icouldiwill on the road

Cairo in August

2009-09-14T15:13:00.000+03:00

Egypt is one of those places I always wanted to go but always postponed because I could go there anytime since it is close to Turkey. Thus I also wanted to go there overland but when finally the opportunity arose it was the middle of August and I didn't feel as crazy as I used to be. 35 degrees of sunshiny days in Istanbul contributed to my decision to fly and postpone visiting Syria and Jordan to some unknown future.

Fast breaking during Ramadan, El Azhar, Cairo

Egypt Airlines, 220 euros return, what a rip off. Nevermind, it was a comfortable ride and as we arrived in Cairo I could feel a cool breeze. Hey wait, didn't the weather report show Cairo 5 degrees hotter than Istanbul? And didn't I feel all fainty from too much sweating there? And this is supposed to be just by the desert, right? Hmmm, dryness! As soon as you're in the shade you're cooled off by a little wind but the sun can pierce you when it's right on top.

Little streets of many surprises near the main market area.

I met a Spanish guy on the plane who's been living in Cairo for a couple of years which is one of the best things one can hope for when arriving in a new place. With his Arabic skills we managed to get a taxi with a reasonable price and the taxi was a Turkish Şahin. As we entered the city I started to have this feeling of going back in time to my childhood, with all flatness of roads without the underpasses and the overpasses, the chaos which is worked out by people and not by traffic lights or machines, the taxis which were mostly the Turkish Fiats which are out of production in Turkey.

Khan El Khalili, the main "touristic" market.

Then I had my first big surprise. Although I am from a nearby country and quite sensitive about cultural prejudices and misperceptions, for some strange reason I still expected Egypt to be a backwards country. After all we in Turkey feel insulted when Westerners confuse us with Arabs, and this comes from -as well as it leads to- Arabs being seen as the Saudis, uncivilized, rich and recently islamist. Although I had a few Arab friends who were not like this at all, I thought it would be reflected in the overall feeling of the society. After all I know the feeling in Turkey sometimes deserves all the prejudice. That’s why I believe everyone shall travel. Anyway Alberto took me to an old teashop which was still somewhat familiar with only a couple of major differences. On the outside some people were having their coffee and teas, playing backgammon and chess and some were smoking waterpipes. Among the people smoking were some women in conservative dress, with a headscarf and all. In my modern Turkish reality the least it would take for a woman to sit by herself in a tea shop which are all dominated by men and smoke is lots of courage, for there is a great chance that she will be approached by the men sitting at the next table. But apparently this was not the case in Cairo. As we entered the indoors I realized that half of the tables were occupied by university students and they were mostly having Stella, the local beer. In fact, I was hoping that there would be beer in Egypt but again I wouldn’t imagine it being so public and neither so tasty. So my first drink in Egypt was a Stella beer.

The old cloth market, somewhere near the main bazaar.

Then I walked a bit and found this Lotus Hotel on the 7th floor of a building. It was a 50 years old hotel which had this instant time travel effect on the newcomers with all the retro furniture, the paintings and posters on the walls and even the bell boys themselves. As I said I’m from Turkey the receptionist started speaking good Turkish. His family was Armenian from Turkey, one of those who survived the genocide and found their way south. Although I have had many Armenian friends who are citizens of Turkey, I haven’t met many who were forced out and I didn’t know what to expect. After all they were banished from their homeland, for whatever reason, and had to endure living in far away lands as complete strangers. But this guy in particular –as well as the few others I later met during my time in Egypt- seemed happy to be able to practice some Turkish. We got along well.

Al Azhar Mosque

I had a huge room, big balcony, cheap room service and a very exciting schedule. So I had a good sleep and had my breakfast and started to discover the city by walking. Cairo is one of those perfect cities to walk because it is almost completely flat and there are more pedestrians then cars. But the traffic is quite crazy and crossing a street can be seriously dangerous at the most unexpected times. Well, I walked and walked. First I let myself get lost, like I usually do, and ended up in some strange places with no tourists at all. But I discovered little teashops, had a couple of little chats and had some sugarcane juice (my favorite). Then I found the old market area and the street where they sell all the fabric and tents. I had been ordered a tennure skirt, which is a big colorful skirt used in a sort of whirling dance derived from the Mevlevi whirling of Turkey. But I didn’t come across any and I walked on until the market changed into a fresh food market, with vegetables, chicken, dried fruits, whatever you like. As the ground was getting stickier with all the rubbish and the air getting balmy with all the smells I had a break and discovered my first Egyptian food koshery. Of all the great Indian food my favorite is kitcheri which is rice and lentils cooked together in a mixture of spices. This koshery is even better than that, it is rice, pasta, lentils, chickpeas, fried dried onions, tomato sauce and spicy sauce mixed together. Exactly what I like.

Khosery, macaroni, rice, lentils, chickpeas, fried dried onions,
tomato and chili sauces, my favorite dish in Cairo.

Cairo is on the Nile basin which is almost like a wide canyon in the desert. This basin which was flooded once every year used to be the only fertile agricultural land along with the delta of course. So it is flat and the sides go up like walls which extend to the horizon. On the Southeastern edge of the basin is one of the hills where the citadel is located and in the citadel was something quite familiar, a replica of Sultanahmet Mosque in Istanbul. It was strange to see this one sticking out as unique because all the mosques in Turkey look pretty much the same. In fact, since the Turks took Istanbul and saw St.Sophia Church, all this 550+ years all the mosques built in Turkey look like byzantine churches. It kind of became a rule to make a dome which stands on an elevated rim on a square base mostly supported by half domes, that’s it. I envy the countries like Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia where people are free to design different houses for God. Some 20 years ago they made this architectural competition to design the biggest mosque in Turkey. The jury was mostly other architects and they chose a very modern looking project with a main enclosure made of triangles. A year later the ministry or the municipality decided that it didn’t reflect the Turkish mosque (perhaps because it didn’t look like a Byzantine church) and commissioned it to be redesigned as another replica of St.Sophia. Meanwhile the architect of the first project sold it to the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan and they made it bigger and built it in Islamabad where it stands today as one of the biggest mosques anywhere and the main landmark of Islamabad.

The replica of Istanbul's Sultanahmet Mosque in the Citadel.

The citadel has a great view of the whole city from the top. Although the desert dust and the pollution had created mist, the other side of the basin could be seen and some five kilometers to the west, rose the great pyramids of Giza. It was my first gaze on the real thing and it was very mystic. The whole modern city were in this pit of the basin and above all rose the grandeur of thousands of years. Cairo has its share of modern high rise buildings but all were down the hole and were dwarfed by the pyramids. And all the new development were really new, built in the last few decades. How much more stunning the pyramids must have stood in the rest of their 5.000 years of history. It had a mystic effect even seeing them as shadows behind the mist. I couldn’t wait to be next to them.

Then I walked to see the sunset by the Nile and had a view of the more modern Cairo. Somehow the city looks like it was built with enthusiasm some 30 years ago and was never maintained. Everything looked run down, all buildings seemed to need plaster and paint, most older cars had scars and the roofs had all sorts of refused stuff which could have been sitting there for decades. I thought it looks like this city had its heyday and now is rotting slowly but fortunately by the dry desert nothing rots, they just get buried under the dust and that was exactly what looked like the destiny of Cairo.

When I finally went back to the hotel I stopped by the internet cafe to learn a little more about the few things I had seen and on Google Earth checked out how far I had walked. It was no surprise that I felt my batteries were completely dry because I had walked 17 kilometers the first day I arrived in this new climate with a temperature of over 35 degrees. But that’s the way I like discovering new places. I had traveled with people who are more conscious of their personal energy efficiency and won’t go walking unless they know there are nice things to see on the way. For me this just kills the magic of spontaneity. Each new place has its surprises and walking around is what makes it different than a photo. If I would be taking taxis everywhere I go, I could as well sit home and watch Discovery Channel.

The next day was my day at the museum. Cairo has a very old Egyptian Museum built by the British Empire. I had passed by it and I had thought that after all it is a building, like any other museum and it wouldn’t be that hard to see it in a day. Obviously I had forgotten about my day at the British Museum in London, and that was 22 years ago and I was still knocked out. This one was also one of the most interesting museums I’d seen with a great big collection of all sorts of things from the early kingdom to the Greek times. One thing was that it was too crowded with tourist groups which was not that bad sometimes when I stopped by to listen to what their tour guides had to say about the artifacts. It was amazing that ancient Egyptians buried so much stuff, mummified people and animals and carved so much out of stone. Well, Turkey is also full of ancient Roman, Greek and pre-Roman stuff but they are usually what is found near the surface or is buried by nature rather than people, so they are mostly not as intact as the Egyptian stuff. Especially stuff like those from the burial chamber of Tuthankamon looks like they were made a couple of years ago, all the gold shining, the chariots and the beds in usable condition. I had heard that when the British built the railways in Egypt sometimes they used ancient mummies as fuel. It was hard to imagine there being so many mummies but now I could see how.

For the next morning I arranged for a taxi to take me to the pyramids in Giza and Sakhara and the old capital Memphis. Is Memphis in Egypt or Egypt in Memphis? I searched Google Earth for “Memphis, Egypt” and all I could find was a little place called Egypt in Memphis, USA! The taxi took less then an hour to go from the center to the western edge of the city where the pyramids are. And as we got closer the pyramids got bigger and bigger but I was surprised that we couldn’t see the Great Sphinx. When I finally entered the area of the historical park first thing I saw and my first surprise was the Sphinx, which was not great at all. Maybe if you take it down to the city streets it could look big but next to the pyramids and by the empty vastness of the desert it looked quite small. The reason they call it the “Great” Sphinx was because they were other sphinxes of all sizes but never this big. And it would be a great welcoming statue to the three great pyramids, had it not been walled and fenced inside it’s own little yard. Poor thing.

Then I walked to the biggest of them all, the pyramid of Khufu. It looks like a medium size hill with very clear straight edges. It’s a pity that people took the white lime plastering to make other buildings but even with the stone blocks it looked massive. I have to say though that these blocks didn’t look like they needed alien technology to be moved around. Their average size were 2x1x1 meters but I had read somewhere that some places there were 40 ton ones and of course those were carried there by aliens or something like that. I decided to start with one of the smaller pyramids next to the big one and walked down a narrow shaft to a burial chamber. It was hot, airless and empty. I saw a small empty room in it. Wow! And I ran out for a breath. When I saw the long lines of people waiting to go into the pyramid of Khufu I decided to appreciate it’s beauty from the exterior. One of the most interesting things by this one was the boat museum. The ancient kings were buried along with lots of things to accompany them in the other side and among them were boats. They dismantled the boats and made big pits just by the side of the pyramids and buried them. One of the big boats of Khufu was excavated from such a pit, reassembled and put into this special building only for itself, with special temperature and humidity controls. It was hard to believe that this boat was almost 5.000 years old; it looked like it could sail anytime. That’s the desert, there is no humidity to rot anything. If something can dry properly, like wood with enough resin, then it is protected forever. And this boat radiated the timelessness of life. I felt I could suddenly be transported to that time and could find the same things I experience today.

Khufu's boat, buried 4.500 years ago, rediscovered, restored and reassambled.
Looks almost like ready to sail.

It was not easy to pull myself out of the tourist crowds so I was taking the paths less walked and on one of them, just when I was taking photos of camel one old camel man, Moosa, asked me if I wanted to go “over there”. He was pointing out to a kind of sand dune on the other side of a depression away from the pyramids and crowds. I got on the back of his camel and he grumpily moved us away. It was indeed a good place to go for a clear view of all the pyramids (there are 9 just in Giza and tens of them further south). I have ridden camels before but this was my first time on a camel in the desert :) And the desert on the other side looked endless and completely empty.

Camelman watching Khufu's Great Pyramid

One hour south of Giza is Sakhara where the first pyramids were built. There is a new and very well designed museum telling about all the firsts in the area, the first stone columns, first stone ceilings, first porticos, etc. It was in a way surprising that even the first columns and first ceilings looked like they were upgraded versions of older ones but the museum claimed that they were all derived from wooden buildings. The Step Pyramid of xxx was not in a very good shape and the one of xxx was just a pile of rubble but seeing that there were no tourists around I went into that. The walls were covered in hieroglyphs and the burial chamber actually has a tomb. All these were nice but it was not so easy to understand why the ministry of tourism decided to put multicolor lights in this plain looking pyramid. Perhaps to help tourists not to be bored with all the stones!

Then I went into a couple of mastabas, burial buildings for the rich which were the most interesting. All the walls were covered with scenes of daily life, of hunting, of ceremonies, of all sorts of things. They were all carved and painted and amazingly they all survived thousands of years for me to see and touch them. I felt really small in time.

I knew of Memphis the old capital from a couple of Ramses books I had read and my expectations were high. Unfortunately the city had fully been eaten by a modern town and what remained of it were some statues and offering tables in a small museum. But it was nice to see the great Ramses as the last thing of the day. As I went back into the taxi I was almost fainty but the ride took over 1 hour. It was also sweet that this 6 hr taxi rent was only $22, though the tickets plus the camel ride was $46. I went to my room and fell asleep.

Ramses in Memphis.

Every Thursday and Saturday night there is a tennure dance and music show by the Al-Azhar mosque. It is in a beautiful old building called Wihara Al-Ghauri and the whole event is organized by the cultural ministry and is free. It made me feel like they wanted to show a bit of the Muslim Egyptian culture when most of the tourists attention is on the ancient civilisation. And the whole thing was very well prepared and performed with many musicians and dancers. Tennure is a whirling dance derived from Mevlevi whirling but is more colorful and in a way free-style. After the initial drumming and music the first whirling of one man lasted for 45 minutes without stopping or even slowing down. My special mission there was to learn where I could buy one of those three layered skirts with which they did all sorts of things such as lift them up their heads and turn them into a giant hourglass or take them up completely and play with them like a lasso. But I learned that they are always made on order and are pretty expensive.

The Tennnure dance and music event at the Wihara Al-Ghauri.

The show ended about 10 PM and I thought I’d just go home and crash but the streets were so lively I started walking around and discovered the main market, Khan El-Khalili. It is a very touristic area where everybody tries to rip you off but it is also a good place to have a complete showcase of Egyptian artifacts from jewelry to clothes, from waterpipes to copperware. I had a tea and walked till the end of the main street. It was already midnight and the main road was more crowded than any place I had so far seen here. I waited for a taxi which wouldn’t come because there were too many people waiting, so I ended my day at the pyramids with another long walk on the busy midnight streets of Cairo.

The next day I decided to leave for the Sinai and went to the bus station to get a ticket. I was expecting a chaotic place where lots of men will scream place names to me and try to put me on the first bus that’s leaving but hey this Turgoman station was not like that at all. It looked more like a shopping mall and there were screens and only a few ticket windows. The lines were not very long and the ticket person spoke English. It was so easy, so unexpected, I wanted to stay there for a while.

However when I returned from Sinai the bus dropped me somewhere more out of town, right under a huge billboard with Kevin Costner saying “Flying with Turkish Airlines makes you feel like a star”. How would he know, he’s already a star! I had only one night in Cairo and I had a few hours on the back streets of the main market buying costume accessories for my performing friends and some gifts. As I arrived there it was the fast breaking time and all the squares were
covered in tables and people preparing to eat which was perhaps the best time to walk around without being hassled by the shopkeepers. But bargaining was really hard. I could feel the price they told me was maybe twice or thrice the real price but it was embarrassing for me to offer so little in comparison and they knew it and they abused it. I did bargain and got some discounts but I don’t have a doubt that I was also properly ripped off like any other tourist there. And this time I walked upstream where I managed to find a taxi to the cafe I discovered the first day to have a beer. But they said during Ramadan it is illegal to sell alcohol. That is so utterly stupid; there is nothing that says consuming alcohol is a greater sin if done during Ramadan. If you see it as a sin, you should just not do it but if you do it then there is no difference about Ramadan. It reminded me of my dad hiding from my mom when he drank during Ramadan. Religions always develop such idiocy in one way or the other.

Cairo street food.

My overall impression of Cairo after 7 days there is very positive. It is a big, crowded, chaotic, polluted city, that is true but in comparison to other such cities it has its charms. I find the people very positive and helpful. It is generally peaceful and secure, even in the middle of the night. It’s a city that starts the day late and stays up all night and that’s 10 points from me also. Just like Istanbul I wouldn’t want to live in Cairo but I can recommend it for a short visit. It has its little surprises for everyone.

Long time no see, still in Turkey

2009-07-14T11:00:00.000+03:00

Wow, it's been over 3 months in Turkey and I haven't blogged anything. I do think of things about Turkey that I want to blog but life is faster here, especially after having been away nearly 3 years. So what have I been doing in Turkey?

Fisherman boats on the Bosphorus on a Sunday, when everything suddenly moves slower.

As I arrived I spent 2-3 weeks with my parents. They are growing older and I am staying in Turkey less and less so I thought I shall be a good son. And I did it. I repaired all sorts of things, helped them change their TVs and PCs, went out for meals with them and even volunteered after so many years to get my old room painted. Wow, so many memories were painted on those walls and it felt good to finally let go of all those (see picture).

My room was too full already when I left Istanbul 12 years ago but my dad kept on putting stuff on
the walls which eventually turned it into a hard place to relax (dogs by the head of my bed???)

Then I went out to meet friends. And again another wow, everybody had grown up (not me:). Funny enough the first bunch I met were my primary school friends which I hadn't seen for like 20 years (thanks to facebook these kind of things are possible now). And they all had kids, jobs and some extra weight. Why do I feel like I shall not let myself grow up or grow old? Anyways, it feels better this way. I feel like a child and I am old enough to feel good to die today.

We made two Juggling Picnics on one of the islands in Istanbul and they were both so much fun, great music and
many juggling friends. We even swam the second time; it had been so many years since I swam in Istanbul last.

And we also went to celebrate the European Juggling Day on the same day with Aeronautics Day
and even at the same venue by Sapanca Lake near Istanbul. And I refuse to grow up!

Then I met more and more friends. Those who haven't married since 2006 had been busy making babies. Aha I see it! You grow up and you make kids, and nobody asks you what you are doing with your life, great, isn't it? It's the easy way out guys and I'm taking no shortcuts. I have no fixed targets for this life, I am living. Anyway, those who have not done these or at least those who haven't made children, grew their businesses. I was even offered jobs by some of my friends who now have their companies, very flattering -in the sense that I'm still free to say no to all of these. But I accepted the insurance bit so now I'm officially the editor of one of my best friend's company and I am indeed editing stuff.

I have to admit, one thing I missed most about Turkey was the food. So on the first opportunity
I made it to the nearest weekly market and got all different kinds of olives, ...

cheese, ...

and nuts and dried fruits.

Of course I also had a culture shock but much milder then I expected, because I expected it, and as I expected it it was about Turkey having a much more tense and rough feeling than SE Asia. I have been enjoying living in places where people smile, are relatively kind with each other (or at least don't fight continuously) and where men are not so charged with testosterone (except the sexpats of course). Apart from these regular annoyances, Turkey in general and Istanbul in particular has become much more fearful and closed. People feel darker and they are made to be afraid of everything. But perhaps that's a world trend these days and I feel it more here because I'm from here.

And another wow goes to the police state. Turkey has never been really democratic but now things are getting quite openly fascistic and people are all silent about it. It is a sad situation. You see police everywhere and they no more look like cops but more like soldiers. Whenever there are demonstrations of any kind (even the May Day) police has a showdown of beating people on the streets, not because they do anything wrong, but because their idea of democracy is vote every so many years and keep silent the rest of the time.

Hundreds of police protecting people. But then, why don't we feel safe?
And who's gonna protect people from the police?

And there is this Ergenekon case. It is very strange. It is a case to uncover the counter-terrorist involvements of the government and the army. The Turkish army has staged coup-detats too many times in the past to be seen as innocent and the evidence against them (for illegally killing thousands of people, provoking unrest to take power, supporting terrorists to have a reason to fight and so on) is massive. Yet the secular people of Turkey (unfortunately they have gone into minority these days) still hope that they will come and save the country from the islamists. And when I ask they say "we cannot fight the islamists because they are armed from head to toe and even their women take kungfu courses to fight, so we need the soldiers against them"! Very dangerous stuff. But with this Ergenekon case they started to arrest people without charges and keep them in prison for months without telling them why. And they are also arresting opposition. It has become a typical fascistic clean up operation which puts everybody in fear.

A strange thing happened. Within my first week of arrival and two days after I made a conference call with friends from around the world and had to listen to my mom going on about being very careful of what I say on the phone because they are all being wiretapped, I received a call from a police officer. He introduced himself and asked me my name, asked me for how long I use this phone. Meanwhile I could hear from the background the noise of the police radio and he was cutting me to answer those sometimes. Then he told me that my sim card had been copied by one guy with the name of this and this and he is a member of a terrorist organisation and if there are any charges brought against him I will have to share the charges as the owner of the phone! So what he offered was a procedure to stop me from using this number without letting him know. But he also told me if I told about this story to anyone it would mean that I am guilty and trying to fool the police. He asked me to keep the phone on, him being on the line, put it in my pocket and go to the car. Meanwhile I tried to give a sign to my dad to call my brother but he has hearing problem and it was a very funny situation; he called all the wrong people and I couldn't talk to him loud because the guy was in my pocket :) And so I went to the car and he asked me to go to the nearest shop and buy a ready to use mobile phone card and come back. Finally my brother was called and I learned from the guy working with him that this is a nowadays common scam and he received the same call. It's so amazing. Really well planned and well acted police impersonation and 20 minutes with me on the phone line. For what? For stealing some phone credits from me! I just cannot believe it. That's the thing: when police start t0 act like mafia, then mafia start to act like police. When I called the phone company to give his number to them they told me there are thousands of such cases and that they are trying to figure out how to deal with it. Welcome to Turkey!

Then I left Istanbul and went South to where some friends live in villages. It was great to see them and live with animals for some time but the stories of last year were just shocking. It seemed that last year all relationships were shattered in somewhat unexpected ways. At least some of the ways the dramas took place were just too far out. My jaw dropped and stayed that way for a couple of weeks. But most relationships survived after transformation and everybody had the feeling of having been washed with tears.

