The Magnificence and Stability of Jordan

Hello all!  I’m writing from Shimla, a lovely former colonial hill station near the Himalayas.  The contrast from the heat and chaos of Delhi is like night and day.  I can definitely see why the delicate British escaped up here for the summer.  Anyway… back to the end of my time in the Middle East…

JORDAN

Colleen and I reunited with Giacomo in Amman after we traveled to Israel.  As we were waiting for our rental car to arrive the next day, Giacomo met two Italian travelers in the lobby.  Gabriele and Caterina were on a three week holiday from working for the UN in Kosovo, very interesting and lovely people.  After talking for a few minutes, they decided to join us in the rental car to drive down to the Dead Sea and Petra.   We arrived at the Dead Sea within a few hours.  Driving in Jordan is very easy, relatively speaking.  Signs are clear and police are honest and friendly, never attempting to extract bribes from you.  At all of the security checkpoints along the highway, they peered into our car, saw five foreign faces, and waved us off with a smile and a hearty “Welcome to Jordan!”  Wonderful people.

I had seen the Dead Sea from the Israel side, but we didn’t get into the water.  This time we did, and it was one of the most peculiar sensations ever.  It is nearly impossible to stand, and anything resembling synchronized swimming is delightfully effortless.   The forceful floating of the Dead Sea means that all of your arms and legs can easily stick straight out of the water as you lie on your back.  Reading a magazine with all your limbs in the air – no problem.  The only drawback was the annoying Arab men taking photos with their cellphones of western women in bikinis (unfortunately a recurring theme on the beaches of the Middle East).

After sunset we continued the drive to Petra.  We took a back way and ended up in the middle of nowhere when we stopped for a break.  Surrounded by the gorgeous silence of the desert and a sky absolutely crowded with stars, I almost didn’t want to get back in the car.  But we continued, and spent the next three days visiting Petra.  Petra is one of those magical unique places (like Angkor Wat) that is impressive not only in its history but its sheer beauty and vastness.  The whole time I was thinking, “How the f did they built this???”  The various rose hues of the stones coupled with the desert landscape and the myriad temples and structures carved into rock formations are beyond words.  Absolutely fantastic and mind-blowing.  Alright, I’m done with the annoying superlatives, but you must see it if you ever get the chance!

After Petra I was desperate to head to the beach, so Giacomo and I left for Aqaba while Colleen and Alison (a Welsh woman we met at the Dead Sea and ran into again in Petra) went to Wadi Rum, the desert where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed.  Primarily a beach resort for vacationing Jordanians and Saudis, Aqaba was packed with mid-range hotels and American fast food restaurants.  Strange.  The beach wasn’t anything impressive, besides the fact that there were no women there whatsoever (if you don’t count the two or three in full chador hiding in the shade).  With all the men around, sunbathing was absolutely not an option for me so we rented a paddleboat.  We thought we would be able to tan in peace and lounge on the boat – WRONG.  We paddled out about 50 meters and I laid out in my bathing suit to get some sun.  Within a few seconds we were surrounded by other boats full of ogling men. UGHHHH!!!  Feeling oppressed and resentful for the nth time in the Middle East, I immediately put my shirt back on and we paddled back to the shore.  The next day we paid $15 each to sunbathe at a private resort full of westerners.  It was kind of an exorbitant amount of money to pay for such a basic freedom, but definitely worth it.

The best thing about Aqaba was probably the food and affordable wine.   We celebrated Giacomo’s birthday at an excellent seafood restaurant recommended to us by vacationing Italians.  Afterwards we went to a hotel bar with a sign that proclaimed “live music!”, which ended up being a forlorn looking blonde woman who strummed random western songs on her guitar in between extremely long cigarette breaks.  Besides a few single men and several Romanian waitresses, the bar was empty.  Bars in the Middle East are always a little… off, but it was a good birthday celebration nonetheless.

The next day Alison and Colleen arrived and regaled us with stories of the desert and the Bedouins.  We had to catch our flight out to Mumbai, so we left for Amman the next morning.  I loved our time in Jordan, such an easy place to travel with very friendly people.  Jordan is probably the safest place to travel in the Middle East since it’s not involved in any direct conflicts and shares a friendly border with Israel.  It was a relief to go days without seeing armed soldiers like we did in every other Middle Eastern country we visited.  Jordan was much more expensive than Syria, but still less than Israel or Lebanon.  Go visit!

Alright, it’s dinnertime now so I will post about India soon.  Hope all is well at home. xo.

 

War and Peace – Lebanon and Israel

Hi all.  I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Mumbai, melting a bit from the heat.  India is like a dream after the Middle East, even though I have only seen Mumbai so far.  Still, I am loving all the lush tropical vegetation (in the city!), the ability to wear t-shirts in public and the lack of armed soldiers.   India feels like a liberal heaven after the Middle East.

I’m a little overwhelmed at how behind I am (it’s been four countries since I last posted, eep!), so I’m just going to give you a rundown of the highlights of the Middle East:

LEBANON

Colleen and I decided to go to Lebanon on a whim after speaking to two British guys in Damascus who had just been there.  Lebanon is highly unstable right now, with the president still undetermined after almost a year and a half since the elections.  Hezbollah is a vivid presence (not only a terrorist organization as portrayed in western media, but also one of the most powerful political parties in Lebanon) and you do have to be careful about where you go in the country.  That said, Beirut is a fantastic city on the Mediterranean that shouldn’t be missed.  However, it’s EXPENSIVE.  We suffered total sticker shock after coming from Syria.  The prices may well be the same as the United States. 

