Monday, July 31, 2006

Mostar

After Sarajevo, I stopped in the small town of Mostar on my way down to Dubrovnik in Croatia. Mostar was a great little town with and old section of cobbled streets lined with market shops and cafes, all surrounding a very striking bridge across the emerald green river. I had only intended to stay in Mostar for a day, two at the most, but got stuck there for 3 days due to a very sparse bus schedule.

Unfortunately, expensive, and few internet cafes have prevented me from being able to upload any photos and videos, but there are a lot to come...

Photos: Mostar
Video: Mostar at Night

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Sarajevo

After initially planning on just passing through Bosnia, I was convinced to stop off for a few days in Sarajevo if I could spare them. I have to admit, I was very pleasantly surprised. Sarajevo lies in a valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides completely covered in lush vegetation; very picturesque.

The first day was spent lounging after the long, sleepless bus ride. The hostel was very well placed directly next to a tastey, cheap bakery and across the street from a square that`s part of the old town containing lots of cafes. The coffee here is excellent, I`ve been lapping up the cappacinos, and I don`t even really like coffee.

I spent the second day on a tour that talked a lot about the war with the Serbs (pictures are forthcoming). We visited a tunnel that was built to connect Sarajevo with outer Bosnia for ferrying of supplies, men, etc. We saw the sniper alley where people were constantly gunned down by serbs in the hills, and visited the Jewish grave yard used by the snipers. It was very disturbing and and disconcerting to hear first hand account of the war, and especially the total and utter failure of the UN in so many different areas.

Last night I arrived in Mostar, a small town 2 1/2hrs south of Sarajevo, for a brief stop over before heading to Dubrovnik in Crotia tomorrow morning.

Photos: Sarajevo
Video: Sarajevo Panorama

Monday, July 24, 2006

Bus`n it to Sarajevo

I am beginning to realize exactly how spoiled I was by the bus rides in Turkey...

I knew that the bus ride to Sarajevo wasn`t going to be pretty, but apparently my expectations weren`t quite low enough. The ride involved taking one bus across the border with Serbia, over to Nish (about 5hrs) where I would transfer to another bus to continue on to Sarajevo (about 9hrs). Things started out decent enough, the bus from Sofia to Nish, while a bit old, was pretty roomy and had pretty good AC. The 5hrs passed fairly quickly with the help of my iPod.

We got to Nish, had a brief respite before boarding bus number two. I boarded to find seats with half the leg room of an economy class alirline seat, no AC, and prison guard style spot lights to light the walk way from above, strategically positioned to shine directly through ones eyelids no matter how tightly they were held shut. Needless to say, the 9hr ride was a sweat soaked, knee and neck dabilitating journey...I tried to look at it as `training` for Africa.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Last night in Sofia

After dearest mom took off, I decided to stick around Sofia for one more day/night and do a little reading/writing and take it easy for a bit longer before shoving off once more. I thought it would be relativly easy to get a spot in a hostel, but stopping by the recommended `hostel mostel´ I was sorely mistaken as they were booked for days, but kindly directed me to the `hostel sofia´ down the road.

While not the cleanest or most spacious hostel I´ve stayed in, by any means, hostel sofia was cozy with friendly people. I thought it was going to be a calm, relaxed evening until I discovered that there was an extremely emaciated, chain smoking (with smokers cough to match), racist extremist, bulgarian woman amongst the rest of the averagely docile backpackers. Having blocked out her racial shouts at the TV for over an hour, I decided to call it an early night. It was only once I´d crawled into bed and had just fallen asleep that an incredibly loud, flemy smokers cough roused me with the realization that the woman was staying in our room! The rest of the night was spent unsuccessfully trying to block out the wince inducing cough, with scattered glimpses of sleep surprising me now and then.

And then it was off to Sarajevo...

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Review: The Clash of Fundamentalisms

I finally made it all the way through Adam's book: 'The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity' by Tariq Ali. It was definately not quite what I was expecting, which was more an emphasis on the 'clash' part and the history/evolution of that aspect. He certainly discusses this in the book but not to the extent I was hoping.

