twinkletoes travelogue

2010-08-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here's CNN Article on Japan. (and a sidebar on food).

Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Japan is thick with temples, shrines and cultural attractions with a unique and interesting ancient history. But beyond what you can learn about the past, modern Tokyo offers more than a few memorable experiences. Here are five not to miss:

5. Tsukiji Fish Market

Tsukiji is one of the world's largest fish markets and one of Tokyo's bigger tourist attractions -- only it's not really intended for tourists.

I visited early in the morning, on the first subway train arriving about 5:30 a.m. Some Tokyo guidebooks say that if you get there early and are unobtrusive, you can watch the tuna auction, where buyers gather to bid on hundreds of beautiful giant frozen tuna. This is not really true, at least not anymore.

There are very stern security guards/police who will direct you away from the tuna auction and out of the market. So efficient are they that I managed to get kicked out twice before firing off a single frame with my camera.

Since May, the market has restricted the number of visitors who can watch the auction. There are two time periods when visitors are allowed into the area: from 5 to 5:40 a.m. and from 5:40 to 6:15 a.m. Only 70 people are allowed in during each time slot.

Registration starts at 4:30 a.m., according to the market, so get there early if you want to be one of the lucky few to attend the auction.

Tuna auction or no, the rest of the market is interesting, with every manner of fish, mollusk and possibly mammal that can be pulled from the sea, awaiting buyers (that's wholesale buyers, not tourists).

There are many sushi shops ringing the market, offering some of the freshest sushi available. Stop in for breakfast after checking out the market.

4. Karaoke in Roppongi

Japan is of course the home of karaoke, and the Japanese still do it best. The setting varies between the more familiar (to Americans) bar scene to the karaoke room, a small room with a karaoke machine for three or four people, though you certainly can pack more in.

Although performing for an audience is fun, the karaoke room version has a certain appeal in that you are singing only to people you (at least sort of) know. Supposedly, people are known to get a room alone just for the love of singing.

It's also fun to have some Japanese songs thrown in the mix. They often seem to be more natural for the form, but I (a non-Japanese speaker) was way off a couple times when I tried to guess the subject matter from the sound of the music (like one song that was not a Japanese come-on but about a father lamenting his son lost to war.)

Roppongi carries two connotations to Tokyoites: foreigners and partying. It's also the place in Tokyo where you are most likely to get scammed. Beware anyone touting a "regular, totally normal bar" they want to show you; it probably involves nudity.

3. Sumo

Sumo tournaments take place a few times a year in four cities in Japan. If you find yourself in one of them while a competition is on, go. It's a one-of-a-kind experience.

Sumo is a professional sport, but it's thoroughly infused with Shinto religious elements, and there is more ceremony than actual wrestling in a day of competition. The rules of the game are simple: The winner is the one who forces his opponent out of the ring or forces his opponent to touch the ground with anything other than the bottoms of his feet.

When the competitors enter the ring, they go through several false starts for a period that lasts up to three minutes while they mentally prepare (and try to mentally unbalance their opponent) for the match.

They take sips of water from a ceremonial container, throw salt in the ring (a purification ritual) and get wiped down. Then they face off, only to back down and repeat the cycle. After doing this dance a few times, they have the actual battle, which usually lasts less than a minute.

The two giant men, or rikishi, often slam right into each other and struggle for a moment, and then one tosses the other down or pushes the other backward out of the ring.

But the matches that get the biggest cheers are the ones that last a little longer because of a mental battle between the rikishi, in which they move their hands around each other, testing for leverage. The trick is knowing when to make a move and committing to it, because with opponents of this scale, if you lose your momentum, you'll fall and thus lose the match. The best matches feature multiple attempts at throws and recovery.

Sumo has been around hundreds of years, and there is a lot of literature about different moves and techniques, but from a layman's point of view, it looks to be fundamentally a mental contest about timing and anticipating your opponent's moves.

The Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo has several levels, with seats on the upper levels and floor mats for seating on the lower levels (tickets range from around $30 to $150). They have literature in English, but once you start watching the matches, it's pretty self-explanatory.

