Whirlwind tour of Cyprus

So from Tel Aviv it was just an hour flight to the city of Paphos, on the far West side of the island. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Cyprus. I had only learned last year that most of the island was Greek while the northeast part of the island is occupied by Turkey. Although as a tourist you can move freely between the sides. That’s important because I wanted to get over to the Turkish side to see how the poker games were! As for Paphos, I knew absolutely nothing about the city itself, except that it would have beaches. And sometimes it’s kind of nice to travel like that, not exactly knowing what to expect and just figuring it out as you go. It turns out that Cyprus isn’t particularly cheap, so I booked a hostel for the first night.

Getting through the Paphos airport was extremely easy. The swiftness at which the immigration guys were stamping passports was impressive; you’d almost think they were racing each other. Quite the difference from Israel! Once out of the airport they had a clearly marked bus stop, with a timetable even! The taxi guys around didn’t even try once to convince us that the bus wasn’t running! I liked Cyprus already. The bus was 1.50 euro and once in town I walked the 10 minutes to my hostel. What I didn’t realize was this was the type of hostel with no real reception. There was a number to call, but I just arrived and didn’t have a SIM card. Yarrgh.

To my surprise the door was unlocked and I was just able to walk right in. I found a guy staying there who told me the owner of the hostel also owned a restaurant, so that’s where I might find him. Alrighty then. That would be helpful to include on the sign outside! I found the restaurant, asked for Christos, and sure enough he came and out and got me set up in the hostel. As I would find out, Cyprus isn’t a big backpacker destination and running a hostel there is a very laid back affair! It’s basically just homeowners putting a bunch of bunk beds in a house or apartment and being like, ok, you can sleep here. They give you the key and then you’re on your own! That’s fine with me.

Paphos is an interesting little town. It’s very British! It reminded me a lot of one of the beaches in Goa that was popular with the British pensioners. Lots of pubs, older feel good music (they kept playing Build me up Buttercup by the Foundations!), soccer matches on all the TVs, and signs advertising full English breakfast, bangers and mash, and Sunday roast specials and the like. It seemed like a pleasant place. Although as a travel rule of thumb, towns that are popular destinations for retirees are generally not where I want to spending extended periods of time!

I got in a bit late so I had a gyro and a beer and went back to the hostel. The two guys in my room turned out to be British Ministers doing a quick religious holiday in Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. They just had a wonderful day following in the footsteps of some saint that I can’t remember the name of. One of them noted that British tourists here were just absolutely dreadful! I couldn’t help but laugh at how he said it. Just so British. I wondered what they thought of my gambling related reasons for coming to Cyrpus! But they very nice guys. It did seem a bit weird they were staying in a hostel though.

I had seen some shops that rented out scooters, which I was pumped about because I hadn’t been able to rent one this entire trip. And there were supposed to be some nice, deserted beaches up the coast. I guess Sunday is a bad day to try and rent scooters because the first few shops I had found were closed. I was beginning to see a trend about Greeks, err Cypriots, and how they run their businesses… I finally found one that was open and he said I couldn’t rent one without a valid motorcycle license. Fortunately I had passed my motorcycle class in the US and my license says D (for car) and M (for motorcycle), but he only knew British and European licenses, not American ones, so he was worried if I got into a crash that he’d still be liable. So he wouldn’t rent me the stupid scooter. Not even a 50cc one! Agh. Stuff like this is why I like traveling in SE Asia! I would have been in and out of that shop in 2 minutes all set to cruise. I still could have rented a car, but that’s boring and a little expensive for my liking, so looks like I’d have to share the local beach with the dreaded Tourists. UGH! I’m kidding, but only slightly.

The nice thing about Cyprus is besides from the beaches there are lots of historic buildings around. Forts, castles, churches, monasteries, there’s that sorta stuff in or around every city you go. Paphos had a big Roman amphitheater, plus various other crumbling piles of stuff. But at this point in the trip I was pretty burnt out on ruins, so I gave them a pass. I’m sure they were lovely though! The beach was nice enough, nothing amazing, the water was blue etc. I’m kind of just going through the motions at this point. I went out that night with a massive Aussie guy and a little French girl from the hostel, but decided I wasn’t gonna stick around much longer.  

In the morning I was eastbound on a bus for a few hours and ended up in a city called Limassol. Where Paphos was a resort city, Limassol was more of a real city city, but it didn’t exactly have a lot going on. The hostel was once again a bit weird, basically just some guy’s house with bunk beds in the rooms, mostly empty. A Dutch guy and I went to the fort which is like the main thing to do in town, but it’s not very big and you can’t even go in it, so it’s pretty lame. The waterfront promenade was nice I guess. The highlight of our night was the local meat place. My meal was just a pile of sliced pork with raw onions, tomatoes, tzatziki sauce, and fries. Basically a gyro with out the pita. The Dutch guy had similar, but his was in a Cypriot pita, which is thinner, crispier, and much bigger than a Greek pita. It looked spectacular!

I was off again the next day, this time to Nicosia, the capital, where I could walk across the border into the Turkish side of Cyprus. The city of Nicosia is somewhat interesting, the old town is basically split right down the middle by a wall, separating the two halves. In one spot you can cross on foot from one side to the other. I guess back in the day this wasn’t so easy, but nowadays the border completely open. You don’t get stamped in Turkish side. The one caveat is that you have to fly in or out of whatever side you came in on, so you can’t fly into the Turkish side and leave through the Cypriot side. The Turkish side only has flights to/from Turkey because technically Turkey is the only country in the world that formally recognizes that Turkish Cyprus exists!

The crossing was easy, I meandered the streets on the Turkish old town a bit, noting the considerably lower prices, and found my way to gate where the buses hang out. I’m very glad to be traveling so light this trip, it makes things like this soooo much easier than if I were lugging my big ass backpack! I hopped on the bus to Kyrenia, which is where most of the casinos are in Northern Cyprus. I walked 15 minutes and found my hostel, which AGAIN was just a dudes’ house turned into hostel. This one was even sillier, as the dormitory area was basically just bunk beds on either side of the living room with some curtains drawn across for some privacy. And in this case the guy and his brother lived there together as well, so you’d wake up every morning to them chatting over breakfast in the kitchen which was adjacent to the “dorms”.  It definitely felt more like crashing on someone’s couch as opposed to being in a hostel.

No matter though, I was only there for the poker! The main casino for poker, which hosts big tournaments every couple of months was the Merit Crystal Cove. I had heard some good things about the cash games here, so I was looking forward to this. It was a bit outside of town, so I hopped in a dolmus (Turkish minibus) and took it up the main coastal road to the entrance (well 15 min walk to the entrance). (Only $1 for a bus ride vs $12 taxi!) When I found my way to the poker room things didn’t look so promising. There were absolutely no cash games at all! The only thing running was satellite tournament to win an entry to some sort of tournament in Bulgaria. I bought some chips and waited at the cash game table for a good two hours before calling it quits. Yeesh!

I took a taxi to another casino that I heard had poker, but I couldn’t find anything. I came all the way to Cyprus for this?! The next day I went back to the Merit casino and we ended up getting a game going 5-handed. It was an incredibly boring game, just some poker regulars who were only playing in the hopes that the new guy (me) was a fish. I ended up getting unlucky in a few spots and was a loser for the night, so I guess I was the fish! But it was certainly not a game worth sticking around for, so I left the next day.

I booked myself a flight to Bangkok, but I had two nights to kill before that, so I headed to another beach resort type city called Ayia Napa on the SE corner of the Cypriot part. This was supposed to be the big party place on the island, but October is getting into off season, so it was pretty chill. I was the only person in my hostel. Another day of hanging out at the beach by myself, yay! This was the Russian hangout, it certainly felt similar to Goa! I spent two extremely uneventful nights there and then flew to Thailand via Bahrain. So that was the anticlimactic end to my whirlwind week in Cyprus. It really wasn’t my favorite place, although I was definitely feeling some travel burnout, and more or less bee-lining it to the get the poker games. So my somewhat negative opinion isn’t completely fair. Plus the best way to do Cyprus is to rent a car and circumnavigate the island, because there’s lots of cool places around that you need your own transportation to get to. So now I know for next time! I’d spend one night in Bangkok and then back to Cambodia to start making some money, hopefully!

Into Israel

From Amman I went to the bus terminal and found a shared taxi to take me the border. On the Jordan side we had to wait over an hour to take a bus which takes us across the no-man’s land and over to the Israel side. I heard that you might get interrogated quite a bit by the Israeli security guys, especially if you’re a brown person or you’ve visited a lot of muslim countries. Immigration asked me a couple of questions about what I was doing in Jordan, why I was coming to Israel and who I was seeing, and that was all. It was a breeze! I had already met a few people so far who certainly did not have the same experience!

Once you’re across the border it’s an easy bus ride through Palestine into Jerusalem where I found my hostel outside of the old town. Hostels in Israel are really nice and well run, although they better be, for $30/night to sleep in a dorm room. Hostels are everywhere in Jerusalem, presumably because hotel prices are so high. Israel is definitely not a budget destination! Just walking around and seeing the prices it felt like being in Perth all over again! However you can find falafel and pita places on the street that are pretty cheap and shockingly good. I feel like I’ve only had mediocre falafel my whole life, so this was eye opening!

falafel in pita, not my photo

In the morning I woke up nice and early to go see the old city before the crowds of tourists arrived. Jerusalem is fantastic early in the morning! All the tourists shops are closed and the only people around are the actual inhabitants of the city, many of which are kids on their way to school, muslims and orthodox jews alike. The city has four quarters, the Muslim quarter, the Christian quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Jewish quarter. So it’s fun to wander around and see the differences in each of these places and the various mosques, churches and synagogues. Highlights include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was crucified, the western wall (aka the wailing wall) which is where all the orthodox Jews go to pray, and the Temple on the mount, which is the 3rd holiest place in Sunni Islam, but also has religious significance for Jews and Christians as well. It’s controlled by Jordan, but protected by Israeli security forces and technically non-muslims are not allowed to pray there. It’s only open a few hours a day to non-muslims, so it can get crowded during those hours!

Before all the shops open up

the Temple Mount

orthodox jews at the western wall

Jerusalem is surprisingly small. You can walk around it all in a few hours. Once it gets to mid morning the tourist stalls start to open up and you get these large groups of people doing religious tours through the city. It’s very popular with Christians of course, following in the footsteps of Jesus. In Jerusalem you can stop at each of the Stations of the Cross, and the groups are usually carrying around a big wooden cross from place to place and singing hymns. It’s interesting to watch! The finale is the Church of the Sepulchure. It also has the empty tomb where he was said to have been buried and resurrected from. Although nobody knows for sure exactly where he was buried. But  for Christians  there’s loads of important holy places. Walking around you can see groups of Americans, Mexicans, Italians, French, Spaniards, Filipinos, Indians, Africans, you name it! People from all over the world. There’s so many tours going on that the intersections on the main walking routes turn into traffic jams. Like in most places, once the tour groups start rolling in, I start rolling out. I’d come back in late afternoon once the crowds had thinned out.

cross bearers

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

the most random shop in Jerusalem. Roll Tide!

In Jerusalem I also made a trip to the Palestinian side to see Bethlehem. It’s easy to take a bus. The Palestinians have to go through security checks, but for tourists you just flash your passport and that’s it. The Palestine side isn’t too much different, but you can tell it’s a bit poorer, buildings are more run down, there’s no high end art stores and retail shopping like in the Jerusalem downtown. The cab drivers waiting outside the bus are annoying and leave a bad impression on some people who aren’t used it, but after being in Egypt these guys seemed almost pleasant. It’s a 15 minute walk to the Church of the Nativity and the Milk Grotto, where it is said that while Mary was was nursing baby Jesus, a few drops fell to ground and turned everything white! A true miracle! It was a pleasant place though. I wandered around town for two hours or so before going back to the bus. The overload of religious stuff isn’t all that captivating to me. A British guy on the bus, who didn’t seem to really like the Palestinian side, muttered, “That’s not God’s country, Israel is God’s country”. Sure buddy, I wonder what that means. But it obviously doesn’t have God’s people, because according to his religion, 97% of Israeli residents will be burning in hell for being non-believers. Ouch.

the milk grotto

make it rain on baby jesus

Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

One of things I found interesting in Jerusalem was that it draws in quite a bit of a different traveler type crowd than in most places, ie the very religious kind. It’s kind of awkward talking to some of these people about Jerusalem because for them it has such a deep, spiritual meaning and for me it’s mostly more sightseeing. I talked to some Americans doing a pilgrimage that they’d been planning for two years; they seemed a bit miffed that I was talking about Jerusalem in such a nonchalant manner, like it was just another place on my trip and I didn’t only have absolutely glowing things to say about everything there!

To be honest, I really didn’t like the majority of Americans I met on this trip, mostly the ones in the hostels I stayed. Normally when traveling, it’s extremely difficult to find Americans who are full-on Trump supporters. They’re like unicorns. Unicorns with lots of cognitive dissonance. Israel is a little different though, between conservative American Christians and Zionist leaning Jews, the religious right is alive and well here, so it’s not uncommon to find Trump slappies. The current state of Israel’s zionism and Trumpism are eerily similar. And with an ever frightening world consisting mostly of 3rd world shitholes and the socialist hellscape that is Europe, Israel appears to be a Safespace! It was pretty annoying in the hostels because there would always be one vocal right wing nut job who would get into an argument with the whole table, which of course would never go anywhere, and everyone at the whole table would eventually just throw up their hands in exasperation. Seriously, convincing these people of anything rooted in facts is just not worth it, might as well be talking to a brick wall. Sigh.

I spent three nights in Jerusalem and then took the bus to Tel Aviv. Originally I was going to go to the Dead Sea but I was getting a bit worn out from traveling and it seems like nobody really even swims in the sea because it’s too salty; it’s mostly just a 5 minute photo-op floating on the water. So I took a pass. To Tel Aviv it was an easy one hour bus ride. I decided to walk the mile or so from the bus station to my hostel. It wasn’t exactly the nicest part of town, but it had character. Lots of little run down grocers and bakeries and Jewish flags. It reminded me of walking around the Lower East Side in NYC. It also surprised me how diverse Tel Aviv is. I was kind of expecting to see all white people, but that was not the case!

The hostel I was staying was quite the sight, it was more like an interactive apartment complex than a hostel! It was five stories, complete with multiple common areas, a small library, a work space, two bars, a rooftop terrace, etc. Impressive! $35 for a dorm though. Nobody wants to pay for a hotel in Tel Aviv though. I met a couple cool guys in my room, an Israeli now living in London, an Aussie from Sydney, and another American that I mentioned before, the Spanish Jew from Houston. This guy was hilarious, he’s 39 and his sole intention of coming to Tel Aviv was to pick up Jewish chicks. When someone asked him if he traveled much, he was like “yea man, I was in PCB (Panama City Beach, Alabama) last year!” I almost spit out my drink! It’s hilarious because absolutely nobody outside of the US would ever know what PCB is, and that someone over 22 would actually consider going there! It really is an awful town, and I would know because I went there not once, but twice for Spring Break! But anyway, it was going to be a good couple of days with this group.