The primary emphasis (2/3 to 3/4 of the book) is on Islam and it's history: how Islam came about and it's evolution and disection into what we have today. There is a lot of explanation of the formation of the various Arab states as well as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Kashmir which I found absolutely fascinating and enlightening, seeing as I knew nothing about all of that prior to reading this book. This information alone made the book a worthwhile read, despite serveral dry sections where lots and lots of names are thrown around, which are hard to remember. I should probably mention that Tariq Ali is an atheist with a 'cultural' Islamic upbringing, so most of his discussion of Islam through out the book is from this perspective and discusses Islams formation as a political tool.

I was a bit disappointed with his discussions of 'A brief history of US Imperialism', which lacked the comprehensiveness of the aforementioned discussion of Islam and also saw a far amount of 'soap boxing' which was tiresome. There was also a section 'thrown in' at the end about Indonesia's 'history' as related to and an explanation for the bombings in Bali, which I thought was entirely unnecessary and would have better served being left out with more attention paid to 'US Imperialism'.

In any case I would definately recommend giving it a read if you have an interest in a unique perspective/explanation of Islam as relates to the middle east and India/Pakistan and can manage not getting bogged down with all of the names.

Bulgaria

After 4 1/2 weeks in Turkey it was finally time to take off and head towards Croatia. After a 12hrs on a bus, and 4hrs stuck crossing the border into Bulgaria, I finally arrived in Sofia where I have been taking it easy and catching up with my mom who is here on business for a few days. I have to admit, its been quite nice to stay in a hotel, have a nice piping hot shower, big meals with pork, and pretty much do nothing. We did manage to get out and go see 'Pirates of the Caribbean' last night, which was fun...I've still got to catch 'Superman' though.

Mom was nice enough to bring me a fresh supply of books to keep me busy for a while: Blindness by Jose Saramago, and The Arabs and The Africans both by David Lamb. I also managed to get a copy of Shantaram from Audible.com, which should keep me busy for a while. I'll post reviews as I finish the books.

I'll wrap up my time in Bulgaria in the next couple of days and head through Serbia and Bosnia over to Croatia and then work my way up the coast an into Slovenia over the next several weeks, at least that's the plan so far...

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Hamam

Well...Adam and I finally managed to make it to a Turkish bath (hamam), and what a bath it was...

I guess at a basic level it was similar to a child being bathed by his mother: one small helpless individual in a new place being cleaned, via splashing water, by another large odd looking individual speaking in a strange tongue, only in this case 'mom' was a big, sweaty, incredibly hairy turkish man, the place: a hot marble room, and the tongue turkish.

Adam and I arrived at the Haman not really knowning what lay in store. With some hand gesturing we gathered that we needed to go change into towels, after which we were ushered into a room with a large marble 'table' in the middle, at a balmy 115+ fahrenheit. Inside this room was a small sauna (at 130 fahrenheit) which we decided to check out for a few mins, but I wasn't able to last long at that temperature. After waiting on the host marble slab for 15-20 mins our big turkish bathers came and took us into another, slightly cooler room, where the fun began.

They started by dousing us with copious amounts of warm water and rubbing us down with some kind of 'exfoliating glove', not unlike sandpaper. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of dead skin that literally came of in big rolls from my neck, back, arms, legs, etc. Every now and then they would throw in a hard slap on the back for good measure. After a bit more rinsing they lathered up the palmolive soap bar for the washing: he jerked my arms, lifted my legs, flipped me on to my stomach, and generously dug his nails deep into my scalp to make sure no dirt possibly remained.

Then it was time for the 'massage', which turned out not to be so much a massage in the traditional sense as it was a beating. After a bit more arm jerking to make sure I was good and loose, he put me onto my back, crossed my arms over my chest and applied the full force of his 300+ pound heft...my back has never cracked so loudly or completely. But he was just getting started. He flipped me on to my stomach and started pounding away at my back to the point that my adam's apple was actually being smashed into the marble slab. Next he moved to the legs and solicited several winces as he burried his thumbs deeb in my ham strings and calves, all the while my knee caps close to shattering against the marble from the force. A few more bowls of water over the head and down the back and we were done, left to haul our bruised, albeit clean, bodies into a cold shower.

I have to say that it was one of the best experiences I had in Turkey, and would highly recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity. I'm hoping I can squeeze one in when I get back to Istanbul before heading to Africa. Unfortunately for all of us I wasn't able to take any pictures...