My friends' Saanen goats give much milk which turns into the best quality goat cheese.

Friends in the village practicing for the evening session. It's quite sad that it has become nearly impossible
to be a humble farmer and survive economically. All these people have gardens and animals
but they depend on the income from the music they make. And they make great music.

Then I went to the gathering, where I couldn't stay long. But some truly sad things happened there, really really sad. So I went at the end to sort the energy out and had some nice time as well. But I'm still trying to recover from the effects and trying to understand how to learn from this experience.

The first site of the gathering. Looks good but terribly wrong choice while
we had a perfect site 20 minutes down the hill where some of us later had to move to.

A little down from the gathering site we had a very nice little river with pools
and all sorts of magical spots. We found one and had a 6 day retreat there.

Then I went on a little tour of coastal Turkey where some other friends are settled. I went to Domuz Cukuru, or Pigs Bay, a remote beach that some friends rented and restored into a backpackers resort. Nice place, really remote, 30 minutes boat from the nearest road. And really beautiful as well. If they can financially survive this season I'm sure that place will be the next Butterfly Valley for the backpackers.

Turkey has stunning landscapes around the south coast.
This one is from near Fethiye, coming down to Kabak valley from Alınca.

Turkey has a Dead Sea as well. Here it is. It's not dead at all. Beware of the raining parachuters.

Pigsbay is a big deep valley with no roads, really peaceful.

And the sea on Pigsbay was sooo deep blue, sooo crystal clear, so amazing.

And I went to Kaz Dağları where some friends have been busy with ecological developments and also making babies. My closest friends there also had their share of whatever strange influence there was last year on their relationships but now seem pretty grounded which made me happy. They had two girls, both very beautiful and I really enjoy playing with the little 6 months old one. But it also made me see that it is a very wise decision for myself to not have kids. It's so much responsibility and compromise of freedom. And also it is an easy way out of realising oneself, having to answer life's questions.

Two of my best friends in Kaz Dağları, Tamahine and her second daughter Rüya.
When I look at them it does feel like it may be a blessing to have kids, but quite certainly not for me.

Now I'm back in Istanbul trying to sort out visas and tickets. I'm going to Ukraine... or maybe not... perhaps I'll go to Egypt, to Sinai... or shall I just say it's enough and go back to SE Asia... I keep remembering the saying

God is laughing whenever we talk of our plans.

I'm in Istanbul, a city to fall in love with at first sight and hate after a couple of months. So I make sure I leave soon. That's the plan.

South East Asia Accounts

2009-04-24T14:34:00.000+03:00

As I write this I’m on the airplane which concludes my two and a half years in South East Asia. I know I have the “Asia bug” and I won’t be able stay away for too long; I already have plans to be back before the end of this year. After all, I feel I have only got a taste of it, or just seen the trailer. When I land back in Turkey I will have all these comparisons in my mind and I’ll perhaps blog those also but for now I’m still dealing with the separation from a loved one.

Asia has been very kind to me. I had no seriously bad incidents but quite a lot of good to great experiences. During the 875 days I spent there I visited 9 countries, crossed borders 22 times but visited embassies only 6 times. I like it when friends DON’T ask me about my favorite country, but of course I had my favorite locations. This time I had Penang in Malaysia as my base and because of that I spent 28% of my days, 247 days that is, in Malaysia. The other countries I spent time in are Thailand (196), Philippines (171), Indonesia (116), Taiwan (60), China (57), Cambodia (22), Laos (6) and Myanmar (15 minutes). Each of these places left its unique impressions on me and I left a bit of my heart in most of them.

Although I mostly rented rooms or bungalows, I also camped out for 111 days, stayed in friends’ houses for 34 days, stayed at monasteries or retreat centers for 33 days and slept in busses and trains for 25 nights. I drove 22 different motorbikes, 4 different bicycles and no four wheelers. I completed three courses and received certificates for them (CFQ qi gong (My), PADI open water diving (In), and Agama yoga first month (Th)). I did two meditation retreats (Th) and I’m happy to have been a part of three rainbow gathering seedcamps (Th, Ch, Tw).

I fell in love with Asian food and this led me to gain 16 kilos but I lost half of it already (I’m no longer skinny, mom). I went up 3 volcanoes, dived 14 times and visited 13 hot springs. I got bitten by a dog once (Th), got mysterious jungle fever twice (Th, Ph) and got my spare money stolen once (La). But I’m happy that these have been the only unfortunate events. Ah, and the 7 times I had a flat tire on the bike.

I guess I grew up a little when I was there and I can easily say that this change has been in a very positive direction and this surely has something to do with the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. Now that I’m in Turkey I can see how special it was to be there, how soft and gentle, how diverse and nourishing the feeling of being there in Asia. I know I can’t be away for too long.

I’ll be back.

___________________

If you didn't know how obsessed I am with numbers, now you do :)

Taiwan Rocks

2009-03-23T08:52:00.000+02:00

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell about this country in the most accurate way but I’m quite speechless. I don’t want to be unfair with it or other countries but I think Taiwan rocks.

Do you know where is Taiwan? It’s an island south of China. In the south it almost touches Northern Philippines, and to the East it looks like you can jump between the little islands all the way to Okinawa in Japan. A big part of the population is Chinese who came over from the mainland over hundreds of years but the indigenous people still thrive and are ethnically relatives to the people of Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. It has a unique interesting past of indigenous cultures and colonial invaders but I won’t go into that. If you are interested to know more about the history of Taiwan in relation to its Austronesian culture please visit this great website of my good friend Chris Anderson who is an anthropologist and has been doing research on this subject for some years.

Amis village chief and elders paying an official visit to our gathering in their traditional clothes. They still keep their traditional social structures such as the age groups. After a little talk and thanks giving they sang their songs, danced their dances and even thought us some. For them dancing and singing is a very high form of social bonding and they love it.

I arrived in Taiwan thinking that it would be much like China (well, isn’t it officially called Republic of China after all?) where I hadn’t felt such warm feelings. Then I thought “both my laptops were made in Taiwan and the world’s tallest building is in Taiwan. So it must be very developed, babylonized and expensive, more like Singapore or Hong Kong.” What a mistake to compare Taiwan to any of these, or any other country at all. It is really unique I think.

View of Taipei from the top of Taipei 101, world’s tallest building today. It was surprising that this was almost the only skyscraper there, Taipei not a city of high-rise buildings. It’s rather a widely developed flat city with rivers.

On arriving in Taipei, the first thing I realized was that it was quite a big and crowded metropolis but it seemed to work better than most others I had the chance to visit. It was very clean and orderly, and there were no traces of chaotic corners or aggressive or oppressive behaviour. There were instructions all over the place “Mind your rubber sandals in the escalator. Speak slowly on the mobile phone. Toilets 30 meters.”, etc. Just when I was thinking maybe this was too much, I saw in a toilet right above the urinal a sign saying “come closer” to activate the flush. But it was not like the signs in Singapore where they’d be more like “Flush after using. Penalty $5”. I didn’t see any fines printed except for the new West induced fascistic smoking ban stickers. And it seemed that although it’s a big crowded metropolis, Taipei worked really smoothly, without needing a visible police force or security guards everywhere. When I realized that there are no policemen around I started looking for them and for many days only saw them around the police stations and no where else. The Taipei Metro, which has been awarded the title ‘World’s most reliable public transport system’ for four consecutive years running, has contributed immensely to the clean streets where traffic is no longer disturbing. As nice big cities go, Taipei was pleasant for a short time.

Taipei metro with helpful instructions. Hush now baby, 100 meters left.

I can’t say that this sign was too much. In Taiwan I saw relatively people having a loud chat on the phone in public spaces. As it says “Good citizens create a happy atmosphere in Taipei Metro”

First SARS and then avian flu has been used to create much public fear in Taiwan. Still in some airports and railway stations have fever scanners (to see if any passengers have fever) and some people go around with a mouth cover. And the buses have these ‘no birds’ signs.

Mind your Crocs on the escalators. One can hardly walk a few meters without instructions and warnings in the metro and inside the metro cars there is hardly any advertisement, all that is posted are instructions.

Although it seems a very safe place there are these ‘night time safe zones’ in metro stations which are monitored by surveillance cameras, in case some guys are too drunk perhaps.

Then I discovered other aspects. Dealing with people first of all was very easy and pleasant. Many people speak English and even if they don’t they still do their best to help you when you need it but don’t bother you when you don’t. There is this general feeling of being taken care of and sometimes being accepted like a local, which I have felt only in Malaysia before but even there not to this degree. There is no double pricing for the foreigners and even the taxi drivers are decent people (doesn’t happen anywhere else it seems) who take the shortest road to your destination. The food is great with many options and vegetarian restaurants are widely available. The night food markets are great to explore ones own taste buds but coming from Chinese culture they also have a taste for “strange” things such as snakes, turtles and snails. I was surprised that food prices were almost the same as Thailand, as well as cheap clothing prices which were even cheaper.

Downtown Taipei has all the scenes we so very well know of scenes of Hong Kong or of Japan. When you have those Chinese characters with which you can tell a lot with just a few lines, then you write, it seems. It’s colorful and I was happy they didn’t mean anything to me.

Chinese new year is the biggest holiday in Taiwan and lasts 9 days. During the weeks before the holidays the markets swell and get very colorful. This stall sells all different golden decorations for the year of the Ox along with very necessary sweets. The downside is the interest in explosives, they just keep going day and night for a whole week.

The most intense food experience I went through while I was there was the Shaodofu or stinky tofu. It is one of a million way of cooking tofu which is first fermented and then fried. Shaodofu places can be found by their smell much easier than by the eye. The stink reaches far , sometimes a hundred meters away you can smell something strange, very strange, something between lightly dirty socks and wet carpet mixed with rotting meat. The smell hits the back of the nose and makes one wonder. But when you sit down and order one there comes this brown crusty tofu which is inside spongy, tastes a bit like meat and you eat it with a sauce of soy, vinegar and lots of garlic accompanied with sweet cabbage pickles. It is the most delicious form of tofu I’ve tasted so far and the experience of going through this smell and taste process is at least as transformative as learning to eat durian.

Candied fruits in the night market. These are like the shish-kabab of mixed fruits dipped in sugar. Yummy.

Another colorful aspect of the markets, dehydrated vegetables and fruits.

Later we went south along the East Coast, which is the less developed, more natural side of Taiwan. We crossed the Tropic of Cancer and very surprisingly the climate changed dramatically. It was supposed to be the dry season but during the two months I was there, we had maybe once or twice two days on a row with no drizzle. It was drizzling all the time, or anytime. Meanwhile the Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan proved to have the most unreliable weather forecasts. Everybody accepts that the weather in Taiwan is simply unpredictable.

Very fortunately for travelers, just the opposite is true for people of Taiwan. Nowhere else I have traveled I felt so easy to rely on people I didn’t know. And this covers all aspects of life. For example if you forget your map, you may get lost anywhere but in Taiwan it is more likely that this way you’ll get to meet people and always will get to where you want. I’ve been doing hitch-hiking all my life (not that it is my main means of transport but I use it) and it has never been so easy. Usually I didn’t even reach the place I thought to start hitch-hiking, a passing car would just give me a lift when I’m walking. And people are inviting. I don’t know how much of it was because of the area I spent most of my time (the East Coast) but we received many invitations and when we accepted them we saw they were from the heart. And a very important thing that contributes to a traveler’s perception of Taiwan is that it is a safe country, once again, the safest I’ve been so far. It’s been a while since left all my bags in the waiting room in a train station and went to toilet, got tickets and snacks for half an hour and didn’t have to worry. Observing the local or localized friends around me I realized how attached I am to locks and keys; people simply didn’t lock their cars or bikes or homes all the time. Of course they do it when they leave for long and of course there is some crime, such as breaking into houses where noone lives and stealing things but the petty crime seems not to exist and it has a very cooling effect on the soul, especially after having spend 2 years in other countries of South East Asia.

Jinzun beach is one of those long beautiful dark sand beaches of the East coast.

Some parts of the east coast are steep cliffs and big waves. Still the corals give this amazing colors to the sea.

Traveling inside Taiwan can be quite pleasant also. There seems to be a good reliable train network as well as bus companies. And it’s a small country, a short overnight train will take you between the northern and southern ends of the island. In the last years cycling is being promoted and there are bicycle lanes on all highways and in Taipei you can even bring your bicycle inside the subway trains in most stations. Along the East coast, which is far more natural than the West coast, I saw many groups of cyclers and campers although it was the cold season (down to 14 C) and was drizzling most of the time. And if you cannot find a place to camp, you can always camp in the garden of the local police station; they usually have a nice set up with camping grounds, shades, showers and toilets and other conveniences.

Dulan mountain is one of the most sacred mountains of southern Taiwan. And the foothills are full of, well, rice fields and betelnut trees of course.

The nature I have had the chance to experience during my short stay there was quite stunning and I was very surprised because I expected none of these. The East coast has many nice beaches which range from black sand to white sand to colorful stone. I heard that there are many surfers’ paradises along the coast and there are plenty of people carrying around surf boards even in the cold season. And some parts are rocky with cliffs going straight into the sea, leaving just a tiny space for a little beach and perhaps a couple of caves. Then there are the central mountains which are home to some of the indigenous communities and are mostly well preserved. At most places they look almost impenetrable. Although they are not massive mountain ranges, they are full of amazing valleys with clear rivers and waterfalls, lots of great forests, many hot springs and peace. As an amateur bird watcher I was very happy to see such diversity of birds even being close to the hills. I hear that in most parts there are some poisonous snakes and trekkers need to have boots, but I love the snakes and the way they serve to keep the land pure. I had the chance to visit the famous Taroko Gorge and I’ll never forget it. It’s a gorge, or a network of gorges and valleys, carved into a mountain made of marble. Yes, it’s all marble and when water slices through it you can see the whole marble face inside the mountain. It is breath taking. The roads leading up to the gorge are also very unique in the way that they are carved into this marble and look like many ant paths. I think this is a must see in Taiwan.

The entrance to Taroko gorge where nature’s majesty is humbly touched by human creation.

Clear waters, marble walls reaching up to the clouds and roads carved into these in a manner of ants in Taroko gorge.

The road in Taroko Gorge took decades to build and it's very easy to see why.

This mountain area, they say, has the greatest concentration of marbles in the world. It takes your breath away to see it like this.

Taiwan rocks. It is just along the same fault lines with Japan and Philippines which create all the earthquakes. And Taiwan has typhoons which are sometimes very strong. In the two months I was there I felt about 10 minor earthquakes some of which made strange grumbling noises which scared the s*** out of me but I didn’t have any typhoons thanks to the season (all the typhoons I experienced when I was in the Philippines between June and October, either started near Taiwan or more often were exported to Taiwan from the Philippines). But Taiwan seems to have the best infrastructure I’ve seen in a country with a rainy season and typhoons. And they are good at engineering marvels such as the world’s tallest skyscraper (over 500 meters) and world’s longest highway tunnel (over 20 kms). It surprises me that in places like Philippines and Thailand they have the rains every year and each year they seem to be caught unaware. This wouldn’t happen in Taiwan I think.

Right on. I want to put this stickers in all toilets, on all paper towel boxes. In fact they should print these on all tissues like the warnings on cigarettes "tissues kill". It hurts me to see people dry their hands with dead trees and even waste them. The point is, some of the warnings and instructions can be very useful.

The plan in Riuesiue hotsprings. Do you see anything strange? Chinese in general are pretty superstitious and the Chinese in Taiwan are no exception. Apparently the character for 4 resembles the one for 'death' so they always leave it out anyway but here they also had a fear of number 9. Funny enough the place was established 1919 and it was the 90th year when we were there (sometimes you just can't help it, can you?)

Of the other unique things about Taiwan I can count the betel nut chewing culture which has found it’s way into a modern society. I have chewed betelnuts in India but the ones in Taiwan are whole fresh nuts and they are more fibery so they don’t disintegrate inside the mouth and are quite pleasant to chew. I know they are addictive but they are also great after the meals or anytime one needs to get going. And you can get betelnuts everywhere, and they are conveniently always 50 NTs (Taiwanese money) for a bag of 10 to 20 green nuts wrapped up in half a vine leaf. They have these ‘betelnut beauties’ which are good looking and scantily clad girls in glass boots selling betelnuts by the highways. It’s funny how this marketing strategy using colorful fluorescent lights and a very sexy outfit to sell something you chew and spit out works for so many years but it is there and it is unique to Taiwan.

Most younger people seem to speak English but as it is with any other place, sometimes English is just spokening.

Taiwan is a small box of wonders, a country of pleasant surprises and it’s there waiting to be recognized. If you ever get the chance go visit Taiwan, you won’t regret it and it won’t be a hard experience. In fact you’ll most likely be so spoilt that traveling in other places will feel not so nice any more. Of all the westerners who choose to settle and live in Taiwan (and there are many of those) the most common reason for this I have heard has been “because everything is so easy here”. Of course people are people and there are some rotten apples everywhere, and we have our individual karmas also, but Taiwan is a great place in many senses. I pray I go back there soon, I love Taiwan.

Photo journals: Cambodia

2009-02-20T13:47:00.000+02:00

I was in Cambodia for the new year of 2008 for 3 weeks. We had this great idea of escaping from the crowds in Thailand but we sadly realized that we were not the only ones. Cambodia with its proximity to such a touristic country and its peacefulness in recent years is receiving more and more tourists, seemingly almost more than it can handle. We made the classical tour of entering the country from the south, sampling the beaches in Sihanoukville, Kampot, visiting the capital Phnom Penh and of course visiting the magnificent ruins of Angkor ruins near Siem Reap.

When you enter Cambodia from the southern border with Thailand there are 4 rivers on the way to Sihanoukville which don't have any bridges on yet. But when we were there they were building a good road and also bridges. So these scenes of homemade rafts with two side engines operated by two guys in harmony will soon be history. Although this makes the journey longer it was nice to have a short stop every 20-30 kilometers. Some of the jungles around look very untouched thanks to the great number of landmines.

Sihanoukville has some nice beaches but they were not this empty at all.

Phnom Penh city started developing around a hill temple sponsored by a lady Penh who is today raised to sainthood and this is a place where everyone comes to make wishes.

In capital cities there are palaces and Phnom Penh, the capital of Kingdom of Cambodia is no exception. After all the turmoil the country has been through, the palaces are restored for service to a growing tourism industry.

As a permanent student of architecture I enjoy these little beauties around. Cambodian architecture is quite similar to Thai architecture, with it's gold, glazed roof tiles, multiple roofs and intricate details.

Another interesting architectural piece is this art-deco French central market of Phnom Penh. It was amazing to see jewelers, electronic dealers, clothes merhants and butchers under the same roof.

Phnom Penh has a little swampy lake and by the lake are poorer neighborhoods and cheapest tourist accommodations. We didn't stay there but went there to enjoy the chill after a day in the busy streets.

This gamelan made me think why they didn't think about this in other countries where they have the same kind of music, such as Indonesia. But here they use much smaller gongs -along with the big ones- and perhaps that's why.

For many foreign visitor Cambodia means Angkor ruins and it's no surprise considering the magnificence of these ancient cities and comparing with the shape of the country today. The day after we arrived, as if we had no more time, we got on the bicycles and started our tour and 3-day intensive course of the Angkor ruins.

The most pictured stone faces on earth, Bayon temple, Siem Reap.

There are a few stories behind who these faces depict. It's either Lord Shiva or the King of Angkor empire at the time (which sounds like so much arrogance). However when you are dwarfed by their presence, these big compassionate smiles radiate a timeless peace.

Kids enjoying the ancient pools of Bapuon
and us tourists sweating and taking photos.

Angkor Wat temple is always as crowded as it can be so you give thanks that there are some alternative roads :)

Apsaras, dancing and singing heavenly beauties are the most common decoration in Angkor temples and they keep on enchanting visitors.

This frieze in Banteay Srey temple depict Lord Vishnu's man-lion incarnation. According to this story from the Vedas, a demon was granted immunity from being killed by a man or a beast, during day or night, in or our of his palace. So Vishnu took the form of a ma with a lion's head, took the demon to the palaces doorstep and killed him there at sunset.

Another very interesting decoration from East Mebon. Ganesh riding himself! Strangely similiar to those tattoos found on the body of the mummified Pazyryk chief.

This is an ochestra performing everyday by the temple complexes. There are many such bands and some of them make pretty good music. What makes them unique is that all the musician in these bands are disabled people. The homicidal Red Khmer regime left great many people disabled and still today people die or get disabled by remaining thousand of landmines all around the country. This is one way they found to make a living but there are far too many of them.

Sunset in Angkor Wat. I remember I was so tired after 3 days of waking up by sunrise and walking around ruins all day long, but every sunset in front of this magnificence takes some of the tiredness away.

When wars were over and the time of big empires was past, nature took it's turn in eating into the ancient Angkor cities. Today in most places these trees are cut down to protect the ruins but sometimes they shoot out from the old stones reminding us once again of the ultimate temple of nature and its beauty.

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Photo journals: Sumatra

2009-02-12T14:55:00.000+02:00

Sumatra is the westernmost island of Indonesia. I was there with Maya for two months September-October 2007. But it felt too short and eversince I have a feeling I'll go back there soon. Indonesia is a great colorful place, almost like India but not as demanding perhaps. Sumatra is less crowded then the rest of Indonesia and still has some great nature. It is where I climbed my first volcano, did my first scuba dives, rowed an inner tube from a truck on a raging river for the first time in my life. It is so rich, sometimes it makes you just stop and inhale. There are places which are very hard to leave and people very easy to love. Indonasians are the most talented people I've seen, or at least they have the biggest percentage of talented people and guitars per household. And they play that guitar, paint that house, carve that wood. You are always welcome.

Main mosque in Medan
Medan is where we arrived Sumatra by boat during Ramadan. Around the mosque was a whole fast breaking food market for the evening. But it was not so great to have this room (where I took this photo from) because they really go at it on the loudspeakers and not all have a good voice, good thing to consider when traveling in Indonesia.

The place we stayed on Lake Toba.
The great tranquil lake welcomed us with this great peaceful place outside the touristic ghost town of Tuktuk.

