hey guys,
i am writing today from sophia in bulgaria. it's a cute little city about the same size as perth but at the bottom of a mountain. i am going up the mountain tomorrow. i left istanbul yesterday. the tour had finished a couple of days before but i spent an extra couple of days wandering the bazaars and all the little antique shops. i can't wait til next year when i'm a millionaire and i can come back to turkey and do a big road trip around the whole lot and then buy my antique mother of pearl binoculars and a 50,000 euro silk carpet that will probably look dumb in my house so it will live with mum and lots of handmade turkish pottery that is only like 300 euro for a plate or 500 euro for a handbag wine bottle.
what the hell is kelly on about you ask. what the hell is a handbag wine bottle. well my friends, kelly is not insane...yet. although talking about yourself in third person is usually a good sign of up and coming maddness. but what i call a handbag wine bottle is a ceramic wine bottle that has a circle bit that you put your arm through and then you wear it on your shoulder to pour drinks. a nice step up from the old hip flask i reckon. i probably didn't explain it to well. i will try to get a photo of one up.
anyway, turkey was great. it is a beautiful country. istanbul is a very modern city and all nice and clean and big step back towards normality after the chaos of cairo. our tour was fairly small, there were 10 of us and 2 of them, saffa's ruth and miles, i already knew because they were on my egypt tour. coincidence, i think not.
the others on the tour were the usual influx of aussies and kiwis and a couple from bahrain which was pretty cool.
so the 10 of us, our tour guide gokhan (damn i kept forgetting to wear my dragon ball z tee when he was around) and out bus driver zekki set off. we went to gallipoli which was good to see but bloody freezing, but i didn't let that stop me from running about getting photos of myself hiding in trenches.
um, i couldn't be bothered writing the whole lot and you are probably getting bored by now, so i'll just do the highlights. gallipoli i already mentioned, the blue mosque was pretty impressive and the basilica cistern i liked. ephesus was good, it's old ruins but a lot of them have been restored and look really good, my favourite part is the public toilets. a long slab of marble with a number of holes in it and water flowing underneath to get rid of everything. some quality photo opportunities there. Hieropolis the necropolis was pretty cool too along with the calcium pools which are these hot springs flowing into these big white calcium cliffs and you can wander about through the water bare footed.
cappadocia was the big favourite though. it looks just like something out of star wars (probably because it was in the first (episode iv) star wars. all these big massive cliff and ravines and there are buildings cut into the cliffs everywhere. it looks like a big human ant hill, especially from the hot air balloon. the hot air balloon was awesome.
anyway, again i am promising photos. but really turkey was great and i would love to go back or have stayed longer, but there are other places to get to. so i am in bulgaria for probably 5 days and then probably belgrade or budapest or somewhere like that. i did want to go to romania, but you need to have a visa before you leave for that, so poo on that plan.
well, keep in touch kids.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
guess who is a wanker
that´s rıght. ıt´s kelly.
who else, in the second week of their 4 month trip, would spend half the day ın a police office gettıng a statement about their camera that they managed to misplace and then have to spend the next day putting a new one of their trusty credit card?
and no, as my lovely mother who always thinks the best of me asked, i was not drunk. just stupid.
anyway, all is not lost, the ever thoughtful rıkki-lee made a copy of all my photos when we were in luxor, so i´ve only lost the photos from dahab and should be able to get some photos from some of the other guys on the tour.
so yesterday i arrived in istanbul where i am starting a new tour. our tour group here ıs pretty small, there ıs only 10 of us and two of them were actually on my egypt tour whıch ıs a pretty cool coıncıdence. and as well as that there ıs a couple from bahraın (a place ın the mıddle east) whıch makes a nıce change from the usual ınflux of aussıes and kıwıs. our tour guide is good, not out-there like sherıf, but good anyway. his name is gokhan which makes me think of dragon ball z.