Shemales of Istanbul

Walking back to Adam's place of residence after dark on several occasions I noticed what looked like your garden variety prostitues on one street in particular. Upon consultation with Adam, I learned that these were in fact trans-sexuals. In itself, I guess this doesn't seem all that strange when considering how large of a city/society Istanbul is. It is a bit more strange however, when you consider that this is in the context of a predominantly muslim society. Adam and I are both curious to know how/why this practice of apparent trans-sexual prostitution seems to be culturally tolerated if not outrightly accepted by turks, especially when there don't appear to be any female prostitues. Eda, I will be curious to get your input.

Cheap Flights

Finding cheap flights has become a pretty important part of getting around between all of these different countries/cities. There are a lot of flight finding websites out there, but a few of the ones that I have found to be the best are: skyscanner, Kayak, Flights.com, and EasyJet (europe only).

Photo Recovery

Every now and then something happens to your memory card, you pull it out too early, static charge maybe, who know, but all of a sudden all of those photos that you've taken over several weeks are gone. Luckily this hasn't happend to me yet, but it has happened to several people I know. For those of you that may run into this problem I wanted to let you know about a great photo recovery tool, that my buddy Tien found: Photorec. Photorec does an amazing job of doing a low level scan of your memory card to search for photos. Unfortunately, the interface is DOS based, but it is pretty straight forward and easy to figure out. Hopefully this will save a few of you in the future.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Back in Istanbul

Its been a hectic last few days. Having spent a while traveling together it was time to leave Goreme and part ways with the folks I met on the blue cruise. We parted ways wednesday, with Kristen and Fernando heading west again to Pamukkale and then on to Greece, Andrew on his way to Syria and Kayley and I sharing a bus back to Istanbul with her continuing on to Switzerland/Germany.

Unfortunately, the Kebab I powered down before hopping on the bus back to Istanbul decided to make a second appearance several hours into the ride and resulted in several vomiting sessions on the bus in the wee hours of the morning. Lucky for all of us on board the elderly turkish man and his son sitting next to me had some spare plastic bags, so things didn't end up on the floor.

In any case, food poisoning and the inability to keep down any food/liquid has keep me fairly incapacitated for a couple of days, but I think I'm at the tail end now. I thought I'd make it out of Turkey without incident, but hopefully this will fortify my stomach a bit for the next country.

I did manage to visit the Topkapi Palace yesterday, but unfortunately some remnant lethary prevented me from taking any photos. I'll get back to that soon enough.

The next couple of days will be pretty laid back, but I am going to try and squeeze in a traditional turkish bath before heading out to meet my mom in Bulgaria.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Video: Open Air Museum

After a late night last night, and a sluggish start this morning we managed to drag ourselves to the Open Air Museum in Goreme as our last tourist stop before leaving. The Open Air Museum is a large collection of churches, chapels, monastery, convent built just outside of Goreme over the 11-13th centuries. Several of the churches contained incredible, bright frescos very well preserved due to the lack of light entering the church. Unfortunately many of the frescos have been damaged by vandals, and the eyes/mouth/faces scratched off by non-christians that settled in the area a a later date.

Photos: Open Air Museum

Sunset Over Goreme

After a relatively easy going day yesterday Fernando, Kristen, Kayley, Andrew and I hiked up to a hill behind our hostel to have some wine and watch the sunset over Goreme. The big jug-o-wine was more like vinegar, but the people were great and the sunset amazing.

Photos: Goreme Sunset

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Video: Ihlara Valley, Selime Monastery and the Camel Palace

From the Underground City we headed to the Ihlara Valley, which houses more than 200 churches built into the rock walls. We hiked down into and through the valley for an hour to a spot where lunch was provided.

After lunch we had a quick ride over to the Selime Monastery, a huge monastery built into the side of a hill which was used as Theological college. The monastery housed a couple thousand monks, hospital, stables, kitchens, library, etc.

From Selime we headed to a Camel Palace on the old Silk Route through Turkey. It was a place where traders could get free room and board for upto 3 days while traveling through turkey.

Photos: Goreme

Video: Underground City

Yesterday was a whirlwind 10hr tour around Cappadocia. We started at 9am and headed to one of the many underground cities in this area that were built by the Hitties as places to hide during attacks from invaders. Of the hundred or so cities in this area we visited the largest one which is 8 stories deep and could house 2000 people for upto 6 months. It was amazing to see what they were able to construct with probably little more than hammer and chisel: winery, chapel, school, defense systems, places for animals, kitchens, wells, etc...they thought of everything.