The first night we just hung out at the rooftop where they had happy hour, which meant $4 beers. Most nights they’re $8 a glass. Yikes. Another American from New York invited himself to our table and he was quick to interject when someone made a Trump joke. We later found out he thinks any mainstream news source is liberal propaganda, 3,000,000 illegal immigrants voted in California, everyone on welfare is lazy or a cheat, we need to arm the populace, Trump is a genius who also has genuinely cares about the average American, and that the sky is in fact purple. We couldn’t get rid of this guy fast enough! Need a fly swatter, jeeez.

The next day was beach day. It was 25 minutes walking to the beach. The ocean was nice and warm and it was 80 and sunny, so it was a relaxing, cheap afternoon. Tel Aviv is indeed a very pleasant city. That evening we all paid $20 to go on the hostel run pub crawl where you go to 5 different bars, skip the lines, and includes a ‘free’ shot at each place. The shot is Raki, which is a licorice tasting abomination. Beers at the bars cost something like $12 each and I don’t even want to look at my credit card to see how much money I spent, because it’s not going to be pretty. But all the bars were fun and lively with lines down the street, so the nightlife is definitely strong in Tel Aviv! I don’t know how all these young people can afford it!

The next day was hangover day and we made it out to the port and the old town of Jaffa in the late afternoon, which is the Arab area. We took it easy that night, except for the guy from Houston who was still on a mission to pick up girls, so he went out to Israel’s biggest club, as he couldn’t bear the thought of going to Tel Aviv and not going to the biggest club in the Middle East! And that was basically it for Tel Aviv for me! I flew out the next day to Cyprus for $18! They did give me a little hassle at the airport, asking me all about all the muslim countries I have in my passport, which is like 10 of them, but it was less than 10 minutes and I was free to go. Time to find some poker action and start making some money!

boats in the port in Jaffa

Jordan: Petra and Wadi Rum

I’m skipping over Cairo for now because I already had this typed up.

From Cairo I flew to the capital city of Jordan, Amman, but I didn’t stick around, instead taking a taxi to the southern bus terminal where I was able to catch a minibus to Wadi Musa, the city right outside of Petra. There’s really not much to the city, but it’s got some good views over looking the rock formations that Petra is carved out of. There’s also a little bit of sticker shock involved after being in Turkey and Egypt for so long! Jordan is quite a bit more expensive than those countries. I used to be able to eat on the street for a $1 or 2, now it would minimum $7 or $8 and $15 for any meat dish in a restaurant. Same with shisha, that went from costing $1 or $2 to ~ $8. And the beer! In Wadi Musa I paid $9 for a draft beer, my god!

Wadi Musa

The next morning I woke nice and early to get to Petra before all the crowds. It’s shocking how few people are around! First you walk 15 minutes down a gravel path which leads to the entrance of the Siq, which is the grand walkway through the rock canyon. It reminded me a lot of the caverns in Zion national park known as the narrows! 20 minutes later and you reach can see a sliver of the Treasury, peaking through a slit in the canyon walls. The Treasury is the photo that everyone has seen of Petra, the ornate columns carved into the rose colored rock. And it’s gorgeous! Like most of these famous historical monuments, I’m usually thinking something like “wow that’s pretty cool” but I’m never like completely blown away or anything like that. It is a very impressive feat of architecture though, and extremely well preserved. Also, what most people don’t realize is that the site of Petra is huge and the Treasury is only a small part of it. There’s lots of other things to see and hikes abound!

I hiked a steep uphill trail that gives you good views of everything around, and the whole time I had the place almost all to myself. On the way down there are all sorts of various tombs cut into the rock, which are kind of eery. There’s not really anything in them though. I should mention that the site of Petra was home to a group of people called the Nabateans who thrived as spice traders until they eventually were taken over by the Romans in 100 AD, who incorporated it into their empire. The city declined in power quickly under Roman rule and mostly abandoned a few hundred years later. It was mostly forgotten about by the west and was ‘rediscovered’ in 1812 by Jean Louis Burkhardt, a Swiss traveler and archaeologist. How cool would that be?! It wasn’t until the 1920’s that the site was properly excavated.

So after a full morning of hiking I was pretty tired and looped around back to the Treasury around 10am, where at this time it was a complete zoo, tour groups everywhere with their little flags, Bedouins selling souvenirs and camel rides; time for me to go! I took my afternoon siesta and returned to Petra for the sunset where I wanted to do one of the hikes to get a nice view of Petra from above. One of the Bedouins was trying to talk to me/sell me stuff and I basically just completely ignored him (which is obviously rude but it’s the easiest way to avoid dealing with these people) then where the steps to the trail started he jumped in front me and said I couldn’t go up without a guide. This was of course complete BS. I told him to move or I’d get the tourist police, but that didn’t phase him.  Eventually someone, who I think worked there, came over to intervene in our standoff. He was saying that I’d offended the dude and it would be best for everyone if I did the hike another time. I rolled my eyes at this, but acquiesced. Better than getting pushed off a cliff by angry Bedouins I guess. Although I don’t have that much time in Petra! It’s ridiculous to me that I can’t do a hike because some snowflake Bedouin can’t handle a tourist giving him the cold shoulder! But there you have it. I still got some nice photos anyhow.  

The next day I took the morning bus to a place called Wadi Rum, which is an expansive desert area in the far south of Jordan. The mini-bus takes you to the village on the edge of the desert and from there you can book a desert camp and organize a jeep tour. I booked one night in a popular camp online and I just figured I’d get to the desert camp first and organize a tour with people that were already there. But I was told the jeep tour had to start in the village (this was a complete lie, ha!) The guy tried to get me to go on a solo tour, which was very very expensive, and I asked if there were any group tours I could just join in, and he said there weren’t, just private tours. The place is not set up very well for solo travellers! Although he was being deliberately misleading about how difficult it was to group up with other travellers. I ended up waiting around in the office and eventually found an American guy and Chinese girl to do the trip with. Easy!

The Wadi Rum desert is spectacular! It has the look of a normal desert but with these massive sandstone rock formations that jut out from the sand. It’s very photogenic. They filmed the Martian here as well a few other Sci-Fi flicks. Unfortunately on the jeep tour we joined in what was basically a caravan of other jeep tours seeing all the tourist attractions, which just aren’t very impressive. So you’ve got this whole massive desert to drive around and you end up stuck in this horde. Lame! At the end you find a secluded spot for sunset at least, which was marvelous. Then they take you into the desert camp. The camps are fun, it’s a very social atmosphere, and they make a big buffet dinner and have some guys sing some Bedouin songs. Then you can sleep in your tent (it’s more like a bungalow) or take out a sleeping pad and sleep under the stars, which is what I did. Then in the morning if you wake up early you’ve got time for a little walk around near the camp, breakfast, and it’s back to the village. So it was a nice little excursion, despite some of the unsavory sales tactics.

I headed back to Wadi Musa and had one more afternoon to explore Petra. I hiked up to another rock carved edifice called the monastery and later on went up to a another viewpoint overlooking the Treasury. It’s a pretty popular spot as it’s the best place to get those perfect Instagram selfies. It was mildy entertaining watching a cute Turkish girl take photos of herself for a good 20 minutes straight. Meanwhile two Chinese girls in nice dresses were waiting and applying some make-up. After the Turkish girl finally moved one walked to the ledge and hopped over the cliff face! Unbeknownst to be me there was a tiny little ledge where you just had enough room to sit, feet dangling over the ledge, making for a nice photo. The Turkish girl, seeing the photo opportunity she had missed, got over her fears and climbed down to the spot as well. Anything for that killer Instragram shot!

The next day I was off to Amman, the capital of Jordan. It’s not known to be anything particularly exciting for tourists, but as far middle eastern cities are concerned its pretty nice looking, clean, orderly, fairly liberal and open minded. There is also a popular citadel on top of the hill overlooking the sandy colored buildings of Amman, but Google had led me astray, saying that it closed at 6pm. It turns out they kick you out at 6pm, but the gates actually close at 5:30. I got there at 5:35. Weak! Although I’d seen enough similar things in Turkey and Egypt that I wasn’t really that disappointed, as some of the others who arrived at the same time as me were. After non-stop moving around the last week the travel burnout had arrived! But no stopping yet, I would be off to cross the Israeli border to Jerusalem tomorrow!

Liveaboard Boat: A week out at sea

So when I was diving in Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh a lot people recommended that I dive down south as well, and the best way to do this is with a liveaboard boat, where you can pack in a lot of diving and get to some of the best dive locations far away from the coast. Most boats were all full but I was still able to find a boat with the itinerary I wanted (called BDE, Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone) just a week beforehand. Nice! That’s why I had one week to do the Nile Valley and then get back to the Red Sea coast.

So from Marsa Alam the taxi dropped me off at Port Ghalib, which is where all the liveaboards are docked. And there’s a lot of them! I was able to find my boat and meet some of the guides and crew. I was one of the first ones on board. Apparently the boat didn’t even leave until tomorrow morning (but you slept on it at night), so I had lots of time to explore the marina, which caters mostly to scuba divers and resort goers and is thus very pricey. The trip says it 8n/7d, but it’s pretty misleading as you spend the first day and night and the last day and a half docked in the harbor, so realistically its more like a 5d/6n trip. I also learned that 20 out of the 24 spots were going to be Spaniards. Yikes! If you’ve ever traveled with big groups of any southern europeans, you already know what that means. English is not going to spoken very often.

During the rest of the evening various parts our group filtered in, with the bulk being a diving club based in Madrid that were 16 arriving at 2am. My roommate was a South Korean guy, but his English wasn’t too great. The only other non-Spanish speakers on the boat were two Egyptian guys, about my age, who seemed pretty cool. One lived in Cairo and one lives in Dubai. The Egyptian guide was curious why I didn’t book with American oriented liveaboard, the Red Sea Aggressor. Not only did I not have any clue about the differences in the boats, I booked this trip last minute, so it’s not like I had a choice! I guess it was kind of lucky to be able to book this very popular itinerary so late, but the lack of English speakers was a pretty big bummer.

Then there was the equipment issue! For this liveaboard I wasn’t able to try on my equipment ahead of time, which normally an extremely easy process. In this case I had to send them my specs and they delivered the rental gear from Hurghada, 3 hours north. I asked what the plan was if something didn’t fit right (scuba masks can be tricky) and they said they’d ‘deal with it’. Well of course the mask didn’t fit as well as I’d like and the wetsuit was wayyyy too thick (the Red Sea is warm) and designed for someone who is like 6’6”. I looked like a kid in his dad’s clothes wearing that wetsuit. Ugh.

So obviously I wanted to a new wetsuit and they said that was the only one they brought. So when they said “we’ll deal with it” they really meant I would deal with it. For a whole week. Fun times. I even talked with Russian woman on the phone who was in charge of my equipment rental and instead of apologizing or providing some sort of solution she started getting angry with me for renting gear AND expecting it to fit! And this rental was not cheap! Ohh Russian customer service, just lovely. So that got me nowhere. There wasn’t much I could do but suck it up.

That morning we were off, poorly fitting equipment and all! The first day you don’t move too far, just doing some nice shallow, easy diving near the coast to make sure everyone knows what they’re doing. On live-aboards like this, most people are generally very experienced. I had about 150 dives under my belt, which seems like a decent amount, but that put me in the bottom third of experience level on the boat, with many guys (and girls) having several hundreds of dives, even into the thousands. I was also the only one on the whole boat to rent equipment, everyone else owned their own. Of course I was also the only person on the boat traveling for multiple months at a time! The others had flown to Egypt for a week or so specifically for this dive trip. The dives were good, although the groups were pretty big, but the night dive was especially cool because we saw some Spanish Dancers (coincidence in the name!) that are huge bright red nudibranches that only live in the Red Sea, and when they swim, they flap their whole bodies kind of awkwardly through the water, which is really mesmerizing to watch. All photos courtesy of my Egyptian friends.

blue spotted stingray

octopus

Spanish dancer

The boat drove all through the night and we woke up the next morning at a place called Daedalus. The reason these liveaboard trips are so popular is that they go to dive sites that are in the middle of the Red Sea which attracts big oceanic pelagics (sharks, mantas) that you don’t see too often along the coast. The big draw at Daedalus was supposed to be hammerheads. From the big boat you put on all your gear and board the rubber dinghies which then take you out the dive sites. You do what’s called a negative entry, where you have no air in your BCD, so when everyone falls backward off the dinghy you sink right away, then re-collect underwater and descend to go find some sharks.

The lighthouse at Daedalus

Unfortunately we got blanked on the sharks. We’d go down to 100 feet or so, where the sharks supposedly like to hang out, but each time we didn’t see any. Normally you’d look around for 10 minutes, swim out into the blue for a bit, and if you don’t see anything you ascend and do the rest of the dive along the reef wall. Although the reef isn’t particularly scenic, so once you don’t see any sharks the dive is a bit of disappointment. We did three dives and saw no sharks. I mean there’s still other interesting stuff, turtles barracudas, big tunas, some moray eels, what have you, but when you’re paying a lot of money to get out these remote dive sites you’re really hoping to see the big stuff! One of the guides said that 20 years ago this place was crawling with hammerheads, but now it’s much more difficult to find them. They suspect Yemeni fishermen killed a lot of them.

Next stop: Elphinstone. Once again, the boat drove all night and we awoke at 5:30 to a completely new dive site. We did three dives that day and once again, no sharks. Nada, zip, zero. It’s also annoying that all the liveaboard boats have the exact same schedules, they all leave the same day, all hit the same spots at the same time, and all return at the same time. Couldn’t they stagger these trips so you don’t have to compete with tons of other divers at the same time?! I get it, they want it so people can fly in for a week and fly out, but damn if your boat took off a day or two later or earlier than the rest of the pack, you’d have the places all to yourselves. Now you’re part of an underwater dive zoo. The reef at this site was at least more interesting than at Daedalus, and there was some more interesting things to see like the giant napoleon wrasses, but no sharkies! Mentally I was already preparing myself for the letdown of spending all this money on a completely sharkless trip. In addition to the letdown of the social atmosphere on the boat.

As predicted, being a non-Spanish speaker on this boat sucked big time. At first during meals I would sit at a table with the Spaniards, but it was mostly pointless. I would just sit there and eat quietly while everyone else spoke in Spanish. Occasionally I might pipe up and ask a question in English during a lull in conversation, which all the younger people understand just fine, get an answer, and then that’s it. Nobody really engaged me in any way, besides maybe asking what city I was from or something. Eventually me, the South Korean and the two Egyptians would all sit together at the outsiders table. The South Korean guy’s English was pretty awful, so it was mostly me talking to the Egyptian guys, who I liked. Thank god they didn’t only speak in Arabic!