Our house by Lake Toba. It's a very old Batak house which was transported here and has two floors and a veranda right by the lake. It looks and feels like a boat, especially when you're inside because of all the heavy wood, angled walls and small windows.

Every morning before sunrise I saw these fishermen putting their nets in the lake on their tiny single trunk canoes. They feel one with the lake.

Toba volcano is one of those mega volcanoes, it's so huge it is impossible to see it as a single mountain. And in its crater there is this Lake Toba which is the largest volcanic lake on earth (100x30 kms), the biggest lake on earth on an island. When the volcano erupted 75.000 years ago it reduced earths population to only 10.000 people through a sudden ice age and acid rain. When one sees how big and how tranquil it is, it's hard to imagine it exploding. Luckily, that kind of thing happened only once in in the last 2 million years.

Another view of Lake Toba with its warm waters and breath taking grandeur.

A Batak house by Lake Toba. These houses are famous with their unique design and the roof is a prestige symbol and appears even in little low cost houses like this one.

The main cathedral on Samosir island on Lake Toba. Batak people were not muslimized perhaps due to living up the mountain away from trade routes and vast agricultural lands. So later on they were christianized and they form one of the few Catholic tribes of Indonesia. This big church looks just like a batak house and the wood carvings on it depict local deities and spirits next to Jesus and Mary. Christianity here adopted much fromthe local animistic traditions.

Batak tombs are a whole different world. They are the ancestors' abode after death so the whole Batak land is full of very well made and maintained, very interesting tombs. This one, which has a common concept, has a perfect replica of a Batak house over a pyramidal tomb.

Another Batak tomb. These tombs are hardly christian and someof them like this depict the person who's resting there. The guy was perhaps a soldier.

Some people explain these intereting roofs with the horns of the carabao or water bufallo, but more in Minangkabau then in Toba. The church on the back is another tomb depicting a church.

A local deity or spirit protecting a Batak house. There is much magic mushroom around and the people were shamanic, of course.

Stone circle on royal burial ground in Toba.

Tomb of a Batak king.

School bus. Hard to believe but true, these vans compete to take more people and there is always space for more. This one possibly has close to 80 on it (with 10-12 seats inside)

A great thing about taking busses in Indonesia is the busking one hears. When the bus is stopping these people jump on with guitars and ukuleles and sing one song (usually very well) and collect their money and empty the space for the next busker. Indonesia is a very talented and musical country. I love it.

Canyon near Bukittinggi. This is the land of Minangkabau people who are muslim and matriarchal. This canyon lies between Merapi and Singgalang volcanos.

Minangkabau houses also have unique roofs. Minangkabau means "winner water buffalo" and it's said that the pointed ends of the roof reaching heavens represent the horns.

Another Minangkabau house. They usually follow the same design with the little storage for rice in the front and are very ornamented.

Many times Minangkabau houses are like gingerbread houses straight out of fairy tales.

Majestic tree with a cute fairy in a graveyard. Although most of Sumatra's jungles are extinct, it is possible to come across such ageless trees in places like this.

Playing the royal drum by a royal Minangkabau residence. Sometimes these huge drums have houses of their own.

Although cultural things and natural oddities are more photographed, in fact most of the land is covered with these: rice and coconuts.

Enjoying Padang food. Although it comes from the town of Padang on the south coast of Sumatra, Padang food is very popular and available all over indonesia. It is normally lots tastes from different foods, very spicy and oily and sometimes surprising.

Lake Maninjau, another volcanic crater lake where we went hiding during the Id-ul-fitri holiday time. This one was easier to perceive as a crater because it was smaller, still warm and nice to swim with lots of great fish.

Going up the Merapi volcano (Singglang volcano at the back). It took us 4-5 hours to come to the edge of the crater on the full moon night when the rainy season gave a 2 days break for us. It was really cold and energy consuming but well worth it.

Victorious climbers on the Merapi peak just before sunrise. The air changes, the feeling changes, all tiredness disappear. After a little inhalation of the sulphur smokes from the active volcano we are tripping.

Contamplating on being on another world on Merapi. Around us are many other volcanos, some still smoking, slowly receiving the first lights of the day.

Always wanted to be on the moon and here I am on the ash covered center of the Merapi crater.

Going down from Merapi to Bukittinggi facing Mount Singglalang, feeling very small.

Then we went all the way up to the northern tip of Sumatra, to Banda Aceh where an earthquake had triggered the devastating Tsunami of 2005. The only thing left of the old city is the old mosque. The seaside where I took this photo is still covered in debris but the seaside line has changed dramatically and there is building work everywhere. Now there are these signs everywhere with an accompanying sign showing the direction to the nearest high ground. But from where this sign is, nearest high ground is a few kilometers away.

Pulau Weh is a tiny island off the coast of Banda Aceh. It has great corals and very clear waters (visibility up to 40 meters). This Gapang beach is where I took my diving course and even on my first dives I saw such variety of fish, I'd be afraid to tell.

One of our neighbors on Iboih, Pulau Weh. I couldn't beleive it, when we rented this little bungalow with its veranda right on the water, that the whole coral in front of us was full of all colors of fish and other sea creatures. They were also quite friendly and we snorkeled a lot and made friends. Later they inspired me to learn diving.

Another neighbor, a gecko which looks like a leopard, looks stoned, and makes this really loud gek-koo sounds sometimes freaking us out.

Our last stop in Sumatra was the orangutan reserve in Bukit Lawang. These are some of the orangutans (forest people) reintroduced to the wild after being captured from illegal traders. They seem to be doing pretty well and happy about the attention (and the bananas) they are receiving.

But to reach the orangutans we had to cross this raging river on this tiny canoe which is tied to a cable overhead and pulled to eather side. This is because they cannot build a rope and let the orangutans out and the poachers in. Ok, I was scared a bit but I survived, even after the crazy tubing experience on the same river when I had my nearest-to-death experience.

Abdul, one big male orangutan giving us a private show after his banana and milk meal.

These guys really have the looks like they have some important things in their minds, even when they are peeling fruit.

Then we discovered a bat cave, a huge line of caves in fact. In in places where it opened we discovered vines and roots, just like those in Tarzan. I couldn't help but at least try the Indiana Jones moves on these roots, just before we leave this beautiful magical land of Sumatra.

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Maya's blog has more photos and impressions of this trip here.

Photo journals: Laos

2009-01-29T09:11:00.000+02:00

We crossed Laos on the way from China to Thailand. We didn't have much time and we only stayed in Luang Prabang and spend a day in Vientiane. We left wishing to come back one day.

Luang Prabang is a little city by river Maekong. It has much colonial influence from the French and many temples. Still in most parts green is predominant and the city is like a tiny anthill.

Long boats on Maekong. This river is one of the main blood vessels of Indochina, it runs from China to Myanmar, Laos to Cambodia and Vietnam. These kind of boats carry everything. In most parts there were not many roads until recently, simply because there was not much need for roads when there was this river and all it's capillaries.

Colonial main street of Luang Prabang. LP is perhaps the most touristic city in Laos and this one street is where all the nightlife is. And it gets crowded, sometimes very crowded.

Among all the lush green, one suddenly sees a temple, with it's stupa sticking out between the trees. You want to be there, feel the peace, yet you don't want to disturb it, and you realize you have peace right where you are, right now.

Just like in Thailand, in Laos also most men leave their families to live like a monk for some years. It is amazing to even imagine a whole society where so many people at one point in their lives went into a long retreat to learn how to look inside and be peaceful. It certainly has its effect in Laos society.

Humans are not the only followers of Buddha. Perhaps they feel the peaceful vibes or smell the tasty offerings. With whatever reason temples and monasteries are always home to many dogs and sometimes cats. There is a peaceful coexistence (mostly, I must say, because I was bitten by a dog while meditating in amonastery inThailand)

House of Buddha in Luang Prabang. Laotian temples are extremely decorated and many things are covered in gold even more so than in Thailand

Waterfalls near Luang Prabang. The steep hills covered with rainforest is home to much wildlife, giant insects, amazing big trees, snakes. And many many streams sometimes form these gorgeous waterfalls and ponds.

Taking a dip in the waterfalls. When it's that hot, it's a great blessing.

Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is perhaps the flattest city I've visited so far. Even the buildings spread out like a thin layer with nothing sticking out except for this unfinished replica of the arch of triumph from Paris.

Survived my 37, got really high and found love

2009-01-17T07:31:00.000+02:00

I survived 37 and I can't believe it. A part of me is reborn, dead and reborn. I wonder which part.

I had a great birthday. A unique one with no cakes, no parties. Yet I fully enjoyed it.

I got really high, as high as I can get when I'm in a city. Then I asked a very nice girl how I can find love. She told me the way to reach love and I found it there. Once again, I was in love.

I know it's cheesy but it was much fun. It was a great way to start my new life :)

The biggest phallic symbol on earth, Taipei 101. I wanna get high.

As high as I can get, at almost 400 meters high feeling dizzy.

And following the directions of the nice girl finally I'm in Love...
(check out the shoes, brand new birthday gift Koji found in the rubbish)

Photo journals: China

2009-01-15T06:15:00.000+02:00

After 5 months of blogging I realized, perhaps I won't have the time to write about the previous parts of this trip. So I decided to post a series of photo journals of places I've traveled between May 2007 - June 2008.

When I first arrived in Southeast Asia I didn't have a camera. When I went to China for the Rainbow gathering and met Maya there, we started to travel together and take lots of photos with her camera. So the photo journals start in Dali, China, where we met. I hope you enjoy it. I'll write a little about the places in photo captions.

Dali Old Town, Yunnan Province, Southwest China
Dali is a beautiful historic city at 2.000 meters enclosed in square shaped walls and moats.
It's one of the biggest local tourist attractions but when I was there I didn't feel it as being a negative influence. In fact it was very romantic.

Erhai Lake, near Dali.
This is one of the biggest lakes in China and a sacred one with many monasteries around.
We had the gathering just across the lake on a sacred hilltop.

Temple on the hillside near Dali.
Yunnan is a kind of autonomous region in China and they still have living temples and monasteries, as oppose to fossilized ones in East China. They are also allowed to make more than one kids. The mountains behind are full of rivers, waterfalls, little sacred locations and cable cars.

We saw this map at an entrance to the hills near Dali.
We looked at it some time, tried to figure out, deided to take a photo in case we get lost.
And we got lost anyway.

Shangri-la, Yunnan, Southwest China
I thought Shangri-la was an imaginary place but apparently it's likely that this remote plateau with it's peaceful Tibetan population was the Shangri-la which the early plane crash survivors told us about. Today it is known as Zhong-Dian and is a fast developing tourist spot.

The plateau where Shangri-la is located is a vast flat land surrounded by high mountains.

Streets of Old Shangri-la.
The Town is already around 3.000 meters high.
Everything moves s-l-o-w-l-y.

Old folk on Shangri-la streets.
They don't have much teeth but they have the biggest smiles.

Their corner in Shangri-la.

Turning the big prayer wheel in Shangri-la.
This is the biggest one I've ever seen. Fortunately there is a kind of engine inside so you can make it faster but it never stops. People literally run and fall around it, it's a fun way to pray.

Every evening people gather in the main square of Shangri-la. Music comes from the speakers and hundreds of people do this amazing circular dance. It's not just a simple walk, there are many quite complex moves but people eaither know them or pick them up quite fast. It's great to watch people practice harmony together in this way.

Rock honey in Shangri-la market. It's sweet and medicinal.

The famous Tibetan butter tea. It's literally hot butter, milk and tea, more like soup.
Very suitable for the cold climate and almost a complete food.

The big Tibetan monastery near Shangri-la.
We were very surprised to see this little model of Potala palace in Lhasa. They are continously building and expanding it and there is a little town growing with it.

The big Tibetan monastery near Shangri-la.
We thought religious activities were restricted in China but apparently things are changing fast. That's why they are also uilding very fast. This huge temple-monastery complex looks pretty new with some age old parts.

I love the natural materials they still use today (except for the rain water drain pipes).
And as temples usually do, we felt tiny and surrounded by a greater energy.

Old gate in the modern city Kunming.
The last couple of decades China developed so fast sometimes old structures are almost sandwiched between new ones. But it's still a pleasant surprise when you're walking in busy streets full of shopping malls.

Few Random Impressions of Thailand

2009-01-06T11:40:00.000+02:00

Over the last two years I keep transiting Thailand without spending much time there, except the first time. This time I intended to stay a month but they changed the duration of visa on arrival from 30 days to 15 days and I quickly arranged my way to Taiwan. So before I leave I thought it’d be good to share some impressions.

Bangkok has these very nice, very green and free bicycles you can ride around the touristic area.
Although you have to show them your id when taking one, knowing that you can even
get a pilot certificate on the next street, they also take a photo of you, just in case.

Thailand is one of the most touristic countries perhaps in the whole world and it is one of the easiest to find your way around in. The internet is full of material on Thailand and whatever I may write here has the possibility of having been already written down somewhere else. Since I don’t want to pass by without blogging anything about it and not repeat anything else, I’ll just write down a few random things that caught my attention about Thailand, and most will still be repetitions :)

Colorful Ayutthaya tuktuks. Busses and taxis are also extremely colorful here.

Thailand is the only country in South East Asia that has never been colonized. It has been a neighbor to other colonized countries all around but it always kept the kingdom strong. The current king, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is eighty something, is the world’s longest reigning monarch alive, with 61 years on duty. But Thailand is not a monarchy, it’s a parliamentary democracy. Well, on the other hand Thailand has the greatest number of military coups in this side of the world. In other countries around, like Myanmar or Cambodia, when army takes power they seem to hold on to it. Whereas in Thailand army takes power, makes elections in a couple of years, the same guys they made the coup against gets elected, they kick them down and make another coup, sometimes silent. But whatever happens, Thai people really trust the king and almost worship him. Little shrines devoted to his highness can be found all around the country and being disrespectful to him is a big crime. (As a side note, I have first time experienced in Thailand such a strong single superhero, revered almost as God almighty, just like the worshipping of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey. But this time he’s alive.) Unfortunately King Bhumibol is very old and sick and there are no good heirs to the throne, with the son being a corrupt womanizer of a socialite and the daughter, although very charitable and much loved by the people, being single with no children (plus Thailand never had a queen without a king before).

One of the millions of shrines in honor of King Bhumibol.

What happens when you cover all your temples in pure gold?
Your neighbor gets jealous. And in this case, the Burmese invaded the capital Ayutthaya
and to take the gold –by melting it- burnt down all the temples and palaces.

The king’s color is yellow but every year people choose a new color for the shirts they wear with the royal seal. When I arrived everybody wore yellow because the king was 60 years on the throne and he was born on Tuesday, the yellow day. This year they all wear pink, which creates a very soft feeling when you look at a crowded market place where many Thai people proudly carry the royal seal on their pink shirts.

King Naalesuan was sent to exile when the Burmese invaded Siam. He became a hero
with his later victories and his fondness of cock fighting is remembered by
all the big and small rooster statues in shrines and monuments in his honor.

The current political situation in Thailand is very strange. Couple of years ago the army took power against Thaksin Shinawat, the Thai Berlusconi, who was charged by corruption. Apparently people were not that happy with him and his privatization and selling government companies and other property to his family. After less then 2 years they held an election and although he himself was in exile (in fear of being jailed in Thailand) his supporters won the elections. He briefly visited Thailand but was forced back to exile when the court cases started to show results against him. Then the opposition started to make mass demonstrations and asked his party to give up. They had a few incidents when demonstrators on both sides clashed and killed each other on the streets of Bangkok but recently they’ve been first occupying the party headquarters, when some people threw hand grenades on them and then they went on to occupy the two main airports of Bangkok just before Christmas time. Reports said 300.000 tourists were stranded for almost a week when thousands of supporters of Peaople’s Alliance for Democracy took over the airport by literally chasing away the few hundred airport security and policemen there. And in the end they got what they wanted. The irony is that People’s Alliance for Democracy didn’t accept the results of a democratic election and pushed army to force a man in uniform to be the prime minister once again. After all it is just a light scale social class war between these urban middle class and the rural population who still support the old prime minister. The unfortunate result of this is the crippling of tourism industry which is one of Thailand’s main sources of income.

The giant swing of Bangkok. Who else would have thought about holding competitions of high swinging
to the point that it becomes fatally dangerous? I tell you, it's no coincidence they love Red Bull.

Thai people are also different than other SE Asians, they are in a way more fiery. SE Asians in general are very kind and gentle people and in most cases this applies to Thai people also. They have these big smiles and they know how to make fun of life. But within the region they are the more aggressive and violent ones perhaps. As far as I know, Thailand is the only country in the region which has a living fighting sport tradition, muay Thai, or Thai boxing. They consume unbelievable amounts of really strong red bull and other stimulants all day long. In fact red bull started in Thailand where the local versions have too much caffeine and taurine to be legally exported.

Picking drinkers from the street on the new year day in Bangkok's Khaosan Road.
It is very strong and you can be 12 and still have it!

Most Thais are Buddhist (some Muslims and Chinese also) and in traditional families men still spend a couple of years time as a monk in a monastery (somehow like the military service back in the west but not compulsory of course). This is a tradition of the whole Indochina region and even the king does his duty as a monk, and for some years every morning takes his bowl and goes begging. On the other hand, also like other societies in the region, there is belief in spirits, supernatural powers and honoring of the ancestors (sometimes wrongly mentioned as ‘ancestor worship’). They make these tiny houses in front of their houses where they keep little statues of their ancestors and honor them with offerings of rice, fruits and Fanta every morning. Many Thai people are crazy for amulets. You can find amulet markets by the sidewalk where vendors sell little clay figures of monks in meditation, or sometimes Buddha. The clay from each amulet supposedly comes from a sacred location and they are sometimes produced in monasteries. After you put the jewelers magnifying glass in your eye and check out all the tiny detail of workmanship and you decide to buy one amulet, you find a suitable house for it, which is a little transparent plastic ad silver pendant that you can hang on your neck with a heavy chain. And some people carry really big ones.

A shrine for dead ancestors shared by a living neighbor on the basement.

Thailand used to be called Siam but changed their name because Siamese is just the main ethnicity here, whereas Thai means free, thus Thailand ‘Freeland’. I really appreciate this kind of name changes. Burma changed into Myanmar with the same reason as there are other ethnicities than the Burmese in Myanmar. I wish the same will be possible for Turkey and other countries where racial identities try to dominate a whole country.

Monasteries are home to many dogs, to the point that there are more dogs than monks like this one.
And the first time I was seriously bitten by a dog was when I was in a monastery in South Thailand,
sitting and meditating under a tree early in the morning. Bad karma dog!

Being a foreigner in Thailand makes you a ‘farang’ and you are recognized as a money source in most places. It is so strong that it feels like in return of most Thais seeing all foreigners as tourists, most foreigners treat the country as an oversized hotel. Although this makes the country very convenient to travel in, I cannot say it is a good feeling not to be seen as a real person.

__________________________________

I rushed this one to post it just before I leave for Taiwan.
I hope to write more about Thailand when I’m back here in March.

Ms.Loh’s Guesthouse, my home away from home

2008-12-21T14:10:00.000+02:00

Teluk Bahang bay and village. Ms.Loh’s is in the green behind the big school buildings.

Ms.Loh’s place is not for everyone but for the last couple of years it became my base in Southeast Asia. When I first arrived in Malaysia with Ayşegül, we learned that we had to wait for two months for her passport extension and started looking for a home. It was clear from the beginning that, one, we couldn’t spend so much time in a guesthouse room, and two, we couldn’t stay in a big town like Georgetown no matter how much we may like it for a short time. So we ended up looking for a house for rent on the far side of Penang Island, in a fisherman village named Teluk Bahang. And we were fortunate enough to have read the few lines on a friend’s guidebook, saying that in Teluk Bahang, there is this place with such an endearing garden that some people end up staying a long long time. It turned out to be true.

Our street with Ms. Loh’s place on the right.

The bungalow building in the garden.

The garden is on one of the backstreets of Teluk Bahang, away from the packed fisherman village, surrounded by a durian plantation. Because of these giant trees (it takes a big tree to carry such big fruits) there are no neighbors around. And in this garden, on one side of the road are some 4 buildings spread out among all kinds of fruit and flower trees, coconuts, durian, starfruit, rambutan, mango, hibiscus and others. All buildings are made of wood and even from a short distance they are lost among the vegetation. The main house is just a ground floor one with a long veranda in the front. It has 10 rooms for guests, one main room which also houses the protector deity of the house and a big kitchen. Then there is a side bungalow with 3 rooms, and two separate buildings which have some rooms on the upper floor while one of them has a nice big shaded area looking the garden under it. The place is big and there is much open space.

The protector of the house

Home Day (winter solstice) morning Ms.Loh appeared early in the morning to
light up this huge incense and give lots of pink offerings to the protector of the house.

As soon as I saw the kitchen I knew I’d choose to stay there and I’d love it. The kitchen has a great diversity of equipment that concentrated there over many years. Some bowls and utensils almost look antique but it also has two working refrigerators and a working stove which makes all the difference. Anyone who has lived in a community knows how important the kitchen is for the social interaction there. And it’s the same here. You meet everyone around the kitchen. And the tap water is drinkable, what a great rare luxury. And you can do your yoga or whatever practice in the shade, or play your guitar on one of the garden swings all around the place (Ms.Loh loves garden swifts so we have many).

Enjoying one of the many swings.

Ms.Loh is a Chinese lady in her 70’s. She’s been running this guesthouse for over 35 years. To have space and freedom for the guests she has moved from inside the village into this garden 25 years ago. At that time there were many travelers on this side of the world. Those were the good days of 20th century, before islamophobia stopped travelers from visiting so-called Muslim countries (as if countries have religions). So the tourism development stopped and small places shut down. But Ms.Loh survived thanks to all the people who saw this place as their home and kept coming. The place has this potential to make one dream of old time travelers places because it’s one of the few remaining relics of that age. You can actually find travel guides and magazines from 70s and 80s and it’s not hard to loose time.

The front veranda where most of life takes place.

