down in plastic chairs and told the man to order us whatever he thought would be good. When our food came the man told us that it would cost us 200 Egyptian Pounds (a little over $30) to which Greg declared, “No, that’s bullshit! That’s bullshit!” Greg is a very outspoken person who once accidentally got into a fight in Bangkok by walking down the street yelling, “3,000 Baht for a pair of jeans? 3,000 baht?!” As he complained loudly to the man I was afraid of what would happen next. The man explained to him that Egyptian people are very sensitive and they do not talk like that, and if he wanted to discuss the issue further he would have to calm down.
The man then told us that he would pay for us and we didn’t need to worry about it. The chicken we were served was the best chicken I have ever had. As we had walked to the restaurant we passed a stall in the market where they were weighing chickens and selling them. The chicken we were eating had probably been weighed, sold, and slaughtered not too long before. As we ate the man explained to us that he and most Egyptians liked American people but they did not like the American government. This was the same sentiment that we encountered in many countries and I’m glad that most people see a distinction between the policies of the American government and the American people themselves.
As the man led us back out of the maze of streets Greg was still upset over being ripped off for dinner (he kept saying that he had been eating meals for 30 Egyptian Pounds throughout Egypt) and he kept refusing to pay. Though the man had told us he would pay for our dinner, when it came time to go our separate ways he insisted we pay the original price of 200 pounds. The rest of us realized that we only had two choices, either pay or run away. The latter option seemed too risky so we all paid our share and the rest that Greg refused to pay. The dinner was so good that the entire experience was worth it even if it seemed like we were close to running into trouble at some points.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
India - Days 3 through 5
The rest of our stay in India was much better than the first few days but since I am running out of time on the ship I’m going to have to resort to a summary of events. On our third day in India we went to a tourist office to inquire about guided tours and were told that there were none available. After we stopped into another private tourist office we met John who said he would personally take us on a walking tour of Ooty that afternoon if we chose. He met us at our hotel a few hours later and took us on a wonderful walk through the hills around Ooty, pointing out birds, trees, and various plants along the way. We walked along a muddy path in the forest that brought back memories of our jungle trek in Thailand. Finally we visited a tea factory where we had the chance to see how tea is processed and we were given a free cup of tea. I bought several kilograms of tea there (which cost less than $10).
India - Days 1 and 2
Leading up to our stop in India, all of the students had been told repeatedly that India is like nowhere else in the world, that it evades description, that it will change us forever. I don’t know about the last part, but it is definitely the most ‘alien’ place I’ve been to yet. Michael and I decided to eschew visiting Delhi, like most of the other students, because we wanted to get away from the chaos and the heat both of which had been constant throughout all of the cities in Southeast Asia and even more-so in Chennai as we quickly found out. Instead we planned to go to Ooty, formerly a British hill station where the British who ran the state of Tamil Nadu would escape from the sweltering heat of summer in Madras (now called Chennai). Ooty is located in the Nilgiri mountains which are famous for tea and eucalyptus oil.
After waiting in line in the sweltering heat for 45 minutes we got another rickshaw that took us to the hotel. The driver absolutely insisted on waiting until we finished eating after which he would take us shopping. By the time we got to the hotel my nose and eyes were full of dirt and grit. Apparently there are no automobile emission regulations in India and as a result its major cities are the most polluted in the world. Chennai made Beijing’s air seem clean by comparison and yet Chennai has ¼ the population of Beijing. To make matters worse, in India everyone uses their horns all of the time. In the U.S. using your car horn is strongly discouraged but in India you can be ticketed for not using it in some cases. Since rickshaws are open on the sides a ride through Chennai resulted in a pounding headache from the car exhaust fumes and the constant squealing of horns.
We arrived in Coimbatore in the evening, picked a random hotel in our Lonely Planet guidebook and checked in. We chose it because it was right across the street from the train station, if it wasn’t for that we probably would have left. The paint was peeling off the walls of the bathroom and the bed was rock-hard due to the paper-thin mattress. This was also the first time we experienced Indian hospitality which is so ridiculous that it becomes annoying. A boy showed us to our room, explained how to turn the lights on with a switch on the wall, showed us where the bathroom is, and turned on the TV for us. It was nice of him but I’m sure we could have figured it out by ourselves.
The train ride however, was torture. Spending seven hours in a tiny train car meant for five with nine other people is not something I’d like to repeat. The Indians we shared the car with were friends from a local town who decided to take the train together to Ooty. They spend most of the trip laughing and talking loudly. They had an interesting concept of personal space. When one of them wanted to stretch out their legs they would just lay on the others or insist you spread your legs a bit so they could put their feet on your seat opposite them. Celine spent the entire trip obviously upset and when one of the Indian men kept looking at the tags on her backpack she would glare at him.