Next dive site: The Brothers. Once again the boat drove all through the night to get there. The site is composed of two different columns reaching up to the surface, surrounded by reefs. One is called little brother and the other is big brother. We started at big brother, which also has two wrecks on it, from ships unprepared for incoming reef! We didn’t see any sharks at depth, but when we started getting closer to the surface there were a few oceanic whitetips that would circle around the liveaboards at around 15 feet. Finally! For safety, it’s important to stick together as a group and always stay below the sharks. If they attack (they rarely rarely attack humans, but if they do it’s always from below). If someone gets separated from the group sometimes a shark will swim up to them out of curiosity too see what’s up. You might have to try and kick them away with your fins. But for the most part they’re harmless. I stuck with the group! So that was pretty exciting, seeing the sharks for the first time on this trip! I’ve seen them before of course, but it’s always fun. 

The next day it was short ride to little brother. We awoke at  5:30am again and got the gear ready, went off in the dinghies, and headed down to 110 feet or so to see what was down there. Nothing at first. We just hung around for a while and our guide tapped his tank, pointed out into the blue, and flailed his arms out to the side, the universal signal for a manta ray! I couldn’t even see it at first , but sure enough after kicking a bit out into the blue, there it was, a massive manta gliding along. I’ve also seen mantas before, but I think this is the biggest one I’ve ever seen! And it liked the attention! It swam passed us, took a turn and swam back, and just for good measure it took one more turn and swam back past us one final time. Awesome. As we were slowly ascending we also saw a thresher shark much deeper than us. And then the oceanic white tips near the surface. Since our boat was divided into two groups we got to brag to them that we saw the manta.

The next dive we went to the same spot again. We saw some white tips at first and then one of the guys in our group pointed and put both hands into fists on both sides of his head, the sign for a hammerhead! It swam right below us, maybe twenty feet deeper than we were. For most of us (myself included) this was the first time seeing a hammerhead before, so it was pretty great. You could sense the excitement even underwater! It stayed for a minute or so underneath us and then headed back into the blue. One of the girls started doing a little jig underwater which was pretty funny. We got another glimpse of it out in the blue, and that was it. But then we also saw some more thresher sharks swimming below us, with their distinctive long tailfins. And then more white tips near the surface. So some great dives! On the dinghy ride back to the big boat some people were making the hammerhead signal to the guys back on the boat, which was met with shaking heads and extended middle fingers. We had been the lucky group again!

The Brothers, and more specifically little brother, had made up for any previous disappointment on the boat so far. Scuba diving is very similar to be on a safari, sometimes you drive around and don’t see anything at all. Sometimes you see some sporadic cool stuff, and every once in a while, it all hits you over the head at the same time.

We still had one more day of diving near the coast of Hurghada, which was nice, and we saw some more Spanish Dancers on the night dive, but it becomes a little blasé after all the great stuff we saw at the Brothers. Then we got into the port, and I could’ve stayed another night on the boat if I wanted to, but the Egyptian guys were bussing it back to Cairo, so I tagged along with them. At the bus station they hooked me up with an Uber to downtown and then we went our various ways (Cairo is huge and they stay a little outside of the horrendously overpopulated downtown area). I also got some a few pics and vids off their GoPro.  

Lots of the Spanish guys were diving with big camera rigs and multiple strobes (flashes) and I know they got some great photos, but it goes to show you how little friendship I felt with any of them that I didn’t even ask for any of their emails or facebooks at the end of the trip. Oh well. Cairo up next!

Getting to the Nile Valley

First I flew to Hurghada another resort town not far from Sharm as the crow flies, but a looong way away if you had to drive. It’s on the Egyptain mainland, meaning you’d have to bus it up to Cairo and then all the way down to Hurghada. Thankfully I flew. The town itself is pretty dumpy. You can tell it’s also been hurt by the decline in tourism. The old part of town where the locals hang is pretty neat though. I only stayed one night and took a shared taxi to the next town down the coast, Safaga.

Safaga: I arrived and the dive hotel I wanted to stay at was booked up, so I ended up diving with another company nearby, which I guess is a French catering dive company. I wandered into an apartment complex thinking it might be a hotel and I was quite a hit there for a few minutes. Lots of photos! The hotel I was looking for was 5 minutes down the road. Diving here was pretty good! But it was a handful of French people on the boat and me, so it was kind of awkward. I guess most of the dive companies around here cater to a certain nationality, Dutch, German, French etc. And with the French, you already know they’re not gonna be speaking much English.

El Quseir: The next town down the coast. I planned to dive here as well, but I after some questioning it turned out the company I pre-booked with was just trying to throw me on a boat with 30 German snorkelers, and charge me well over 100 dollars for the pleasure. No thanks. The town was pleasant though. And I ate at a fish restaurant where I had a huge fish, shrimp soup, salad, fries, bread, and a drink for about 10 dollars. Would definitely go again!

My Egypt Itinerary

Luxor: Time to get into the touristy stuff! I had to get to the Nile Valley from the coast. I took local minibuses to get there, which are shockingly cheap, especially when compared with your only other option: a private transfer. Luxor is known as the hassle capital of Egypt! You get approached A LOT! If you walk along the river everyone is trying to get you to go on a felucca ride. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always the offer for drugs. Then you’ve got potential tour guides, horse carriages, souvenirs, etc. And wait till you walk down the market street! But actually it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. You just shake your head and ignore the hell out of everyone and they get the idea eventually. Some are very persistent though. 

horse buggies outside of the Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple

I ended up doing a tour with my guesthouse of the valley of the kings, which is where the tombs of many of the great pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried. For the important pharaohs the grave shafts reach extremely deep into the earth. It’s a shame all of them were eventually robbed. Except one! King Tut’s tomb was basically forgotten and buried beneath another tomb, which is why his was never robbed. Just imagine how much cool stuff would have been in the tombs of the great Pharoahs! We didn’t pay to see Tut’s tomb though, because it’s expensive and there’s nothing it anymore. We saw the tombs of a few other minor pharaohs, which are still pretty cool, walking down the tunnels with all the paintings and hieroglyphs on the walls. A lot of the decorations are very ornate and well intact. No photos though! Actually the guys who watch after the tombs kind of hope you try and take photos so then they can catch you and make you pay a fine/bribe.

 We also had a crazy older Russian woman with pounds of make up on in our group who was some sort of tarot reader in Russia and they kicked her out of one of the tombs because she kept touching stuff after they told her to stop. She also had huge knockers that were falling out of her top and whenever Egyptian guys looked at her too long she’d shake her tits at them and say a bunch of stuff in Russian and laugh. It was hilarious and super awkward! She spoke Russian to everyone as if they could understand it, even though obviously no one did. I couldn’t forget about her!

I will admit, I did kind of screw up by doing the group tour though! Group tours are always during the middle of the day when it’s A: super hot, and B: super crowded. If you wake up early or go late in the day you get to see the same stuff with way less people when it’s not so hot, and with much better light for photography. The next morning I rented a bicycle and woke up early and rode my bike around the valley and that was much more enjoyable! Much better photos too! When you go into the tombs the tomb-keepers actually encourage you take photos (that are supposed to be not allowed!) so you give them some baksheesh, ie a tip. 25 or 50 cents is sufficient. If I did it all over again I’d stay on the West bank, which is where the valley of the kings is located, in the village, as opposed to the big city on the East bank. A much more interesting local experience I think. And it’s its not like there’s anything much going on in the actual Luxor city.

Aswan: The other touristy city further south on the Nile. A lot people do felucca boat trips from Luxor to Aswan or vice versa. You can also take the train. But I didn’t realize the only ones you can take as a tourist only go early in the morning or later in the evening, so local minibus it was. It was pretty entertaining on this minibus ride, because I agreed to pay the driver over double what the actual rate was (which I obv didn’t know, $4 instead of $2). And when the people in the bus were collecting money (the riders collect the fares amongst themselves and give it to the driver near the end of the trip) it turned into a shouting match with the driver because lots of people in the car didn’t like that I was getting overcharged for the ride. At one point I was given the extra money I had paid back, then the driver kept yelling and I ended up giving it back to him, and then he gave me like a 10% discount or something. I obviously didn’t care about the $2, and was happy to pay $4 for a 3 hour ride, but it was entertaining nonetheless, and I was glad the other riders were willing to stick up for me!

Aswan also isn’t the most exciting city! It’s got some historical monuments, most are unimpressive with exception of the temple of Philae. I kept expecting these cities with lots of western tourists to have some sort of tourist district or something with nicer restaurants and maybe even bars, but really no such thing exists. You can’t even buy beer in any of the street shops, you have to buy it at the hotels, which upcharge quite a lot. Anyway, most people go to Aswan to see Abu Simbel which is a massive tomb cut into a hillside, constructed by Ramses II, the most prolific of all the builders in Egypt. It’s original site (along with many others including Philae) was to be flooded by the damn built in 60’s, so UNESCO raised enough money to get it moved chunk by chunk to a higher location, which was an insanely massive project. But they did it so well that you can’t even tell. It’s best to see the photos rather me describing it. But it’s very impressive!

The flooding that created lake Nasser that I described before also relocated thousands and thousands of Nubian people, who would best be described as Sudanese people living in the southern tip of Egypt. So around Aswan you also have many Nubian villages, which are also interesting to see. There’s one that specifically caters to tourists, but there’s also plenty more that you can visit, just to see what the local life is like. And you definitely feel like you’re in Sudan, not Egypt. Although I visited during the middle of day when everyone is resting, so it wasn’t particularly enthralling.

Edfu: I took the train from Aswan to this town on the Nile that is known for it’s temple of Horus (one of the more famous Egyptian gods, he looks like a eagle). But it’s rare that tourists actually stay in this town, because the vast vast majority of tourists only stop at it for an hour or two during their felucca ride along the Nile. So I enjoyed being the foreigner around town! My hotel was really nice and cost $11 or something silly. There was one cute Egyptian girl who spoke some broken English at the reception, just enough for me to understand. I made lots of new friends walking around town! But of course there always has to be at least someone around trying to take advantage of the tourist. When I was smoking shisha one guy tried to convince me to sleep on his boat, or to sell my phone to him or let him be my tour guide, and I kept shutting him down. Then when I tried to pay, he tried to get the bill for me, telling me give him $6, which of course is BS. I know from smoking shisha at many local places it should cost like $2 tops. After an argument I ended up paying $3, which doesn’t matter about the money, its just the principle, especially when you know for a fact that some dickhead is deliberately trying to get some extra money out of you, and he doesn’t even work at the cafe! Too many experiences like this and it really starts to grind your gears!

The next day I woke up the see the temple of Horus, and to my surprise it was jam packed right after sunrise at 7am or so. It turned out that all the feluccas all get there at the same time! So I was quite annoyed by this, because there is nothing worse than two dozen tour groups roaming around the temple with their little flags when you thought it was going to be empty! Even if you have a little room to yourself for a little bit one of the tour groups busts in and basically forces you out of the room. But then by 8am all the tour groups had gone back to their boats and I had the whole temple to myself, which was of course what I wanted. It’s pretty damn cool to have temples so large and impressive all to yourself!

Edfu was also great to walk around in the morning, as it’s a very agricultural city, so you can see lots of guys taking their donkeys to and from the fields. I even found a big Coptic Church randomly outside of town, but then they didn’t let me in because I didn’t have my passport. Bummer!

friendly guy who i drank some tea with

the road through the fields to the Coptic Church

Marsa Alam: My next point on the trip was the small town of Marsa Alam, back on the Red Sea coast. I had been told that I couldn’t take public transportation across the desert back to the Red Sea and I would have to hire a private transfer. Travel in Egypt isn’t always easy. The cost I was quoted from Aswan to Marsa Alam was 150 euros!! Haahah. And it was a complete lie. I was able to use public transport for the equivalent of $6. It wasn’t very comfortable, but there’s no way in hell I’d pay 150 euros for five hours worth of driving.

The village of Marsa Alam is really nothing much, it’s mostly under construction. When I stopped in a gas station to buy some food the guy asked me where I was working, because I guess the only foreigners that stay in town work in the oil and gas industry. I was just there one night and then headed to Port Ghalib, which is where my liveaboard boat would depart from. The hotel owner got me the local taxi price, which was nice of him, as the taxi driver assured me he’d try to get two or three times as much from a foreigner, but being it was his good friend who owned the hotel, he would respect the Egyptian price. Thanks broham. An hour later he dropped me off in the harbor, where are the liveaboards were docked. Nice place! Here I’d find my boat and head off for a week of diving in the Southern Red Sea!

South Sinai: Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh

So things got better once I got to Dahab. People I interacted with on the street were much friendlier. Whereas Sharm El Sheikh is very resorty, kind of like Cancun or something, Dahab is much more chill and backpackery. It’s a small town on the coast with lots of budget/midrange guesthouses and hotels, a bunch of dive shops, and wood planked restaurants that are built overhanging the water. You can walk through it all in 20 minutes. The most hassle you get is people inviting you into their restaurants. Dahab’s economy seems to be doing a bit better than Sharm’s, but once you get outside of the main part of town there are lots of very empty and hotels and restaurants with some halted construction projects and stuff.  

These nice looking rooms looked totally empty

The boardwalk outside of town, also no people

2016 was a very bad a year for Sinai’s tourism when a Russian plane was shot down by terrorists over North Sinai, which led to Russia and the UK to discontinue direct flights to Sharm, a very sizeable chunk of their tourists. Those flights are still discontinued and the region has had to pivot to more domestic tourists in the last few years (and the Gulf countries too). A massive terrorist attack also happened in North Sinai in 2017 (300+ people dead, claimed by ISIS) which even though it was very far from the tourists in S. Sinai, it certainly didn’t help the region’s reputation. 2017 was a terrible year for both Sharm and Dahab, although 2018 has seen a steady increase in tourists, moreso in Dahab.

I booked a hotel for a few nights; talked to a couple of dive shops and picked the one I liked the best. There are plenty of good dive sites around and you don’t even have to get on a boat! The majority of the diving is shore diving, so you just put on all your gear and walk right in. The most famous dive site is called the blue hole, which goes all the way down to 120 meters or so. At 60m (180ft) there is a fantastic underwater arch that opens the blue hole out into the ocean and it’s very popular with scuba divers and free divers alike. It’s also perhaps the sport’s largest underwater graveyard, as this type of depth is not meant for inexperienced divers on one tank. You need to take a technical diving course in order to go this deep (and the companies are better about enforcing it now) but I guess back in the day anyone wanting to try and do this dive could attempt it on a single tank and the results weren’t always so good. Nitrogen narcosis can be a real bitch at 60m. Don’t worry I’m not doing this dive!

did one day on the boat. As you can see it’s just desert and ocean. Brown and blue.