Apart from the trees and flowers, the garden is a home to a lot of animals. First, we have the dogs, the numbers of which is usually between 5 and 10 but can get over that if two bitches give birth at the same time. Then we have the rats and mice, which are the nighttime visitors. They seem to enjoy having big football games up on the roof every night but luckily not for a very long time. The first month here it was one of my favorite evening pastimes to sit and watch them carefully but with short rapid moves approach the dogs’ food bowls, grab a chunk of leftover rice and make their run behind a rock or up a tree. They are responsible for the cleanup. Then we have some lizards, the millions of geckos which make these birdlike sounds and eat mosquitoes (which is why we like them I think) and the occasional monitor lizard. Monitors are huge lizards. First time I saw one I was really scared because I thought it was a crocodile. The big ones you can see around here are perhaps 1,5 – 2 meters but they can get bigger than that. Raja, one of Ms.Loh’s handymen, tries to convince us that it’s the monitors that take the puppies when they get lost and not the Muslims (Muslims here don’t like dogs and sometimes kill them). There is a family of these monitors living under the bridge just on the border of the garden but they are very shy and they’re also very scared of the dogs. Raja also says they caught some really big snakes in the garden just on the other side of the road but I only met one green tree snake in the bathroom once (which turned out to be a quite poisonous one). Philip swears he saw a black cobra in the toilet once. Macaque monkeys make their ways all the way from the nearby national park to the durian orchard on the other side of the road but luckily they don’t cross the road and enter our territory. Then there are birds. Mynas are also big fans of dog food and they also come to clean the dinner table. Then there are small colorful flowerpeckers which hover in the air and suck nectar from flowers with their long curved beaks. A little after noontime comes the golden orioles and sometimes you can see a fish eagle nesting on one of the highest trees. Wire-tailed drongos make their number 8 dances almost look like they want to catch that black butterfly following their tails. And there are butterflies, many big colorful butterflies.

There is an endless cosmic dance in the garden.

The flowerpecker having his breakfast.

Then there are the inhabitants of Ms.Loh’s place. Since this is not the kind of place that pops up as a guesthouse in the minds of people who carry guidebooks, the fast travelers usually leave a bit disappointed. Most places these days offer rooms with attached toilets or even air conditioners, and of course, newer beds. But some see the garden, get hooked up on cooking and end up staying longer than they intended. The main crew of the place however are people who make it their base when they travel and mostly for many many years. There are people who keep coming back here for tens of years and of course they are old. Because of this mostly it is a good place to hear some old travelers’ tales and get some good advice. But of course some old people complain a lot and are not flexible anymore, and some people cannot handle old travelers. So there is this social dance that takes place in this garden and without taking parts or feeling included in any group, I like doing this dance. I like communities anyway. Some would say this is not a community because we pay for things, have our rooms and things and we don’t have any prior agreement with each other. But I like to see it as a small experimental society. A unique one.

V for Verygraceful

I love Penang

2008-12-19T13:19:00.000+02:00

Penang is an island just a little off the Western coast of North Malaysia. It was virtually uninhabited until the British East India Company thought it could make a good port to compete with the Dutch port of Melaka (today also in Malaysia) during late 18th century. They needed to clear the jungle and create a town and to do it fast, the story goes, they loaded the cannons with silver coins and shot towards the jungle. The workers now had a good incentive to cut all the vegetation to get the silver and create land for development.

Koh Kongsi, an early Chinese trade union. Until early 20th century, Penang was under
unofficial control of this sort of Chinese trade unions and secret societies (mafia).

Muslim village in Batu Ferringhi, as oppose to the Chinese and Indian villages just next to it,
this one, like other Muslim villages, doesn’t have any dogs because they are considered non-halal.

Very fortunately they didn’t cut it all but created more land by filling the sea. And soon Penang became a bustling port full of merchants from everywhere but mainly Chinese. As far as I know, today Penang is still the only majority Chinese state in Malaysian Union. The other founding state which was also majority Chinese was Singapore and was forced to leave not wanting to give away the economic power of its Chinese population only two years later. Today Penang still has all sorts of people but none seem to be majority and there seems to be a general feeling of “sharing” this land.

Georgetown as seen from the terrace of Kek Lok Si Temple.

Main pagoda of Kek Lok Si Temple

Georgetown, the capital, has the old and the new city right next to each other. It has great colonial architecture and an alive little India, while next to them is one of Asia’s longest towers, Komtar, and once longest bridge on earth, the 13.5 km long Penang bridge connects the island to the mainland. There are great many temples for all religions, Chinese and Indian temples, mosques, many churches, Thai and Burmese Buddhist temples, and others. The Thai temple has a huge reclining Buddha which used to be the biggest in Southeast Asia. Today Penang is known as Malaysia’s Silicon Valley and the microchips for my next passport are being made here. But a traveler never notices this.

Penang Bridge, which connects Penang with the mainland.

Gurney Drive, where the old city turns into the Cyber City Penang.

When you leave town along the coast first you see big posh shopping malls and tall condos with swimming pools. Later on you come to a long beach called Batu Ferringhi, the Foreigners’ Rock. I don’t know where the rock was and where all the nudists who discovered this beach have gone but today this most promoted touristic beach of the island is full of resort hotels and Saudi tourists. Unfortunately, especially for those who decide to spend their holidays here after seeing the brochures of the place, the seas around Penang are not good for swimming. Because of the Melacca Straits, which runs between Mainland Malaysia and Sumatra, and is one of the busiest sea highways thanks to all the Chinese exports, the sea here is usually murky and quite full of jellyfish.

Local people of Penang having a sunset dip on
Teluk Bahang beach, with their clothes on as usual.

Air Hitam dam lake

But the center of the island still has some amazingly old (like millions of years) untouched jungle and in or around this jungle it’s possible to take a dip in a waterfall or a pond on a river. Many people who stay here enjoy the long treks to these hills or the peninsula at the Northwestern corner which is the Penang National Park. This park is home to the cheekiest little macaque monkeys I’ve ever seen anywhere. They treat your belongings like theirs, completely ignore you and even fight with you to take them. This applies especially to plastic bags and drinks. I’ve got lots of food stolen by monkeys in India but I had never in the past experienced a monkey coming to claim the drink in my hand and even playing tug-o-war with me for it.

Cheeky monkeys of Penang National Park.

One of the roads on the edge between a fast developing city and an ancient jungle.

Before I arrived here I didn’t know what a “food enthusiast” meant and now I think I turned into one in Penang. The ethnic mixture in Penang gives one great many choices of food and especially the street food is very special. There are so many books on hawker food of Penang, one can help acknowledge that the foods from these kitchens on wheel are sometimes better than the food from well established restaurants. If you were obsessed with food in the past and came over it after much effort, don’t come to Penang. It’s to a food lover, what Jamaica is to a pothead.

Evening food court on Gurney Drive where you get the best variety of food.

The main temple of Penang is Goddess of Mercy Temple
which is recognizable by the smoke rising from it.
Although it has big fans to clear the air inside, still the walls have all turned
black and in front you can always see these 2 meter incense burning.

There are also other things about Penang which you’ll have to discover yourself. These were just a few things why I love this place and see it as my base. Ah, and there is Ms. Loh’s place…

Smiling for peace, Golden Smiling Buddha in Kek Lok Si Temple

Nonsense Visas for Nonsense Borders

2008-12-18T06:58:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I can’t believe I’m still living in this age where there are borders, visas, governments, armies, police and all that goes with this mass illusion we wrongly call civilization. I have been feeling we’ll be done with these quite soon and I still believe that. But it seems it’s not time just yet.

Last year I went to China. It was really smooth. I went to the embassy in Bangkok, filled in a form, paid some money and returned 4 days later to receive my passport back with a sticker inside. No questions asked. It was funny to go by boat from Thailand to China on the Mae Kong river, which is the border between Myanmar and Laos. It’s like walking on the thin line people draw on the map and say “this is one country and this is another” as if when you are on that line you could tell one side from the other.

Then this year in April, just the day I was going to buy tickets for Macau on the way to China, there was the main news that China changed the visa regulations because of the Olympics. I had thought Olympics would make it even easier for foreigners to go to China but it was just the opposite. They asked to see hotel reservations and return tickets, neither of which any serious traveler in such a vast country has. It meant that for the Olympics they only wanted tourists and not travelers. But more than that, they had some other new rules such as “passport holders of Asian countries can take China visas in their home country only”. And this didn’t apply to Malaysia which I saw as my current home unless I had a working visa there. I had to go back to Turkey in order to go from Malaysia to China! After the Olympics, I heard, they changed the visa laws back to the traveler-friendly earlier one and everybody took a deep breath. It was almost unseen in this region and perhaps just an arrangement for only once.

Lately I’ve been planning to go to Taiwan. As soon as I arrived in Malaysia I started to call the consulate but first the numbers were wrong and then I could only talk to robotic ladies which would connect me to non-answering departments. I sent an e-mail which also received no answers. Finally I went to the office for China Airlines and got a more private number of the consulate. I rang and managed to actually talk to a real living being. She asked me my nationality, made me wait a few minutes, asked if I’m working here, made me wait a few more minutes and in the end returned and said, “we can give you a visa only if you have a working visa in Malaysia, otherwise you have to get it from Turkey.” If I had a working visa here, I’d be working and wouldn’t be going to Taiwan for a month, would I? It’s kind of similar to that you have to prove you don’t need money in order to get credit from the bank. It is nonsense.

And I sit and think. Taiwan’s official name is Republic of China, as oppose to People’s Republic of China where visa is an easier story, and I had of course imagined it to be a more free country than China but it turne out to be a Beurocrat’s Republic of China. And in the end it’s supposed to be the same country anyway. All these Malay people who inhabit Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and other countries in the region have their root sin Taiwan. But Taiwan still has some openness to learn from these countries.

Malaysia gives 3 months permit at the border to any foreigners for free. Indonesia charges some and gives a visa on entry for one month or in the embassy for two months. Philippines gives three weeks free at the border which can be extended up to two years without leaving the country. Do these countries feel more secure that they can invite people like that? Do Taiwan have more terror than them so it has to keep things in control? Does it make sense?

Perhaps I should look into my passport, the only one I can get because I was born within certain borders. It’s the passport of Turkey, a medium sized country in the Middle East. Aha, Middle East. Perhaps that’s why. Everybody knows about muslims terrorists and although they didn’t strike Taiwan yet, who knows they can sometime soon. Does it make sense at all?

So I changed my plans and decided to go to Thailand, which gives one month free visa at the border, and see some friends and do ameditation retreat toclear this energy. And I think “Thailand must be pretty deserted now because of this airport occupation of the most anti-democratic democracy movement. They’ll be happy to see another foreigner and I’ll be happy to see less.” But then, in the evening I learned that they changed the visa policy! Now they give only 15 days on the land borders. If you fly in you get 30 days but if you come overland it is only 15 days or you have to get a visa in the embassy. This is so absurd. Why now of all times when the country is suffering an unseen 50% tourist loss? It doesn’t make any sense.

So I decided not to stay so long in Thailand, let them loose me, and go to Myanmar for a month for which I need to get another visa. I heard a friend was refused a visa there last month and he assumes it is because his passport was from USA and USA supports the opposition in Myanmar. I wonder if they know about muslims. I hope they don’t.Muslims don’t care about human rights anyway so I guess they’d be getting along pretty well.

Long time I have stopped considering traveling in Europe because the treatment they give in the consulates in Turkey is simply inhuman. I refuse to be treated like that. So I’ve been happy in Asia where the countries are not saturated with illegal immigrants from Turkey or scared of muslims. But this last visa troubles I had with two Chinas is making me consider eliminating Chinas from my map also. They’ll be loosing, not me :)

__________________________________

Revision, December 29, 2008, Bangkok

Just to prove the absurdity of all theses "absolute" laws and regulations, today I received my 60 days visa for Taiwan. As soon as I arrived in Bangkok I called the consulate, got to a real person pretty fast, and the nice lady replied me with the words "you just come here, fill in the form, pay the fee and pick it up later." But, but, the embassy in KL even sent me an official enough e-mail containing a long list of requirements such as invitation, reservation, return plane ticket, proof of funds and the worst of all resident visa in Malaysia. I asked to the lady on the phone and she giggled "no, no, you don't need to buy your ticket or anything, we only need your bank statement."

So I went there the next day, had a brief and nice interview, mostly about the reasons behind my continuous traveling and the lack of Turkish visitors in Taiwan. Then today I received it. I'm really happy about it.

So what was wrong in Malaysia? Perhaps they had the Muslim Alarm on, or only business travelers fly from Malaysia to Taiwan, as oppose to genuine tourists who fly from Thailand. In any case this goes to prove one thing: even when the officer behind the desk is telling you it is just the law and there is nothing he can do about it, he may be wrong or just trying to avoid you. Laws are not absolute; they bend. And as conscious people we'll help them bend wherever they can.

What’s so special about Malaysia?

2008-12-12T11:42:00.000+02:00

Malaysia is in South East Asia. It’s population is a mixture of Muslim Malays, Canton and Hokkien Chinese and Tamil Indians, plus the almost extinct Orang Asli, the original people or aborigines. It’s nature is similar to the countries around but not that special and badly damaged. It has some nice coral islands along the East coast but on the West coast the sea is not clean due to all the pollution in the Malacca Straits. It has some of the few remaining “oldest” jungles on earth which survived many ice ages. Its history perhaps is a little more special due to its geographic importance during the days of spice trade. Although the first colonies were Portuguese and Dutch, it entered the last century under British rule and is still a part of the British Common Wealth. There are some nice historical sites to be seen in Malaka and Penang. It’s also a fairly developed country. Its petrol and palm oil production has created much wealth in the past decades (and destroyed most of its forests), which is distributed better than in other countries of the region. Malaysia has the world’s highest twin towers, one of world’s longest bridges, most successful budget airlines and even a space program. It is a so-called democracy with very little freedom of speech and a less than democratic election law. It has the world’s only rotational kingdom system, which permits the kings of 13 states be the king of the whole country for 5 years each but their responsibilities are symbolic… But for me, none of these are what makes Malaysia special.

Kuala Lumpur landscape with Menara KL and Petronas tower on the back.

Petronas are the world’s tallest twin towers.

Having different cultures living together creates the richest aspect of Malaysia. In many places there is no apparent majority of the population. Each society has its organizations, schools, press and even special laws. For example there are things Muslims cannot do, such as play lottery or join a meditation retreat. The Chinese own most of the big business and have their own schools in Mandarin, while the Indians represent the lower part of the economic scale and lately have been expressing a rare discontent because of this. Apart from these it is not uncommon to see Christian churches, Tibetan Buddhist temples and others.

Traditional Chinese tea in China Town, Kuala Lumpur

Perhaps it’s this cultural mix that makes a foreigner feel at home. A westerner who’s visiting Malaysia is many times treated the same way as a Malaysian person as long as s/he doesn’t act like a tourist and not in a touristic area. If you have traveled in Asia you can understand how precious this can be. In Thailand, which is the most popular tourist destination in the region, wherever you go, however you behave, even whichever language you speak, Thai people will see you as a “tourist”. In return, most westerners see Thailand as an oversized hotel (though it’s not easy to say which comes first). But here in Malaysia you are almost a local after a couple of months but as soon as you arrive you’re already a person, not a tourist. This changes the feeling you have just walking around or talking to people. It is very pleasant.

Tea plantations of Cameron Hills.

And you thought all that tea came from Darjeeling?

It’s not that Malaysian people just mind their business and leave you alone. If you need help or just want to chat, you can just go and start it and most people would love to talk to you. Malays like it if you can speak a few words of Bahasa Malaysia, the Chinese or the Indian don’t mind but pretty much everyone speaks English. So if you are a social person you easily make friends here and they will be friends.

Attempting to make friends with the kids of the tea plantations

One contributing factor to the pleasant feeling one has visiting this country is that Malaysia is relatively more prosperous than its neighbors. It’s not that Malaysia has more resources than the rest (like Brunei Darussalam) or historically more privileged (like Indonesia). I think most of it comes from being smart in managing what they have and also the lack of corruption. I believe as long as there are politicians there is corruption but around this side of the world there are guys such as Soeharto of Indonesia and Marcos of the Philippines who stole the wealth of millions of their citizens and even after decades their countries are still trying to take the money they stole back (in fact, there is still a continuing court case against the Marcos family to get the billions of dollars of the country back). As oppose to these pro-American dictators, Malaysia had Dr. Mahatir Mohammed which was like an Asian version of Hugo Chavez at his time. He didn’t take orders from USA or the World Bank, created one of the biggest growth rates in the area and successfully carried Malaysia to safely across the big Asian financial crisis which collapsed the economies of all countries North and South (which also slowed down Malaysia). Today the country neither has Mahatir nor a closed economy and is tensely waiting for the tsunami of the global economic meltdown. But although there is possibly corruption, it is not big or widespread enough to keep the country poor. And the distribution of wealth is pretty well.

Giant poster of the Malaysian space program

So this creates the scene of lots of cars and motorbikes and just a very few people dumpster diving. In Malaysia you don’t find the insisting souvenir sellers in Thailand who are desperate to sell you that one dollar thing so they can profit one cents. Neither do you find as many beggars or inhuman living conditions as in most other places around. Things are a bit more expensive than other countries around with the exception of food. Ah, food…

Adam and Eve Beach in Pulau Perhentian Kecil,
where I swam with many little friendly sharks

I’ve seen the ancient jungle in Taman Negara, dived around a couple of coral islands, seen the tea plantations and some historical places in Malaysia but in my eyes, none of these makes Malaysia as special and worthy of a visit than its food. First of all there is the Malay food, which is mainly lots of spicy curries (not nearly as spicy as in India), fish soup, fries, and some light sweets. Then there is the Chinese food which is like… well, Chinese food. It can be anything and all different ways of cooking them. Then there is the Indian food which brings the roti chanai (like bread and curry), tandoori, tosai, chai and some more spicy curries (still not nearly as spicy as in India). And there are mixtures of these like the Nyonya kitchen which is Malay-Chinese mixture. Western food is also pretty common but you’d be missing a lot if you stick to your old food habits.

Lok Lok stall in the night market. You pick an assortment of
things on sticks, boil them there and eat with yummy sauces.

It would take a long blog entry to explain the food of Malaysia. As far as I know, it’s the only country for which the Lonely Planet guide has planned “Food lovers’ country tours” in its local guidebook, which are tours you can make around the country in search of different tastes. As a person who spent most of his life hating to eat and seeing the whole thing as a chore, I had a second awakening about food here. First time I went to India I discovered the art of cooking. Now in Malaysia each time I go to an evening food court I feel like I’m in an amusement park. Food courts are like big parks where many people put up small food stalls at night and there are tables in the middle and sometimes there is even entertainment on stage. You can find stalls where you fill your ingredients into a bowl and ask them to make them into a soup or you can get things on a little stick (almost anything edible from tofu to crabs to quail eggs) and boil them yourself (lok-lok on photo). And as soon as you take a seat, someone comes to ask you what you drink, which can be a variety of fresh fruit juices to teas and coffees to healthy barley water or sometimes shakes. But when there is no food court, like here in Teluk Bahang, I go to the lady on the corner who cooks at home and sells them on a table every evening. I get rice and self serve myself a choice from her almost 20 yummy dishes. And it’s cheap.

Another pleasant thing about Malaysia is its peacefulness. First of all the country has no serious army or military confrontations. It doesn’t have any terror or people who are seeking independence for Malaysia. And in a smaller scale, you don’t come across people fighting or even quarreling. I’ve spent many months here and haven’t seen a single loud quarrel in public space. They don’t even raise their voice and they don’t drive as aggressively as people do in other Asian countries (although, of course, you cannot compare it with European driving). There is some crime, especially kidnapping of little girls (I think it has to do with the conservative Muslim society) or bombing of ATM machines to rob them. But there is not the prevalent feeling that there can be a criminal next to you who can steal your bag or any dark street can be dangerous. You get these feelings rightfully in neighboring countries but not so much here. Malaysia also doesn’t have any natural disasters, no volcanoes, typhoons or earthquakes (it was hit only lightly by the famous tsunami although it’s very near to where it originated). And best of all, Malaysia is the only country I know which gives 3-months free visa at the border to citizens of almost all nations (it doesn’t recognize Israel). There is even a “Malaysia My Second Home” program, which permits foreign pensioners to deposit some money in a Malaysian bank and stay as long as they wish (or live). And there are many foreigners living, working, studying here but you don’t see the expats of the type that is so common in countries such as Thailand, Cambodia or Philippines, because there is no sex tourism here.

Tree top canopy walk in the
ancient jungles of Taman Negara

Friends ask me why I spend so much time here in Malaysia, why I chose it as my base? I love the people, I love the food, I love the feeling, I love the peace, it is right in the middle of the region and conveniently has the cheapest airlines and other connections to everywhere, and I’ve found here a little place with a garden which I like to see as my home for the moment but that is a subject for another post…

A warning sign in Lake Garden’s Park, Kuala Lumpur

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*I feel I may write more later but meanwhile if you have any questions, any points about Malaysia or the region that you’d like to be clarified about, please leave a comment and I’d be more than happy to reply each of them.

*Most of my time in Malaysia I didn’t have a camera, so the photos here may not be a good selection to represent the country.

Traveling in the Philippines

2008-11-30T05:12:00.000+02:00

Philippines is not a very well traveled country but is well worth it. It has anything from coral islands to mountain jungles. There are many endemic animal species and different indigenous cultures. It’s also generally a safe and healthy place to travel. The only thing that keeps it out of travelers’ maps is its remoteness.

Logistically, Philippines is not a very easy place to travel. First, it is not near anywhere; it just sits by itself near the edge of the vast expanse of Pacific Ocean. It’s not on the way between any two locations unless you’re going from Australia to China. Then, it consists of 7.107 islands, spread out from north to south. There is a big national highway that runs all across but the roads are not always in good condition and neither are the busses. Trains are virtually nonexistent. To travel between distant islands one has two choices, the ferry and the airplane. Like Indonesia, Philippines also has many local airlines with cheap prices and some with old propeller planes. Ferries take more time and depending on the boat and the class you choose it can be either very comfortable or not comfortable at all. I took Superferry once for 13 hours on “tourist” class (second cheapest of the four classes) and it was a big AC hall with about a hundred double deck beds and was very comfortable. You can even travel very cheap by cargo boats if you have the time and the guts.

