Blogs from Middle East - page 1038

Hehhhh....summer has arrived and the AIESEC tours started. First on the list was SAT (Southeastern Anatolia Tour) held by AIESEC Gaziantep. We decided to go there 1 day earlier since it takes about 13 hours by bus. The bus has reached Gaziantep at 4 am, which was totally different from what we were told when we bought the ticket..6 am. Anyway, we took a nap in the huge bus station. We started walking at 6 am..and we were thinking that it will take something like 15 minutes to the center, but we ended up taking the bus for 20 minutes :) Now, I have to thank God for learning Turkish at the proper time, otherwise I'd have never understood what was that man explaining to me..hihi. He took us (4 people) in the center - ... read more

We have made it to turkey and have spent the last 5 days here. The flight from Helsinki to London went well, the night spent at Luton airport while waiting to check in at 4am was pretty painful. Even worse was the end of the flight when we arrived in Istanbul, a little boy on the plane appeared to develop chicken pox marks during the flight over. There was a mini quarantine scare as we all had to wait in the plane on the tarmac as the boy was checked out. We eventually made it and it was all worth it. Turkey is quite an interesting place to visit. The people are overly friendly and seem to love Aussie's and Kiwi's (especially in the cities around Gallipoli). The architecture of the buildings and mosques in the ... read more

Nightfall, an old, vacant inn in the quiet countryside. In my room, I was in the shower. All goes black. I scream. In pitch darkness, I have shampoo in my hair and a bloody cucumber mask on my face and the water's become part of the distant past. I wait for 10 minutes for the lights to come back on. No luck. With a towel around myself, i trip over everything between me and the door and finally burst out to the corridor. I scream. "We've been waiting for you," they say, ghostly pale Japanese women circled my door to my shock, their faces glowing blue in the dark from the cell phones they're holding. "You must go down to the lobby and get help. We don't speak English because we're old. The phone is ... read more

By coincedence, Japanese and Persian have identical phrases which are completely different in meaning. Hence, a little Japanese dialogue with a fellow JP tourist could result to disaster. Two Japanese women ran up to me, freaking out when a bunch of curious Iranian locals pointed at them shouting 'Shinei! Shinei!' - they were merely saying 'Chinese?' but in Japanese, this is an imperative command meaning 'Die!'. In the marketplace, some Japanese tourists and I noticed the bizarre form of watermelons on display. to this, we said the phrase 'Hendawane~' (meaning 'how odd!'). Hearing our conversation, the fruit vendor smiled and gave us three watermelons for free. we were puzzled, but accepted them anyway. Other fruit vendors nearby did the same, and some of them decided to just throw them at us like bloody hotcakes. One barely ... read more

Untitled Hello everyone! Earlier this morning, İ admit that İ was missing Vancouver a bit and that I wanted to come home, believe it or don't, as Samir says. Mom of course told me otherwise, not to wish away our trip, and "no more negativity", but İ seriously think 5 months is long enough, and we were thinking to go for a year! Anyway, that was just a small whatchyamacallit: Dad and mom have told us to express ourselves on paper (actually they only told Samir that when he got mad about his math page and wouldn't tell anyone what the problem was), so, anyway agaın, let me start writing about Turkey a new country and the last leg of our trıp. We flew first from Srinagar to Delhi and then made a stop in London ... read more