I ended up doing the bulk of my diving with a Spanish girl about my age and German woman in her 40’s. So it was a good five days of diving, lots of nice healthy corals, blue spotted stingrays, octopuses, scorpionfish etc. Normally it’s kind of rare to find an octopus, but we saw at least one just about every single day! They are my favorite aquatic animals to watch! I would have preferred a larger dive group, err nightly social circle, but you can’t have everything! The German woman was off with an Egyptian ‘friend’ most nights. Apparently Dahab is very popular with European women who like to mix it up with the local guys here. Similar to Bali or Goa. Of course being an Arab country, the reverse could never ever happen!

So overall I liked Dahab a lot. It has a nice homely feel to it and everyone knows everyone else in town. Dahab is also traditionally a Bedouin community so you see them a lot when you walk outside the main tourist strip, white robes flowing and all, which also gives it a cool local flair. The dive company’s driver was also a Bedouin. It was nice to do a couple dives in the morning and have the rest of the afternoon to chill in one of the waterside cafes. I stayed six nights and then headed back to Sharm El Sheikh. I opted to stay at a small dive center/hotel in Namaa Bay, which was tucked in between the surrounding massive resorts. I’d be diving with two American guys and an older British woman.

It’s really easy to not like Sharm! With so many resorts around you lose any type of local feel. And all it is the ocean and the resorts, the rest is just desert. And now that most of the tourists are Arab, there is kind of a cultural divide. The parties that used to rage into the night several years ago don’t exist anymore. There’s doesn’t seem to be a fun western oriented bar to hang out at. The divers are fewer and far between and the local dive community has lost quite a few guides who have opted to go elsewhere. Resorts are often at 30 percent occupancy. But this isn’t exactly bad for diving, as you get less divers at each dive site and healthier corals! And there are lots of excellent dive sites around. No coral bleaching to be found in the Red Sea! (yet). So I definitely would never stay here if it wasn’t for the diving!

You see a lot similar things that yo do in Dahab, but everything is a touch brighter, there’s more schools of fish around, and there’s more features to the underwater terrain. It’s also quite a bit more expensive. In Asia, normally the equipment rental is included in the cost, but here I was paying $23/day just for equipment rental, plus the dive sites are in a ‘national park’ so that’s another $8/day, then if you want to go to some of the further sites they get you for a $30 fuel surcharge. None of that is including the normal price of each dive. So it was not cheap! There was one really cool wreck dive called the Thistlegorm, which was a British ship that got bombed during WW2. It’s a big ship and contained a whole bunch of ammunition, motorcycles, and even a tank, all of which you can still see today! It’s rated as one of the best wreck dives in the world, and it certainly is the coolest wreck dive I’ve ever done!

some photos I stole from the internet

My stay in Sharm was 5 days, and besides the diving it really wasn’t too exciting. Doing three dives a day, everyday, gets you pretty wiped out! We’d have beer o’clock once we got back to the dive hotel at 5pm or so, regroup and have dinner, maybe smoke some shisha, and off to bed! Welcome to traveling in your 30’s! I was also really lazy about taking photos in Sharm. But imagine a lot of nice looking all white resort/hotels in the middle of the desert with nobody in them! Next up: Still the Red Sea, but on the Egyptian mainland. Here’s some iphone photos:

First day in Egypt

Note: I wrote this a while ago, but I’m just posting it now.

I’ve been here 15 hours now and I hate this place so far. You are literally a tourist piece of meat in this country. Right off the bat in the airport you get directed into a line to buy a visa, which you need if you’re going other places in Egypt besides Sinai. It cost $25. I get to the desk and the guy says 25 Euros. I point to the official sign on the wall that says $25. He says they don’t take dollars only Euros. What? Apparently this stupid line is a private company issuing the visa and they just pocket the Euro/Dollar difference. Cool. Off to find the ‘official desk.’ Why do they allow this kind of BS in the airport?

Next I made the rookie mistake of not having a pen around to fill out the immigration forms. Usually there are some pens available or someone working will let you borrow one. Not here! Both people I asked told me to use the pens on the tables. There are no pens on the tables! Finally someone begrudgingly handed one over. Then you’ve got the airport taxis, which are basically a cartel. No one will give you even close to a reasonable price, even if you’re just going a few miles down the road. “Only 20 Euros my friend!” they’ll say. Ha! I told them I would rather walk than pay them 20 Euros. So I started heading towards the main road and one of them followed me and I got him down a little bit, still at least double the normal price, but I was too tired to deal with these guys any longer. Then he acts like he’s my best friend on the ride to the hotel. I’m not your buddy, guy!

The next day the first thing on the agenda was to buy a SIM card. Walking down the main tourist district during the middle of the day is kind of depressing. It’s a bit of a ghost town. Some of the hotels had been shuttered, all the stores in the shopping mall were closed, almost no one was in the streets, and the heat was oppressive. A couple guys approached me to sell boat trips, but I was having none of that. I found a vodaphone stand and I handed over my phone and he slipped in the sim card. I asked him how many gigabytes of data and he kept telling me it’s 4G! 4G!. Riiiight. I asked how much. 30 Euros he says. Oh god damn it, here we ago again.

Of course they can’t just have a price list that says X amount of gigs costs you Y amount of money, you pay that and be on your merry way, like most other countries in the world. No, no, no it always has to be a game to see how much they can squeeze from the tourists. I ended up paying $15 for the SIM, which I’m sure was also a ripoff. These guys drive me nuts. I guess prices on almost anything are negotiable in Egypt, including convenience stores, pharmacies etc. Which effectively means they’ll try and rip you off on anything if they think they can get away with it. Fun times. At least the country is cheap!

Next I took a taxi to the bus station, where there was supposed to be a 2:30pm bus to Dahab. I get to the station, there is even a schedule posted confirming the 2:30 bus and I try to buy a ticket. The guy tells me to wait till the bus gets in to buy the ticket. 2:30 rolls around, then 2:45 and I start to inquire about where the bus is. “No 2:30 bus, only 5:00 bus”. I point the schedule, which says 2:30. “No no, that is old schedule, no 2:30 bus now” Arghhh. I don’t feel like waiting in the bus station, which is hot as hell, so taxi it is. 90Km (60 mi) to Dahab.

I agree on a price with a taxi driver and of course once we get there he insists I need to pay more so he can pay off a bribe to a police officer or something. I have no idea if he’s bullshitting me or not (I assume he is) and I tell him no, we already agreed on the price, I’m not paying any more. He starts getting mad at me, I’m getting mad at him for throwing in this hidden charge at the last second and eventually I cough up the extra money and storm off. How many people can try and rip me off in less than 24 hours?! It’s definitely the worst first impression of a country I’ve had so far.

About time to go

I’m getting a bit tired of this region now! I still think it’s a very interesting place, but it’s just too lonely traveling solo around here. I’ve been here for 12 days now (a few days too many I think) and have not met, let alone seen another western tourist. I can only spend so much time by myself! And it’s not like there is any nightlife. A lot of these places you can’t even find a beer anywhere. Then you got the heat, which during the day is oppressive, so you don’t even want to do anything from about 11am to 4pm. And at this point most of the touristy stuff is all kind of running together: old mosques, forts, churches, and ruins.

 I also thought there would be a more pronounced difference between Turkish and Kurdish culture, at least to an outsider looking in, but besides the language (I can’t understand either one) and some slight differences in clothing and a slightly darker, more arab looking appearances in general, it doesn’t seem all that different. I’m sure Kurdish people would take offense to that! But for anyone who is young, the only way I’d know if they were Turkish or Kurdish is to ask. The older Kurds also seem to be fond of “warrior Trump”, which annoys me. I’ll chalk it up to poor education system.

Tea and shisha

Here in Sanliurfa I was befriended by a very eager university student who studied for a year in Poland and speaks good English. He wanted to teach me more about Kurdish culture, help me get around, make sure I don’t get ripped off etc. Seemed like a nice guy.  We eventually went to visit Gobekli Tepe, which is kind of must see in Urfa, it’s an archaeological site, basically the worlds first temple built in 11000 BC. It’s about 10 miles outside of town. Rather than just hop in any taxi he calls a taxi driver that he knows, who will charge less than a normal taxi. We walk around the site for 30 minutes and then on the way back when it comes to pay the cost is 200 Lira, $40. What? There’s a taxi board right outside the Hilton where I’m at with the price of 100 Lira posted, which means a normal taxi on the street will cost much less than that. Friends don’t let friends pay double or triple cab fares! I assume they were splitting the excess proceeds. I coughed up 180 Lira and ditched my ‘friend’ shortly after that.

On the plus side, the food is really good! I’m still not tired of kebabs and Turkish pizza and baklavas for dessert. I had a pistachio baklava for the first time the other day, it was amazing! Where has this been all my life? Turkey is amazing value right now price-wise. I mean Eastern Turkey would have been cheap anyways, but now with the lira going down it’s a great deal. A doner kebab on the street is less than a dollar. A dolmus to get from one city to the next cost about two dollars. I just ate McDonalds for the first time on this trip, and it costs just over three dollars for a burger meal with fries, a drink, and a 6 piece mcnugget. A room at a cheap guesthouse costs $6-8.

Lately I’ve been staying in more higher end hotels than I usually do because at the $20-$30 price range you can get some great bang for the buck. As I mentioned before I’m staying at the Hilton (garden), it’s one of the nicer hotels in town, super plush beds, speedy wifi, blasting AC, pool, sauna, fitness center, huge breakfast buffet, etc, and the cost is $30/night. These are not my usual traveler comforts! Even in Western Turkey this wouldn’t be possible because all the hotels are quoted in Euros. So I’m sleeping well in Turkish Kurdistan!

I am ready for my next country though, Egypt. Although I have heard you will get hassled A LOT in Egypt, so I’m bracing myself. One of my travel buddies, who’s been to 50+ countries says Egypt was her least favorite country in the whole world. But it sounds like a female traveling solo in the Arab world is much more of a pain in the ass than being a man. Anyway, I think the temples and pyramids and all that stuff will be cool, but I’m really looking forward to the scuba diving, which I haven’t done for a long time now. I’ve got my flights booked now, so I’ll be in Sharm El Sheikh in two days!

Hopping around SouthEast Turkey

So last post I was in Hasankeyf, here's the next part of the trip

Midyat: A smaller city with many well preserved Syrian Orthodox churches. It’s most famous for it’s Mor Gabriel Syriac monastery outside of town, which was founded in 400 AD and still functions today, serving the small Christian community nearby. It conducts its weekly masses in Aramaic if you’re around on Sunday. Tours cost only $1, although they’re supposed to have some tour guides that speak English, but there were none around when I was there, so Turkish it was. Back in town everyone goes to the top of the highest building in old town to watch the sunset, which was pleasant. There is a nice old town to walk around. I just stayed one night here and that was enough.

the walls of the old town

goats on the loose!

whose gonna get em?!

Mor Gabriel Monastery

Mardin: Another ancient city, this one located on top of a big hill with views that look out over the plains of Mesopotamia. It’s a surprisingly nice city that seemed to be quite popular with domestic tourists. The main street and the shopping district was crowded with people, even during the middle of the day when it’s miserably hot. It has come a long way from the 90’s when the city was inaccessible due to the government and PKK fighting. Like most old towns, there are some interesting churches and mosques you can find hidden in the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways. Lots of people really like Mardin, but I found that one whole afternoon and morning of walking around was enough for me. Also I never do anything in the middle of day because its too hot, so rather than lying around in bed, I feel like I might as well hop on an air conditioned bus and get from point A to point B during the middle of the day instead.

the city on the hill

some interesting doors

overlooking the plains of mesopotamia

cats everywhere. This one didn't run away!

Diyarbakir: The walled city. One of the largest cities in the region and was the center of many clashes between the government and the PKK when the violence was near it’s peak. I think the UK government still has a travel warning on this city for some reason. It didn’t feel very dangerous to me. The old city was certainly more run down and poor, and had a much grittier feel than anywhere else I’ve been to in Turkey. There were still piles of rubble left around from the clashes with the government. But I really enjoyed it. The place had character. Old people sitting on street corners, bands of kids running amok, guys wheeling carts of peaches down the cobblestone streets. For walking around and observing local life and taking some street photos, it was my favorite place in Turkey.

Although I did have someone try to pick my pocket when I was walking around the back alleyways. I passed a group of kids who surrounded me yelling hello hello!, which  was odd because normally they just stare at you or ignore you. There were also some teenagers around and one of them ran up behind me and tried to slide his hand in my front left shorts pocket where my iphone was. The pocket is actually surprisingly narrow and he had trouble getting his hand in and I was able to swat his hand away, and then he sprinted back to his group of friends.

I reflexively yelled back at him “You piece of shit!”, he yelled “motherf’cker!” There wasn’t really anything left to do at that point but get the hell outta there. The last thing I need is to get the shit beaten outta me by a group of teenagers! So that dimmed my perception of the place a little bit, but it’s mostly an unfortunate reflection of the economic situation in the old city. Although it makes me wonder if this was in the US and the person in my place was packing with a concealed carry permit, how a scene like this would have went down. It just seems so easy for something, that in grand scheme of things just isn’t that big of a deal (even if he had nabbed my phone) to turn violent or deadly when peoples emotions are running high and there is a gun around. Although most people on the right seem to think that if someone takes your property they deserve whatever happens to them, and if that’s death, then so be it, because that 15 year old kid was a CRIMINAL! I can’t stand gun nuts. Ok, moving on! Here’s a ton of street shots:

Karadut: The small peaceful village on the foot of mount Nemrut. You can walk around it in 10 minutes. The only reason you’re there is to take a tour up to the top of the mountain at sunset or sunrise and see the mausoleum of King Antiochus 1, the ruler of a small Armenian kingdom called the Commagene. Antiochus claimed he descended from Alexander the Great on one side of the family and Darius the Great of Persia on the other, and was very insistent that he was a God-King.

So befitting of a god he had his tomb built on top of the region’s tallest mountain, where his followers could come and pray and worship him long after his death. Protecting the mausoleum were massive stone structures representing both Greek and Persian deities, reflecting his so called lineage. The heads eventually became dislodged from their structural bases at some point (nobody know how or why) and now are placed at their feet. You can see the heads of the Greek gods: Zeus, Apollo, and Eres and the Persian gods: Oromasdes and Mithras. The site one the greatest architectural achievements of the Hellenistic era and became a world heritage site in the 1980’s, which Antiochus surely would have liked!