Amid crumbling, bombed out buildings that have not been rebuilt since the civil war ended in 1990 and the war with Israel in 2006, you also see shiny highrises, fancy boutiques and luxury vehicles everywhere.  The Lebanese have a reputation for being the party animals (and craziest drivers) of the Middle East, and from what we saw it did not disappoint.  Genmayze is the main drinking street with over 80 bars, a shocking sight in the Middle East.  With all the high-maintenance women and sleek cars, it may well have been Los Angeles or Miami.  With a high percentage of Christians and French-speaking people, Lebanon has a completely different feel from the rest of the Middle East.  And while I admire the Lebanese spirit of “let’s party because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow!”, it is jarring to have a few beers in a bar and leave the building to find a giant tank and armed soldiers stationed directly outside.  Also, several parts of the city are eerily deserted as many Lebanese have left in anticipation of another civil war, and there are parts of Beirut that are totally off-limits (unless you fancy a Hezbollah checkpoint).

 Due to the current political instability, politics reigns as THE number one point of discussion.  It was fascinating to talk to people from different backgrounds about their political views - Muslims who support Hezbollah, Muslims who don’t, Greek Orthodox Christians who distrust all the Arabs in power, etc etc.  We also visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut along with two Czech girls from our hostel.  The Palestinian woman who showed us around spoke almost perfect English and didn’t blink an eye when we told her we were American.  She led us through the camp, a labyrinth of concrete and filth with a tangled web of electrical wires hovering above us everywhere.  The camp was designed for 3,000, but currently houses 18,000.  It was by far the poorest place I saw in the Middle East.  One of the Czech girls commented on how much it reminded her of the slums in Mumbai.  We helped cover some books at the school library and played with the kids for a bit before heading back to our part of town.

ISRAEL

Crossing over to Israel from Jordan was the biggest ordeal in border crossings Colleen and I have experienced so far.  Most border crossings in the Middle East are a breeze – the officials take a perfunctory look at your luggage, stamp your passport, and wave you off.   It usually takes about half an hour max.  The Jordan/Israel border was much more like passing through security in an American airport – officials barking directions at you as you pass through multiple physical security checks and generally making you feel like a criminal.  But as “friendly” as they were towards the foreigners, the Palestinians had it noticeably worse.

Colleen and I were stopped at passport control and made to wait, ostensibly because we had visited Syria (twice).  We had anticipated this, and after two hours a border official came out with a slew of questions for us – “Why did you go to Syria?” “Tourism.” “Why?” “Um, because we wanted to see Damascus.” “Do you know any Syrians?” “No.” “Why did you go twice?” “We had to pass back through after Lebanon.” “Why did you go to Lebanon?” etc. etc.  After many more seemingly irrelevant questions such as ”How do you two know each other?” she called my friend in Jerusalem to verify that we were indeed staying with him and let us pass.  I should mention here that the rest of the country is also extremely tight with security – metal detectors everywhere, from the bus station to the local supermarket.  Soldiers with guns are sighted at almost every turn.  Normally this would have affected me quite a bit, but after Colombia and the rest of the Middle East I hardly noticed it.

As much as Lebanon was a shock to us, Israel seemed COMPLETELY western and developed.  The streets were lined with trees (in the desert, just like LA!), roads were perfectly paved, buses and bathrooms very clean.  It was interesting to see that all the street signs were in Hebrew, Arabic and English (as opposed to just Arabic as we were used to).  Jerusalem was the only place in the Middle East where we saw throngs of American tourist groups, not exactly a welcome sight.  After the tenth conversation or so we overhead consisting of, “Oh jeepers honey, I think Jesus was buried in there!” we saw a few of the sights very quickly and got the hell out of there.  Since we happened to be there for Easter it was particularly crowded, and therefore kind of annoying and exhausting.

Jerusalem has a beautiful old city that is like a much more touristy version of Damascus.  So many of significant religious sites are revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, for different reasons.  It’s another disheartening example of how difficult it is to find any sense of fairness in “dividing” the territory in this region, or how you can ask any of these groups to give anything up.  Jerusalem itself is also divided into different districts, mostly according to religion.

We stayed with my friend Guy during our five days in Israel.  I met Guy while traveling in Southeast Asia in 2004, so it was great to see him again.  He and his friends were an interesting bunch – an amalgamation of anarchist, post-zionist, communist, hippie, pacifist metalhead types (not your typical Israelis) which provided lots of fodder for interesting conversation.  Almost everyone we met pumped us for information about what Syria and Lebanon were like.  It was very sad actually, to see how curious they were since they will probably never be able to go there in their lifetimes.

We happened to be in Israel for Purim, a Jewish holiday that appeared to be just a drunk Halloween.  We went out that night in Jerusalem and saw lots of Israelis stumbling around in entertaining costumes.  Many of them were fittingly Middle-Eastern: lots of Ottoman-era outfits, people dressed as Jesus, Arabs, but also clowns, cross-dressers, witches, fairies, etc.  I think my favorite was a guy dressed as an Israeli hippie girl.