tomorrow we head off to gallıpolı which is the must do for every good aussie and kiwi when on tour. then we do a bit of a loop around to cappadoccıa whıch has all these underground cıtıes and stuff and then back up through ankara whıch ıs the capital of turkey (news to me, i thought ıt was ıstanbul) and then we end back ın ıstanbul.
wıll keep you posted and hopefully will get some photos up soon.
who else, in the second week of their 4 month trip, would spend half the day ın a police office gettıng a statement about their camera that they managed to misplace and then have to spend the next day putting a new one of their trusty credit card?
and no, as my lovely mother who always thinks the best of me asked, i was not drunk. just stupid.
anyway, all is not lost, the ever thoughtful rıkki-lee made a copy of all my photos when we were in luxor, so i´ve only lost the photos from dahab and should be able to get some photos from some of the other guys on the tour.
so yesterday i arrived in istanbul where i am starting a new tour. our tour group here ıs pretty small, there ıs only 10 of us and two of them were actually on my egypt tour whıch ıs a pretty cool coıncıdence. and as well as that there ıs a couple from bahraın (a place ın the mıddle east) whıch makes a nıce change from the usual ınflux of aussıes and kıwıs. our tour guide is good, not out-there like sherıf, but good anyway. his name is gokhan which makes me think of dragon ball z.
tomorrow we head off to gallıpolı which is the must do for every good aussie and kiwi when on tour. then we do a bit of a loop around to cappadoccıa whıch has all these underground cıtıes and stuff and then back up through ankara whıch ıs the capital of turkey (news to me, i thought ıt was ıstanbul) and then we end back ın ıstanbul.
wıll keep you posted and hopefully will get some photos up soon.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Sherif the tour guide.
So the tour was great, but the thing that really made it great was our tour guide Sherif. It was an absolute pisser. A fantastic mix of facts and stories, someone who is keen to share knowledge of their country and totally full of shit all at once! It you are planning to do Egypt, I definately recommend going with 'On the go' tours and then begging to go with Sherif.
He was really good at keeping the group keen and interested and involved. whenever we got to an attraction ie. temple, pyramid, flushing toilet. he would say 'laddies and gentlemens, this is the time you have been waiting for all your livesm get excited, it's ...' and we would all cheer. At the temples and stuff, other tour guides would carry something to lift up so people could find them. Sherif said he was big enough to see, being the ex-body builder and current belly-builder that he is, and if he wanted the group to gather he would just started yelling 'group b! group b'. one of the best things though was if he noticed someone not from the group trying to listen in, he would suddenly start talking about when the aliens came from the sky and taught the egyptians to build the pyramids until they left, it was so funny. one cracker was when we were with another group (group a) in Karnak Temple. sherif and hany kept telling us about how there was a bond movie and an indiana jones movie in Karnak temple. and sherif and hany are standing at different corners and pretending to be bond and indiana jones, slow-motion running towards each other and sherif is saying 'and he runs from here, and he runs from there, and they running and they running and the running' then when they get really close you're thinking it's going to be a bond-jone show-down, but he says 'but they don't meet, coz they in different movies!' i nearly wet myself, i think it may be one of those, you had to be there things.
anyway, off to turkey this evening, will keep you posted.
He was really good at keeping the group keen and interested and involved. whenever we got to an attraction ie. temple, pyramid, flushing toilet. he would say 'laddies and gentlemens, this is the time you have been waiting for all your livesm get excited, it's ...' and we would all cheer. At the temples and stuff, other tour guides would carry something to lift up so people could find them. Sherif said he was big enough to see, being the ex-body builder and current belly-builder that he is, and if he wanted the group to gather he would just started yelling 'group b! group b'. one of the best things though was if he noticed someone not from the group trying to listen in, he would suddenly start talking about when the aliens came from the sky and taught the egyptians to build the pyramids until they left, it was so funny. one cracker was when we were with another group (group a) in Karnak Temple. sherif and hany kept telling us about how there was a bond movie and an indiana jones movie in Karnak temple. and sherif and hany are standing at different corners and pretending to be bond and indiana jones, slow-motion running towards each other and sherif is saying 'and he runs from here, and he runs from there, and they running and they running and the running' then when they get really close you're thinking it's going to be a bond-jone show-down, but he says 'but they don't meet, coz they in different movies!' i nearly wet myself, i think it may be one of those, you had to be there things.
anyway, off to turkey this evening, will keep you posted.