Sanliurfa: A large Kurdish city, known as the city of the prophets. Old testament guys like Job, Jethro, and Elijah lived here (and they say Moses was being a shepherd off in the countryside), but the most famous is Abraham. There is a famous lake in the city where, according to the Koran, the cruel King Nemrod threw Abraham off the mountain and into a great fire, but God turned the fire into water and the sticks in fish. It’s very popular with the locals to come and feed the fish. But besides the religious history, Urfa’s surrounding areas contain some of most important places for understanding ancient civilizations. It’s astounding how many sites are being excavated and from so many different time periods. And in town they have a brand new archaeological museum, which is one of the best museums I’ve ever been in. Costs $1.25.

The most famous of all the excavation sites is called Gobleki Tepe, which was discovered only 23 years ago. It is believed to be the worlds first temple, dating back to 11,000 BC. Now keep in mind the pyramids were built around 2500 BC and Stonehenge around 3100 BC, so this is shockingly old. It’s so old that it predates agriculture (around 9500 BC) and pottery (around 10,000 BC), meaning that it was built by hunter-gatherers. This also upends how archaeologists traditionally viewed how ancient societies developed. Shmidt, the German guy who found the place says:

“these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies"

So it’s some pretty wild stuff! Even I got excited about it and I haven’t cared about anything archaeology related since watching Indiana Jones movies when I was a kid (the last Indiana Jones movie not included!).

So it is a very unique and historical region!

To the East! What some would call Kurdistan

You know you’re in Eastern Turkey when the guy working the reception at your guesthouse shakes his head with disapproval when you try to walk out the door wearing shorts. “Why?” he asked pointing to my shorts. “It’s so hot outside!” I replied smiling, not sure if he was joking around or not, making the fanning motion to my face. And it was hot as hell out there, probably around 95. He put his hands to knee level “this no good” then moved his hand down to ankle level “this good!” I sighed and went back to up to my room to change into my one pair of pants, that I hadn’t donned yet on this whole trip. Even though Turks, and the Kurds too, basically always wear pants, I assumed it doesn’t really matter for foreigners. Well I still think that, but maybe the guy was just trying to save me from looking like a goofy, unfashionable, tourist. Hopefully nothing worse!

I was in a town called Tatvan, on the far west shore of Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey. I ended up here by somewhat odd happenstance, getting dropped off the night before at 3am. My plans were getting jumbled as booking buses, err buses to the places I actually wanted to go, was seemingly difficult as the Muslim holiday Eid was approaching. I had been in Cappadocia for 5 days and was hoping to get to a place called Mount Nemrut, one of the more famous attractions in Eastern Turkey. But it turned out every single bus going to that general vicinity was totally booked up. It was not looking good. Hitchhiking had crossed my mind, but it was pretty damn far. I eventually found a bus to a town four or five hours east, and decided to go with it, thinking maybe once I was there I could get a bus closer to Nemrut.

My convoluted, backtracking route through SE Turkey

Of course once I got there and enquired around at the bus station I got absolutely nowhere. As this wasn’t a touristy town, English also wasn’t so good. I’d say the names of the towns I’d like to go to and got nothing but head shakes (meaning they understood, but the buses were all totally booked up).  Hmm. Time to shake up the itinerary. Rather than steadily work my way east I could catch a long haul bus way out east and then work my way back to the west.  They had tickets available to Tatvan, a place I knew nothing about, but I knew geographically it was a good place to start doing my SE Turkey trip working back East to West, so I booked it. Nine hours later I was dumped off there on the side of the road! Fortunately they dropped us off in town and not at the bus station, so finding a hotel was painless, even at 3am. 

Tatvan is one of those towns where there really aren’t any tourist attractions. Apparently there is a nice crater lake up at the top of a nearby mountain, but that’s about it. That doesn’t mean the place isn’t interesting though. It is a primarily a Kurdish town and today it was hopping. People everywhere and all sorts of make-shift stalls and tables set up to sell clothes and produce. There was no room to sit in any of the teahouses that I passed by. This was the last day before Eid, so everyone was scuttling around making final preparations or catching up with friends who were back in town for the holiday. Eventually I stopped in a kebab shop that had some open bench seating, which completely filled up within seconds of me sitting down. But at 5 lira/$1 for a big kebab and unlimited water, no complaints!

old guys drinking tea, a ubiquitous scene in Turkey

You really can't get enough bread here either

I stopped in the bus offices to see what the situation was like. My intended destination was Hasankeyf, a scenic river village, kind of in the middle of nowhere. To get there I’d have to get a big bus to a town, humorously named Batman, and then a dolmus from there. There were no morning buses the following day, but I was able to book an evening one at 8pm, a seemingly late hour. At least that would give me enough time to get up early and hike to the crater lake outside of town. But around 7:30 that night I got a call from the bus guy, they made a mistake, the bus was tonight at 8pm, and there was no bus going tomorrow! Ok then, I threw all my stuff together and it was off to na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BATMAN!

Although like Tatvan, Batman also has nothing at all interesting for tourists (outside of people taking photos with the city’s namesake!). It’s a flat, hot, boring, oil town, but I was able to stay at a very nice hotel for $22! I was actually tempted to stay another night just because the the hotel was such a  good deal, but I did end up leaving the following morning. The bellboy walked me to the exact spot where the dolmus starts loading people and waited with me until it pulled up. Excellent, but unnecessary, service!

An hour later I was in Hasankeyf, a village on the shores of the Tigris river. It's got a lovely location, lots of ruins and cave houses around, and next year it will totally be gone. Yup, you read that right. It's going to be submerged when they release the dam upriver, as part of Turkey's GAP project, aiming to provide more water to the rest of the region. Right now they're finishing up a new cookie cutter little town for the residents to move into when the dam gets released. It's a pretty sad story, all the history in this town, poof, vanished. Apparently Erdogan doesn't mind. As a tourist I guess it's interesting to see this place while it still exists. 

old town

new town

I found a guesthouse with a terrace overlooking the river with a big friendly owner who spoke surprisingly good English. He said I could have a room, or lots of people like to sleep up on the roof, under the stars. This sounded kinda nice, so that's what I opted for. The village is pretty small so you can walk around it in no time. Apparently they had already carted off some of the famous monuments, such as one of the citadels, and a very small old church and relocated them in the new town already. An odd place. When the sun got lower I went up hiking in the hills to check out some of the cave houses. I met a Turkish couple up there who were also staying in my guesthouse. We hiked down together, got some nice photos around sunset and then had a huge meal on the terrace while the sunset colors faded to black. A very nice evening! And that's about all you need for Hasankeyf! I had a somewhat restless sleep on the roof and I'd be outta there the next day.

hiking

everyone sleeps outside

sunset from the bridge

A good spot for dinner

Although my morning didn't get off to a great start when I tried to pay and the owner quoted me a price about double or triple what I thought I'd be paying. When I protested, I got the "Hey, you're American, you have dollars, life is good!" spiel. Eh, I rolled my eyes and got out of there. It was the first time in Turkey so far where I thought I really got taken advantage of. It was my bad for not asking for the prices ahead of time though. I was now a little bit less sad that his business would be soon be going under. Anyway it was time to catch a dolmus to the next city, Midyat, only an hour away. There are no buses originating in Hasankeyf, they all come from Batman. The first one I tried to flag down was completely packed and didn't stop. 30 minutes later the next one was the same. This was not looking promising. Hitchhiking time! 

I'd read that hitchhiking in this part of Turkey is supposed to be relatively easy. They said if you really want to be picked up quickly and garner lots of goodwill, wear a Kurdish keffiyah, the headscarf with the colors of Kurdistan. I didn't have one though. I walked down the road with all my stuff trying to flag down cars. It was baking! 95 and a blazing sun. After 45 minutes, still no luck! Someone feel sorry for me! Two more public  buses passed, both full of course. I should have bought the keffiyah! But soon enough two young guys pulled over and I hopped in. I felt bad because I knew very little Turkish and definitely no Kurdish, so I wasn't really filling up my end of the hitchhiker social contract. Oh well, it was only an hour ride and they seemed happy to have me. You don't meet too many foreign tourists in these parts. 

streets in the old town

They dropped me off in the middle of town and I headed on my way. Then I proceeded to get completely lost looking for my hotel in the winding streets of the old town because google maps kept telling me I was in a different location than I actually was in. I'm helpless without a fully functioning google maps! And it's still 95 out, ugh. After attempting to get help from the locals and wandering down every single street, I picked the right one eventually, thank god. What was supposed to be a really easy travel day turned into an exhausting affair. But hey, I made it. I cranked the AC and passed out in my bed immediately. 

Aegean Coast: I'm on a boat!

The next day I got to the boat company office expecting a whole bunch of people waiting to board this boat, but it was just me and a middle aged Chinese woman. Apparently there were some people already on the boat and we would be joining up with them. And then more people were arriving later on in the evening or something. Hmm. A little weird. But anyway I was able to chat with the Chinese woman a little on our ride to the harbor. She had retired and had been traveling the world solo for a good chunk of the last four years. She had a husband but he had a heart condition so he just stayed home in Beijing, or that’s what I understood from her Chinese and Google Translate.

For as much as she had traveled, especially alone, her English was shockingly terrible! I don’t know how she managed the last four years. She didn’t even know the English names for the cities she had been to in the US, Chicago included! But she was very lighthearted and quick to laugh. The fact that she had so much trouble trying to speak English was very amusing to her! She also never picked up an English name at any point, but her Chinese name was pronounced Roo-en Jin Do, which of course was almost instantly shortened by the boat members to Roo after the meet and greet. 

A little dinghy took us out to the big boat where we met the crew. It was a pretty small one consisting of solo Turkish woman around 40, an Australian couple just slightly younger than me and a South African family with two kids, 15 and 17. Plus we had the captain, the cook, and the deckhand, whose English abilities corresponded with their level of importance. We all sat down for tea and everyone seemed pretty social and interesting, the teenagers included. My political views got brought up fairly quickly, as I get asked all the time if I want to Make America Great Again, but I had to disappoint. I think a lot of non-Americans have a kind of scientific curiosity to meet a real Trumpkin out in the wild, mostly to observe and take notes on this seemingly mythical creature, and maybe poke it with a stick a little bit to see if it gets riled up. Even I still haven’t met another fellow American traveler who’s a die hard Trump supporter. They're out there somewhere...

Anywho, we had to time to cruise around a little bit, stop and go for a swim, and then we’d go for a hike to the top of San Marcos Island to watch the sunset. We all grabbed some beers and got ferried over to island. Even hiking with the sun low in the sky, it is absolutely astonishing how much you can sweat here. All of us were absolutely drenched by the time we got to the top, I can’t even imagine trying to go for a big hike during the middle of the day. We passed the remains of a few churches on the way up and were rewarded at the top with a gorgeous sunset, with the sun coming down almost perfectly symmetrically between the gap of two chunks of land. Everyone was in great spirits. An excellent start!

They had a big dinner spread waiting for us when we got back. Loads of bread, vegetable salad, eggplant salad, roasted peppers, pilaf, tzatziki sauce, Turkish meatballs, grilled chicken, the works. They did a great job with dinner. After the meal we played some cards and had more drinks, which you’re technically not allowed take your own on the boat, but the crew didn’t seem to care.

The crew eating lunch

The next morning we met our newest additions, a Spanish family with three daughters in the 16-20 range and as 12 year old boy. Something tells me there was a push from one of the parents for that one last child… They were all very friendly, but you could tell the girls were a little bit shy about using their English, which was fine of course, just a bit accented. And then were off to cruise the Aegean! Although this strange staggered start had already threw the first chunk of the supposed itinerary to wind, which was already starting to draw the ire of some on board, and fairly so. But not me! I had already done all of the stuff around Oludeniz and the blue lagoon. Apparently we didn’t have time to stop at the lagoon, so I tried my best to help out the captain and smooth things over, telling everyone that it’s not that cool anyway, which I think is true!

Our first stop that morning was the Butterfly Valley, although it didn’t have any butterflies during summer. We renamed it dead bee valley, because for whatever reason the shallow waters in this bay were basically a bee graveyard. RIP bees. The valley is tough to access without a boat, so it’s functions as a hippie getaway, where people camp out for who knows long, have beach bonfires and listen to trance music at night. Sadly we would miss out on all of that. If you had time to hike there’s supposed to be a waterfall somewhere, but we didn’t have time for any of that nonsense of course. It was a nice spot for a swim though. Well, everywhere is a nice spot for a swim!

An ill fated backflip

We spent the whole rest of the day cruising with one long break for lunch. Lunch is always vegetarian, but there’s tons of good meatless Turkish food and the main course was delicious stuffed peppers. That evening we docked in a town called Kas. We had some time to do whatever we wanted, shopping, drinking, etc. Incidentally everyone ended up at the liquor shop at some point, so it looked like it was going to be party night! Although when 7:00 rolled around, the time we had to be back at the boat, Roo was nowhere to be found. I guess we only had an allotted amount of time to dock and the captain was getting some harsh words from the harbourmaster. He sent out his fledgling to look for Roo, but by 7:30 they had to give up and we were given the boot. Looks like we were leaving without her! Uh oh. She really is in her own little world sometimes. A butterfly valley we watched her grab some random towel off a line and dry herself off, funny woman! But this was getting a little worrisome.

docked in Kas

It turned out to be too big of a deal, we went off to anchor in a more seclude cove while the harbourmaster was on the lookout for a lost looking middle aged Chinese woman. Eventually she turned up and they sent the dinghy off to go pick her up and bring her back to the boat, to the applause of all. Now it was party time! Things got a little rowdy that night. Even the teenagers were allowed to drink, only because it was vacation of course! We had everyone take turns controlling the Bluetooth speaker; there were drinking games, shots of Raki (gross liquorice tasting Turkish booze), drunk swimming, Chinese singing, Flamenco dancing, and so forth. There was also rumored to be some late night hanky panky with the 40 year old Turkish woman and the 26 year old cook. Shhh!

Obviously everyone was dead the next morning, but we pulled ourselves together a couple hours later when we docked at our next destination, a sea village called Kalikoy? This was a gorgeous little tourist town with guesthouses cut into the rocky hillside, only a small place boats to dock and lots of little shallow lagoons, impossibly blue. If I were traveling on land, I’d for sure spend some more time at this place. It’s supposed to have some great homemade ice cream, but being that it was still morning and everyone was hung over, we all had to pass. Unfortunately that afternoon the Turkish woman, Aussie couple, and SA family were getting off the boat, as it was their 4th day on the boat. So after lunch we had to say our goodbyes, everyone slightly annoyed that we couldn’t all just have started on the same day!