Guy also took us to a sunrise music festival near the Dead Sea, which was glorious.  We drove out right before dawn and caught a spectacular sunrise and some amazing desert scenery.  The Dead Sea was a really unique color and texture – very glassy, smooth and light blue.  It’s freakishly calm and looks like it has an oily film on top.  I know that sounds gross but it looked really beautiful and shimmery.  However, I didn’t go in that time (we went on the Jordan side a few days later).

We spent just a day in Tel Aviv, another laidback Middle-Eastern Mediterranean city.  This city, however, was filled with cute boutiques, cafes, attractive beach-goers, adorable gay men and a lovely beach.  It reminded me of San Francisco (and Los Angeles).

After four or five days in Israel, we returned to Amman to see the sights in Jordan with Giacomo for a week before flying out to India.  This keyboard is sticky so I am going to save Jordan and the beginning of India for my next post.  Ciao!

 

Syria – leave all your expectations at home!!

Hi dear readers.  Colleen and I decided to stay in Damascus (and all of Syria) for much longer than anticipated.  In fact, we arrived in Beirut a week later than originally planned.  Whoops.  But this is what I love about long-term travel – the flexibility to change your plans whenever a whim hits you.  Which brings me to last Saturday…

Last Friday on Colleen’s birthday, I took her out for a lovely meal in Damascus (Syrian food is fantastic, by the way, someone needs to tap into this!!!) and we went out dancing at a club in the old city that was basically a 1000+ year old cave.  With a DJ from London perched in the upper corner.  Crazy!!  We danced til the wee morning with hip young Syrians and woke up too late the next day to check out of the hostel so we postponed Beirut plans again.  Saturday night was supposed to be a quiet one, but we ended up going to dinner with three other travelers Colleen had met at an internet cafe – a Brit, an American (the only American we’ve met!) and an Italian, all guys (we rarely meet other female travelers, which is sad).  We went to a gorgeous restaurant with a balcony and a huge courtyard in the middle that was alive with singing and dancing from a huge wedding/engagement party (we think).

 We ate on the balcony and Colleen milked her birthday card even though it wasn’t her birthday anymore and the waiter brought a complimentary chocolate cake with four kinds of ice cream out for her!  He insisted on it, saying he wanted her to have a great memory of Syria.   The hospitality in the Middle East continually amazes me.  Then the three boys decided to pay for the meal because it was her birthday, another lovely gesture considering we had just met hours earlier.

Giacomo, the Italian who had recently arrived in Syria to travel after working in Iran as a chef, had plans to rent a car and go to Lattakia the next day.  Lattakia is a city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, known for being a laidback beach town.  He invited us to go with him, and we decided in a split second to go and postpone Beirut since he said he would do all the driving.  Driving in the Middle East is like playing some kind of insane version of Grand Theft Auto, but with more cars, no lanes and incessant hooking. 

So the next day we took off – three foreigners in a rental car in Syria, armed with a map and about ten words of spoken Arabic between us.  The highways in Syria are well-paved and signs to major cities are marked clearly in Arabic and English.  We drove about 350km to Lattakia, arriving at the main hotel on Blue Beach after following road signs to “Touristic North,” where we were told to ask about rental apartments in the area.  The reception guy told us to “talk to the guy standing on the corner,” so we went outside and found the rental guy who called his English-speaking friend so that he could translate during this entire interaction.  We decided on a furnished three-bedroom apartment on the water with a terrace and a great view and paid less than $40 a night for it, extravagant for backpacker standards but such an amazing deal!

Lattakia is definitely the most laidback place I have seen in Syria.  Women generally have their heads uncovered and wear tight, tight clothing!  We even saw trannies walking down the street, something you NEVER see in the Middle East (except Istanbul).  I think it’s the Mediterranean beach influence, because there’s also lots of Italian food there.  People look Italian too!  We had pizza for dinner and had a few beers on the terrace afterwards.  We ended up chatting all night on the terrace, having switched to tea since the beer had long since run out.  After watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean, instead of going to bed we decided to go visit Qalat al-Saladdin, a castle/fortress built roughly around the time…oh, I don’t know, when Jesus was walking around.  Nuts.

The castle was only 24km away, so we figured we would check it out in the gorgeous early morning sun and head back to the apartment in relatively no time at all.  Ha!  Things never work that way, as we always realize later on.  We got horribly lost and asked about fifteen different people how to get to the castle.  Asking strangers for directions is almost comically ineffectual when you don’t speak Arabic.  Here’s what would generally happen:

1.  We pull up, roll down the window.

2. The Syrian is shocked by these three foreigners driving a car and doesn’t register what we are saying because he/she is too busy staring at the freakish combination of an Italian guy, a blonde girl and a Korean girl.

3. We repeat the name of the castle several times.

4. The Syrian recovers from the shock, develops a huge smile and gestures enthusiastically in Arabic about which direction to go into.

5. We smile, say “Shukran jazeelan!” (thank you very much) and drive away, still not having any clue which way to go.

After contemplating driving on the highway in the wrong direction (Syrians do it frequently because you can’t get off the highways and back on in a different direction), we suddenly found our way and drove up to an area that looked EXACTLY like Tuscany – Cyprus trees, rolling hills, brilliant violet wildflowers – absolutely gorgeous and totally unexpected.  We arrived at the castle three hours after we left the apartment at exactly nine on the dot, opening time.