2. Bullet trains

I'm quite jealous of Japan's rail system. It's thorough, comfortable and, as you may have heard, fast. The Shinkansen train reaches speeds of almost 200 miles per hour. Japan Rail (in Japan it's referred to by the English acronym "JR") covers most of the main islands of Japan, so you can get just about anywhere you want to go by train.

Couple that with an extensive metro in Tokyo and other cities, and you can get from the plane to many of the country's best attractions without ever getting in a cab.

The Shinkansen compares well to flying, getting you from city to city in about the same time. But there are no lines, and delays are very rare. There's no free beverage service, but there are frequent vendors with carts cruising the aisles, selling delicious treats ranging from snacks to bento box meals. The ride is very pleasant and quiet. And if you miss a train, it's usually not long until the next one.

For foreign visitors (and Japanese living overseas), there is a great deal available in the Japan Rail Pass, which allows for unlimitedtravel for a set period. This allows a great deal of flexibility, because most trains have cars without reserved seats, so you can hop on any time.

A bonus: The view of Mount Fuji from the Shinkansen between Yokohama and Kyoto is spectacular.

1. Cuisine

You can't beat Japan for variety and quality of native cuisine. If you find yourself hungry, keep walking; you won't get very far without stumbling over something delicious or odd (and usually -- but not always -- both).

From vending machines and food stalls to traditional and cutting-edge (and stratospherically expensive) restaurants, there is no shortage of options.

(CNN) -- You can't beat Japan for variety and quality of native cuisine. Here are some of my favorite types of restaurants, followed by a few recommended Tokyo spots.

Noodle shops

A little more than an hour off my plane from the U.S., I was starving and had some time to kill, as my ride was going to be late to Shinagawa station. It is a very busy, somewhat bewildering train station. I'm a noodle fanatic, so I naturally homed in on a noodle shop.

For a minute or so, I studied the action: People lined up at little machines, dropped some coins in, got a ticket and entered. I followed suit, punching a button next to a picture of a bowl of udon and a small bowl of rice with some yellowish stuff on it.

Inside, I was greeted and gestured to a standing table. I gave my ticket to a waiter who asked me haltingly, "hot or cold?" I opted for hot. Moments later, my noodles and rice showed up. I still don't really know what the bland topping on the rice was, but I ate it. The udon in dashi (with a few bits of stuff floating around) was one of the best dishes I've ever had.

Maybe you've heard that in Japan, it's not only acceptable but polite to slurp your noodles. In a busy train station noodle shop at rush hour, the slurping is positively deafening.

There are three main warring noodle factions vying for hearts in Japan: udon (fat wheat noodles, and my favorite), soba (spaghetti-sized buckwheat noodles often eaten cold) and ramen (a Chinese import, a sexed-up version of the American college staple).

Yakitori

For my first dinner in Tokyo, I have to say I was a little disappointed when my friend suggested his favorite local yakitori joint. In a country full of unique and risky options, yakitori seemed a safe fallback. I thought it was grilled chicken kebabs, and it is, mostly. But it is all of the chicken, and it's not always grilled.

The author eats chanko, a "sumo wrestler's meal," at the restaurant at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo.

This spot offered chicken sashimi and a few other semi-cooked versions. For the sashimi, the raw chicken is dipped in a quail egg and soy sauce before eating. I tried it, and that is about all I can say for it.

Chicken is maybe the only meat I can say, unequivocally, that I prefer cooked. And the cooked chicken was great. Even the half-raw chicken with an ume plum sauce was good.

KaisekiYakitori chefs stand in the center of the bar and carefully cook their skewers over a small bed of charcoal. Some interesting chicken parts I was served, which were all on the menu, were hearts (decent), necks (better, and boneless) and um, cartilage. Chicken cartilage is apparently something people enjoy for its "unique crunchiness." I am not one of those people. Still, the other bits of smoky goodness, including regular dark and white meat, made it a great meal.

Kaiseki is the traditional Japanese meal, often served in traditional inns, consisting of many courses -- eight or more -- of small dishes. There is a lot of focus on presentation, with the arrangement of the food and even the choice of plates garnering nearly as much thought as the food itself.