So the rest of that day it was just me, Roo, and the Spaniards cruising the open the seas. Conversations got a little sparser as I was the only native English speaker left. We anchored in a nice quiet spot and had a pretty chill night. Playing poker for a living and Trump being the president of the USA make for some pretty good conversations starters though, as most people can’t really wrap their head around either! The next day Roo and I got dropped off and the Spaniards had the boat all to themselves the last day, which the girls didn’t seem too enthused about. They kind of got the short end of the stick as all they would do that last day is drive around the area again, where the scenery is much less interesting than at the beginning of the trip. So a lot of people were a little flustered with the organization of it all, just throwing on different groups at different times. But overall it was a very a nice trip. Would it have been better if we just had one cohesive group from start to finish? Sure. But everyone agreed they had a nice time.

I was soon off by bus further up the coast to Olimpos to reunite with the Aussies. There they have some nice coastline as well as some natural gas flames that never go out! But I’ve been typing long enough now! I spent one night in Olimpos and one night in Antalya, they were nice, blah blah, but I was hurrying along because at this point I had enough sun and ocean for now and I was really excited to get up to Cappadocia in central Turkey, the most unique part of the country!

Looking across the bay from Antalya

cat tax

Aegean Coast: Fethiye and Oludeniz

I didn’t want to turn this into to too much of a beach holiday, as I would be scuba diving in Egypt later, but I figured a week or so on the coast should do trick. The first night in Fethiye I was able to catch up with a girl I met in Sri Lanka who was also in Turkey at the time, although she was leaving the next morning on what they call the ‘blue cruise’, a 4d/3n boat trip, heading northeast along the coast in the direction of Antalya. Apparently it was pretty popular thing to do! Now if I could have planned better, we could have done the same cruise, but hers was all booked up by now. It sounded fun, but I didn’t get my hopes up, because for all I knew, all these cruises were booked up. She also mentioned the one thing I HAD to do around here was the paragliding. Apparently the paragliding in this part of Turkey is world class. Alrighty then!

The next day I set off for Oludeniz, which is a smaller, touristy beach town near Fethiye, which features the blue lagoon, one of the most famous beaches in Turkey. It kind of sucked getting there, the dolmus was just insanely jammed packed and it took way longer than I thought to get down to the beach, winding through the hills and all. And then once you’re there you have to pay to get into the lagoon, it’s so friggen crowded, kids running everywhere, all the sun lounges are taken (and they’re not even free!) and there is no sand, it’s only a gravel beach that is hot as hell to step on! So that sums up my thoughts on the blue lagoon pretty well. Once you’re in the water it’s probably nice I guess. By opted to walk back towards the town and find a nice section of gravel beach all to myself. But seriously any part of your body that strays from towel get instantly scorched on those rocks! This was now my second experience with gravel beaches on this trip (Brighton being the other), and all I can say is: not for me.

You do notice in Oludeniz, when you look skyward, there are big flaps of colored nylon just about everywhere in the sky. I decided to stop in some of the shops and do some inquiring. It was way too hot lay at the beach for too long anyway. It was getting later on in the afternoon, so most places were booked for the day, but I did find a place that had room in their last run at 6:00. Perfect. I chilled out for a bit and then went back to the office. They gave me some shoes to wear (can’t wear flip flops) and then a few others and I piled into the van that they drive to the top of the mountain. I guess they have a few different launch points depending on the wind, but they said our conditions were good so we’d be able to go to one of the higher ones. I met my guide at the top and there was absolutely no dawdling around! He laid out the shoot on the 45 degree concrete runway, got us strapped in, and the only instructions I had to follow were “walk, run, jump!”

And that’s what I did. A few seconds of walking, a few seconds of running, and I hardly even had to jump because were basically in the air already at this point. After the initial takeoff rush wears down, its very relaxing. You’re just floating above the sea and the beach and the mountains. And I must say the blue lagoon looks a lot better from above! I got to chat with my guide, he’d been doing it for 15 years now, sometimes competitively. Although the competitions he did were to see who could stay in the air the longest, which sounded pretty boring to me. Anyway, he knew what he was doing. I actually had googled paragliding accidents in Oludeniz before I jumped (probably not the best idea), but it appeared that almost all the accidents were from solo jumpers, usually inexperienced ones at that. The tandems sounded almost totally safe. Sounded.

Now in the air they don’t let you take your own photos but the guide has a selfie stick with a go-pro attached to take some photos and video. I kind of hate doing the video because when you’re paragliding it’s very calm and peaceful, but then when they do they video they want you to act all excited like it’s so amazing and exxxtreme! It feels way too forced. I hate that stuff. Most of my video is me sitting there smiling and waving like a dork. Maybe that’s worse, I’m not sure.

blue lagoon is much nicer to admire from the air

did I mention how much I hate the shoes they gave me?!

Anyway, near the end you start doing some acrobatics, some downward swoops and spirals and stuff to get your blood pumping. I was happy enjoying the scenery until that point! By now you’re getting close to the ground and it’s about time for the landing. You land on these grassy strips right off the boardwalk, you just have to worry about people not paying attention walking through them! It gets a little tense as you get close to the ground, because you feel like you’re coming in pretty hot! But then (if they do it right) the parachute really catches at the last minute, you jerk up a bit and then come down, landing softly on your feet. And that’s how ours went. Although after watching several landings I can say that not all of them were as smooth as ours! So that was pretty damn fun. I even shelled out for the photo/video because the photos over the blue lagoon were cool, plus it’s the guide’s main source of income. I’ll probably delete the video, hahaha.

The next morning I stopped in the boat company tour offices and asked about the blue cruises. The first two were booked up for the next week at least, while the third one said I could join their boat tomorrow. Perfect. I didn't really ask any question, signed up, coughed up my money and that was that.

Next I rented a mountain bike (bc couldn’t rent a scooter without a motorcycle license, which is lame), and that turned out to be a bust. There were some places a little outside of town I wanted to get to, but while the town is flat, everything outside of town involves going up hilly/mountainy roads, which is hard enough, but during the midday heat and zero shade or cloud cover, just no freaking way. I was dying like 5 minutes into the uphill part. It didn’t take me very long to bail and go find the beach! I eventually got back on the bike before sunset to go find some ruins overlooking the city, but once I got close it was just much easier to just walk! It was a nice place to watch the sun set though.

a stroll through the market

melon season is the best season

The next day would be off to cruise the open seas. 

Ephesus and Pamukkale

When I landed in Turkey I literally had no idea what my itinerary would be. Really, my knowledge of Turkey on the whole was very limited. It is a pretty large country so I figured about a month of traveling seemed about right. Googling one month Turkey itineraries was difficult at first because I didn’t even know the names of the any of the famous sites or any of the cities besides Istanbul, Ankara, and Antalya. So there were a lot of google tabs open at any given time! Overall the west is where most people go, being that it’s wealthier and more modern, has the nicest beaches as well as lots of Greek and Lycian ruins. Then you have Cappadocia in the center, which is probably Turkey’s most unique region that most would say it’s a must-do on any itinerary. Then you’ve got the East, which is generally poorer, has less infrastructure, and way less tourists. But there’s still lots of ancient towns, mosques, fortresses, and ruins to see, as well as a different cultural flair. You’ve got the Armenian influences in the mountainous Northeast and you’ve got more Arab influences in Kurdistan, which makes up most of the hot, flat Southeast region.

My loose itinerary

Two weeks for each half it is! I decided to start with the ruins of Ephesus in the far west, get down to the southern coast and work my along the coastline for a bit, go up to Cappadocia, and then figure out what to do in the East from there.  Domestic flights are very cheap, so I booked a flight out to Izmir to save myself a 9 hour bus ride (making sure to fly from Ataturk, not SAW!) and then took the train to city of Selcuk, which is the small city used to access Ephesus. I walked from the train station and found a hotel nearby for $12/night. Yep, Turkey is cheap. In the outdoor cafes you see all these old men out drinking tea, each tea costs 1 lira, or 20 cents. Same with a cup of lemonade, a bottle of water, a piece of Turkish bread, you got it, 1 lira. Ice cream might cost 2-3 lira. Things on the menu usually ranged from $2-$5, rarely more than that. I had learned that in the last few weeks the lira had dropped quite a bit, making it a particularly good time to be a foreigner making dollars and spending lira.

The next morning I woke early to get out to the ruins, which open at 8 am. I’m not gonna be stuck behind any tour groups! Although I will admit, I do get mildly tilted when I can’t visit a nice outdoor place like this during sunrise or sunset hours. I didn’t feel like waiting around for a dolmus (vans used for public transport) so I just hopped in a taxi. I got in right after the gates opened and for a short while I had the whole place to share with only a handful of people.

So about Ephesus: It grew in prominence a Greek colony around 1000 BC, then was taken over by the Persians for a while, then the Romans, where it reached its peak in the first few centuries AD, housing 300,000 people and becoming second in importance only to Rome. It’s crowning achievement was the temple of Artemis, which was over four times the size of the Parthenon, although a few columns is all that is left today. After the fall of the Roman Empire the city was mostly abandoned and forgotten until the 1870’s when British and Austrian archaeologists got permission to start excavating the site. While teams have been excavating this site for over 100 years, amazingly only about 15% has actually been dug up.

the main strip

umbrellas mean the Chinese tour group has arrived

The ruins feature such things as an ampitheater, public baths, the terrace houses, a stadium, and the best preserved feature is the entrance to the Library of Celsus (which was the 3rd largest library in the ancient world, behind Alexandria and Pergamon). So it was a neat little glimpse of what it would be like to walk down a Roman street about 1800 years ago. Half an hour later later the tour buses full of Russian, Turkish, and Chinese groups rolled in clogging up the whole place with selfie sticks. Fortunately it’s not that big so I got to see most of it before the hordes rolled in.

Ok, checked off the list! I mean it was pretty cool, maybe if I was a bigger history buff I’d appreciate it more. I came away with a ‘hmm, this is pretty neat’ impression rather than a “omg, this is amazing!” type reaction, which many other people seem to get from Ephesus. I mean if a fully intact temple of Artemis were still around, then yeah, that would be amazing. Ruins, and especially ruins filled with tourists, just don’t really do it for me. I guess that’s why I haven’t been to Athens or Rome yet! I could have left that afternoon, but it was market day in Selcuk, so I figured I’d relax and enjoy the afternoon and get to my next destination, Pamukkale, the next morning.  

I booked a direct bus at 8:30 am, but when I got to the station I was told the bus was not working. Uhh, ok. I was directed to take train at 9:20 instead. I get the feeling the bus just wasn’t booked up enough and they decided to call it off. On bright side, the trains are very nice. On the downside I’d have to find the bus station in Denizli and find a dolmus to take me the 20 km to Pamukkale. Being that it took a solid hour and a half to find the bus station, wait for a dolmus to fill up, and get to Pamukkale, a direct bus would have certainly been preferable! So far I’ve noticed in Turkey, they have very few ‘tourist buses’ where they take you directly to/from the tourist areas, instead you always get dumped at the bus station, which is usually at an inconvenient location on the outskirts of town and have to get a taxi/dolmus from there. Alas.

So Pamukkale is a pretty interesting sight, it basically looks like a snow mountain in the middle of the brown, arid Turkish landscape. In Turkish the word actually means cotton castle, which is kind of cute. The location is on a fault line, so as the fault shifted, it created hot springs with very high mineral content, which formed lots of calcium carbonate (aka travertine), which makes Pamukkale so white. They make you take your shoes off to help preserve the travertines. I was there during the middle of day, so it was pretty jammed, but still entertaining. You kinda  feel like you’re hiking up a glacier, just in a swimsuit and bare feet. It’s extremely hot during the day, but there are plenty of pools to take a dip in. If I had done it again I probably would have spent the night here just so I could enjoy the place in the late evening/early morning without all the people. Instead I spent about 2 hours there and then found a dolmus back to Denizli and another bus onto to Fethiye, my first beach destination.

Istanbul

Where East meets West! Ahh, the ole cliche! But nonetheless this city does have a fascinating history of fusing Islamic ideologies and western values. I'd been wanting to visit it for some time now. Just seeing some photos of Istanbul's majestic mosques alone should be enough to draw anyone in. But it's history, being the former seat of the Byzantine empire and the Ottoman empire, certainly adds to it's appeal. Plus it's location is extremely unique, at the confluence of two rivers, meeting in the sea of Marmara, which has always made it very tricky to conquer. 

The straight that goes up and to the right is called the Bosporus, which connects to the Black Sea. I stayed in Karakoy neighborhood, which is that part in the center. 

Right off the bat I had gotten myself into a bit of quandary as I landed at a different airport than I thought I was landing in. I had foolishly assumed that Istanbul only had one international airport! I was walking around outside the airport hopelessly looking for the metro, the M1, to get me into Istanbul when someone informed me that informed to M1 is the line that goes to the Ataturk airport. "This isn't Ataturk?!" I asked. Nope, it was Sabina Gokcen airport. Ohhhh. 

Ok, no big deal, just a different airport! One on the complete opposite side of Istanbul, and wayyy out there. I was able to hop on a bus that was supposed to take me somewhere near the city. But this was not looking promising, google maps (thankfully I bought a SIM card at the airport) was telling me that bus connections would take 2 hours to get to the city center! How big is this goddamn city?! And why is this airport so horribly connected? No metro, no direct bus, wtf! After an hour on this slow moving local bus I bailed to try and take the metro lines, but I didn’t have the card you need and I couldn’t read the directions in Turkish to buy one. Ok, I give up. Taxi time!

After a while in the taxi we finally crossed over the massive bridge going over the Bosphorous, which connects the ‘Asian side’ of the city to the ‘European side’.  Buildings and houses were smashed into the hills as far as the eye could see, a population of 15 million in total. You really got a feel for how massive and spread out the city is. The area I was staying in consisted of a maze of walking streets so the taxi had to drop me off a few blocks away. It was $12 for a solid 45 minutes of driving, pretty reasonable! I made it to Istiklal Avenue, which is the main shopping and pedestrian street, and boy was it a popular place to be. The most striking thing to me was diversity in the dress, especially for the females. Women in full on burqas walked alongside women wearing high heels, skirts, and bare midrifts. It was an interesting juxtaposition! Turkey is 99% Muslim, but attitudes about religion vary greatly.

The main pedestrian street, istiklal ave.

Turkish desserts

Walnut vendors

I found the side street up to my hotel, which was filled with outdoor cafes and Turks drinking coffee and tea and smoking shisha. I liked this place already.  I was pretty famished at this point so I found my way into one of restaurants nearby. I ordered some sort of meatball + eggplant kebab and a salad. I was expecting some sort of small bowl of salad, but what I got instead was a massive plate that could have filled me up all by itself. Then the kebab came out, but it wasn’t just a kebab, it was a whole plate of shredded lettuce, carrots, roasted tomatoes, peppers, pilaf, and bread. The salad order was not necessary. Well looks like I wouldn’t be going hungry in Turkey. The whole thing was $6. I wouldn’t be going broke in Turkey either!

definitely couldn't finish all this

That night I made it down to waterfront to take some photos. The most prominent mosque from my vantage point was the Suleyman mosque. Suleyman (the magnificent) was the Ottoman empire's longest running ruler and perhaps the most famous. He doubled the size of the empire in the mid 1500's to include most of north Africa and the Balkans, as well reforming the judiciary and building a lot of buildings. 