Upon arrival we were offered tea by the castle guards, so we sat and chatted with them for awhile before exploring an almost empty giant castle/fortress/citadel thingy.  We walked along the extremely precarious castle wall (with a several hundred foot drop on one side), explored the ruins, watched Colleen fall off a donkey into a puddle of mud, and met the sweetest 15-member Iraqi family on vacation. Fabulous morning!  We were delirious with lack of sleep at this point, but spent three delightful hours there.  Around noon we finally left to grab some lunch and head back to the apartment.  On the way home some police tried to wave us over, but Giacomo gunned the engine and sped away instead.  Giacomo had been told that the police only pull over foreigners to extract bribes, and that if you just drive away quickly they are too lazy to follow you (I mean, they have important tea-drinking and backgammon-playing to attend to!).  I can now confirm that this is true.

Our next few days in Lattakia were not nearly as eventful, but, as we like to call it, the perfect “vacation from our vacation.”  We did a whole lot of nothing besides laying around, walking to the beach, sitting on the terrace, drinking beer, letting Giacomo cook for us and making fun of unintentionally hysterical Arabic television shows.  Giacomo also regaled us with fascinating stories of life in Iran.  My favorite anecdotes include the popularity of the “burqini,” a scuba-suit-like bathing suit, and an Iranian television channel that solely features a still camera angle of a river running through a grove of trees with tinkling music in the background.  And sometimes rain on the trees, because there are no trees, pretty rivers or rain in Iran.  So people watch it on television – just as good!

Three nights later we finally tore ourselves away from Lattakia and drove to Aleppo, the most conservative city in Syria.  Talk about culture shock!  Colleen and I immediately covered our arms and heads because almost all the women were in full chador.  The traffic in Aleppo was even more manic than the traffic in Damascus, so cars would come to a screeching stop an inch or two away from each other, in every direction, honking honking honking. SOOO stressful for driving – Colleen and I were so glad that we didn’t have to deal with it.  When we finally parked I vomited in my mouth, which basically describes how I felt about that place.  People rave about the ”authentic” souks (covered markets) in Aleppo, but there were full of elderly German tourists and male harrassment on par with Istanbul.  Ugh.  Compounded by the fact that Giacomo had to leave us to meet a friend back in Damascus, we felt harrassed, intimidated and generally sort of unsafe during our brief stay there.  We were followed and yelled at constantly, which can be kind of a downer!  After a day we got the hell out of there and back to Damascus for a night before leaving for Beirut the next day.

Getting from Damascus to Beirut was another circus as as well, but I’ll save that for my next entry about Lebanon. Beirut is currently on the brink of war - political parties at a standstill with Hezbollah everywhere, but what an exciting place to be (and not as dangerous as you would think).

 

Welcome to the 70s… I mean the Middle East

Hi all! I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Damascus, in a building that’s probably about a thousand years old.  Let me backtrack a bit…

After Istanbul Colleen and I flew to Amman, Jordan. We were the only tourists on our flight except for two Japanese travelers who were in transit. Following the Lonely Planet recommendation, we stayed at the Palace Hotel, a dingy but clean hotel (there are no hostels in Amman) with really friendly staff. Men from various Middle Eastern countries chain smoked as they watched Al-Jazeera coverage of the Democratic primaries in the US. We chatted with Nick the lone backpacker, an Arabic-speaking Brit who was studying in Cairo, and ended up going out to a tea house for some nargileh (hookah), tea and backgammon with two other Brits he had met the night before. James and Oli were 18 and teaching English and music at a school in Amman. I have never met such well traveled 18 year olds before, but Oli had been to Afghanistan and rural Pakistan, which was fascinating to hear about. Conversations in Middle East often swirl around two main topics (with both locals and travelers) – religion and politics. I am happy to discuss both at length and really interested in what others have to say about these issues.

Colleen and I only spent two days in Amman, not really seeing sights but taking care of errand-y things. Amman isn’t particularly beautiful or glamorous, but it has great energy and just feels like a “real” city where people live and work. We went to Mecca Mall (love the name), a flashy mall on the edge of Amman where I bought contact lenses and almost everyone spoke English. I had a lovely massage at a Turkish bath and spent a few hours in a great little gallery/cafe, chatting with the elderly owner who had exhibited his paintings all over the world.   People in Jordan and Syria are almost unfailingly polite and respectful, a really welcome change after Turkey. Syria receives even fewer tourists, so the reception from locals is even more enthusiastic.

Colleen and I took a shared taxi from Amman to Damascus (3 hours, about $13) and stopped at the border along the way. We had obtained our visas for Syria in the US and had no problems going through border control, which we later discovered was highly unusual. Most Americans apparently are hassled and made to wait for hours as phone calls to the American embassy are made and papers are shuffled around. Luckily it only took us a few minutes and we rejoined our taxi companions – a jovial elderly Jordanian man who spoke a few words of English and Khalid, a 24 year old Iraqi-born Syrian who spoke absolutely no English. After engaging in some rudimentary conversation with the six words of Arabic we know, we showed Khalid photos from our trip as he continuously offered his Marlboro Reds to us. I cannot emphasize enough how welcoming Syrians have been during our time here so far. Most are simply curious as to why we are here, and even children can say “Welcome to Syria!!!” before learning anything else in English. Shopkeepers never hassle us, but simply engage us in friendly conversation. Syrians are supposed to be even friendlier in more rural areas, which I’m looking forward to seeing.