Egypt
My Egypt trip has been great... despite a major case of the trots and less than ideal toilet facilities, but we won't get into that too much, except to say that it is pretty bad when one of the better places you get to poop is in some poor guys banana field.
I flew into Cairo and am now spending a couple of days at the end of the tour here as well. Cairo is just so surreal. I think the roads pretty much give you a picture of what the whole city is like. Huge and filthy and the rich and the poor all thrown in together and trying to get about as quick as possible. A taxi ride in Cairo is similiar to rally driving, it's very exciting. In Cairo, you have a massive highway, 3 lanes each way, and you will have taxis and cars weaving in and out of lanes, no blinkers, you just toot your horn and go, and if you can't decided which lane to sit in, just sit in the middle until you decide.
But then you are not only weaving in and out of other cars and buses, there will also be scooters, bicycles, a couple of guys with donkeys and carts, mini-vans so full that people are hanging out of the doors, once i seen a herd of sheep. Then the pedestrians will take a look and think, this looks like a great place to cross! The first time i crossed a road here i was sure i was going to die, and I know I said the same thing about Rome, but this was way worse. A hundred times. But it was cool, I just place another person, a local, preferably a mother and child or someone with a disability between me and the oncoming traffic and bolt across the lanes when they do. Easy.
The tour itself was great. We visited the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Cairo, then we went to Aswan where we went to Abu Simbel, the Aswan High Dam which is the biggest man-made lake in the world, the Temple of Pilae and then spent 2 days floating down the Nile on a felucca. Abu Simbel was absolutely amazing. The statues are massive, and not only is the building of them just 'wow', but in the 70's the Egyptian government acutally moved them as they were going to be drowned with the building of the dam. The temple of Abu Simble was one of my favourite things, the statues reminded me of 'the oracles' in the never ending story, I kept thinking they were going to open their eyes and shoot me with lazers.
The felucca ride was great too. So relaxing and such a beautiful part of Egypt, especially in comparison to their filth-ridden cities. it was especially good as me and rikki weren't feeling so well. Rikki was so bad she had to get an injection to stop the nausea and take some anitbiotics. Me though, I too tough for that.
Next we went from Kom Ombo to Luxor. We had to get the police convoy for this. The police convoy is a bit of a money maker for the Egyptian government started after some tourist bus got shot-up or something. It's all part of what I like to call Egypt's 'Illusion of Security'. I mean, they have 60-70 buses in the convoy and half a dozen police cars scattered along the way. If someone wanted tourists, it's like take your pick. They also have quality metal detectors everywhere. They beep for almost every person and the guys on the door don't look twice at anyone. In one airport there were two sets of metal detectors, both going off randomly for different people. Or when we went to the Pyramids, our tour guide Sherif says 'please leave your bombs on the bus while you go through security'. We all get off the bus, go through the metal detectors, then get back on the bus, which has driven through with no-one looking twice at it! Funny.
We also went to the Valley of the Kings. It is sensational and changes your whole image of what every temple and tomb you've already seen would have looked like. You see all these carvings and you think, wow and imagine the stone walls and columns etc complete. Then in the Valley of the Kings you realise, 'oh shit', everything was actually painted and coloured and you're just 'wowed' all over again.