This one has the Hagia Sophia in the background

Suleyman mosque in the background

The next day was super jam packed touristy day! I rented a bike so I could get around to as many attractions as possible. Note: Istanbul is set up or horribly for bicycles! First up was the Sultan Ahmed mosque (blue mosque) and the Hagia Sophia Museum, which are right across from each other. The Hagia Sophia was used as a church for about 900 years, then as a mosque for 500 years, and then turned into a museum in 1935 by Turkey's very secular ruler, Ataturk. 

The walkway leading into the Hagia Sophia

Looks like something out of a movie set, very surreal

Next up: Istanbul's eccentric Balat neighborhood.

more mosques!

The Suleyman mosque

overlooking the Karakoy neighborhood

The Grand Bazaar

I love lamp

One more of the Suleyman mosque

fishermen in the Uskudar neighborhood

Awww yeah, doner kebabs everywhere!

Budapest: The best!

As for my central European city tour, we’ve found our winner: Budapest! Beautiful, historic, cheap, amazing nightlife, kinda quirky vibe, not overly touristy, etc. I really liked almost everything about this city. So for those that don’t know (I didn’t before getting here) one side of the city is called Buda and the part across the river is called Pest. I stayed in the Pest side, as that’s where most of the action is. The focal point of the city is the Parliament building, which lights up spectacularly at night, also on the Pest side. The Buda side is more hilly, so it’s got the better views looking out over the city. Then you’ve got the bridges which connect the two sides which are also iconic of the city.

 

The first evening I made my way across the river to the Buda side of the city to take some photos of the Parliament building and the bridges. These are pretty classic Istanbul photographs so there were quite a few other photographers with their tripods out. But my photos surely turned out the best :p I had a drink at the hostel bar later on but most people were already out and about at this point. I mentioned this before, but when the sun sets at 9:15 I won’t get back to the hostel till after 10pm, and at that point it’s usually too late for social activities. Or everyone is already hammered. Alas…

The next day I rented a bike to ride around the neighborhoods. You do really feel like you’re going back to the 1940’s when you ride down these narrow streets. There are just rows and rows of old, historic buildings. And there is so much detail in the rockwork! Lots of intricate designs, sculptures of faces or even whole bodies are inlaid into many of the foundations. And if you look closely you can even see the bullet holes in the sides of some of the buildings. Plus there’s very little traffic, so it’s a nice place to go for a bike ride in general. Also from what I could tell there seem to just be very few big retail chain stores. Lots of little mom and pop corner shops, which seems to be a bygone era to anyone from the US. There’s lots of little things I liked about Budapest.

So many building like this!

lots of random street art too

indoor market

In one of the subdivisions there is a pinball museum, or flipper museum as they call it, which is basically just a massive collection of pinball games that you can play for free for as long as you want. They even have originals from the 50’s, which you really don’t want to play for long because they’re terrible. I stuck around for an hour or so, but I’m a pretty awful pinball player. Whatever knack some people have hitting the bonus loops and not letting the ball go through the middle, I ain’t got it. But it was a pretty cool place!

That night I decided to be bit more social and took a break from photography and hung out at the hostel bar. I ended up meeting some people that wanted to pregame in the park, mostly because they have little money, but also it’s like a popular thing to do in Budapest. So we grabbed some beer and wine at the convenience store and headed over there. I must say, it’s quite the scene. It’s a pretty big park and the place is pretty much jammed with people sitting in small groups drinking. There’s also pool for people to sit around. This one of the things that’s nice about Europe, it’s just very enjoyable to be able to sit around and drink in a nice public setting! No worries about the cops coming to bust heads.

I never knew this before coming to Budapest, but I guess it’s grown quite famous for it’s warehouse bars, where people have taken up spaces in old warehouses or crumbling buildings and turned them into bars, often several different type of bars in one location, and usually decked out in some grungy or kitchy type theme. There’s a whole bunch all over the city. We ended up at the most famous one, which has two floors, a hookah lounge, wine bar, cocktail bar, and couple of more normal bars, all with different themes.

A view from in the park

The hookah section

the upside down?

The next day I already had planned out, baths and goulash! There are a couple of baths around Budapest but I decided to go to the big outdoor one. It has a huge outdoor area, plus various indoor thermal pools, as well as various saunas and steam rooms. Good for a hangover! It’s also located in a really nice park, which makes for a nice bike ride and a very pleasant afternoon. I stopped at one of the restaurants in the park (I think there were 3 in total) for the Hungarian classic: beef goulash soup!

Castle in the park

Charcuterie and beef goulash, mmm

Then to ruin the happy vibes I stopped at the Terror museum, which is the same building that housed the AVO (secret police) in the Soviet era, who wreaked havoc on the Hungarian citizens. As I had just read a book on some American correspondents in this time period, I wanted to see if I could match up any of the names in the book to the museum. It is amazing the extent of the spying and surveillance on anyone who was suspected of being an enemy of the state. And so much work wasted to monitor pointless everyday stuff just in the hopes of picking up anything incriminating!

Sounds like a pretty awful time and place to live. In the book I was reading the son obtained and opened up the AVO files on his parents after they passed away, and because they were west-leaning journalists they had volumes and volumes of files on them. Pretty wild. Even they didn’t know the true extent of the surveillance. As for the museum itself, it wasn’t that great, mostly just videos of old people talking about those Soviet days and very little English on any of the exhibitions.

Then for my last night I hiked up the hill to get a view over the whole city at sunset. Some stunning views!

The scene on the pedestrian bridge around sunset

view from the top

Fisherman's Bastion

So I thought Budapest was pretty great and I'd recommend it to anyone!

Vienna

I’m going to keep this one as mostly a photo trip report. Vienna was a nice city, the main square and everything around it were very picturesque, with some great architecture. Some intermittent rainstorms made for some ominous skies. I really enjoyed the Schonbrunn Palace, as everything is so well preserved and you really get a good feel how the rulers in Hapsburged dynasty lived. The Albertino museum had a Monet to Picasso exhibit was cool, as I needed a brush up on my classical art.  Plus there was a contemporary art section and a photography exhibit, to my liking. 

Although I will say Vienna was probably my least favorite city in this European tour, there just isn’t enough things for tourists to do besides the dozens of museums around. Plus it’s the most expensive. I walked into a café that had this enough breakfast buffet spread, didn’t ask the price, and ended up paying almost $40 for the meal. Sheesh!

Very first photo in Vienna. I took a little nap and walked outside into this right after a rainstorm!

The view at my metro stop. These cool clouds wouldn't last long!

just a random street shot. Nice greenery around

Getting into the old town. The wet streets are nice for photos

St. Peters dominates the skyline

the visitors area

The square where all the horse carriages hang out

Hoffburg palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Nice place to chill outside the art museum

The rose garden at the Volksgarden

notice the little baby bee incoming!

Ferris wheel at the Prater Park

Lots of art collections in Vienna

aaand some more rain. Found a wine bar for cover

reflections of Goethe

ha, the Chinese and their props

The Wurst stand

Breakfast in the most famous cafe in Vienna

London

London: Rough Start!

There was a sizeable line at the London Gatwick airport to get through immigration. I didn’t think to print out proof of my flight to Chicago, so the guy wouldn’t let me go through. I was having trouble with the free wifi, so I had to sit off to the side and sign up for the Boingo wifi hotspot with my credit card to bring up my flight confirmation email, which was annoying obviously. And I know I’m gonna get billed once a month for it and I’m gonna keep forgetting to cancel it. Book it! Once through I bought my train ticket to the city (for $20!!), Victoria Station. I went through the gates to the Gatwick Express and hopped on the train that read “London-Victoria” on it’s electronic display. As soon as we left the conductor got on the microphone and alerted new passengers that the electronic display was wrong and this train is actually going the opposite direction, to Brighton. Great!

I got off at the next stop and waited 20 minutes for the next train towards London. Ok, now I’m good to go! We went back through the airport and on towards London but soon stopped. We heard through the speakers “We have encountered a MASSIVE points failure up ahead, this train will be stopped indeterminably. I liked the emphasis on “massive” to really let us know that we’re screwed. I guess a points failure is some sort of problem with track’s signalling. Well apparently this track was a dead end so we went back to the airport where were then able to switch tracks and then finally get into the city. Get your act together London railways! The conductor guy did apologize like seven times for the inconvenience though. So there’s that!

So many pubs

The hostel was a 15 minute walk, but I got distracted by a homely looking British pub and stopped in for a pint.  This was definitely a locals bar, I think I was the youngest person there by about 20 years. I finished that up, but then got saw a crusty looking fish and chip shop. I was going for the most British start as possible! The hostel was in a row of all white, older buildings. I was all the way up on the 5th floor, no stairs. Curse these old buildings! No AC either. There was nobody in my room so I plopped my stuff down and headed out. I still had a few hours of sunlight to get a feel for the city. To the riverfront!

Not gonna lie, London’s waterfront was not all that impressive! I guess I’m so used to looking a big looming skylines in the US and in Asia that I just kind of expected it from a huge international city like London. But alas, London really doesn’t have that many towering buildings. There quite a few modern looking, big glass windowed type high rises though.  But it’s the ferris wheel aka ‘the eye’ that dominates the skyline; whereas in Chicago the Navy Pier ferris wheel is just like a small blip.

The riverfront walkway was also kind of annoying as well, at least in my section of town. First, it’s walls were too high! If you’re not standing next to the wall you can’t actually see the river. Why even have a wall at all? Do they think people are just going to be running or bike so fast that they can’t slow down around a curve and hurtle themselves into the river?! Yea yea I know it’s old and historic or whatever, but I don’t like it. Also, the path occasionally diverts inland around certain buildings, including Big Ben.  Surely there can be a way for the city to build a path that runs entirely on the waterfront! Is that really too much to ask?!

riverfront didn't really look how I expected it to!

this was not the part with the high walls!

I had slightly poor timing because Big Ben was under renovation, so two of the towers were covered in sheeting, so that was a bit disappointing. Okay now I’m done whinging (British word!). The walk was still very nice! I did finding walking around London to be more interesting once I got away from the river. I hung out in Trafalgar square watching the double decker buses for a bit, then found then found my way back through the neighborhoods, enjoying all the very British sounding names. Williamsby Manor, Asherton Glen, Devonshire flats  … and the like. This neighbourhood was filled with older, very regal looking apartments. In my neighbor hood of Chicago if a unit is older they just knock it down and turn it into a sleek looking glassy rectangle. Here the oldness is a positive thing.

I also appreciated how these homes were decorated too, from what I saw in the few that had their blinds open. Big gold framed victorian paintings on the walls, detailed wood furnishings, large crystal chandeliers, ornate tea sets, etc. Very vintage! And lots of care in the garden work as well. The cobblestone streets also lend to the overall feeling of the neighbourhood. Everybody on the sidewalk dressed impeccably and every car on the street was an Audi or Beamer. Being rich is nice.  

gotta love the phone booths!

Trafalgar Square

Next place on the list was the Hippodrome, London’s biggest casino (I think) and home to some live poker action. I try not to play too much poker when I’m traveling but at least like to see what other poker venues around the world are like. I hopped in a low stakes 1/2 game where people usually buy in for around 200 pounds ($260). Some guy from Kuwait sat down and literally had no idea how to play, so he dropped about $700, and fortunately I got about $300 of it. 2 days in London paid for, excellent! After I cashed out I wandered around Soho, which is the main touristy bar/restaurant district in London, but it was after 2am so the only places open were some clubs, which I had no interest in, so that was all for the first night.

The next morning I took a little stroll around Hyde Park, which was relaxing. The weather was very British like, cloudy and cool. I realized how much I missed the cool weather like this – it’d been nothing but hot and humid for me in the last 7 months! I didn’t pack a jacket, but I certainly could have used one!

After I while I headed over towards Buckingham Palace and noticed that people were just streaming in. Something is going on apparently. I guess they were celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the Royal Air Force; there would be a flyover AND a visit from the Queen herself. The whole place was absolutely jammed. Plus it’s completely flat so you can hardly see anything. Naturally half of Britain came out to catch a glimpse of the back of the Queen’s head. After standing there for half and hour waiting, I decided I honestly don’t care if I see the Queen (and even if I did it would be some fleeting glimpse), so I headed out. I walked along the Pall Mall, which would also be on the Queen’s route, so it’s completely packed, and then to Trafalgar square, which was also a zoo. That’s when the planes started flying overhead, first single planes, and then ones in formation, and then finally a group that formed the number ‘100’. This was pretty neat. Much more interesting than seeing some 80 year old woman waving in a carriage.

What are we looking at?! Ahh yes the fuzzy hat guys!

waiting patiently

Do the British people really love the Queen? Here is your answer

Here come the planes

100 years of the RAF

Feels very American!

Next I headed into the National Gallery, which is free, and then into Soho and London’s main shopping districts, Bond St. etc. It feels similar to when I walk around Michigan Avenue, being on the outside looking in, watching as people shop for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on some nice looking cotton textiles made in Bangladesh. But it was fun walking some of the famous streets that I’d only seen in movies or wherever. The sun came out and it ended up being a gorgeous day. I got back to Soho and stopped in a café with street seating and live music. Feeling fancy I ordered some charcuterie and red wine and observed the Londoners walk by. On average they certainly do dress better than Chicagoans!

A diverse clientele

Lots of mens' shops

This is quite the fancy bookstore

So much different looking than high end Chicago shopping buildings

These guys adding some color to the scene

I didn’t want to hang out too long though, because people at the hostel were getting together to watch the world cup game that evening and I wanted to join in. France – Belgium was the game. Probably a dozen of us headed out to one of the neighbourhood pubs, which was already pretty crowded. But the nice thing you can chill outside the pub on the sidewalk with your beer, and the bar has huge open windows, so you can just watch easy from outside. Fortunately Britain isn’t so strict on public drinking. I was routing for Belgium, because they were the underdogs, and to hell with the French, but they prevailed anyway. I kind of blew it because I was flying out the next day, and that was the day England was playing Croatia, and it would have been really cool to see that in London. Oh well.