We arrived in Damascus as the sun was setting, bathing the grey, boxy brick buildings of the city in a gorgeous soft orange light.  Sunsets in the Middle East are impossibly exotic and I don’t know why – maybe it’s the dust, the sandy hills, who knows.  A bustling city of 5 million, Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It’s also a city full of immigrants from other parts of the Middle East – Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, etc. Syrian women in Damascus tend to be very cosmopolitan, shunning hijab (the headscarf) for tight jeans, form-fitting sweaters and loads of makeup. We were told by Abdullah, the receptionist at our hostel, that the women in chador (full black coverup, but not as covered up as a burqa) are immigrants from Iran or Saudi Arabia, much more conservative Arab countries. The men’s fashion vacillates between Lawrence of Arabia and That 70s Show. Again, those with head coverings tend to be immigrants, but Syrian men love their bell bottoms, tight trousers, turtlenecks under flannel shirts and shiny dress shoes. The men’s fashion, along with the vintage Mercedes and ever-present 70′s era furniture give this place a distinctly dated feel. I’m totally tickled by it.

Yesterday Colleen and I wandered around the walled old city, an area where most buildings are well over a thousand years old. We were approached by three Syrian university students at the Umayyad Mosque who asked if they could take our picture and ended up giving us a tour of the entire building. A group of giggly high school girls who spoke no English approached me at the second mosque, gave me candy, took photos with me as we attempted to communicate solely through body language. Sitting in the courtyard of a mosque is a great way to observe local life.  I was playing with a toddler who had run up to me when her mother came up to us, clad in full chador. I thought she was going to take her child away, but instead she picked up her toddler and asked her to give me a kiss on the cheek. Adorable, and smiles all around.

Today is Colleen’s birthday, so we are going to check out a nightclub in Damascus… should be interesting! Tomorrow we are headed across the border to Beirut, Lebanon, only 84km away. With the current political situation, the border is going to be a bitch. We weren’t planning to visit Lebanon on this trip because of time constraints, but after chatting with some Brits we met yesterday who had just returned from Beirut, we can’t resist. Yes, the country is unstable, they are sort of gearing up for war and Beirut is full of Hezbollah operatives, but it sounds too fascinating to pass up and is apparently still ok for travel (for now). Beirut was once the “Paris of the Middle East” and is renowned as having the best food in the region, so we’ll be on our way!

 

Hello! Hola! Konichiwa! Nihou! I am here!! MEOW!!!

Hi all.  I was planning to write a final post on my last week in Colombia, but now I’m two countries behind already so I will just have to say that Col0mbia is one of my all-time favorite countries and you MUST go, if you ever have the opportunity.  You will meet no friendlier people and see no better beaches, jungles and mountains, I promise.

 After Colombia I spent a whirlwind week back in California – a few days with my family in Los Angeles and a very quick weekend in SF.  It was delightful to catch up with everyone and eat all the food I had missed, but I am thrilled to be back on the road and away from “real life” yet again…

For the next leg of my trip (Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Israel, India) I am traveling with Colleen, one of my oldest and closest friends.  We spent four days in Istanbul before arriving at our current destination in Amman, Jordan.  Istanbul fulfilled many of the stereotypical images in my head as a bridge between traditional and modern, religious and secular, east and west.  I didn’t realize that there is also a literal bridge that connects the two halves of the city (old and new).  Istanbul is an incredibly massive, diverse, bustling metropolis.  We visited many different parts of the city but I felt like I needed weeks more to fully explore it.  We spent a fair bit of time in the historic old center where the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and our hostel were located.  This part of the city is incredibly picturesque but extremely touristy, which brings mediocre food, blaring American pop music and irritating carpet sellers.  Akbiyik Caddesi street is very similar to the abomination that is Khao San Road in Bangkok, but all the cheap hostels are located there so we didn’t have much choice.  Also, the backpackers you meet there tend to be very young and very green travellers - just out of college generally, with Istanbul being the “craziest” place they have ever been (not to be such a travel snob, sorry).  AND I had just met up with Colleen and we had lots to catch up on, so I wasn’t too interested in smoking a hookah with alcoholic 22 year old Aussies on the roof of the hostel.  Anyway…

Friday night we went out to Beyoglu and Taksim, a hip shopping district with lots of bars and clubs.  Beyoglu is full of energetic young Turks and plenty of women with their heads un-covered.   We went to a bar that was playing salsa music (random) and danced at an electronic club.  Good times.  The next night we took it easy and sprawled out for what turned out to be a five hour dinner.  We drank 10-15 cups of tea a day, and that night was no different.  The tea drinking culture in Istanbul is absolutely fantastic – it’s like enforced relaxing.  I loved wandering around the Spice Bazaar and taking in all the delectable aromas, and every time we walked into a cafe we were greeted with the fragrant haze of apple tabacco smoked in large water pipes. 

The main reason I didn’t totally fall in love with Istanbul, however, is that we were endlessly harrassed by men almost everywhere we went.  I do miss traveling with a man for that reason, because two girls alone is no different than one girl alone in terms of harrassment.  The title of this blog entry is how we were greeted by almost every shopkeeper/annoying tout as we walked by (I have a bag that says “Colombia” on it so people kept talking to us in Spanish, funny).  At first we were polite and responded “hello” back while continuing walking, but that would lead into inevitable conversations with lecherous men and pleas to have tea so we quickly developed the art of averting our eyes and not responding to anyone as we hurried by.  This wasn’t even the ideal solution though, because we found that some men would become really angry if we ignored them – “Are people unfriendly in your country? COME BACK HERE I AM TALKING TO YOU!!!” or an unfortunate incident at the club where a guy said “F*** you!  God will judge you!!” because I answered a question from someone else.  Ugh.  I pretty much stopped talking to any local men after that, which is so unfortunate because conversations with locals is one of the best parts of traveling.  Oh well.