The good thing about traveling in the Philippines is that you can speak English to anyone and they will understand you. This makes traveling more hassle-free and also sometimes leads to forgetting that it’s still Asia where the bus arriving “just now” may in fact come an hour later.

The prices for transportation are similar to other SE Asian countries (such as a 6 hr bus ride for about $10) but the visa is the most expensive I’ve seen. You get a 3 weeks free on entry which is extendible up to two years without leaving the country. But each 2 months extension costs about $70-80 (different charges apply each time), which makes it around $250 for 6 months which is simply unheard of. On the other hand, Philippines being the only country in SE Asia which doesn’t have any land borders, it may be seen as a blessing that they extend it here, rather than forcing you to fly somewhere after two months, like they do in Indonesia. That would surely be less nice and more expensive. This also explains why and how there are more expats here then there.

Since it’s way out of the way to anywhere, there are not many foreign travelers in the Philippines. The foreigners are either expats who are settled here, students (mostly Korean) or missionaries. So in touristic places the accommodation and services are adjusted for Filipino tourists. And they travel in groups, sometimes big groups. So what you find are rooms good for 6 or good for 10 or 15. Sometimes it is hard to find a double room and single rooms are nonexistent although sometimes there are dormitories. So when it comes to renting a room it makes it so much cheaper to share it with a group, and more expensive if you’re just a couple. I have stayed in a room good for 8 just by myself but the owner was kind enough to let me pay for one. And it is close to impossible to guess from the name what kind of accommodation is waiting for you. A resort can be a hostel, an inn can be a guesthouse and cottages can be a hotel. Transient usually is a place for groups which also has kitchen, cable TV and other furnishing. Homestay or pension is usually the cheapest but has less privacy. And prices for a similar room in different places can change dramatically with no objective reason.

On planning a trip to the Philippines, one must be careful with the seasons. With around 30 typhoons hitting the country every year, typhoon season, June to November can sometimes be unpleasant. Roads can be closed due to flooding or landslides and the mountains can be too cold and wet. Ferries and planes also may become unreliable. But of course this is also the discount season while Christmas and Easter times are the high seasons when it may even be hard to find bus tickets or rooms.

But apart from all these practical aspects, Philippines is a very pleasant place to travel. People are just great, they are kind and when you are in need they will sort you out. If you ever get the chance, don’t say no to going there. You can hardly regret it.

Some more impressions on the Philippines

2008-11-22T12:07:00.000+02:00

The Philippines is a unique country on the eastern edge of South East Asia. First of all it has that “the” in its name as if there are other Philippines. Before I came around here, I thought it was somewhere in Latin America, thanks to all the Spanish names. It was the only big Spanish colony in Asia as well as the first colony there. This also caused Philippines to be the only majority Christian country in Asia. Famous “explorer” Magellan was the one who “discovered” Philippines and in fact, contrary to what’s generally told about him, he couldn’t go on with his famous tour around the world because he was killed here (his fleet completed the tour without him).

In other countries of Asia there are usually different cultural influences on the culture because people from different cultures live together or close to each other. Especially the Chinese communities which you can find all over SE Asia is a good example to that. But in the Philippines even the Chinese change their names and “mix in”. The society in general looks more homogenous then other places. There are Catholics and some Muslims. But when it comes to cultural influence there are all sorts of influences. First the Spanish, than the Japanese and the American, all of which colonized the country for some time, plus Chinese. As I wrote on the other post on names, these influences are very clear in names. But also food, games, daily things are all a mix.

Market in Manila

Popular sports in one country is a good sign of where the cultural influences come from. In the Philippines the most popular sport seems to be basketball. There are basketball fields everywhere and it’s always on TV. Soccer is almost nonexistent and it was pretty much a disappointment for me to realize that even the Euro Football championship was not in any news or papers (when Turkey was once again miraculously making it all the way to the semi-finals). Occasionally I see kids in school yards playing baseball or throwing this strange shaped American football to each other. But perhaps next to basketball the most national ‘sport’ is cock-fighting. This is a very South East Asian sport. Although in most countries today it’s deemed violent, thus banned, or only allowed on temple grounds as a part of religious ceremonies like in Indonesia (as if there is no gambling), here it is very public and includes lots of gambling. Although I haven’t seen live games, I always see it on TV and all around there are these posters advertising a breed of fight cocks or vitamins and feed for them (like the one in the photo). And it is a very violent ‘sport’. It’s not like they let two cocks fight like they’d do if they let them in a pen by themselves; they attach a 8 to 10 cm blade to one of their legs so when they attempt to grab the opponent they actually stab or cut them. The games usually last less then a minute and ends with one competent dead or fatally injured. I feel the justification behind this cruel treatment goes something like “we do cut and eat these chickens anyway, we’re even doing them a favor by offering them an honorable death through fighting which is their nature anyway.” So it’s not only the cat and dog owners who associate human feelings with animals!

Fighting cock advertisement, includes a complete list of
achievements and a brand vitamin for best strength (click).

When you ask someone they say they are all Christians giving you the impression of a strong unity but the fact is a bit different. Before the Spanish arrived people of the islands carried beliefs mainly of animism and shamanism with a strong Muslim tradition in the south as well as some Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. When the Spanish came they quickly started to convert people to Catholicism but they were not that successful in remote places, such as the Mountain Region where the people were finally converted about a 100 years ago. Catholics also made the laws of the country some of which remain today. For example there is no official divorce in the Philippines and the age of sexual consent is only 12 (which leads to child prostitution but there are people who are trying to bring it up to 16). But Catholics also welcomed the integration of local beliefs (perhaps it was how they could succeed in the first place). I saw a half-documentary film which showed shamans performing a ritual for good rice harvest while villagers join singing Christian hymns. But with the Americans arrives the fundamentalists. These are the backwards protestant churches which are mostly very inflexible in their beliefs. They supposedly only follow the Bible. If it was true than there’d be a single Bible-only church but the fact is that all towns are littered with small ‘fundy’ churches and there are all these American missionaries everywhere. They also approach me sometimes, and I don’t mind pushing their buttons. The sad thing about their existence is that, according to what I’ve heard, in places they get established they try to eliminate all the traditional elements, saying it’s all superstitious and non-Christian. There are all the apocalyptic churches from Mormons to Scientologists and their existence is as irritating as any other religious fundamentalists. The good thing about missionaries is that they do some social work, such as free medical care and education. On the other hand there are not many expressions of religion in public places and occasions. There is no special costume or a way of salutation. It’s comforting that religion is less of an item for showing off here than in some other places around. And I like to see the little stone cave-like places that people create in the nature as houses for Mary and also the Baby Jesus, which is so clearly one and the same as baby Krishna, Gopal.

El Nido St.Fancis Church

There are very many Filipino people; with around 90 millions it is the 12th most populated country in the world. It is very sad to see so many “kid factories” in suburbs of big cities while the country is having difficulty feeding itself. There is close to no birth control, thanks to the Catholic religion. Abortion is illegal and there is a lack of sexual education. There is this very touching statistic which compares Philippines with Thailand “In 1975 both countries had similar population sizes of 41 to 42 million. Then Bangkok launched a major family planning effort. Now Thailand has a population of around 64 million and is the world's top exporter of rice. Meanwhile, the Philippines with a population of 90 million is the world's top importer of the grain.” This also owes to the ‘democracy’ of Philippines being far more corrupt than the ‘kingdom’ of Thailand. In any case, Philippines is a crowded country with swollen cities and an uncontrolled birth rate.

Baguio City with its cathedral on the hill, as seen from the SM Mall

Because it consists of thousands of islands (7.107), people speak many different languages and literally come from different tribes. The idea of one nation is still in the creation and even for the communists here nationalism is not a bad thing. It makes it clearer to see that nationalism has its place in the making of a country and only after sometime it becomes an obstacle to development. Here most people speak more than one language. They speak their very local language, and then the language of the region they are from, in addition to the almost national languages of Tagalog and English. This is very good in the sense that a person learning to think in a different language is a different, a more sophisticated person. But it has its downside that some people are not that good in their mother languages, which leaves them with a secondary language to express everything, which will perhaps never be as good as a mother language. As a foreigner here, it is a great boon to be able to talk to anyone in English though.

Igorot boys playing the gongs and dancing

Filipina girls posing with guard soldiers

Filipino people love to sing and dance. And they are surprisingly good at it. But apparently, the traditional music and dances are rather simple, similar to other SE Asian traditions. For example, in the area where I spent most of my time here, mountains of Luzon, the traditional music is performed with gongs and bamboo percussions with the occasional addition of the mouth harp. The shamanic and animist roots they have are still there. Today the most common social music is the music in karaoke bars. For those of you who don’t know the word, karaoke (“empty box”) is a Japanese invention where people sing to the background music of famous songs with the help of the lyrics on the screen. There are few different types of karaoke places, the ones where you can rent a private room with your friends or those which offer a karaoke automat in the middle of a bar. The song lists usually consist of popular American oldies and Filipino songs but there are the occasional Nirvana or Christmas carols for a change. People are so practiced with these things that most people sound well when they sing and sometimes it is hard to tell if the music is coming from a nearby karaoke or is the original version (but of course there are also those which just shouldn’t sing to a microphone). And people also seem to watch MTV and learn how to dance well. There are many dance bars in most places and different types of them. One type of bar which is on the decline is the American country music bars. For me it was a very interesting experience to see Filipino people dressed like cowboys, playing really good cowboy music and dancing the cowboy dances. But these are mostly for the old generation who knew when the Canos (Americanos) were still here. New generation prefer really loud music. As a related note, I have to add that Filipino people, especially women, pose very well. As soon as they see a camera they put on this pose one can see in a fashion magazine or TV. Perhaps they are the most photogenic people. They just seem to practice a lot.

A Filipina girl, Maya, testing her singing in karaoke.

Local pork sausages longanisa is a mix of
fat, sugar, nerves, cartilage and also some meat.

After seeing all the talent in music and dance, one wishes they also cooked well but unfortunately they don’t. Philippines is for me the worst place for food in SE Asia. There is neither the variety nor the sensitivity put on food in other places. They eat a lot of meat and only a little vegetables. Being a tropic country it’s a shame that they don’t even have good fresh fruit juice (in fact, I even see pineapple juice imported from Turkey). Of course there are occasional delicacies but that’s a rarity rather than the general rule. Fast food is very big. There are all sorts of fast food outlets everywhere and the most common street foods are hot dogs and hamburgers accompanied with barbecued meat on a little stick. The interesting foods I’ve found were a bit too strange. Balut, which is supposedly an energy food, is a fertilized chicken egg on its day 12 to 18, with a semi-grown up chick inside. It is strange to gulp a whole embryo like that but it is tasty and full of protein. They also have the one day old chick barbecue or deep fry but you can find that in other countries of SE Asia too.

Balut, a fertilized and semi developed chicken egg,
well cooked and yummy.

Gloria cares. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the second woman president of the Philippines. Everywhere you see posters saying “Gloria cares” under her cute motherly face. Many believe that she’s also corrupt “but who isn’t”. Just like Corazon “Cory” Aquino, who came with the People’s Power revolution against the dictator Marcos and was the wife of an assassinated popular politician, Gloria is the daughter of a former president. It’s not easy to find woman politicians who are not related to a more successful man anyway. Her photo of surfing has the same feeling of Bill Clinton playing the sax. But after all she’s a politician, she represents a government, etc. all of which we’ll have to dispose of soon.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo surfing

In the Philippines everybody seems to want to go abroad. It already has the biggest diaspora in the world, with over 10 million Filipinos living abroad. On one side all the money these people send to their families back home contributes greatly to the economy (family ties are very important here). On the other hand, there is an immense brain drain. For example, Philippines is the biggest exporter of nurses. So much that you see nursing schools everywhere. But I heard that it’s such a popular way to make an escape from this country that even doctors take nursing training and go abroad, leaving the country’s hospitals lacking in personnel.

And because I’m being and I’ll be asked, I have to add, yes, Filipina girls are beautiful. Just like the rest of Southeast Asia, people here are rather small, tanned, mostly with slightly ‘Chinese’ eyes and are gentle in spirit. As is the case everywhere, people of the mountains are chubbier then the lowlanders. The most significant difference in physical appearance of Filipinos to the rest of Southeast Asians is that there are more plump and fat people then in other places, possibly due to the consumption of so much meat and cooking everything in lard.

After all, Philippines is a country worth visiting. People are truly kind and helpful but they don’t overdo it. The nature is pretty diverse and has many surprises. And the culture is quite unique. You wouldn’t regret being there.

[For information on how to do it, read the next post titled Traveling in the Philippines.]

El Nido, North Palawan

2008-10-30T09:20:00.000+02:00

El Nido is at the northern tip of the very long island of Palawan which almost touches Borneo in the south. It is a little fisherman village sheltered in a crescent shaped beach, which leaves no doubt why Palawan was called "The Land of Safe Harbors" by early Chinese traders. What made El Nido one of the major tourist destinations in the Philippines is not the town or the beach but the nearby islands. The Bacuit Bay is dotted with many islands most of which are just inaccessible straight up walls of limestone (resembling the views of Krabi in Thailand and the famous bay in Vietnam the name of which I can’t remember). There are some postcard beaches and great coral reefs as well as some really posh resort hotels on some islands. The place is also one of the few places where the last dugongs live (reputed to be the origin of mermaids).

On our first night out eating and drinking with some friends on the beach I was startled when I heard a loud siren go off for a meaningfully long time but nobody around me seemed to take notice and went on with their lives as usual. I had just received a strange e-mail and was wondering if it could be the TR3 something something the triangular UFOs coming from DUMBs (Deep Underwater Military Bases) to declare worldwide martial law when somebody told me that it’s bedtime for kids. It was a strange relief. “What are you talking about? They have sirens around the town going off in the evening to tell kids to go to bed?” “This was the first one at 9.30 and there’ll be another one half an hour later. After that it’s curfew for all kids in town.” Wow. What an organized town, I thought, they must have heard of child abuse and prostitution in some other places in Philippines and wanted to keep things in shape, which is not that bad. As I was slipping into asking why they don’t think of this solution in other places I realized I wouldn’t want to live in a society where there are sirens, curfews and all-inclusive rules. But still on this little beach town it felt fine. Every evening after that I realized kids and youngsters playing on the beach right until the sirens and then leaving it for the adults. Surprisingly the only one time I went to the beach after midnight and in full moon light, it was completely deserted save a few dogs and all the bars were also closed.

El Nido is not a place for big night life. Especially in a country like Philippines where night life is night life in some places, El Nido appears to be serving other needs. What one does here is wake up around 7 in the morning, have breakfast on the beach and join one of the tours (conveniently separated as tours A, B, C and sometiimes a suspicious D), marvel at the natural wonders of limestone islands and green waters, snorkel over the remaining corals and not believe your eyes in some of the lagoons, if lucky see some turtles or dolphins, have fish barbecue on one Robinson beach, come back to town’s beach just before sunset and feel nicely tired already. Many people have just enough time to complete this 3 or 4 tours.
The ones who stay longer like we did take long sunset walks in either direction from town or rent kayaks to test their paddling skills and "discover" some deserted island.

Once again we rented a local paddle banca and went to the nearest Not-Not beach on the Cadlao Island right opposite the town. We had a whole day privacy save 3 little cats. It was great to have time to imagine being stranded on a remote island beach. We had many coconut trees and the corals right in front of us were abundant in fish, squid and crabs. We had a little creek and a lake (we had heard before) further inland. We had great shade of big trees where colorful birds would come to eat the fruits of. Yes, we could actually live there sometime.

But of course we human beings are not that well with rain. Here in the tropics it doesn’t necessarily get cold when it rains but it may get very wet. And this whole trip we had an amazingly wrong timing with our tours. Our first boat tour was very rainy in the beginning and although it stopped after, it didn’t clear up completely and plus all the discharge from the mangroves because of the rain, made the visibility too little to enjoy snorkeling. The second tour started very sunny and gave us enough sun to admire the two famous lagoons and the caves. But in the afternoon it rained so strong that we got more wet in the boat than in the sea and we cut it short. On our third and the last tour it was sunny and as I started to develop fever and fell completely sick midday, the clouds were so thick it made us think it could be hard to go back with this little boat when that storm hit us. Fortunately it didn’t come our way and we went back safely, my fever reaching a hallucinogenic 40 degrees. That happens when you end up sweating a lot and fall asleep in front of the fan! (Thank God we don't take A/C rooms)

Few things I found interesting about El Nido:

- I saw some amazing fish while snorkeling and reconsidered why I dive when snorkeling is so rewarding. Apart from the usual beauties the surgeons, butterflies, angels, parrots etc. we spotted a group of 10 squids and swam with them for a while. They are very trippy when they stare at you with their huge eyes and start changing colors quickly trying to hypnotize you. One of them even made an ink cloud when I attempted to chase it. And once again we saw many boxfishes and puffers none of which puffed…

- Although the town is small (perhaps a few thousand households) there are churches everywhere. There is the main Catholic church which is the biggest and the oldest of course (1901) but there are also lots of fundamentalist churches all around. This, according to a friend, is more a recent influence from missionaries of USA. There are Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jesus of Latter Day Saints, Iglesia Ni Cristo, Jesus I Am Church, Full Gospel Church, Baptist Church, etc. and when you ask everyone is Christian, as if they all believe in the same thing. I keep thinking whether it is so hard to see that this is a part of the divide and conquer program. The number of American fundies around is sometimes very disturbing. Once in Baguio, I even once saw a group of people wearing Scientology T-shirts.

- El Nido supposed to be a fishermen’s village but we couldn’t locate them until we decided to walk to the very end of the beach. There is the port on one side of the beach and to the left of it is the town and all the touristic places. But there is the “other side” of the pier, which is normally completely out of sight of the tourists, and which occupy maybe a tenth of the whole beach. That is the fishing village. There are many streets of mostly very simply constructed houses on top of each other. The streets are full of kids, just too many kids. The beach is of course full of fishing boats and fishing nets. And a good thing, there is a basketball field also. But the contrast of this side of town to the other side stroke me. One side is planned with wide streets, houses with gardens and mostly busy with tourism while the other side reflects far more poverty, illiteracy and all that comes with it. Of course these people are far more fortunate than people living in the suburbs of big cities like Manila and they are even more fortunate that they live where the sea gives them food. I even find their natural setting pretty amazing although I don’t know if they think about it.

- Corals are fragile. And wherever I’ve seen corals I’ve seen them destroyed out of greed and ignorance. In all countries I had a chance to swim over corals I saw fields and fields of corals bombed, crushed, poisoned. The view is mostly like a big big city after it has been carpet bombed. It’s such a sad thing to see a few fish over this landscape looking for a bit of life so they can feed themselves.

And this is because there were some greedy fisherman who were also ignorant. Nobody told them that corals won’t grow back quickly (one centimeter of hard coral grows in 3 to 10 years). But nevertheless they were sold the tools to destroy them. Perhaps they were not the traditional fishermen, but those who came to these places or chose this practice later. What they did was get some dynamite, go over the coral, drop it and collect the dead fish on the surface. Only for once. Next time next coral, until they ran out of corals and fish. Or they would do the same with cyanide. Drop it, collect the fish. This time the corals wouldn’t break but they’d die all the same, along with some of the people who ate that fish over the years. Or they get some heavy drag nets and vacuum clean whatever is on the bottom. The result is always the same: heavily damaged or completely dead coral fields extending to the underwater horizon with few islands of life remaining. That’s where they take tourists to but you inevitably see the destruction. Plus because neither the boatmen nor the tourists are told anything about the fragility of corals, each tour causes more destruction. It’s a sad sad situation.

And as a last note, I have to say before we went to Palawan we asked people "shall we go to El Nido or Coron?". We also serahed on the internet. We were mostly told that they are very much the same thing but Coron is less developed. That's why we went there first (we were not sure we would go to El Nido). Coron was nice for diving and snorkeling also but in general it is not nearly as breath taking as El Nido. We also thought El Nido would be too developed and more expensive. Wrong. It was even cheaper than Coron and the big resort development were out of sight. I believe if you are very rich and can stay in one of those private island resorts, than it wouldn't make a big difference to stay in Coron or El Nido, but if you are a budget traveler than definitely El Nido. Coron doesn't have a town beach and even the nearest swimable beacch is an expensive boat ride away. El Nido doesn't have the nice wreck dives or the island lakes of Coron, and that's why one can choose to go there. But if you are choosing one go to El Nido and not Coron.

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Coron, North Palawan

2008-10-17T08:34:00.000+03:00

Due to weather conditions, the difficulty in leaving very beautiful places and our laziness we went to Coron for a few weeks and ended up staying over a month (including El Nido). We expected different things from where we went as well as from ourselves and once again remembered that traveling usually happens to you (if you let it) and it is not that easy to be prepared. Another thing we realized about the place was that it was very easy to be confused by the names. Coron Island for example was opposite to Coron Town which was on Busuanga Island, which had a Mount Culion opposite to a little island where Culion village was, while Culion Island was a big island further down South. We didn’t ask why. Culion Island by the way, used to be the biggest leper colony in South East Asia, which means when leprosy was an incurable and scary disease they would just send lepers to this island to live with other lepers and sort themselves out. There are some museums on the island telling this story but we didn’t go to that island, with a similar reason to why we hadn’t visited the killing fields in Cambodia. I don’t really enjoy visiting traces of human suffering as tourist objects (while I acknowledge that learning about past suffering we inflicted on each other can help us see it and stop it when it’s happening again in the future).

The day after we arrived, there was a nearby typhoon and dark skies for 3 days.

