Indiana Jones never seemed to spend much time scrubbing toilets. I don’t think he ever even had the pleasure of a roommate who smokes in a room in which you can’t open the windows, although it’s probably fair to say that he didn’t have Internet access either. I mention Indiana Jones for much the same reasons that I mentioned Borat in the blog about Kazakhstan - you’re all thinking about it, and every time I say something about going on an archaeology dig, particularly somewhere so close to Petra, someone says “blah blah Indiana Jones blah blah blah” much like every time I said something about going to Kazakhstan someone said “blah blah Borat blah blah blah”. So the archaeology “dig” which I’d sort of planned my travels around has finally begun. We received very little ... read more

If you want a country has nice scenery, diverse cultures and beautiful scenery, and is easy to get around, while not being as expensive as Europe or Australia, you should all go to Turkey. I think I was lucky to be there in May/June, as it’s been nice weather (bordering on the hot) but the more out-of-the-way places have not yet been overrun by German or Russian sun-seekers. It’s not quite the sort of place I wanted to travel, so I’m not totally disappointed to be heading into Syria now (probably there, or left, by the time you get this), but that’s partly my fault for sticking to the tourist trail most of the time. So in the last blog I’d pretty thorougly explored Istanbul. Here’s a brief overview of the next week (the past week ... read more

So I failed in my attempt to get from East Timor to Jordan without flying. I was so close, in fact I was even in Europe. The city of Oral in far northwest Kazakhstan is west of the Ural river, and so is considered part of Europe. In Russian it’s “Uralsk”, but in English it’s usually called after the Kazakh, “Oral”. I went as far as Oral, but I was hoping to go all the way to Kiev. And from there it would have been easy to get buses or the ferry down to Turkey and from there through Syria into Jordan. Anyway. I left off the last blog in the small town of Turkistan. I got on that train fine, I arrived with plenty of time to spare. I didn’t have much food with me, ... read more

I was pleasantly surprised that the train journey only took about 40 hours, rather than the 44 I was expecting. This time I had a “hard sleeper” with a middle bunk - in the hard sleeper compartments they cram the bunks in three deep. So the train ride from Beijing to Urumqi was much more comfortable than the one from Guilin to Beijing had been. Still the beds were very small (almost exactly the same width as my hips) and being on the middle bunk there was nowhere save to put my day-pack in which I keep all my valuables such as my computer, money, and passport. So at night I slept with it like a hard, blue, smelly, teddy bear. There was space for my big backpack of course so that was alright. On my ... read more

My allergies were back again. Not as bad as in Bangkok, so they didn’t make me look strange, but I woke up in the night in Yanshuo with my whole back driving me crazy with itching and with large welt-like rashes on it again. It made it hard to sleep, so I dug around in my first-aid kit and found some of the left-over anti-histamines, the ones the first Bangkok doctor prescribed me and the second doctor told me to not take, and fell straight back to sleep, probably because they’re the ones that cause drowsiness. The same thing happened the second night. I mainly ate pretty boring Western food, so I don’t think it’s anything I ate. I feel like I’ve become allergic to mosquitoes, is that possible? Anyway, there’s no Mosquitoes here in Beijing, ... read more