I don’t want to leave the impression that all Turkish men were like that though, because we did also meet some friendly university students as well.  They didn’t believe in God, which was pretty shocking in a country that is 95% Muslim.  We had a nice chat with them in a hipster rock bar and left without anything lecherous happening.  Whew.  There were also plenty of men who barely noticed us in Beyoglu, which was really refreshing. 

I think Istanbul would have been a radically different experience if I had been traveling with a male companion, but… well, lesson learned I guess.  I would love to go back and explore the rest of the country sometime in the future.  We did have some excellent food experiences – Turkish yogurt (yum), gozleme (kind of like a crepe stuffed with cheese, spinach or meat served with an array of spices) and manti (ravioli-type things served with yogurt, garlic and some harrissa-type spicy sauce).  But…er… the food in Jordan is blowing me away right now, so I think it wins for best Middle Eastern food so far.

I hope all are well, I will post about Jordan later!  I love it here!!

 

Turkish Hipsters Denied Access to Blogging

Greetings, fellow wanderlust sufferers.  This is Ruth.

Leona has instructed me to post on her behalf, because:

“. . .  i [went] to wordpress to update my blog, and the website is blocked!! i
had no idea that turkey had such serious censorship! scary….

i did some web research and found out that the turkish government
banned wordpress last year because someone wrote some defamatory
comments about a turkish islamic creationist, adnan oktar.
HMMPPPHHH!!!! so then the government blocks access to all the other
one and a half million bloggers on wordpress. awesome. censorship will
definitely expedite turkey’s plans to join the EU.”

I am also supposed to give the Turkish government the virtual finger, so, um, consider that done.  Leona will post from Jordan next week, if she isn’t strictly reprimanded/detained in the meantime (JOKE JOKE HA HA ERRUMMM. . .).

 

Medellin – my favorite Colombian city

Hi all. I´m back in Bogota to chill out for a few days before boarding my flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday (I am going to be back in the states for a week before flying out to Istanbul). I spent six days in Medellin, but I could have stayed for weeks more. Medellin is known for its perfect year-round spring climate, stunning setting in a valley surrounded by green mountains, excellent plastic surgeons and Pablo Escobar. During the heyday of the Medellin Cartel in the 80s and 90s, Medellin was infamous for rampant drug-related crime. With curfews and loads of motorcycle assassins, it didn´t attract too many visitors at the time. Medellin today, however, is an entirely different place with an extraordinarily vibrant nightlife and some of the friendliest people you will ever meet.

After arriving on Saturday morning, Chris and I ended up at the Palm Tree Hostal, a lovely hostel with the cleanest communal kitchen I have ever seen in Colombia. Generally speaking I don´t cook very much when I travel because kitchens are often dirty and it is usually cheaper to eat out. The Palm Tree, however, offered free coffee, unlimited oranges to make fresh juice and two eggs per day. We ended up making breakfast and dinner every single night, a really welcome change after eating so much tasty but not very healthy Colombian food for weeks. It´s amazing how delicious steamed broccoli tastes when you haven´t had it in awhile! Chris is a very good cook so we took turns with the meals. The other travelers were really into cooking as well, so the hostel had a great, homey feeling to it. It was also small enough that you knew everyone who was staying there, and the group was pretty diverse – in addition to the usual Aussies and Brits, I also met travelers from Switzerland, Italy, France, Argentina, Brazil and the US.

We were pretty tired from the bus journey, but since it was Saturday night we felt obligated to go out and experience the famous Medellin nightlife. It definitely did not disappoint! We started at an electronic club with some people from Palm Tree, where I had my first dose of serious Colombian plastic surgery. Holy crap! I don´t think I have ever seen so many fake tits in my life. The ass implants were pretty entertaining as well. Some women were really starting to look like trannies though, which I don´t think was the intended effect…

That club closed at 4am, which felt way too early. We wandered outside to ask where the next spot was. After a short chat we ended up in a car with some very drunk but friendly Colombian guys who plied us with whiskey and red bull as they drove us to the next club. I would never get into a drunk stranger´s car back home, but the rules when traveling are a little more…relaxed. I rode in vehicles and motorbikes with drunk drivers in Southeast Asia all the time, just because, well, everyone was drunk and there wasn´t much you could do about that.

Anyway… the second club reminded me a lot of the clubs in Vegas, except that it was full of Colombians, not Midwesterners. More electronic music, more expensive booze, etc. I ran into some travelers I had met earlier in my trip, which happens a lot more often than you would think. Right outside the club were street vendors selling cigarettes, lollipops, gum, and all sorts of random crap you might want for a late night at a club. At around 6am we finally got tired of dancing, caught a taxi home and flew through the city as the cabbie blasted the best hits of UB-40 while driving like a maniac. Nice.

Sunday was spent doing pretty much nothing as we nursed our hangovers – had some food, watched movies in the living room and chilled out with the other hungover travelers at the hostel. After that indulgent and extremely lazy day, we did go out and explore the city a bit during the rest of the week:

Monday – Indian vegetarian restaurant for lunch, and then the Botero museum and plaza. The overview of modern Colombian paintings was really interesting.