We expected (not hoped) Coron to be a little undeveloped island with great coral reefs around and good wreck diving. Instead we spend our first days in our guesthouse (which are all called “resorts” here) waiting for the rain to stop while doing more internet than we ever did thanks to the free wi-fi and free coffee in the restaurant. The first relatively sunny day we rented a kayak to discover the nearby islands. After the tranquility of some nice mangroves our first discovery was a fisherman village on stilts. I find it not very easy to understand why here most local people live right over the water when there seems to be enough land just behind the houses. It seems, some of them being sea gypsies, they trust sea more than they trust earth. They have their kitchens, washrooms, and even pig pens right over the water on stilts. It seemed to me that the first building on land was the government school (which was perhaps centrally designed without regard to environment anyway.)

Coron Island

Then we paddled to a tiny island with little beaches and nice corals to snorkel and then to the big and most famous Coron Island which is a huge chunk of sharp limestone shooting straight up from the ocean. This is supposed to be the biggest limestone formation “on earth”. The white sand beaches were like really white and green and the rocks really razor sharp. They are in fact so sharp that even if you wear shoes you wouldn’t find a good place to hold without cutting your hands unless you have been a manual farm worker or a fisherman all your life. Still it felt pretty insane to learn that the aboriginal Tagbanwa people of this island climb to the highest edges of these rocks to harvest swift nests! The bird nest soup is an expensive delicacy found all over South East Asia and is made from the nest of accurately named bird edible-nest swift, which is some fine mud mixed with the bird’s saliva. One kilogram of these nests fetches over 200 dollars and this is enough reason for some locals to risk their lives for their harvest. It also seems to have made them a little more conscious of the environment. The most touristic attractions on Coron Island, Barracuda and Kayangan Lakes close at 4 PM because that’s when the birds come down to drink water and in some parts there are restrictions on using pesticides and even tourists are warned to go easy on the mosquito repellant.

Little lagoon on the entrance to Barracuda Lake on Coron Island

After the Banul Beach, we started to follow the ragged edge of the Coron Island, discovering many hidden lagoons in the process. We had seen the name Secret Lagoon on the list of places to visit on a boat tour but some of the lagoons we visited were obviously not accessible by anything bigger than, well, a kayak like ours. The clarity of the water helped us watch all the sea life without having to get wet and we even saw a small black-tip shark among a multitude of other fish. In one place the lagoon bent to one side and the rocks on two sides got higher until there appeared a straight up wall in front of us. As we got closer to it we saw a tiny opening in the rocks, just big enough to glide through and access the deep blue lagoon fed by many fresh water streams around it. When we snorkeled there we realized the thermoclines and the psychedelic visuals of mixing fresh and salty water. At the end of our kayaking we had a little walk up and down in the jungle to visit the Kayangan Lake just before the swifts came to drink and were lucky enough to be there alone to feel the serenity of this outworldly environment, walls of limestone rocks going straight into a deep blue lake. When we were back to our kayak we realized we were too tired to do the last one hour of paddling back to town and got a relieving lift by the last tourist boat there. When we arrived back at our “resort” soon after dark, there were few people already waiting for us at the pier, fearing that something happened to us. The girl we rented the kayak from said she was going to call the coast guard if we didn’t appear soon because “nobody ever did that”! There are still waters of almost an inner sea over great corals surrounded by the best white beaches and lagoons to discover and nobody ever took a whole day of kayak and went all the way to Coron Island which is just 2 miles away? Hmmmm… What to say!

This is not the kayak in the story (we didn't carry the camera that time)

This is the local kayak, small bangka, paddling near Concepcion

Wreck Diving in Coron

2008-09-30T09:28:00.000+03:00

I’m not an experienced diver. I just got my PADI open water diver license last November in Sumatra. I had only 10 dives before I arrived here in Coron, Palawan which is supposed to be the “World capital of wreck diving” because in 1944 the US navy sank 24 Japanese warships around here. At least half of these ships still lie in shallow waters, good to dive. During the past 64 years much marine life have made their homes around these dead warships. Also the area consists of many coral islands, so diving would still be great without the wrecks.

I choose to dive with local dive shops (Coron Divers in this case), not necessarily because they are usually cheaper but also to make sure more of the money I spend here stays in the local economy. The feeling is also very nice; we quickly make friends with them. The funny (!) thing about diving with local dive masters is that usually they do many things most western dive masters would warn you not to do. My dive guide in Bali, Ketut had tried really hard to make a puffer fish puff, poking it with his stick but later I learned that this fish can puff a couple of times in a whole lifetime and then it dies. So this is not a great thing to do; better not to touch things. Yesterday’s feat was the table-size giant clams which were quite reluctant to close up like the small ones but our guides managed to do it anyway.

Another thing many western dive masters would think twice before doing was guiding us into those wrecks. Although we were 3 inexperienced divers (one first-timer) and two dive masters, some of the entries and exits were pretty scary. Our pipes and dangly parts got stuck several times but nothing serious happened because they were really carefully watching everybody’s moves and we were following each other closely. But next time I attempt a wreck dive I’ll ask for gloves; 60 year old rusty metal cuts are pretty irritating.

I can’t help it; when I’m inside a dead ship I think about the people who died there and think this place can also be my grave if I make just a couple of wrong moves. Although driving feels far more risky then diving, the chances of being rescued is greater and the time during which one can be saved is longer, whereas in diving it is a matter of seconds or minutes. In fact just the day before we took a sightseeing/snorkeling boat tour with 6 other people we just met. While we were snorkeling in our first stop, one of them, a 64 year old professor drowned. We tried to rescue her. We were fortunate to have a first aid instructor with us who knew CPR and emergency breathing and all that stuff but we were too late to save her. She just died snorkeling with a life vest on. Well it was surely her time but also it was just a few crucial minutes between saving her and not. Makes one reflect on how thin this string we are attached to life is.

Inside the wrecks is magic. Small doors opening in to big dark spaces where one looses the sense of direction (including up and down), little holes which let in rays of deep blue sunlight and families of fish around their chosen little cavities. I try in vain to find a bone or any sign of past human life but all I found was rusty metal and broken glass. We move from one hull to the other through narrow corridors of a capsized shipwreck and suddenly I realized a beautiful but deadly poisonous lionfish only one meter right in front of my face. We both have no space to back off; so I remember the no-panic principle and my encounters with snakes and keep floating with tiny beats of my fins. One of the guys in front of me step on the dusty bottom creating a big dust cloud in which we are lost once more. I hold on to a rusty door pane and wait a little to see what’s in front of me. We turn around and enter a big space with two gigantic metal circles which are perhaps engines or tanks. A big triggerfish is nesting in the bottom. I see once more how life springs from death of another thing and death is just the result of life.

At the end of each of my spacewalks in the ocean universe I get anxious to breath freely, be in my own habitat. I love the alien feeling and the no-gravity effect under water but once again the other place becomes a mirror and I learn the value of our nice and perfectly habitable sphere of existence. I give thanks, move on.

____________
I didn't take these photos ;)

Tomorrow will be blue skies

2008-09-23T08:28:00.000+03:00

I’m in Coron. It’s a really beautiful coral island paradise. The only thing is that it didn’t stop raining since we arrived 4 days ago. So I came here hoping to stay away from any civilization for a while and ended up more online than ever. I also wanted to write about Coron later but I’m almost bored so I start now.

They say there are no typhoons in this side of the Philippines but this is obviously a bit too much for just the monsoon rain. There is the huge Typhoon Nina passing by the Philippines and this seems to be a “tail” from it and this hour it looks like we are just about to leave the cloud cover soon. The sky is still completely covered but the clouds are less dark today and the rain less frequent. Tomorrow will be my day of kayaking and snorkeling, yes, tomorrow will be blue skies…

Fruits of Manila

2008-09-23T08:23:00.000+03:00

We were headed for the historic center of Manila when we decided to take a horse-cart ride through it. While Rambo the horse pulled us not through but around the fort, our driver Rolando Miguel Gonzales played guide and informed us about everything we saw.

“This is the old wall.” (it is, obviously)

“This is the statue of Magellan who died here in the Philippines.” (ah, nice)

"This is China Town." (Lots of banks)

“This is a child factory” (oh my God, this street is sooo full of kids, some just naked, seemingly living in these cardboard houses.)

“This is a papaya tree. Do you have papaya trees in Turkey?”

“No.”

“And this is coconut. Do you have coconut trees in Turkey?”

“No, we don’t.”

“This is a banana tree.”

“Yes, yes, we have banana trees in Turkey, in fact we have them everywhere and Turkish bananas are so much sweeter than the bananas here.”

I learned to enjoy tropical fruits but it took some time and I still have some reservations. And although I saw all sorts of fruits growing wild in tropic countries it was still surprising to see these around the crowded streets of downtown Manila. But each city has it’s surprises. And I know some blueberries in downtown Istanbul.

Icould Travels So Can You

2008-09-01T11:44:00.000+03:00

Sometimes it makes me sad to see people give up on traveling because they think they cannot. Although they would very much like to travel, they think traveling is a kind of skill only some people have. They are mostly wrong, traveling can be learned.

I have some friends back in Turkey who would make excellent travelers if only for once they’d make the leap and start to travel. But instead they spend years asking the same questions and “getting ready”. So I decided to help you get ready. There is not so much to be prepared for anyway, it’s all in the mind.

The first obvious obstacle in front of starting to travel is of course finances. Although you do need money to travel, you shouldn’t take the amount you spent during your 1 week holiday in a resort hotel by that famous beach and multiply it with the weeks you want to travel for. First of all, when you travel, especially for a longer time, you gain by not paying some bills that you have to when you are settled, such as water, electricity and telephone bills. If you normally live in a big city like Istanbul, it is also very likely that the total cost of your monthly accommodation will be less than your monthly rent. The best way to figure out how much money you will need for traveling in a certain place, just like other things, is to ask people who have done it before.

Although it is normally against the law to make money with a tourist visa, there are many people who do that and make their money along the way. You may have a certain talent or something you produce but of course the most important thing is what is in demand where you want to go. If you make music or perform, you can make street performances in most places in Europe. If you are a good looking young girl you can make pretty good money as a hostess in Japan and finance your further traveling (it is not uncommon among travelers). If English is your native language you can teach in places like Philippines or Brunei where teachers are in demand. Perhaps one of the most common ways to make traveling money after busking is selling handicrafts in local tourist markets. If you are creative enough you can make pretty good money in the flea markets of Goa.

And do not forget that once you start to travel you will learn to reach the cheaper alternatives. You will find out the local restaurants and take some local transportation, which will all be cheaper than the touristic ones. You won’t have to lower your standards to the point of discomfort but you will learn about those things that you always had but didn’t really need.

The second big mind obstacle people have between them and traveling is fear. What if I cannot find a place to stay? What if I get my money stolen? What if nobody speaks English? There are so many what if’s that it is simply impossible to answer all of them. It is always good to remember that, even when we live in the supposed security of our hometowns, there are still many such questions one can ask. What if you are robbed? What if there is a traffic accident? It is better to filter the questions and ask only those which will help you be better prepared.

How do you know how to move around, where to stay, what to do when you travel? Well, if you don’t like the travel guides like many travelers, the internet is full of great sites who’ll give you all sorts of information. But the best way to get relevant information is to ask people. Once you are on the way, you will meet other travelers and it will become a natural part of your interactions to inform and get informed about the road. The best options are rarely listed in internet sites, far less in travel guides. You learn these things as you go along.

Many people feel insecure in new places. Today’s mainstream culture is built on fear and all the movies, all the news and many modern stories tell about unfortunate events as if they are the norm. You are constantly told that you are only secure when you are behind a strong and locked door, at home. One reason I want to help people to start traveling is to make them see for themselves that this is not true. Perhaps you also don’t believe that the world is so full of crime but knowing feels really good and can change your feelings about life in general and traveling helps it.

To play it secure you can use travelers cheques or a credit card. Money transfer services are pretty common around the world these days, in case you’ll need to get some money sent. Never carry all your money in cash. Also divide it to few portions and put them in different places so if you loose one it is not all you have. Carrying a little bag hidden inside your clothes is also very common. And after you have done these please stop being paranoid about your money being stolen.

There are places which are more dangerous than others. Usually there is more crime in cities then in rural areas and there is less crime in countries where the distribution of wealth is more even. Still, I think, one of the most important things is your attitude. If you look very flashy, as if you are carrying a fortune in your valet, of course, you may attract some hungry people. Same apply for being paranoid. So leave your Blueberry, laptop and other gadgets home; you won’t need them anyway. Avoid looking like a rich tourist (even when you are one) and also show it with your attitude. Travel light, and travel with a light which will create a shield around you.

Although most people would prefer to have a good travel companion, traveling alone has its own benefits and is not that bad at all. You will have much more time to think or meditate and random people will approach you more often. You’ll make many friends and you may even receive more invitations. The best thing about it is that when you travel alone you feel free, independent in doing whatever you want or going whichever direction you desire. And when you come across fellow travelers it is a greater joy.

There are many marginal questions which in most cases depend on what you are planning to do. If you are going to do hiking you may need shoes and if you are going to China learn some Chinese. When you are missing something it may become a good learning experience depending on your attitude. I had great time with people I had no verbal communication with and I can laugh about getting wet and being saved by some angles along the way. This is about trust in the universe.

Attitude matters a lot. If you are paranoid, you may actually attract some of the things you fear. If you are suspicious of people, it is unlikely that you’ll inspire trust in people anyway. If you are negative in your attitude and accusing, you are actually asking that your experience teaches you a good lesson about these. After all my traveling years I can easily say that what they meant by “who travels more knows more” is this. When you are in a completely new place where you don’t know and where nobody knows you, you are completely face to face with yourself. “A new place is a negative mirror” says Calvino. When you travel you learn these things much faster and if you get the feel for “making your way” than you may also get wiser. Of course, there are some people who interpret things very differently and keep on traveling being complete a**holes. Well, ask them about their experience and you may see that they are still learning what they have to, but perhaps the harder way.

Some last words for the traveler of the near future:

- Travel light. With your initial insecurity you may take lots of useless things with you; drop them along the way.

- Be responsible for your own health. Discover which local foods agree with your personal digestion and be your own doctor. Carry only a little natural medicine.

- Learn the art of making friends. Carry things between places. Give as you receive.

- And most importantly, enjoy it! Traveling is fun.

WELCOME

2008-08-18T15:43:00.000+03:00

Today I announced my first time ever blogs. I have been motivated to do this by Maya who has been blogging for some years and recently started a new blog with the purpose of letting off steam. So I thought I also can use some letting off steam. At first I thought “who’s going to read these anyway?” but then I realized I don’t need to care. It’s more like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the ocean of the internet. Someone will read it one day, someone with patience. I have a lot to share and I know I like to keep it as detailed as it gets (one could say “I have a problem with keeping it short” but I rather not see it as a problem). I hope you have the patience

So I started this blog and three others about a month ago. I’ve been updating it quite often ever since but this may not be sustained as I’m not this much online when I’m on the road. I’ve decided to make use of this period of temporarily settling in a ‘civilized’ place by sharing things.

I was waiting to be more satisfied with the first part of the content to invite you here but I realized that’s very hard. I’m not that happy with my blogging skills but it’s a new thing for me anyway. I feel like I’m writing an e-mail to a good, concerned friend who doesn’t have a face or a name. It’s like keeping a diary starting with “dear journal” and then letting the world see it. It’s weird. I just hope it’s not boring and that you have a little patience to see what I have to share.

I just learned that the order of blog posts go reverse. So what you see right below this one is the last post I sent and the first post I wrote is at the bottom of this page, or even on the ‘history’ part which can be reached through the side panel. I would really appreciate it if you can start with the couple of first entries rather than the last ones, so that the blog gains a little relevance.

I would really like to hear some comments about what I wrote so please click the ‘comment’ link right under the posts to give me some feedback. If you really like what I write and want to see what I write as soon as I put it online you can ‘subscribe’ to this blog using the ‘subscribe’ links on the side panel (RSS).

As I said I have 4 blogs now. This one is about my inner journey and I have one on my inner journey, one on relationship stories and one in Turkish.

Welcome to my little web.

But this is an old tale you tell – they say.

But surely this is a new tale you tell – some say.

Tell it once again – they say;

Or, do not tell it again – others say.

But I have heard all this before –say some;

Or, but this is not how it was told before – say the rest.

And these, these are our people, Dervish Baba, this is man.

Naqshibandi Recital

as quoted in The Way of The Sufi by Idries Shah

Names

2008-08-18T15:30:00.000+03:00

I come from a country where the only names you can legally give your children are the ones that appear in Turkish names dictionary. This not only limits being creative while naming your kids, it also makes it impossible for millions of people to be named in their mother language. You can name your child “sold” (in Turkish of course) but you cannot use the letters x or w that exists in Kurdish, or anything that is not Turkish. Strange enough many Arabic names are fine as it is considered good to give Islamic names to your children.

I have been to many countries where people have interesting to strange names but so far no other country came close to Philippines in being liberal in choosing a culture for naming. Of course, because of the influence of Spanish colonizers and Catholic religion, the most common names are mostly Spanish, such as Maria or Juan. Then comes the American influence and names like Ronald and Grace. But it seems today’s Filipino families do not need any more influence to find names. For example, Maya’s cousins have the names from Greek, German, French and other cultures. They all have the same family name but their first names are like a world tour: Abigail, Fabienne, Athena, Odessa, Jamaica, Fraulein, Jefferson.

I really love this. Because of the fact that people learn to spell all sorts of names all the time, Philippines also became the first country where some people managed to spell my name correctly. Wikipedia says that if Malaysia didn’t get its independence first Philippines could be called Malaysia. It seems, once that name was taken they gave up about the search and kept the former colonizers name and there seems to be no change in that; it remains the only country in South East Asia with a western name. But they just like it better this way and that's perfectly fine as long as we learn how to spell it correctly (double p, single n, and with the the). At least they don't have a complex about their country having the same name with a very beautiful bird!

Traveler vs. Tourist

2008-08-18T15:24:00.000+03:00

There is a long lasting and never resolved dispute about tourists and travelers. Many times it seems these two do not like each other and sometimes people serving tourists do not like travelers and vice versa. It seems to me that most people do not know the distinction as it is mostly hard to tell by the looks of a person whether s/he is a tourist or a traveler.

A tourist, in my humble description, is a person who travels for a limited time (tours), has a greater per day budget, usually buys a whole trip rather than planning it himself, buys lots of souvenirs, takes lots of photos but does not learn much about the local culture or get to meet local people. These are not necessarily bad things. Most people do not have the time to travel long and learn local languages and since their holiday time mostly means a time to rest, they also prefer full facilities, rather than learning about the local ways of doing things. It is understandable.

A traveler, again in my humble dictionary, is a person who chooses traveling as a way of life, either for life or for a certain amount of time (but rarely for just 2 weeks). He may still buy some souvenirs but he has to be careful that his bag doesn’t get too heavy because he won’t be hiring porters to carry it for him. He may stay in some hotels but because he normally wants to make his money last as long as possible to be able to travel more, he stays in guest houses, camps and tries the local foods, takes the local buses, etc. Since he wants to use the local market he learns some daily local language and meanwhile makes a few local friends. This also is not a good thing without exceptions. For example, some travelers get too stingy and overdo the bargaining. Some get too arrogant as if they are Marco Polo.

I read somewhere that, some years ago the Tourism Ministry of Thailand conducted a research to see which one is better for their tourism industry. The result was in favor of travelers. The final report said that the travelers spent their money in smaller and more local establishments and thus helped the distribution of wealth; that travelers are much more sensitive to culture and environment, and this type of tourism is more sustainable. So they seem to have concluded that the Thai government shall support travelers and this may be a reason why Thailand remains a very friendly destination for backpackers.

Please do not get me wrong; not everybody that has a backpack is a traveler, and not everybody who stays in an expensive hotel is a tourist. In most cases it is not that easy to say which is which. And also some real travelers still leave a bad influence and some tourists do god things. What is important is to have a good travel and to leave a good influence behind.

Tourism in general is disastrous for the environment. There are many wasteful sides of the resort tourism to start with. The buffet meals are the most wasteful way to feed ourselves. Hundreds of air-condition rooms in a hotel (plus their mini bars) has the same effect on global warming as an airplane. Many tourists prefer to keep on with their habits when the are on tour and for this the hotels have to import all sorts of food, beer and whatnot to suit their tastes. The cultural influence is also pretty degenerative as these people don’t get the time to learn how to respect the local culture (as if they’d care). Since they don’t know about the local prices they pay very high prices for everything and although on the surface this seems to be a good thing for the local tourism industry, it raises prices and creates the image that tourism is the new gold. They create these concentrated areas which sooner or later becomes too crowded with hotels and shops to enjoy. All around the world you can see this kind of tourist ghost towns which were once very nice spots but are now completely spoilt. Strange enough they also look the same, with the same kind of resort hotels you can see everywhere.

On the other hand, when one has the time and energy to go the hard but more rewarding way, there is much to discover. Taking a local bus is not as comfortable as the air conditioned tourist bus but it gives one the chance to feel where he is. Staying in a village house or a homestay, being a guest to the people of the place is of course why one goes all the way there. For me it has been hard to understand why people go half way around the world to spend a week in a resort hotel which is a replica of the one back home. If you cannot handle eating the local delicacy of fried cockroaches, maybe you can have a coffee in the village coffee house and learn a little about their daily pastimes. There is hardly any hotel entertainment as fulfilling as a village wedding.

But there are disturbing things about travelers also. Some travelers demand too much from the locals as if they have to be taken as local citizens because they don’t stay in hotels. Some demand lower than local prices and exaggerate haggling. The stereotype of a traveler is also pretty scruffy and dirty. This can be excused by being on the road for so long but only to a certain extend. I have also met many travelers who get easily angry with people who either confuses them with or wants them to be tourists. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what they know and it’s ok. If you want to have a chance to change this, start with having a positive attitude.

There is also the off road impact. When bus loads of tourists take a safari tour to see elephants, they bring in cash for the conservation effort but they also leave a huge footprint. But travelers also do this, although it is on a smaller scale. With travelers things can be a little more dangerous because they like to discover, to go to places where not many people go. Thus they can find an unspoilt piece of land and in some cases spoil some it. Remember that many beaches and other famous touristic places which are clogged with resort hotels today were discovered by some adventurous travelers in the 60s. It is a hard work to keep your mouth shut and also let the locals know that you rather camp there but it is very necessary.