After all that I left Rikki :( in Luxor where she was heading back to Cairo and I went to Dahab with the rest of the crew. Dahab was great, diving that equals the Barrier Reef and we climbed Mt Sinai, which so far is the absolute highlight of my trip. We climbed it in the middle of the night so that we would get there for sunrise. It is 2100 and something metres, the 4th highest mountain in Africa. Mustafa, our guide, was pretty happy with us as we powered it up the mountain and did the whole climb in 1.5 hours (it usually take 2-3 hours). I ended up being in the first half dozen to the top, so i was pretty happy with that effort. So we scored ourselves a pretty good possie to watch the sunrise. The only problem was it was on a hill at the edge of the cliff and I went to sleep and when I woke up 20 minutes later, I had slid a metre down my matress. I was like 'oh crap, glad i didn't sleep much longer'. I have so say, the hikinh up the mountain by torchlight was well worth the effort, even the 760 steps at the end. It was one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. I'm sure the photos won't do it justice.
I flew into Cairo and am now spending a couple of days at the end of the tour here as well. Cairo is just so surreal. I think the roads pretty much give you a picture of what the whole city is like. Huge and filthy and the rich and the poor all thrown in together and trying to get about as quick as possible. A taxi ride in Cairo is similiar to rally driving, it's very exciting. In Cairo, you have a massive highway, 3 lanes each way, and you will have taxis and cars weaving in and out of lanes, no blinkers, you just toot your horn and go, and if you can't decided which lane to sit in, just sit in the middle until you decide.
But then you are not only weaving in and out of other cars and buses, there will also be scooters, bicycles, a couple of guys with donkeys and carts, mini-vans so full that people are hanging out of the doors, once i seen a herd of sheep. Then the pedestrians will take a look and think, this looks like a great place to cross! The first time i crossed a road here i was sure i was going to die, and I know I said the same thing about Rome, but this was way worse. A hundred times. But it was cool, I just place another person, a local, preferably a mother and child or someone with a disability between me and the oncoming traffic and bolt across the lanes when they do. Easy.
The tour itself was great. We visited the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Cairo, then we went to Aswan where we went to Abu Simbel, the Aswan High Dam which is the biggest man-made lake in the world, the Temple of Pilae and then spent 2 days floating down the Nile on a felucca. Abu Simbel was absolutely amazing. The statues are massive, and not only is the building of them just 'wow', but in the 70's the Egyptian government acutally moved them as they were going to be drowned with the building of the dam. The temple of Abu Simble was one of my favourite things, the statues reminded me of 'the oracles' in the never ending story, I kept thinking they were going to open their eyes and shoot me with lazers.
The felucca ride was great too. So relaxing and such a beautiful part of Egypt, especially in comparison to their filth-ridden cities. it was especially good as me and rikki weren't feeling so well. Rikki was so bad she had to get an injection to stop the nausea and take some anitbiotics. Me though, I too tough for that.
Next we went from Kom Ombo to Luxor. We had to get the police convoy for this. The police convoy is a bit of a money maker for the Egyptian government started after some tourist bus got shot-up or something. It's all part of what I like to call Egypt's 'Illusion of Security'. I mean, they have 60-70 buses in the convoy and half a dozen police cars scattered along the way. If someone wanted tourists, it's like take your pick. They also have quality metal detectors everywhere. They beep for almost every person and the guys on the door don't look twice at anyone. In one airport there were two sets of metal detectors, both going off randomly for different people. Or when we went to the Pyramids, our tour guide Sherif says 'please leave your bombs on the bus while you go through security'. We all get off the bus, go through the metal detectors, then get back on the bus, which has driven through with no-one looking twice at it! Funny.
We also went to the Valley of the Kings. It is sensational and changes your whole image of what every temple and tomb you've already seen would have looked like. You see all these carvings and you think, wow and imagine the stone walls and columns etc complete. Then in the Valley of the Kings you realise, 'oh shit', everything was actually painted and coloured and you're just 'wowed' all over again.
After all that I left Rikki :( in Luxor where she was heading back to Cairo and I went to Dahab with the rest of the crew. Dahab was great, diving that equals the Barrier Reef and we climbed Mt Sinai, which so far is the absolute highlight of my trip. We climbed it in the middle of the night so that we would get there for sunrise. It is 2100 and something metres, the 4th highest mountain in Africa. Mustafa, our guide, was pretty happy with us as we powered it up the mountain and did the whole climb in 1.5 hours (it usually take 2-3 hours). I ended up being in the first half dozen to the top, so i was pretty happy with that effort. So we scored ourselves a pretty good possie to watch the sunrise. The only problem was it was on a hill at the edge of the cliff and I went to sleep and when I woke up 20 minutes later, I had slid a metre down my matress. I was like 'oh crap, glad i didn't sleep much longer'. I have so say, the hikinh up the mountain by torchlight was well worth the effort, even the 760 steps at the end. It was one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. I'm sure the photos won't do it justice.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
THE PLAN
Hey everyone,
As I may have mentioned before in my blog, various emails and repeatedly to anyone who I come into contact with, I am taking 4 months off before heading home. Finally I have started to organise myself, and it's about time as I am leaving TOMORROW. So here it is. THE PLAN
First leg is Egypt with the one and only Rikki-Lee where we tour around for 10 days soaking up the sun, visit the pyramids, float down the nile on a felucca and do the mandatory camel riding. After this it's bye bye Rikki as she is off to Africa and then home to Cairns. For me, I'm going to hang about in Egypt a bit more, head down to Dahab for a few days and do some diving.
From Dahab I return to Cairo and fly to Istanbul for a 10 day tour of turkey, including Gallipoli and Cappa..something (which looks pretty cool, despite the fact I can't remember what it is called.
From Istanbul the plan is to have no plan. I'm just gonna wing it for a bit and see where that gets me. For the week around new years I have booked a ski tour in France and just before that I am thinking going to Iceland. Then I will be back in London for a few days where I will get to catch up with those left behind in London and Nga who will be holidaying at the same time as me.
From jan 14 I am flying out to Nairobi and doing a week tour to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and then a 4 week tour of Kenya and Uganda which does all the safari stuff and goes to see the Mountain Gorillas and ends in Zanzibar where there are lots of dolphins and diving and all that beachy stuff I love.
So there it is, and I leave in approximately 12 hours. Yay.
I really wanted to tell you guys about my trip to Ireland last weekend and my work leaving drinks and stuff, but I don't have time now. So maybe tomorrow. I also wanted to put more pics up, but couldn't coz i sent my laptop home, so you'll have to wait til i take some more.
Anyway, will write again real soon. See ya
As I may have mentioned before in my blog, various emails and repeatedly to anyone who I come into contact with, I am taking 4 months off before heading home. Finally I have started to organise myself, and it's about time as I am leaving TOMORROW. So here it is. THE PLAN
First leg is Egypt with the one and only Rikki-Lee where we tour around for 10 days soaking up the sun, visit the pyramids, float down the nile on a felucca and do the mandatory camel riding. After this it's bye bye Rikki as she is off to Africa and then home to Cairns. For me, I'm going to hang about in Egypt a bit more, head down to Dahab for a few days and do some diving.
From Dahab I return to Cairo and fly to Istanbul for a 10 day tour of turkey, including Gallipoli and Cappa..something (which looks pretty cool, despite the fact I can't remember what it is called.
From Istanbul the plan is to have no plan. I'm just gonna wing it for a bit and see where that gets me. For the week around new years I have booked a ski tour in France and just before that I am thinking going to Iceland. Then I will be back in London for a few days where I will get to catch up with those left behind in London and Nga who will be holidaying at the same time as me.
From jan 14 I am flying out to Nairobi and doing a week tour to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and then a 4 week tour of Kenya and Uganda which does all the safari stuff and goes to see the Mountain Gorillas and ends in Zanzibar where there are lots of dolphins and diving and all that beachy stuff I love.
So there it is, and I leave in approximately 12 hours. Yay.
I really wanted to tell you guys about my trip to Ireland last weekend and my work leaving drinks and stuff, but I don't have time now. So maybe tomorrow. I also wanted to put more pics up, but couldn't coz i sent my laptop home, so you'll have to wait til i take some more.
Anyway, will write again real soon. See ya
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