Tuesday – Took the cable car up to the top and explored a neighborhood that used to be a total slum. The cable car has transformed this neighborhood by connecting it to the rest of Medellin. Now people can go to school or work with much more ease. Also, a huge, modern library has just opened up in that neighborhood, and we saw several offices that looked like they were giving business training. And there were tons of adorable kids running around!

Wednesday – More paragliding for me, first time for Chris and Adam (Aussie from the hostel). This time was even better because of the fantastic views of the city. Also, I wasn´t scared at all this time, so I took a lot more photos. We landed in a big dirt patch in a poor neighborhood where the kids gawked at my camera and hopped around us. As we headed to the metro afterwards, we ended up stopping at an empanada stand and eating about 20 potato empanadas (they were small!) while chatting with some friendly locals.

Later that night we went out in Zona Rosa, party central in Medellin. Since it was Wednesday night it was pretty tame, so we had just one drink and headed back (I still felt like I was recovering a bit from Saturday anyway). There were TONS of bars and clubs in that area though, and it looked like it would be really fun during the weekend.

Thursday afternoon we caught a bus to Manizales, a city in the heart of Zona Cafetera, the coffee-growing region of the country. I really didn´t want to leave Medellin, but forced myself to do so because of time constraints. I will be back though! Who knows when…

 

Carnaval and Colonial Disneyland

Greetings dear readers! Sorry for the delayed posting. I only have a week left in Colombia and I just can´t bear the thought of leaving (but I won`t whine too much about it since most of you are reading this from florescent-lit cubicles).

I ended up staying in Barranquilla for five days for Carnaval. Our host procured tickets to one of the best parades for us, so we spent an entire day drinking free beer in the Aguila stand (Colombia´s most popular beer), eating fried street snacks and dancing to LOTS of salsa. I am a terrible salsa dancer, by the way. I love to dance but have never been good with coordinated dance moves, and salsa is no exception. However, if you have a good dance partner, you can look really good! It´s amazing.

After the parade started winding down around 5pm, we headed home to change and then off again to a few more outdoor salsa parties. When you are at these huge outdoor parties it feels like the entire city of Barranquilla has shut down, except to celebrate Carnaval (which is pretty much the case). After drinking all day and dancing til 3am, we went home and slept like hibernating bears.

Two more days of Carnaval followed, but I must admit that I did a whole lot of nothing besides lazing around Camilo´s posh apartment – rented some movies, cooked some amazing meals and met his friends. Barranquilla is not usually very interesting to travellers because it`s a port city that isn`t particularly attractive. It reminded me a lot of Los Angeles actually – tons of shiny malls, flashy cars, palm trees, high-maintenance women, wide roads and vaguely Spanish-colonial apartment buildings. Oh, not to mention the Tower Records, Blockbuster Video, etc etc.

After Carnaval was over, Darren and I peeled ourselves off of Camilo´s couch and headed to Cartagena, the crown jewel of colonial towns in South America. Camilo drove us and we met up again with Chris, a British guy we met on the Ciudad Perdida trek. Cartagena is by far the most touristy place in Colombia, and you feel it the second you arrive. You do see lots of beautifully restored colonial buildings, but it feels a lot like a Florence or Venice – absolutely gorgeous, charming, romantic, etc. but totally overrun with tourists and businesses that only cater to the tourist industry. We walked by tons of dressed up Americans eating in fancy restaurants, not something I have been seeing much of in the country. The highlight may have been Camilo’s aunt’s apartment building in Cartagena, where we lounged on the rooftop pool and watched the sunset over the ridiculously picturesque city.

After two days in Cartagena we spent a day at Playa Blanca, a huuuuuuge white sand beach with warm blue-green water and gentle waves, perfect for floating and evening out my stomach tan. Within hours of arrival we had been plied by friendly beach vendors with oysters, fresh fish, beer, mango (excellent with pepper and lime, by the way) and massages. I desperately wanted to stay for a few days, but with only a week and a half left in Colombia at that point I felt obligated to move on. So I said goodbye to the Caribbean, goodbye to the coast, goodbye to Darren (he stayed back a few days to hang out with his new Colombian lover) and boarded a overnight bus to Medellin with Chris.

Bus travel in Colombia is always interesting. Overnight buses are pretty nice here – plush seats, bathroom and air-conditioning so cold that you need blankets or layers of extra clothing. As usual, a crappy action/thriller/suspense movie came on. This time it was Blood Diamond. Leonardo DiCaprio stills looks like he is overacting when he´s dubbed in Spanish, in case you were wondering. I was a bit startled during the movie when a soldier with a huge gun came onboard and walked by. I hadn´t realized that the bus had stopped at a police check, which is very common here. Most long bus journeys pass through multiple police checks. Sometimes they just get on and take a cursory look around, but other times they make everyone get off the bus. After that they search your belongings, pat you down and look under the seats for god knows what (drugs I think). Sometimes these police checks add hours to your trip, which you need to factor in when planning to get anywhere. It can be annoying, but it also means that the main roads of the country are actually navigable again, as opposed to being overrun by paramilitary/ guerrilla groups.

After the thirteen hour bus journey, we arrived in Medellin on Saturday morning and took a cab to what is now possibly my favorite hostel in all of Colombia. It´s time for dinner, so more on Medellin later!