These are just a few points of the ever-lasting debate of tourists versus travelers. You can always come across a supposed traveler complaining that those backpackers come to small towns and spoil the place by demanding air conditioned rooms and toast for breakfast, just like tourists. On the tourists side, they have an equivalent complaint about travelers keeping the rotten huts from being renovated by staying there and smoking dope all the time. There are endless examples.

Although I feel myself to be closer to a traveler, nobody likes to be boxed and neither do I. After all I’ve recently been taking great many photos and visiting very touristic places like Angkor Wat. The way I travel is more of traveling fast for some time and then settling and feeling one place for longer. I’m not a big a fan of local transport as I used to be also but I love new food experiments (recently I’ve been happily introduced to fertilized, semi developed chicken eggs). I just like being there, rather than seeing what’s there.

When you are going somewhere just think that you are actually going to be there and have an influence and be influenced. Make it nice. Give thanks.

Pros and Cons of Being a Foreigner

2008-08-18T15:18:00.000+03:00

Sometimes I complain that being seen as a foreigner rather than just someone, and in some cases as a money milking cow, is insulting. There are not many places where foreigners are treated like normal people, like in Malaysia. In other places it has its advantages and disadvantages.

Anybody who travels knows this, if you look like a tourist with a camera hanging over your belly, you are inviting the local establishments to overcharge you. It is true that this cannot be generalized and I have even experienced taxi drivers who would still take the normal way even when I had all my tourist gear on me but unfortunately this is a rarity, a nice surprise.

In India, sometimes it was so disturbing that I gave up all my western outfit pretty early and went around barefoot like a local traveling person. Of course, they would know I was a westerner but their expectations were clearly lower. Speaking a few words of the local language also helps but I recommend that if you want to ask “how much?”, first you learn the numbers. I have seen the local five turn into the English “ten” very easily.

On the positive side, being a foreigner makes people feel you are their guest. You may ask the road and have someone guide you all the way to where you wanted to go. Or you may be taking a crowded shared mini-van and they empty the front seat only for you. Sometimes some people give you the feeling that it would be a big crime for them if they leave you stranded without that red string you are looking for and they go and find it for you.

You are also allowed to ignore the local moral rules to a certain extent. As long as your personal sense of respect permits it, you can do things the locals would never do out of fear of being criticized by their fellow citizens. You can kiss your partner where no locals does it and mostly, people around you would take it as “that’s the way it is in their country” (of course, there may be some old ladies around who wouldn’t like it at all and give you a terrible frown). You can jump on a moving bus or get off at the red lights, use the exit to enter places, forget to tip and sing aloud if you like. It’s not that I do all these things but I realize sometimes that just being who I am is already too much in some local standards. Funny enough this applies to my “home” city where I’m still seen as a foreigner anyway.

The other day we were out at night and felt thirsty. We stopped by a 7-Eleven and I got a bottle of beer and asked them to open it. Somehow they were not equipped to do that but the security guard did it for me. I sat there having a donut and drinking my beer when the cashier turned up with a little plastic bag and asked me if he can put my bottle in it. He said it’s not permitted to drink liquor there! I told him I could go out but he insisted I don’t mind as long as it’s in a plastic (as if I would put a bottle of coke in a plastic bag). Realizing that I’m the only privileged person having a beer in a 7-Eleven I felt like a colonial master (it was night, I was half drunk, I excused myself in the morning).

Here in the Philippines they see me as a “Cano” (from Americano) and I let it be. Thinking how American people usually act (I make a terrible generalization using the disrespectful loud tourist stereotype) I feel I do not need to stress myself too much about the local customs. But I do respect these people (honestly they are really great) and try to learn being respectful. I don’t feel I’m being overcharged here because they are not so used to tourists anyway (the few foreigners around seem to be rather living here). I’m just happy to be the guest of these very kind people and I do my best.

Pilgrimage

2008-08-12T12:10:00.000+03:00

I know this journeying on the face of the world is nothing but a journey inside to find my inner self and in that sense it is a pilgrimage. When I travel I try to be conscious of what my experiences touch inside me. Sometimes the reason why I’m there makes itself very clear, and sometimes it is pretty hard to understand why I had to live that particular experience. Everything happens for a reason and this pilgrimage I’m on will lead me to my Mecca sooner or later.

I have also been to many pilgrimage places literally. I have been in the golden temple of Amritsar, the main Zoroastrian fire temple in Yazd, two Kumbha Mela’s in North India all at the right time. I’ve had a hand shake with H.H. Dalai Lama, did the 10 rounds around the biggest Buddhist temple Borobodur, been to the source of river Ganga and more. They all have been very memorable moments but I know they are also just superficial. I know I don’t need to go on a pilgrimage to become a pilgrim. I am already one.

In his book The Art of Pilgrimage, writer Phil Cousineau gives the description of pilgrim by some other people.

A pilgrim is a traveler that is taken seriously.

Ambrose Bierce

Pilgrims are poets who create by taking journeys.

Richard R. Niebuhr

Personal answers to ultimate questions, that is what we seek.

Alexander Eliot

And he lists five excellent practices for travelers on sacred journeys:

Practice the arts of attention and listening.

Practice renewing yourself everyday.

Practice meandering toward the center of every place.

Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts.

Practice gratitude and praise-singing.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old,

seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho

Brief summary of my time in South East Asia

2008-08-04T10:30:00.000+03:00

At the time I started this blog, I’ve been in South East Asia for over 20 months continuously. Although I may write about my further pilgrimages as they happen I don’t think I’ll go back to writing what has happened during that time, apart from some anecdotes like the ones I already added. So I want to give a summary of what I’ve been doing and where I’ve been all this time.

I arrived in Bangkok, Thailand on November 14, 2006. After a few days of enjoying this great city which reminded me of Istanbul, I traveled to Kho Chang, which was perhaps a too touristic spot to start this trip but it was nice nevertheless. It was just to show how small the world is that on the remotest beach of that island I bumped into friends from Turkey. After a week I went back to Bangkok and with many friends went to the Rainbow World Gathering.

The site of the World Gathering was a secluded little beach on the West coast quite near the border of Myanmar. I made myself a camp house out of bamboo and camped with many old friends for the next 2 months. It was truly a very special experience to be free with friends on a tropical beach. I enjoyed a lot, learned a lot and most importantly sang a lot. First time in my life I started to compose little songs and made melodic announcements everyday. I was nourished by all the smiles and laughter I motivated on other people.

On the morning of the first day of the year I hurt my slipped disc on my back pretty badly and couldn’t stand up for 3 days. I decided to see it as a lesson and did my best to receive the learning it brought me. And it brought lot of things into my sight. I was surrounded with all sorts of healers from reiki masters to homeopaths, from acupuncturists to massagists. I’m so thankful to all of them and especially Herman who with his magic needles and great experience in acupuncture helped me stand up and walk around after a relatively short time.

During the gathering I crossed to Myanmar by boat a couple of times to extend my visa but didn’t stay longer than 10 minutes. At the end of the gathering I left with Ayşegül to a nearby monastery, Suan Mokkh, for a 10 day silent meditation retreat and a little longer stay in the monastery itself. Then we made it back to Bangkok for a visit to the embassy. For some reason they couldn’t extend her passport quickly and we decided to go to Malaysia which gives everyone 3-months free visas at the border. We went to Kuala Lumpur to the Turkish embassy and learned that they ne

eded two months to send her application to Turkey by normal mail and receive the reply also by normal mail. So we decided to stay and feel Malaysia. On March full moon we joined Tim and Nina to go to the oldest jungles on earth, Taman Negara. It was truly amazing to see such big trees and big everything in such an untouched environment where we could camp.

After a few days we went back to our first stop in Penang, got a nice old style room in a fisherman’s village and got acclimatized. From the first moment I felt very welcome in Malaysia and I thought

of it as a great base to be in South East Asia. Because of the multiculturality of the country people didn’t treat foreigners as if they are Martians, like they do in most other countries in Asia. Our friend Rene started to teach me CFQ, which is a kind of qigong developed by a master from Pen

ang. I was immediately captured by it and started to practice 3-4 hours a day. I also received healing from Master Yap who helped me to touch my toes standing up after more than 10 years. My slipped disc problem have been more or less history ever since.

Then Ayşegül decided that she wanted to go back to Turkey and I thought I’d rather not go to Indonesia alone and instead went to China. I went overland to Bangkok, spent some time by the river Kwai watching the famous bridge and took a boat on the river Mae Kong from Thailand to China passing between Myanmar and Laos.

China was a whole different world. It came as a big surprise because I expected it to be less developed and m

ore historic. On the other hand I had never been to a place where it was so hard to find someone who knew some English or would try to communicate in any other way. I quickly went to Dali in

the mountainous Yunnan Province and found my friends. After only a few days of acclimatizing to the cool mountain air we went up to over 2.000 meters to start the seed camp for the coming local rainbow gathering. The plateau overlooking the Erhai Lake was heavenly. And we had great relations with the local villagers as well as the monks of the mountain. However the book-minded officials couldn’t fit our presence there into anything they could report to

their higher officers in Beijing and asked us to go down only after a couple of weeks. It was sad but all things happen with a reason anyway.

Then I met Maya. Dali was a perfect little romantic old city to spend days walking on the streets, climbing its ancient walls, going for forest walks. After a few weeks we went to see how close we can get to Tib

et and visited the famous Shangri-La (Zong Dian) where most inhabitants and the culture are Tibeta

n. We had some butter tea, visited the local Potala and stocked some cool weather for the times we’d go down to the lowlands.

Then we quickly went back to Dali and Kunming and booked two beds on the 2-day sleeper bus to Luang Pra

bang in Laos. I was selfishly hoping to find a less developed country but at least the old and very beautiful town by the Mae Kong was too touristy to be undeveloped. There we had a room overlooking the river and went long walks, cycled around, swam in the local waterfalls, all of which were very nice, except for getting all our spare cash stolen from our room while we were in the shower.

Well…

We passed by Vientiane, the capital of Laos, which seemed to be a boring flat town with nothing to do other than take a bus to Thailand, which we did after we met shortly with Renate there.

In Turkish we say “fox goes around and around but always ends up in the fur shop” and for me Bangkok seemed to be that fur shop. About a year from today, on Maya’s birthday we were there with Evrim and Bene and that was the last time I spoke Turkish with someone face to face. On our way back to Penang we stopped by the island Kho Phangan which is so famous with its full moon parties but we

found a peaceful romatic spot on a tiny connected island and chilled out. Than we went back to Penang and I took a course on CFQ.

In September 2007 we went to Sumatra Indonesia for two months. Indonesia reminded me of India which I lov

e and miss so much. The people seemed alive and real, the nature and culture were very rich. There were lots to explore. But we had not made a very good timing by arriving during Ramadan which made it hard to find food and travel. Our first stop, Lake Toba, a mega-volcanic crater lake which is also the world’s biggest lake on an island, made us stop immediately. By th

e tranquil lake days passed slowly. I had heard a lot about this place but still it’s affect on me was like nothing I expected. We were not camping or anything but we always felt the grandeur of Mother Nature.

After hardly leaving the land of the Christian Bataks we went to Bukittinggi, the land of the Minangkabau c

ulture. For the Ramadan festival (Muslim equivalent of Christmas) we went to hide by Lake Maninjau which was another volcanic lake but smaller. We had a tree house and it rained almost all the time we were there. Back to Bukittinggi we had very hard tome to find tickets back up North

and we had to wait there for another week, which was not that bad because on the full moon night the rains started to give a break and we went up to Mount Merapi under a beautiful sky. It was my first volcano and when we arrived at the peak by sunrise the feeling was completely out worldly. In the distance we could see tens of big an small volcanoes dotting the landscape dwarfing the human townships.

Then we went to Aceh, the name of which I knew by the boxing day ’05 tsunami and earthquake disaster. Banda Ac

eh was still a big construction site and it was hard to look at all the rubble and ruins by the seaside and imagine there were so many houses where there was the sea now. Weh Island was my first

truly coral island. We had a bungalow with its porch right over the sea and any time of the day we’d look down and could see all sorts of very bright colored fish and other sea creatures. So we swam, we snorkeled and I couldn’t hold myself and took a PADI open-water diving course. The stuff I saw during my first ever dives would make my future dives look pale in comparison and it was great to step on this whole new world. Just before we left Sumatra we went to Bukit Lawan

g to say hello to the native orang utans and almost died tubing on river Bohorok.

Oh my God, I said I’d summarize it, didn’t I? Well, I guess that’s the best I can do.

Next on our list was Bali but we thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to go there on such high season and instead went to Thailand, sat another 10-day meditation retreat, and entered Cambodia just before Christmas, which was still not such a good idea. Sihanoukville Beaches were pretty packed but around Kampot and Phnom Penh were quite nice. We had a week in Siem Reap practically

studying the Angkor ruins and left Cambodia in less than a month after having done the typical tourist circle around the country.

We passed throug

h Thailand and Malaysia quickly and flew to Java, Indonesia. Near Solo we discovered some really interesting pyramids that looked truly out of place. We had a pilgrimage to the biggest Buddhist temple on earth Borobodur and the nearby Hindu temples of Prambanan. I also personally enjoyed the old capital Yogyakarta as a small city. Then we had a stopover on the breath-taking

great caldera of the Bromo volcano and went to Bali.

We had prepared ourselves to find Bali fully spoilt by tourism but the reality was better. Bali is one of the f

ew places I’ve been to which has a such a uniquely alive old culture. It’s nothing like the Hinduism i

n India but it is at least equally alive and inside the daily lives of people. In a short time we got saturated with festivals and rituals. Then discovered the nature with it’s nice volcanoes, rice ter

races, hot springs and of course beaches. We saw the dolphins, dived and snorkeled, had a completely silent new year day and just before we left we tried wave surfing.

We wan

ted to go to Borneo but Adam Air went bankrupt the hour we were supposed to fly and missing our connecting flight we ended up in Kuala Lumpur instead. We decided to see it as a sign and decided to have a month of sabbatical until the World Rainbow Gathering in China. Right after Maya flew to the Philippines I bought this little Asus EeePC I call Susu, went back to Penang and started to write. Just the day we were booking our flights to Macau, China announced their new visa policy which made it practically impossible for me to get a visa anywhere

in SE Asia. So after a little more time in Penang I came to Philippines and the last 55 days I’m here. At the moment I’m surviving my 4th typhoon.

Wow, I really rushed this and it’s still….. 2.004 words. Oh, I forgot all the numbers. I love numbers, here they are.

I’m in South East Asia the last 628 days. Of the 8 countries I’ve been to, I’ve spent most time in Malaysia (221), Thailand (151) and Indonesia (116). I’ve camped for 75 days, stayed in monastery/retreats for 33 days and slept on busses or trains for 20 nights. I was in 2 rainbow gatherings, 2 meditation retreats, dived 10 times and got almost 2 years older. That’s all.

Monkey business

2008-08-04T10:27:00.000+03:00

Monkey business got a whole new meaning for us when we visited the Ulu Watu temple in Bali.

At the gates of the big seaside gardens of the temple complex we were firmly warned to keep our bags, cameras, glasses and other things safe in case they are grabbed by the monkeys. We were also told and later reminded by many signs around the temple that the monkeys could get aggressive and feeding them was not a good idea. That’s why it was surprising to see some people selling little portions of fruits and nuts to feed the monkeys around the gardens. After all the warnings none of the tourists seemed to dare to do that anyway but then we realized the fruits were a part of a more sophisticated business.

While we were enjoying the views of the high cliffs by the main temple we were aware that many monkeys were scrutinizing us in case we were carrying something interesting. That’s when we heard someone scream. A monkey had grabbed the glasses from the eyes of a Japanese tourist and was sitting on a rock by the high cliff staring back at us. One of the kids who were selling fruits quickly approached the owner of the glasses and asked if he needs his help to retrieve his glasses. Then he jumped on the rocks and approached the monkey waving a little bag of fruits towards him. The monkey holding the glasses tight on one hand approached the boy, and grabbed the fruit before the boy could snap and take the glasses back. Then he went a bit further where he felt safely away from the reach of any humans and ate his fruit, still holding the glasses on one hand. When he was finished he came back within the reach of the boy and got another portion of fruit. This scene repeated few more times while the boy got closer to the deadly heights of the rocky cliff, trying to imitate the agility of his rival. When the monkey was finally bored of the game or filled with fruit he let the boy take the glasses which were a mess of crushed metal with one lens missing. Nevertheless the boy was paid for his fruits and was tipped for his heroics.

This is the way we learned what the monkey mind was capable of. They had silently made a business deal with the fruit sellers of the temple and although it was surely a monkey business, it was profitable for everyone but the unsuspecting tourists.

The day we were grounded

2008-08-04T10:00:00.000+03:00

Indonesia consists of thousands of island and to go from one to another used to require a long ferryboat journey until the cheaper airline companies took over the market. Today there are over 20 Indonesian economy airline companies who carry people within the archipelago. However none of them, even the national Garuda Airlines, are not permitted to fly to the West due to their weak security and history of accidents.

One strange thing about these flights is that, as oppose to buying in advance to make it cheaper, in Indonesia if you want to pay less you have to buy your ticket at the latest minute. Of course you take the risk of not finding a last minute ticket and that’s why we also played the auction game of booking flight tickets at the latest time they are available.

We were in Bali and wanted to fly to Indonesian side of Borneo and cross to the Malaysian side the day before our visas ended. For this we had to fly from Bali to Jakarta and from there to Pontianak on Indonesian Borneo. Although we were checking the internet everyday, suddenly it seemed like all the flights were getting booked. We wanted to fly with Adam Air which was offering the most reasonable prices but we missed the last tickets for the Jakarta – Pontianak flight. So instead we booked Adam Air from Bali to Jakarta and Lion Air from Jakarta to Pontianak.

8th of March 2008, early in the morning we went to Denpasar International Airport, checked our luggage in and went to the gate to wait for our flight. While waiting I read on the newspaper from the day before that Adam Air would reduce the number of it’s flights next week. From the waiting hall we watched our orange colored plane be taxied to the gate and our luggage get loaded onto it. Then the newspaper of the present day arrived and on the cover was the news that Adam Air is unable to pay the insurance fees due to the big number of crushes it had and was going to freeze operations within a week. Then we watched our luggage be unloaded and the plane be taxied away from the gate. “Please wait” was the only answer we received from the gate crew even after the flight seemed to be delayed an hour. Strange enough on the airport screens it was still written that the flight was on time. When we started to push for some more answers we realized we were not the only people getting anxious about their connecting flight from Jakarta. There was a Taiwanese couple bound for Taipei and a German guy with a long chain of connecting flights he was afraid to miss.

When we were taken to the office downstairs the personnel there were already in a hard situation trying to answer so many demands at the same time and quickly. I fixed all my attention on one person and became her shadow whichever corner she went to hide until I managed to make her buy for us tickets by Garuda Air to Jakarta, leaving now. We ended up literally running together with another guy to the ticket and check-in counters. Just when I started to run towards the gate for the new flight I was stopped by the same guy telling me that I had to go down with him to the baggage claim and fish our stuff from a large pile of stranded Adam Air luggage there.

Somehow this exercise took my anxiety a bit and we enjoyed the non-economy class flight with the big Garuda airliner. But there was a little problem. Because of this delay, we seemed to have only 40 minutes left between our arrival to and departure from Jakarta, which was a very risky amount of time considering that the check-out counters sometimes close half an hour before the flight. So we made a plan. As soon as we landed we would split and I would go down to pick our luggage while Maya would run to the Lion Air check-in counter and stop them from closing. This we did. The 10 minutes waiting in front of the carrier belt felt like an hour and but when I finally made it out of the gates I realized we still had 30 minutes. Then the information guy told me that this was the international terminal and the Lion Air was in the domestic terminal, few kilometers away and I had to take a taxi. I looked around to see if I could spot Maya in this crowds but of course it was impossible, she could have been even on a different floor. So I went ahead with our initial plan to meet at the check in counter and took a taxi. Surprisingly when I arrived at the Lion Air check in there were still a line of fellow passengers but no Maya.

Then I wanted to slow down the time, make it last longer so that Maya would arrive but she woudn’t. I sadly sat on my luggage trolley and watched the screen notification turn to “departed”. I had just missed my first flight.

I went to the Lion Air counter and told them that I had lost my wife. After the initial giggles one of them decided to be my assistant on this mission and took me to the first terminal where Maya was still waiting for me. She had thought that the plan would have changed because the terminals would have been far apart. It was the expensive taxi ride that had given her the idea that even if she took a taxi it wouldn’t arrive on time, although for me it didn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Sometimes, in times of crisis, accidents, or sudden loss of something, a weird sort of coolness takes over the emotions and tells one to stop. We didn’t talk. We knew it was very easy to start to argue and accuse each other for this situation. We sat and had a drink.

Now we had to find a way out of Indonesia before we ran out of visa within the next 2 days. Adam Air was fully grounded and all the stranded passengers have booked all the other tickets on other flights. It was practically impossible to find tickets to anywhere on the direction we wanted to go within 2 days. So we went back to the superstar of budget airlines and booked a flight by Air Asia back to Kuala Lumpur.

We wanted to travel all across Northern Borneo and Brunei and take a boat to Southern Philippines but it was not to happen. We ended up grounded in the heat of Kuala Lumpur and later flew to Philippines.

Hadith and Instant Karma

2008-07-31T14:10:00.000+03:00

Prophet Muhammed said:

" There is no better companion on this way than what you do;

Your actions will be your best friend;

Or if you're cruel and selfish,

Your actions will be a poisonous snake that lives on your grave."

I think this explains, along with other things, why people have completely different experiences of seemingly the same trip they have. It is true that on the way it is much easier to experience instant karma. One who travels knows that the energy you emanate attracts a similar energy. Your actions and even thoughts are equally rewarded.

Experiencing the Typhoon with an I

2008-07-28T08:10:00.000+03:00

Today I’m locked inside the house by the most forceful typhoon I’ve experienced so far. This being the third one, does not scare me as much as the first two. But the wind is very strong and it is pouring. It is a surprise that we still have electricity and even the cable TV is working.