After the crowd died down me and another American went out to Soho, and then finished the night in the Hippodrome. I won enough to pay for this entire Europe mini tour, ha. Poker is fun this year! It was a good day in London! But only enough time to scratch the surface. London really is one of those cities you need a lot of time to explore, because it’s so spread out. It’s more like a collection of neighborhoods than a big city, so I do have a lot more to see. Until next time…

Some more photos

The real purpose of the phone booths now...

haha

They let you drink outside the bar in the street with your beer

Tour bus watches this American classic rock cover band at a red light

Prague

Everybody likes Prague! I don't think I've met a single person traveling so far that didn't say good things about Prague, other than maybe that it's super touristy, but so is every other awesome city. After hopping off the bus the first thing I did after getting to Prague was stopping in a shipping container market where they had all sorts of foodie type stalls. I only ordered fries with chipotle aioli (delicious) so I could eat while walking, and I asked if they took cards. Turns out they only take cards! No cash at all. Ha! I’m not used to this.

A few shots from my first 15 minutes walking around

The architecture in Prague is amazing! Even just walking along random side streets all the buildings are fascinating to look at. Just have to watch out for the trams that are everywhere! I checked into my hostel, and of course everyone I meet is college aged. This is by far my least favorite part of traveling Europe, all these hostels seem to only have travelers aged 18-25. When I’m off in Indonesia, Africa, the Stans or other more far flung places I meet a much more diverse group of travelers of all ages, who I’m much more at home with than university aged kids looking to get drunk in Europe in between semesters. So even though some of these cities are really kick ass I can’t see myself doing any long term traveling in Europe unless I’ve got a travel partner. That’ll have to wait! And of course I could afford to stay in hotels if I really wanted to, but that’s boring and the price difference is just so much bigger in European cities.

Aaaand now it’s off to the Old Town. There is no shortage of nice old towns in this part of the world! It didn’t take long for me to realize that motorcycles had seemingly took up every available parking spot and the sound of loud mufflers could be heard around every block. It was bike week in Prague! Harley Davidson Chapters from all over Europe had made their way over to the city for this. Lots of rough looking dudes (and chicks) with some pretty tricked out bikes. Apparently Eastern Europeans really dig the whole macho man type schtick! They also like to vote for authoritarian asshats… Coincidence??

I found the center of Old Town quite easily and ordered a big hunk of ham and some sauerkraut with a beer right in the middle of the square. Great spot to eat, but 15 bucks, oof. Gotta stay away from the super touristy places! The square was gorgeous like always, but unfortunately they were doing construction on the old clocktower with the astronomical clock that goes off every hour. This was supposed to be one of Prague’s biggest tourist attractions, although I wasn’t too bummed not to see it.

Eventually I made my way over to Prague’s most iconic structure, the Charles Bridge. The nice thing about Prague was that it was somewhat well preserved, ie it didn’t get levelled during WW2. That Bridge had been connecting the old town with the new town for hundreds of years, stretching over the Vltava river. You can see the Prague castle up on the hill on the other side. The bridge is lined with statues of various saints as well as some other religious imagery. And then there’s the hundreds and hundreds of tourists! It’s a pretty good place to pull out your camera! I’ve got lots of shots from around that bridge.

I walked up to the hill park on the other side to get a different vantage point of the bridges and at the top of the hill and there was this pop up bar and a DJ. On this towering rock wall you had this large crowd of young people sitting, drinking and smoking :0 (no worries about being arrested obviously) overlooking this absolutely gorgeous city and listening to a live DJ. What a cool scene! Really one of the cooler things I’ve ever seen in any city! Fun stuff. I ended up meeting some other Americans up there and chatting them up for a bit. One just moved here to study Czech, mostly as an excuse to live in Prague for a year. She was pretty jazzed up about it, and I beginning to see why! The city is historic, gorgeous, clean, open minded, diverse, has great nightlife, and isn’t crazy expensive. Like I said, everybody likes Prague.

The next day was more of the major sights, the Prague Castle and the big cathedral, the usual European touristy type stuff. I give myself one really big touristy day in each big city, I can’t really handle too much more than that. But I wanted to be a little more social in the hostel, so I made it back there by 8pm when they cook up a communal dinner type thing. It was some vegetarian stew, meh, but I did get to meet some of the people there. A few people from Perth, oddly. Then it was on to the world cup and drinking games, and then off to the bar, which was a place that had a whole bunch of different music venues, with a different theme in each one, the biggest being the EDM set with the lazers and smoke machines and all. It was a pretty cool place. I left with some people at 3am, but a bunch of the hostel peeps stayed there until 5 or 6 am. I can’t hang anymore!

Then it was lazy day the following day, sleeping in and then taking a long walk through some of the local, non-tourist neighborhoods. All of these places were quiet and nice with plenty of parks around. I liked how all of the big parks had some sort of bar and beer garden in them! Also almost all of the dogs were off leash, and every one of them was so well behaved. I was impressed!

Ok, I’m getting tired of typing, here’s a couple more photos from around the city! Highly recommended!

Wroclaw

This place was recommended to me as a good stopover before Prague. Now I will admit I knew only of Warsaw and Krakow, the two largest cities, before getting to Poland. Well now I know the 3rd largest. I also will also admit that I still don't know how to pronounce anything in Polish, especially Wroclaw! Poland uses the roman alphabet, which is deceiving, because about half the letters aren’t pronounced like they are in English. There’s a popular beer called Zwiec which I utterly failed at ordering in the bar. I also had a conversation with someone about my itinerary that went something like this:

Me: After this I’m heading to Wroclaw (pronouncing it ro-claw, like any normal English speaker would)

Him: Blank stare

Me: You know, the big, nice city not far from Prague, ro-claw!

Him: Ahh you mean Vlo-Slav

Me: Uhh yes… (shame sets in)

Anyway I still have no idea how to say anything. But if I need to, I can just type the word on my phone and show it to the person, and then they’ll be like “ahhh that” while thinking I’m a dullard. Polish is hard!...

A smooth 3.5 hour bus ride later and I’m in Wroclaw's nice new bus station. Once again it’s blue skies and mid 80’s, perfect weather. I hopped on the tram into the city, but their self pay thingy only has the tap reader for the credit card and not the one where you actually insert it, and tap reader never seems to work with my American cards. (why don't we have the tappy tap card readers in the US??). I could have probably paid the dumb tourist card and stayed on the tram, I don’t even think anyone was checking for tickets anyway, but I ended up hopping off and walking the rest of the way into the city. With only one small backpack and my shoulder bag, I’m free! I can walk around for a few miles with all my luggage and still not get worn out. It’s great. It was about a mile walk to the old town.

I liked how even the worst looking buildings always seems to have cheery gardens

Soon enough I was in the center of the old town, and these places are just gorgeous! Gothic (I think??) style buildings line the square, painted in light pastel colors. The focal point was this very unique looking church with an Alice in Wonderland reminiscent clock tower. There was a hostel right across the street from this, but it was all booked up, not surprisingly. Eventually I found a room overlooking a different church a 5 minute walk away. I’ve noticed in Poland that there aren’t as many hotels as most places, but there are tons of tourist apartments for rent, and they’re pretty reasonably priced, most are around $50 a night.

view from my room

I only had one day in Wroclaw, so I didn’t linger in my room for long. I had lots of walking to do. The thing I liked about Wroclaw is once you’re outside the main square, everything is still very nice, lots of outdoor cafes and all, but it feels like there are a lot more locals around as opposed to tourists everywhere. And the prices reflect that. I stopped in this restaurant with huge glass windows giving you nice views of one of the major churches in town; it’s the type of place where it buffet style and you weigh your plate at the end. I had a whole plate of food and a strawberry banana smoothie and the total came out to less than $4. Wroclaw seems like a very live-able city.

I really liked this restaurant

I eventually made my way around to the Panorama Racliette, which features a massive 360 degree panorama of some point in Polish history. Sadly I missed the last showing by 15 minutes. Oh well, there were still lots of nice things to see. I walked through a park and to the river path overlooking some new modern apartment buildings and 200 year old churches on the other side. The path was full of joggers and bikers. I really wasn’t expecting Polish cities to be this nice. I mean you see some pretty ugly concrete housing blocs but almost everything else was modern and clean with tons of quaint outdoor cafes and healthy looking people out and about. And on a random side note, Polish people walk quickly! I’ve never felt like a slow walker before, but these Poles burn rubber on the sidewalk!

churches churches everywhere everywhere

just random places I found walking around

In this part of the world the sun doesn’t go down till after 8:30 so you get lots of time for sightseeing and exploring. I finally made my way back to the main square to take some photos while the light was still nice. I’ve been taking way too many old town photos, but I just can’t seem to help myself! The downside to the sun going down this late is that it kinda hurts my social life. It kills me to not be out photographing between 7:30-10pm when the light is the best, but those are also prime intermingling hours at the hostel. So far the photography is winning out. So there is some benefit to the sun going down at 6pm in Asia!

back to old town

Luckily I did find some people hanging out around the ping pong table and drinking. A mix of Swedes and Aussies. For whatever reason there seem to be lots of Australians in Poland and Europe in general. We ended up going out for some drinks on the square. I believe I might have already mentioned this, but Poland has some pretty decent craft breweries these days. Although these beer/burger bars need to take it easy on the word ‘craft’. They have ‘craft’ beers, ‘craft’ burgers, ‘craft’ wings, 'craft cocktails,' I mean c’mon, you can’t just throw that word in front of evert type of food/drink and expect people to take it seriously! Or can you…? All these places were crowded so maybe its working. I ended up just going for the classic Polish sausage and kraut, which at least didn’t have the word craft in front of it.

The next morning it was back to the bus station and off to Prague! Traveling in Europe is just so damn easy. I bought my bus ticket online in minutes, the people in the stations speak English, everything is on time, roads are nice, most places aren’t really that far, and you don’t even need to stop when crossing borders! I still have vivid memories of some horrendous border crossings in the Stans last year. Thanks Europe for being such a breeze!

Krakow

Next up: Krakow by train. And the trains are surprisingly nice! Fast, modern, easy to navigate, etc. Somewhat pricey. Warsaw to Krakow was only a little more than 2 hours. And the train station is only a block away from old town, which is convenient. It’s always a PITA to be dumped 30 minutes outside of the city. I found my hostel two blocks away from the station, dumped my stuff, and had a look around. Almost instantly I was smitten! It’s like a fairy tale city! The sun was shining, the  sky was perfectly blue with a few puffy clouds, the architecture is colorful and gorgeous, the cobblestone streets are immaculately clean, church spires rise in the distance, horse drawn carriages ply down the streets, all the while classical violin music plays off somewhere in the distance.

St. Mary's Basilica

The main focus of the old town is the St. Mary’s Basilica, smack dab in the middle of the square. The courtyard is massive and lined with dozens of umbrella-laden outdoor cafes with looking into the square. In front of the church the buggy drivers wait with their horses to take tourists around town. I mean I haven’t been to Europe in a decade, but it’s certainly the nicest old town I’ve seen! I’m assuming there are better ones out there, but I’m a Euro-noob, so I was pretty damn impressed. I can certainly see what draws people to Central Europe! And being that it’s mid-summer, there was definitely no shortage of people.

I decided to stop in a rustic looking restaurant on a side street. Pierogie time! And unlike my usual family occasions they other options besides potato and sauerkraut! These were fancy pierogies. I ordered five different kinds, and opted for steamed instead of the fried. I had potato and cream cheese, spinach and kraut, duck confit, minced pork, something with horseradish. The potato cream cheese and the duck were both killer. And still less than 10 bucks for the meal and a large beer. Much better start to Krakow than Warsaw!

Eventually I wandered all the way through the old town and across the river to the museum of contemporary art. I’m not a huge museum guy, but given a choice between art and history I’m taking the art museum every time. Every time I’m in a history museum it’s information overload and I feel like my brain shuts off after an hour. Plus I can get all that information online, at my own pace, if I want; whereas looking at art is much more powerful in person. So needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed the museum, especially some of the photography exhibits

You can tell from some of the exhibits that Europeans see America's presence in the rest of the world a little bit differently than many Americans do. 

When I got back to my hostel I found some people getting geared up for the evening World Cup match, Colombia vs Britain, so I tagged along. It’s kind of fun traveling in Europe during the World Cup because everyone is so pumped about these games. And with Colombia tying it during penalty time and Britain winning in penalty kicks, it was a pretty great game to watch. But really, there has to be a better way to solve these huge matches than with PK’s! After the game some of the group moved to another bar to celebrate, but I really couldn’t have cared less that England won, so I called it a night.

Now, what should have been a straight to bed, pass out before hitting the pillow night, turned into something much more sinister in the hostel. Right above my bunk was the most dreaded thing that can happen in a dormitory, a snorer! AGH. I didn’t have earplugs either. Seriously there is nothing worse a snorer. It’s like you’re whole existence becomes part of the reverberations from this random guys nostrils. Seriously these people need to shamed, Cersei style, dragged naked through the streets with people cursing and throwing rotten food at them. If you snore don’t stay in a hostel dormitory, JFC! I’m getting too old for hostels. Even after I passed out I had nightmares where I was getting chased around in an old factory where there is constant off-kilter groaning sound going off and on in the background. An ominous sign for my travel plans the next day.

That morning I was off on a tour to Auschwitz, which is one of those things you really should do in Krakow, even though it does kind of kill the fun travel vibe. I won’t get into the gritty details of the camp, but what really is amazing to me was how seemingly easy it was for the systematic elimination of Jews to happen, even in Poland, where before the German occupation, the Poles and Jews lived side by side. For months and years the Germans blasted constant propaganda, meant to dehumanize the Jews, claiming the Jews were thieves, different from everyone else, dirty and disease infested, and eventually separated them from the normal population ‘for the public good.’ First it was the ghettos, then it was the death camps. And people just watched it happen, many of whom bought into the propaganda. It’s scary how well propaganda can work on the masses. And I’m not going to get into politics too much, but the similarities between ICE and the Gestapo are a bit eerie, and having an authoritarian president who constantly lies and uses choice words meant to dehumanize an entire group of people should be disconcerting to anyone who follows history. Or anyone what at all.

Anyway, so after that sobering experience it was back into Krakow, this time I wanted to check out the Kazimierz neighbourhood, just outside of the old town. The buildings are a bit older and more run down, but that gives them their own kind of appeal. It’s kind of the more hipster part of the city, I guess you’d say, with an art street, funky coffeeshops, and bars boasting of Polish craft beers. My kind of place. For lunch I had some sort of cheesy casserole with potatoes, bacon, sauerkraut, onions, and polish sausage. Fantastic! Later in the afternoon I got around to sampling the local craft brews, which is something I always miss in Asia.

Then it was back to the old town to visit the Fawel castle around sunset and some beet soup + beef ghoulash from a more local place for dinner. Mmm. Ghoulash is one of those things that tastes better than it sounds! I had one more drink on the square to admire my surroundings and listen to a guitar player. A very romantic place, it certainly would be better with a girl around. I ended getting to bed somewhat early, as I’d be taking a bus to Wroclaw the next morning. I can also appreciate having a more normal sleep schedule after having poker mess mine up for so long!

And that's all for Krakow! Next up Wroclaw. Here's a few more photos of the old town: