http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/ChristopherV/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from ChristopherV en-us Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:36:41 +0000 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:36:41 +0000 Sorry for the pictures. The first day that I could go out and take them it was hazy.It's been five years that I left Africa.......so when we landed at 430am I was not sure what to expect excited on the one hand but nervous on the other. I have to admit that I was also mentally prepared to go to battle given all those years I spent fighting my way past corrupt officers police and officia http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Senegal/Cape-Verde-Peninsula/Dakar/blog-375589.html httpwww.thecompassculture.comsubsfeb0903.html http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/West/Tirana/blog-369734.html This year's Beirut Marathon invited local NGOs to set up water stations for the runners. We were assigned to Kilometer 25 in Jal el Dib.The migrant workers and social workers from Ethiopia set up a microphone and loudspeakers saying Ethiopia Ethiopia go go when the Ethiopian marathon runners passed by. When a runner from Iraq or Egypt passed by they were yelling Marathon yalla yalla http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Lebanon/Beirut/blog-349996.html Okay I'm cheating on this blog because I live here.Ashrafieh has converted from a posh district of the city to a large construction site. Literally it's nearly every block that has a new apartment building coming up. What's happening At about 6am small groups of Syrian construction workers start walking up the hill from Sodeco to various construction sites around the district. Each one in a http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Lebanon/Beirut/blog-348742.html I feel guilty to say this but when I lived in Tirana in a way I felt a bit bored and understimulated. I didn't see alot of culture or arts in play. The city's residents seemed a bit conformist to me and the entertainment options seemed limited.Now on this trip I see a new Tirana. The residents are going through a transformation where there is more diversity more demand for culture arts st http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/West/Tirana/blog-313128.html After Lufthansa refused to allow me to change my ticket to Georgia I have decided to spend the rest of my holiday in Tirana. Actually it's very good because I am really enjoying having the time to spend here and reconnect with this place where I used to live.The transformation of Tirana into a modern European capital is amazing. Today I was walking near the lake and I was just taken by the b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/West/Tirana/blog-312515.html We left an empty hot Tirana on Sunday morning and took the three hour drive down south to Vlore. The road passes through Durres which had become a parking lot of cars with foreign platesAlbanians home for the summer holidaysand teenagers on holiday walking to the beach.The road winds down along the coast past some abandoned factories empty railroad tracks and a million roadside restaurant http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/South/Vlor-/blog-310831.html When I first came to Albania in 2004 I landed at a small shacksized airport and drove into a city where alot people looked and acted the same and where the country was still struggling to take its place among European countries.Yesterday I landed in the morning to the city's new airportwhich although still sized for a small country ie only one luggage belt for arriving passengers had all t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/West/Tirana/blog-309412.html Jakarta in a strange way grows on you.The city becomes very tropical and is a huge urban metropolis but then the leaves and trees surround you and you see that nature is not far away and the jungle is not completely distanced from you in the city. The speed of the traffic whirls past you. It's dirty full of cars hot steamy but life is buzzing around.So let me complain just a bit. My work pu http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Java/Jakarta/blog-304740.html Singapore came as a relief after being in Phnom Penh working to backbreaking hours. Everything in Singapore is easy and effecient with immigration officials even offering you a candy while they process you in.After being hot sticky and hardly finding air conditioning much less a functioning air conditioning for the past two weeks Singapore came as a dream as a reconnection to civilizati http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Singapore/blog-303143.html The afternoon rains arrived about 3pm today and loud claps of thunder are breaking through the sky. Today was quite hot even in the morning with the sun and the heat beating straight into my terrace room which not shielded from the weather.The school feeding project demands normally about 23 months of preparation to get to the final submission stage. When I arrived here on 6 July nothing h http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/South/Phnom-Penh/blog-300884.html Today the heat has reached the maximum of the trip.....by 8am it was burning into my room.....I had a kind of expat meltdown first with the internet not working at the office nor the hotel all the internet cafes don't have air conditioning the wireless on my laptop had been disabled after trekking across town to find a cafe that had it then the heat and the lack of air conditioning but I tr http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/South/Phnom-Penh/blog-299099.html Yesterday I had to meet with the partner in Kampong Cham which was a really beautiful town along the Mekong River. All the French colonial architecture wide boulevards and pleasantly calm streets somehow free of the millions of mopeds that every other city seems to have. The drive there was out of some National Geographic show with water buffalo and cows working the fields farmers hunched ov http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/East/Kampong-Cham/blog-298682.html Phnom PenhThis is somehow what I remembered when I first started in this line of work and somehow I recognize that it's something I have been missing in the posh places where I have been over the last few years in the EuropeMiddle East region.Phnom Penh reminds me alot of Africa. On the drive in from the airport you pass block after block oflowrise cheaply constructed buildings with pharmacie http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/South/Phnom-Penh/blog-296885.html So am I an expat who has become jaded and seeks out only the creature comforts from homeToday I had sushi lunch in fresh restaurant did a Bikram Yoga class and sweated about a liter from some Canadian girl who is travelling all around Indonesia giving Bikram Yoga classes then to one hour foot reflexology and then a dip in the rooftop pool. Yes it's too posh. But sometimes a working boy n http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Java/Jakarta/blog-295675.html Jakarta Day TwoSo the city grows on you in a way. After months in Lebanon thank God some place is still cheap. Posh sushi dinner 10. Indonesian lunch 1. The city is like a stain which has spread densely in all directions with no plans no destinations. There are barely no sidewalks so just to walk down the street is almost impossible with nowhere to walk and motos and cars buzzing pa http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Java/Jakarta/blog-295335.html Take Los Angeles add a few million cars add a few million more people make it poorer add some tropical trees and there you are.Is this the future of the world Huge cities with no character spreading out for miles with super highways car exhaust shopping malls with KFC and Zara outlets in each one architecture that could be transplanted anywhere and look as if it belonged I think of Lag http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Java/Jakarta/blog-294767.html