This will be the typhoon with the letter I. My first one was Frank, which killed a thousand people in the Philippines but was just a rainy day in Baguio. Then we got caught in Helen when we were on the northern tip of the Luzon Island, attempting to go sightseeing around Pagudpud. But then we thought, what the hell happened to the letter G? There was supposed to be one with G between Frank and Helen. They couldn’t have missed it, in fact they love G here in the Philippines, they have it everywhere. The language is TaGaloG, the national breakfast is lonGGanisa, they have BaGuio, BenGuet, iGorots and Rufa Gutierrez. Then we realized that the president was Gloria M. Arroyo and perhaps some American meteorologist had named a typhoon Gloria and the Filipino authorities had decided to ignore that one. We never heard of it.

In any case, it seems these big storms are more problematic in the lowlands. Up here in the mountains it gets wet and cold but that’s all about it. It’s not necessarily a disaster. When we were on the way back to Baguio during the heaviest time of Helen, we had to pass a flooded road near Laoag. The river next to the highway had burst its banks and the road was indistinguishable apart from the line of trees between the river and the road. It was strange for me to see the land that sees 30 typhoons a year so unprepared.

When it got deeper and deeper and the water level reached the first step of the door of the bus and the traffic came to a standstill I said to myself “wow, I’m stranded in a typhoon, so cool.” But then, when the bus was trying to move a few centimeters forward I felt the river push the bus a few centimeters to the side, I thought maybe it was not that cool. I had been in some such river crossings in North India but I was usually on top of the bus and had felt I could just jump down if the river took the bus. Here though, we were all inside and even the doors were closed due to the heavy rain. I looked around me to see if people were getting anxious about the situation but saw that I was the only one making it into a big deal. I was just being the foreigner.

How do disasters happen? Do they come slowly and give you time to reflect whether it’s been a worthwhile lifetime or not? Or do they come when you least expect them? There we were in a bus, the size of a nutshell compared to the size of the swollen river, and we thought we are fully safe because there is the road, although we cannot see it, there is the 3 tons of the bus, although it’s slowly being pushed to the side, and there are all the other vehicles on the road, although they are also half swimming. When we hear a bus has been taken by the river during a storm, do the passengers there also feel the way we do till the last moment? Or when these accidents happen you know it from the very beginning that something’s going to happen?

Perhaps our bus was not being pushed to the side at all and the flood adventure lasted about half an hour and the rest of the 8 hour ride was uneventful apart from the little argument we had with Maya but that was because of the full moon energy.

Did you know there were more violent crimes during the full moons than at other times? Luckily all the accident we had was a bite on the arm and a slap on the head.

***

It’s so flattering to receive a quick personal reply from God. Right after I wrote the above stuff, the house started to rock. It is a 3 storey concrete villa by the side of a steep hill. It’s hard to believe any wind would shake it like an earthquake. It was scary. Then Maya texted me asking if I want to go out! I couldn’t even imagine that it’d be possible to walk around without flying. But she said the main road and around the mall it must be full of people now (it’s Sunday). People just go on with their lives as usual, always experiencing that there is a greater power we cannot control.

Blogging and Me

2008-07-28T08:09:00.000+03:00

I don’t read blogs unless I come across one with some useful information about the places I want to go. So when I learned that Maya was blogging I was curious and thought it could be a good way of sharing experience. I attempted a travel blog and started writing “useful” things but the outcome was very unsatisfactory. It was boring and not that useful. It was also not that easy to get inspired in internet cafés. But now that I have my own little laptop, Susu, I decided to give it another try. But first is the reason why I gave up before.

This is what I originally wrote about Cambodia in a hot and uncomfortable internet café in Bali at one go. I’ll resist the temptation to edit it so you see why I haven’t blogged so far.

Cambodia First round

WARNING
This is my first ever blog try.
It may contain anything.
It may also contain nuts.

A blood red welcome

After a few extra days of waiting in Trat on the Thai side of the border and really enjoying the little town energy there we took the minibus to the border afternoon 22nd of December. Although it was one of the dustier borders around this side of the world, it was also one of the smoother border crossings, thanks to Maya's nationality being a member of ASEAN with Cambodia and me being smart enough to buy an e-visa online. The land borders of Cambodia are very famous with the officials' scams to rip incomers off their 30+ US dollars instead of the official 20 so I agreed to pay 5 extra online to avoid the hustle (am I smart?) and it worked fast.

As soon as we crossed the main gate and even before we got to see any Cambodian officers we were spotted and "taken care of" by motodops, the motorbike drivers who can help you with almost everything. We agreed to get a ride downtown (10 kms) to Koh Kong on two bikes and refused to be involved in any drug story (I know it's the dreads and the earrings but I really don't do it anymore!) Somehow the first sunset we witnessed while very slowly riding behind the bikes was also one of the most colorful sunsets we have seen for a long while, a blood red welcome. We also passed by a very posh luxury building right next to the border area which we learned was a casino perhaps owned by some retired generals. It looked incredibly out of place in front of the dusty road and in comparison to all that we would see the next day. We found a cheap room in a place called Koh Kong Riverside and turned off.

Meet the Dust

We have thought we could stay there one day and move the next so that we see one more place in this neglected country of our maps but we woke up and walked downtown for breakfast and met the dust. It seems there were some asphalting works way back in history but there were also some strong rains and much mud which luckily dried before we arrived and turned into fine dust that's everywhere. Not pleasant. We had a local breakfast (nice soup with free tea) and paid in Thai Bahts. and found the bus station where we saw how true the reports of the fullness of local minibuses were. They were pretty unbelievable, so many people in such a small minivan. I think this happens all over the poorer parts of SE Asia but somehow they seemed fuller than the ones I saw in Sumatra but, I know, Java is coming.

We agreed to pay 100 Bahts more (3 $) and take seats on a shared Toyota Camry taxi with AC. There we were only 6 grown-ups, 2 kids and the driver and the ride was much nicer than we feared after we had read the stuff on the internet because they've been pretty busy paving all the way from the border to Sre Ambel (connecting it to the way between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville). Even the 4 famous short but time consuming ferry rides over the rivers are coming to an end. two of the bridges were near to finished and one already opened. I really enjoyed the 3 rides on the flat boats with creative designs on the tropical surroundings that reminded me images from Apocalypse Now. It is such a beautiful scene, yet so polluted in our memories with wars and in reality with land mines.

Our taxi driver decided to help us experience the minivan rides and put us on one from Sre Ambel to Sihanoukville but we were given the front seat only for ourselves (although our bags didn't seem as comfortable dangling on top of the two motorbikes loaded on the back of the minivan.)

Wrong timing once again

By the time we arrived in Sihanoukville, ate something and made it to the famous beach with an impossible name to spell or pronounce (it amazes me how it can be famous at all with such a name as Ochheuteal - I copy-pasted this- shall we blame this on the French influence?) it was already couple of hours to sunset. Leaving bags with Maya I started the room hunt. Wow, although the beach is not so much built by resort hotels it was so crowded, it was immediately clear that the Khmer Rouge didn't make it this far in their landmining campaign. It was packed (we later learned that it was also Sunday and the beach was full of local tourists from Phnom Penh).

With good hope I started from the "Serendipity" beach side and although the place looked, well, OK, it was full. The only room that was available for that night only was 30$. So I came back to the second option of the roadside cheapies. GST full, next door to it 30$, Cobra brothel, next door full... until I made it to the last hotel on the beach fully wet in sweat. Jasmine Hotel had a room for us for 10$ and that seemed to be the only option for the night. It also had attached bathroom and cable TV, so I said it's OK for a couple of days. Just before I went to pick up Maya the receptionist said "but you know tomorrow it is not 10$", "what? why?", "All rooms are 50 % more expensive because it's the holiday season!" And it dawned on me that the effects of Christmas tourism was what was making me sweat. Got Maya and managed to be in the perfectly still sea for the sunset.

Change is good

We started the day early, had breakfast on the beach and I said goodbye to find a room on the Victory Hill area. I took a motodop and checked Sakal bungalows, full, Bungalow village, full, rainy season full, and finally got a room in a place with a good view from the restaurant called Chez Mari Yann. When we were moving in Maya saw another sign nearby which even looked better with same prices and after we had difficulty sleeping because of the private disco of the guest house we stayed, in the morning once more we moved to Sunset Garden Inn.

It came as a strange surprise that all these cheap rooms (5$) even came with attached bathrooms and always cable TV. But I could enjoy a little bit of it after a year of abstinence (well I had one day with a TV for myself in Jinhong, China and that's pretty much the thing. I don't count Ms.Loh's TV in Penang because it was only Malaysian and I saw mostly only 7 o'clock news there.) After we moved to Mari Yann I also had an interesting time trying to find a bike to rent. All the foreigners were riding bikes and there seemed to be none left for us. After an hour of walking and searching, I found one, took it to the gas station, filled the tank and saw the tire was flat, took it back and changed it, transferred the gas and made it back home just before the sunset.

And it was Christmas. We passed by all the Victory Hill bars with "hostess" girls dressed in Santa clothes waiting for the sexpats. It also seems Cambodia is some destination for the sexpatriates. There are so many fat men with tiny Asian women around it hurts the eyes.

So what's special about Sihanoukville?

This place was chosen as Cambodia's main port after it became clear that using the Mae Kong river delta which is in Vietnam was not so good anymore, in 1952. So there are no historical, cultural things around. The beaches are nice long yellow sand beaches and the sea is pretty shallow. The first day we sampled all the nearby beaches on the map, Victory, Hawaii, Independence, Sokha, Occhi-whatever and Otres and decided the one nearest to us Victory, was better for us. Somehow it was hard to understand the Antonov plane on the beach but it was more peaceful than the others for sure.

The following days we also discovered the Prek Treng beach to the north of town and were happily surprised that we were the only ones on this long white beach. We decided to go off-road and came across the first protected forest we saw in Cambodia, the Kbal Chhay watershed. I felt like some Indiana Jones on wheels crossing the very dodgy wooden bridge on the river and felt even more strange paying 0.5$ for it at the end. The waterfall was great but pretty dry because of the dry season. And it was not very pleasant to find yet another flat tire when we were leaving. Luckily we were not very far from the waterfall picnic site cafes so we found a man who did the repairs but we had to cancel our plans to go to Ream National Park and headed back.

Kampot

[To be continued]

[At this point the writer realized that blogging his travels in internet cafés while traveling is not really happening. The places are hot and noisy, very uninspiring. After reading what he had already written and feeling utterly bored and embarrassed about it, he went between deleting it and keeping it private and he decided to add a note and stop feeling bad about not adding more on his travel blog until the day that he starts traveling with his little lap-top. The day is coming in some months hopefully. Till than, have patience.]

***

So that day has come and I’m hoping to have a tastier blog this time. I’d love to hear your comments. I may need to be motivated :)

My very personal statistics of South East Asia

2008-07-28T08:04:00.000+03:00

I have been in South East Asia for over 20 months now. There are things I’m happy to have done and places I want to go back to. Here is a brief list, some statistics and toplists I’d like to share, for those who are asking those questions “which country is best for a 2 weeks holiday in July, and we’d like to dive and see some volcanoes and make it cheap?”

Countries visited : 8
Countries really visited : 7 (OK, the visit to Myanmar was a little brief.)
Countries really visited that were really in SE Asia : 6 (well, China doesn't count for SE Asia, does it?)

The shortest visit to a country : Myanmar, a total of 15 minutes in 2 visa runs (because second time I had to buy some cigarettes for a friend)

Will you tell us which countries?: Sure. They are (in order of visit) Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, China, Laos, Indonesia, Cambodia and Philippines.

Countries missing: Only Vietnam
What about Singapore?: I was there 16 years ago. It can’t have changed much.

Nicest big city : Bangkok (reminds me of Istanbul)
Biggest name for a nice big city : Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit which is Bangkok

Nicest historic city : Dali, China (photo)

The flattest capital ever: Vientiane, Laos (just really flat)

The easiest country to find someone to ask directions: Philippines (where English is spokening!)
The hardest country to find someone to ask anything: China (where even speaking basic Chinese don’t make enough sense since its pronunciation is harder than French.)

Best food : Penang, Malaysia (great choice of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Western and Nyonya food) (photo)
Hardest time to find food : Ramadan in Indonesia (don't do it!)
Hardest time to find anything : Christmas in Cambodia (don't do it!)

"World's Oldest Jungle" : Taman Negara, Malaysia (go there)

Best riverside chill out location : Khanchanaburi, Thailand (especially after being in Bangkok just a few hours before.)

Most common name for a guesthouse: Riverview (surely there is a view wherever there is a river.)

Most guitars per person : Indonesia (I love it) (photo)

The coolest back-to-future feeling : Riding the skytrain in Bangkok looking at a local newspaper and realizing it is year 2550.

The simplest toilets : China (simple they are and for the rest just use your imagination freely)

"Best" leader around : King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand (who is also the world's longest reigning monarch today, this year is his 61st.)

Most corrupt leaders around : Cambodia, or maybe Indonesia, or no no Philippines perhaps. Well, it’s so hard to say.

Most colorful marine life : Weh Island, Aceh Province, Sumatra, Indonesia (where I finally took a diving course)

Weirdest food I ate : Iced prawns, Kampot, Cambodia (which are just raw prawns on ice)
Weirdest food I didn't eat : Fried scorpions, Bangkok, Thailand
Weirdest food I tried and fully enjoyed: Balut, chicken embryos, Philippines (that is fertilized chicken egg with a hint of the developing chick inside. Supposedly an aphrodisiac and a high energy food. Non-vegetarian.)
Weirdest drink I had : Bird's nest drink, Cambodia (actually made of the nest of the swallow accurately called the edible-nest swallow!)

Worst bus ride : Medan to Banda Aceh, Sumatra (it rained on us inside the bus.)
Best bus ride : Banda Aceh to Medan, Sumatra (of course, this time we paid for a super-executive bus.)

Three most daring rides I did on a 100cc motorbike :
3- Samosir Island, Sumatra, September ‘07 (we had to see the lake on an island on a lake on an island but we trusted the map a bit too much)
2- Bokor Hill, Cambodia, December ‘07 (this time we trusted the bike rental guy who said "no, no, there are just some stones but this small bike is better than the big ones", and had a flat tire on the half way and ended up spending 4 hours going up and down dusty roads and slept during the new year.)
1- Tiger Hill, Penang, May ‘07 (after a rainy day, alone this time, I got the directions wrong and ended up on a 20 cm wide muddy walking path in the thick of the jungle and just made it out before dark with very little gas.)

Most flat tires : 3 times in 1 week in Cambodia
Most inspired name for a repair shop : Non-Triangle Services, Teluk Bahang, Penang
The repair shop you’d better avoid: Freakish Service, Bali

Most luxury room I stayed: Jinhong, China (I had no verbal communication with anyone in the city and ended up in this shiny hotel but first time ever, I had cable TV, AC, hot water, luxury decoration and even a tea machine and free condoms for less than $7.)

Least luxury room : Rona (Sputnik) Guesthouse, Medan (oh my god, do I miss India?)

Nicest, cheapest and most traditional room : Tuk Tuk Timbul, Lake Toba, Sumatra (a real old big Batak house right on the lakeside for $2 a day) (photo)

Most unnecessary item that one finds even in the cheapest rooms in Cambodia: cable TV
Most necessary item that one cannot find even in the costly rooms in Indonesia: mosquito screen (as if Indonesian mosquitoes are better behaved than Thai mosquitoes)

Nearest death experience : Tubing on Bohorok River, Bukit Lawang, Sumatra (we’ll take a guide next time.)

Cheekiest monkeys : National Park in Penang, Malaysia (they just ignore you while going into your bag.)

Easiest way to find drugs in all these countries : have dreadlocks (anywhere anytime)
Best way to avoid being hustled for drugs because you do not use them: cut the dreadlocks (Come on, why do I have to be a smoker only because I have the same hair style with Bob Marley? I don’t do it, seriously.)

Closest feeling to another planet : Merapi Volcano summit, Sumatra (photo)

Best on-board music : The minivan ride from Sihanoukville to Kampot, Cambodia (oldie rock and punk)
Worst on-board music : The boat from Penang (MY) to Medan (IN) (cheapest Indonesian video karaoke made with a single but noisy keyboard)

Best way to wake up : by sunrise near Lake Toba, Sumatra
Worst way to wake up : before sunrise by the noise of the preaching in the great mosque in Medan, Sumatra

Best market for anything : Jatujak weekend market, Bangkok
Best second hand clothes markets: Philippines

Coolest looking fisherman boats : The catamarans of Bali with eyes and a mouth to ward of evil spirits. (photo)
Coolest one-man vehicle : police two-wheelers in Bangkok
Most comfortable tricycles: Siem Reap, Cambodia (apparently adopted from horse carts)
Least comfortable tricycles: Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, Philippines (how come they never thought it could rain in a country where there are 30 typhoons a year?)
Most insanely overloaded public transport: Indonesia

The tranciest trance experience: Kesiman temple, Denpasar, Bali

The most noticeable hilarities:

Best names:
Services: Non-Triangle service (Penang), Freakish Service (Bali)
Restaurants: Full On Restaurant (Siem Reap)
Shops: New Open Shop (Siem Reap)
Bands: Chakrasonic (India)
Taxi: Hard Drive Taxi (Baguio)

Best Ads:
- Angelina Jolie was here before you! (Red Piano Restaurant in Siem Reap near Angkor ruins where she shot the film Tomb Raider.)
- We don't serve dog, cat, rat or worm (and this is the advertisement for a restaurant named Dead Fish in Phnom Penh)
- Lonely Tonite? Confused in Gender? Why don’t try Mixwell Lounge & Bar (Bali)

Best mottos and signs:
- We deliver like there’s no tomorrow (a Filipino cargo company )
- When the going gets hot (on the main façade of Baguio Fire Station)
- Avoid penalty, Sit properly (on park benches in San Fernando)

Wisest, smartest and cutest women of all : of course the Igorots of the Philippines (hi Maya)

I travel

2008-07-28T07:16:00.000+03:00

When I was in elementary school I had my best friend Cinar and the one game we loved most was missing the school bus and exploring the way back from school. We would go around the neighborhood villas with a wide awake imagination and all the narrow roads would be full of adventures, the monstrous guard dogs would want to eat us alive while we would try to reach the last piece of food left on earth, the cherry on that tree.

Then when I grew up things changed just a little bit but still today, sitting and watching the 3rd typhoon of the year hit where I live with full strength, I tend to see it as God getting too hot and turning on his fan a bit too strong while we desperately struggle to keep our clothes dry. I’m happy to be here now to see one more manifestation of Godly power.

Even when I was very young I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with staying in Turkey (mostly because I’m from Turkey) but at first I was thinking I could find another place and settle there. Traveling helps one learn about himself much faster and one of the first things I learned about myself was that I couldn’t be happy stopping for too long. I needed to discover.

I am so thankful to my parents who sponsored me for one month interrail trip to Europe when I was 16. After a few more visits to the West I saw it clearly that whatever I was looking for was not there. And I had a few pushes sometimes when I tended to stop. After my 2 years of hibernation in Istanbul, having a steady work, steady girlfriend and a nice rented house, I was kicked out of Turkey by the army which wanted me to wear uniforms and carry orders for 18 months after they give me a risky operation on my spine. India was welcoming and extremely rich, richer than I could ever imagine any land to be. So for a few years I thought I could settle in India and keep traveling in that country which is anyway 5 times the size of Turkey. But it was not to be.

What it gave me was this sense of being a traveler. [I’ll explain it separately how different for me a traveler and a tourist are]. There I started to live down to earth, travel in remote places, cook and enjoy local food, learn local language, make a few local friends, and in short be there rather than see there.

This required more time than just traveling with a schedule and a camera. Since I didn’t carry a camera, I had to sit in front of that mountain and take it in slowly. Mostly I would just rent a house there and do everything right in front of that mountain until I was sure I had it in me. I don’t know what else I took in during those days but one of them is the traveler’s bug for sure.

I was very fortunate for having a rent income to support my travels but just because I don’t have to work, not everything is hunky-dory. For a long time I stubbornly insisted on local ways. I felt this is the way I can deserve what I am already given. I wouldn’t take any touristic buses or eat in touristic restaurants. I was in India for 3 years and I haven’t seen Taj Mahal. I would generally try to live on the cheapest edge. Which taught me a lot of things and made me a stronger person. But the time comes when one says “ok, now I know I can handle the 20 hours of bumpy jeep ride, so I can take the super deluxe bus this time”. Another hard thing about traveling is all the family and friends back “home” calling me back all the time. Two out of 3 communications with anyone back there has the question “when are you coming back?” while I don’t make such plans. If I made such plans, for example, to go back to Turkey, let’s say, in 10 months, I’d feel I have to speed up and do all the things I want to do and be in all the places I want to be in before I go to Turkey. I want to be back to Thailand and Indonesia, I want to visit Nepal and Sri Lanka on the way back. I want to dive a few more coral islands and surf some more, perhaps go up a few more volcanoes, but putting this in a time frame is somehow impossible.

On the other hand I’m aware I am not a hard-core traveler. I am very slow, and lately, pretty touristic. My friends who were with me in Thailand when I first arrived in SE Asia about 20 months ago have been all around Asia, some went to Australia before we met back in China and now most of them are in the Americas already. I’m still here.

I can go on for hours when I start to talk about traveling. I believe everyone should travel. I believe the world would be much less problematic if more people traveled (and I’m talking of traveling and not a one week tour where one stays in a global hotel, eats global food and meets only other tourists). I really would do my best to inspire anyone to travel. So I’d love to answer any questions that would make traveling clearer for you (as long as it is not “what’s the meaning of life?”. That you have to find out for yourself.)

When I was in the university I met these two Brazilian travelers. They spent some weeks with us and we gave concerts together and made good friends. One of them, Marcus Borges Dias, gave as much time as it takes to tell me what traveling is all about, how they arrived in Portugal with a one year open ticket and traveled across North Africa doing all sorts of things. I don’t know if he knows that he became my guru but I received his guidance from the universe and I wish I have the occasions to return it.

May this blog be a means to giving a hand to other travelers.