GeekTrek
Geektrekker Joined: March 9th 2009
Logged in: April 22nd 2011
Logged in: April 22nd 2011
This trip I will be touring Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and once I am in Istanbul I will take 2 weeks to find my way home depending on what flights are cheap, and where I feel like going. I will be updating this blog less frequently than my last trip as at times I will be going without internet access for a few days at a time.
-------------Below is my original profile opening from my last trip-------------------
Looking forward to my first trip outside of North America. I leave for Shanghai on April 1st, from there I will do a whirlwind tour of Asia stopping in 7+ cities, in 4-5 countries and provide a geeks eye view of one of the most fascinating areas of the world.
It's hard to believe that my childhood dream of touring Asia is actually coming true. From the first day I learned about Asian culture when I was 12 years old I have wanted to see just how different the world can be from the world we know. This will be a journey of finding difference's and similarities between cultures.
Travel Blog Posts
SeaWalker
After taking a day to recover from Songkran I used the morning to figure out my plans for the rest of my time in Phuket unfortunately the weather predicted thunder storms for most of the days in the up coming week, I picked the one sunny day on the weather website and booked a full day trip to Coral island for some snorkeling, sea walking and para sailing. Once I had the plans all booked and pair for I had the rest of the day to go shopping, and hunt out a good Thai restaurant which was not very hard to find, once again I had some amazing spicy Thai curry. I am once again marveled at just how nice everyone seems here and how they can put up with the heat and the humidity still ... read more
Welcome to Thailand
My first full day in Phuket was the also the first day of Songkran, which can loosely be described as Thai news years and water festival. I had the pleasure of experiencing songkran in Chang Mai two years ago and couldn't pass up the opportunity to be a part of it again. First things first I unpacked my luggage bag for the first time this entire trip looking forward to spending more than two days in the same hotel. After getting settled and finding lunch I was off, it did not take me long to realize I was not prepared for the heat, and amount of water this day involved. Luckily I was able to buy a water gun, sandals, a new shirt and shorts from a shop just outside the hotel. I started with a ... read more
My flight Istanbul to Phuket took about 20 hours including an 8 hour stop in Abu Dhabi were I met an Iranian computer scientist one of the more surprising people I have met on my travels. We were both the only people in the Irish Pub and ended up having a wide variety of discussions ranging from the definition of freedom, racial and cultural profiling, How much young Iranians want a change in their society and an in depth discussion on the difference between American and Iranian woman and culture. Although the later stories I would choose not to write about I was effected when he asked me what freedom is and I gave a very vast freedom of speech, religion etc speech, and he held up a beer and said this.. this is freedom. Being ... read more
Blue Mosque
During this trip there are a few times where I would post two entries at the same this is mainly due to timing of Internet access and general scheduling. I only mention this because when I have posted two entries at once the second entry gets buried and missed,you may want to go back a few posts and check out the post title Cappadocia if you haven't already. This is my mid east wrap up that I had planned to write on the plane to Thailand but I got caught up in reading my book on the plane,,, again. Anyways I am writing this sitting next to the pool in my hotel it is 34C and sunny out and I have sun burns from snorkeling and sea walking on Coral Island yesterday. But I will get ... read more
CHurch dug into the rock
After the busy day of site seeing the day before I decided to skip the carpet museum and take some time to sleep in and recover during some of our last down time of the tour. After a nice slow morning Stacey, Tash, Fred, Ian,Claire and I went off on our own to see the open air museum. The open air museum was basically a collection of about 30 old churches that were dug into the rock face, they varied in age, size, and decoration with some of them being very exquisite and some off them being little more than a hole dug in a rock. This site would have been more impressive if we hadn't spent the last 28 days looking at some of the most amazing and ancient sites in the world. Once we ... read more
The underground city
After the surprise that was Mount Nemrut and the evening drinking by propane lamp light we had to get up at 6am for a ten hour buss ride to Cappadocia our last major stop on the Cairo to Istanbul tour. The bus ride itself took us by some amazing scenery, I found it very interesting that almost everyone on the bus was pointing out different things. For example Terry, Helen, and Fred had great discussions about the farming equipment they saw and the different methods of farming along the highway because Terry and Helen live on a farm in Australia and Fred seems to have experience with a little bit of everything except computers. I couldn't help but notice how some of the hills mountains in the region reminded me of driving in the Yukon and ... read more
The great river
Day 23 – Home stay in Yuvacali The trip seems to be going faster and faster as the trip goes on and Turkey certainly is no exception, after saying goodbye to Syria early in the day we stopped on abridge on the Euphrates river. I was shocked at just how wide the legendary river was and was able to really get a feel for just how important the river would have been in warfare and commerce thousands of years ago. Countries that controlled the river would prosper and be able to utilize the river for transporting goods and people much easier and faster than any other means. Along the way to our home stay we stopped in the city of Sanliurfa for a few hours we enjoyed a brief eat as a group than had an ... read more
Aleppo
Aleppo Aleppo was our last stop in Syria and I was very surprised by the sheer size of the city when we first arrived in Aleppo a lot of people on our bus were surprised to get dropped off away from a hotel in what at first look looked like a unfriendly neighborhood in Aleppo but the streets only looked so deserted and the hundreds of shops lining the street were all closed because it was Friday and most places close in Syria on Friday for Friday prayers. After a brief walk down some side streets and allies we found our secluded hotel which was actually a courtyard of old houses converted into a hotel. The hotel itself was beautiful and after we settled in we were off on another orientation walk throughout the old city ... read more
Inside Palmyra
Palmyra On our last day in Damascus almost all signs of the demonstrations the day before were gone and the city seemed to be back to normal. I would find out later that demonstrations and unrest have been continuing in Syria but I never did see anything from the people of Syria that would show any anger towards their president they seemed to be protesting against the security forces and some members of hardliners still in power from when his father was president. After one final morning in Damascus we left in the afternoon for Palmyra and checked out the sunset from the Arab citadel before another excellent dinner where the Mezza (appetizers) are so good that when the main dish came out most of us were fully stuffed. That night we decided to drink at ... read more
Smile
Crossing into the border into Syria we were worried that the border may not be open, and one of the people in our group did not have a Syrian visa but everything went well and we were able to get into Syria without any problems. All thoughout this trip I have been amazed at just how nice people are I know I shouldn't be surprised but even on the streets in Syria people say hello when you see them, they hold open doors, and smile. I feel safer walking on the streets in Damascus than I do walking on a lot of streets in Winnipeg. The western media have been so wrong and have had such a negitive slant on the middle east and they are so wrong that I find myself questioning many of the ... read more