Video: Walk Through the Valley

Several folks from the Blue Cruise (Andrew, Fernando, Kristen, and Kayley) and I all left Olympos at the same time and headed to Goreme. We arrived in Goreme in central turkey a few days ago after a long, mostly sleepless overnight bus ride from Olympos. After deciding to stay at the 'Shoestring Cave Pension' (We are actually sleeping in a cave), we did some walking around town and then went for a 3+hr guided hike through the Pigeon Valley, Honey Valley, White Valley and Love Valley.

It was nice to get out and do some hiking after a few lethargic days. The rock formations were amazing, and a lot of the landscape reminded me of Utah/Arizona. Some of the unique formations are the fairy chimneys, and giant love sticks.

Chimaera

In the last post, I kinda forgot to mention what exactly Chimaera is. Up above the small beach town of Olympos, Chimaera is a hill which has a large number of naturally occurring flames, caused by some kind of methane based gas seeping out of the ground and bursting into flame due to the pressue loss (I believe). What's amazing is that these flames have been burning for a few thousand years apparently...never ending flames.

We did a night hike upto Chimaera while in Olympos and it was pretty amazing to see these natural flames all over the hill side. It was good to get a little exercise in the hike up the mountain, after being on the boat doing nothing for several days.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Video: Flames at Chimaera

Video: View from the Boat

Blue Cruise Days 1-4

I spent another day in Fethiye, walking along the water and taking it easy. I met up with Eda at the 'Lykia World' resort for some lunch and sea kayaking which was a lot of fun. Tuesday (July 4) I caught the boat for the cruise over to Olympos.

Day 1: The cruise was a great time, and finally gave me a chance to soak up some needed sun and enjoy as much clear, blue (albeit incredibly salty) water as I desired. The original plan called for stopping in the Blue Lagoon and Butterfly Valley (the primary spots I had been told were a must see) on the first day, unfortunately, due to some issues with the boat, or something of the sort, we didn't actually get rolling until after 2pm, which meant that we had to skip both of those and head straight for our over night spot in St Nicolaus bay. We spent the first evening sending messages back and forth to a neighboring boat, via bottle, and met them on their boat later that night for some socializing.

Day 2: Unfortunately, the cruise was so relaxing, that I have to confess I don't really remember much about the specific ports of call that we visited each day. Other than the fact that day 2 started at 5am with 4+ hours of motoring to our next spot, it (like the other days) is mainly recalled as being full of blue water swimming and jagged, rocky land. We did visit Kas on day 2 (I believe): a really nice small town, with great, friendly people, and good food.

Day 3: On day 3 we broke down...and were stuck in a small port for about 24 hours while the oil pump was replaced. Fortunately, we had such a great group of easy going, and relaxed people that we spent the day jumping off the boat and playing cards, before heading to the 'smugglers inn' at night to celebrate a fellow passengers birthday (fernando) with some dancing and mingling.

Day 4: On day 4 we visited and swam in the pirate's cave and around a few more bays before heading to shore around 2pm to catch the mini-bus to Olympos (turns out the cruise doesn't actually go all the way, as one might believe by the 'Fethiye to Olympos' title).

Photos: Blue Cruise

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Downtime in Selcuk

Yesterday was a needed rest day. Having been on more than my fair share of buses since Monday, and going through a bit of 'ruins overload' I ended up spending the day hanging out with a canadian couple also staying at 'Jimmys Place' that I met the day before on the free ride to Ephesus.

We spent the day hopping from one eatery to the next consuming meatball sanwiches, tea, baklava, hummus, and copious amounts of water to help stave off the incessant heat (something that later caught up with me on my late night bus ride). During all of this consumption, they shared some of their travel stories with me. Sebastian spent 8 months in South East Asia several years ago and offered some helpful tips, including how to handle the use of the 'water gun' when no toilet paper is around. He also told me about a fascinating trip spent walking through the giant sand dunes of Tunisia for a 5 days, something that I have definately added to my list for some point in the future. He emphasized bringing my own sleeping bag for such a trip, as his friend got stuck sleeping in the 'blankets' they put between the camel and the cargo during the day!

After the leisurely day, I grabbed a late night bus to Fethiye and arrived at 3:30am, quite a bit earlier than the stated ETA of 6am...not a good thing. I'll spend the next day or so here before taking a 4 day/3 night cruise over to Olympos.