 

Lost in the Jungle

After a week of adventure boot camp, Darren and I took an overnight bus to Taganga, a tiny town on the Caribbean coast. We wanted to go on the famed Ciudad Perdida hike, which travelers in Colombia rave about.  Ciudad Perdida (¨Lost City¨) is a series of ancient ruins nestled deep in the jungle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, accessible only by foot.  You are required to go with a licensed guide, so we signed up with Turcol and ended up in a ragtag group of nine with a people from London, Los Angeles, Seattle, Bogota and France.  It felt very much like adult camp.  Or the first week of freshman year. After hiking, eating and sleeping together for six days, we became comfortable very quickly and spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the state of our digestive systems.  Travellers LOVE talking about parasites and tropical diseases they have acquired/staved off. 

 The trip cost $230 for the six day hike, all food and accommodation (hammocks) included.  Every day except the fourth day (which was spent wandering around the ruins) we woke up around 7am, ate breakfast, and hiked until about 2pm through steamy hot jungle and crossed the river many times.  In the afternoon we would have lunch and usually jump into a pristine swimming hole.  This left us with a LOT of free time.  It´s an interesting social experiment to see how nine adults entertain themselves with no booze (the delicious cheap rum-iodine tablet water-tang cocktails ran out after day 2), no music, no internet and no activities – just birds chirping and pitch black darkness beyond the candle on the camp table.  We held insect championships by catching them in plastic cups and trying to force them to interact with each other, vigorously scratched at the hideous number of bug bites we received and had lots of discussions about travel and politics.  I led an impromptu yoga class after the Colombians asked me about my idle stretching, and we all received mini-massages from Erin, the masseuse and self-proclaimed ¨hippie plant girl¨from Seattle.

Ciudad Perdida itself was pretty stunning, lots of circular stone ruins set into the green, green jungle.  I think we definitely appreciated the effort it took to get there. About forty soldiers patrol the area, and they are all young, friendly and very bored.  We heard them shrieking as we climbed the last 1200 steps to reach Ciudad Perdida.  When we got to the top we realized what was causing all the commotion – they were taking turns swinging on a vine into the trees, Tarzan style (not paying much attention to their M-16s).  Since the last incidence of guerrillas kidnapping tourists in 2003, the government has stationed soldiers there around the clock and it is extremely safe now.

I loved the fact that we saw almost no other travellers during the entire hike.  Generally speaking, the only people we passed were indigenous people living in the area.  If Colombia continues becoming safer and safer, this hike is going to explode in popularity. 

On day six, we returned to Taganga, where I had my first real shower in a week.  We became so dirty during the hike that I almost forgot what my skin looked like without mud or hundreds of insect bites from mosquitos, bees, sand flies and spiders.  Darren is now calling me ¨refugee legs,¨ with all my cuts, scratches and bites.    I have so many bites on my back that several people have taken photos of it (which I am not posting here).  But I have to say that despite all this, the hike was totally worth it.

After Ciudad Perdida, we hopped a bus to Parque Tayrona for a few days.  Parque Tayrona is a national park on the north coast of Colombia with gorgeous PERFECT Caribbean beaches.  We hiked a few hours to the best beaches and slept in hammocks.  Waking up in a hammock to the crashing morning waves may sound pretty idyllic, but hammock sleep is not good sleep.  You spend a lot of time swatting at bugs and tossing and turning in the hammock, which almost never leads to a comfortable position.  But you really can´t beat $5 a night in Colombia, so hammocks won out.

I just arrived in Barranquilla last night for Carnaval, the city with the second largest Carnaval celebration after Rio.  I am staying with a friend of Brendan´s in a beautiful, huge apartment.  After all that outdoor time I am reveling in clean sheets, chic plateware, air conditioning and Argentinian wine. Life is good.

 

Adventure Boot Camp

My apologies to the faithful blog readers who have harrassed me for not posting during the past two weeks. I have been lazy about parking myself at an internet cafe for more than a few minutes.

 I finally left Villa de Leyva and arrived in San Gil, a small town further north of Bogota.  San Gil is famous for outdoor activities so I figured I would spend a day or two rafting or something and then heading up to the Caribbean coast.  I ended up staying there for a week, which keeps happening to me in Colombia.  Here´s what I did:

 1. Whitewater rafting (twice) – The first time was grade 3 rapids for one hour, $12.  The activities here are ridiculously cheap.  I got totally hooked on rafting and signed up for another trip, this time grades 4-5, safety kayaks, the whole deal for 3 hours, $60.

2. Rock climbing – all afternoon, $12 including transport.  Darren (travelling buddy I met in San Gil) and I watched our “instructor” climb a wall with a cast on his right arm.  Nice.  They didn´t have any rock climbing shoes so I climbed barefoot.  Pretty exciting.

3. Paragliding – Woooooo!! So fun, and only a little bit scary.  $30.  I have photos, and video, but I don´t know how to post them right now.  Sorry.

Wow, what else did I do for a week?  I visited another colonial town for a day (Barichara, pretty and totally deserted), drank a lot of fresh tropical juice from the market, spent many hours reading Guns, Germs and Steel in the hostel hammocks and ate a bunch of Colombian food with Darren, who is as obsessed with food as I am. $1.50 at the market will get you a soup, teeny salad, lentils, yucca, rice and a suspicious beverage.  Total steal! 

I am now up on the Caribbean coast in Taganga, a small fishing village.  I just got back last night from a six day hiking trip to Ciudad Perdida, ancient ruins nestled deep in the jungle and only accessible by foot.  Much more about that to come in my next post!