Typically, there is a sashimi course, a tempura course, a rice course and one or more courses of Japanese pickles. It is a very leisurely affair, lasting hours. Many restaurants offer a toned-down version, or casual kaiseki, where you still get many elaborate small dishes, but they all come on one tray.

Bento

Bento are to-go meals in a box, consisting of many tiny dishes divided into little compartments. Most have half a dozen compartments, with at least one filled with Japanese pickles, rice, a protein and a couple of mystery items. There are purveyors of bento in train stations (and on trains), and many restaurants offer a bento that you can buy at a little side counter.

Sushi

Yes, they have sushi. You can pretty much run the gamut in price and atmosphere, including shops where the sushi rattles around on a little conveyor belt and you grab it as it comes by.

Some recommended locations:

Torishige

3-11-12 Azabu-Juban, Minato-Ku. Phone: 03 5445 1589.

The aforementioned yakitori-ya In Azabu-Juban. It's a nice, cozy space with great chicken. The yakitori master has an interesting haircut, which I thought might have something to do with yakitori. It does not.

Udon Kurosawa

Nakagin-Roppongi Manshion 1F, 6-11-16, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Phone: 03-3403-9638.

There is a great noodle restaurant between Azabu-Juban and Roppongi Hills. Udon Kurosawa takes its name from Japan's most famous film director and approaches popular noodle dishes with the same precision. The curry udon is the same genre of curry noodles you could find at thousands of Japanese restaurants, but it is a cut above. The dish tastes like curry, but it is only slightly piquant, in a way that just catches up to you at the end of the bowl. In addition to the curry and a few other noodle bowls, they also offer complex oden (stew) dishes.

Chanko at sumo

In the Ryogoku Kokugikan

If you are attending a sumo match, consider eating at the restaurant at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. They serve large bowls of noodles to sumo and non-sumo alike, and you could end up sitting next to a rikishi, or wrestler, carb-loading for a bout. I had the "chanko," billed as the sumo wrestler's meal. It has a pot of broth over a burner where you cook various meats, vegetables and fungi. This is complemented with pickles, a bowl of cold precooked stuff, rice and an egg. If I ate this on a regular basis, I might bulk up enough to compete.

2010-05-22T07:25:00.001-07:00

Tokyo Subway

2009-10-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Hawaii

Chez Leon, Brux

2009-05-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Filet Americain

2009-05-11T13:44:00.001-07:00

I just ate about a pound of raw minced beef.

Bruxelles

2009-05-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

France

2009-05-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

Chunnel

2009-05-11T03:56:00.000-07:00

Bus

2009-05-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Stonehenge

2009-05-10T05:38:00.001-07:00

IMG00385.jpg

2009-05-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

Good morning

2009-05-05T08:29:00.001-07:00

Govna

Or something

Dillon, SC

2009-03-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

Greenville SC

2009-03-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

Really

Bye Philly

2008-09-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

En route to Atl.

Bye, PA

2008-09-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

En route to NYC.

Bye orlando

2008-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

En route to philly.

2008-05-03T21:38:00.002-07:00

I took a bus from Tel Aviv to Cairo, it was an adventure. Below is an account from an email I wrote a few days later, with a little cleaning up, detail added...

For visual enhancement you can open google maps in another window. Start with Tel Aviv, Israel.

So I left Jerusalem on an egged bus Saturday night, stayed at the venerable hayarkon 48 in TA (where my friend David and I had stayed earlier in the trip). I went and bought some good food items for the trip (bread, fruit, bissli, water, granola bars, and bresola which is like fancy Italian beef jerky). The bus was scheduled to leave TA @ 10a, remember the Mazada tours place was across from the Egyptian embassy. So I left @ like 8:30 or something (Mazada said to be there by 9:30a) I got there @ like 9:15, I was the first one there. I checked in, they had no record of my reservation but took my credit card anyway. So then I had some time to burn, I found a currency exchange that actually had Egytptian pounds! (I had tried throughout the trip to get some Egyptian currency), bought an IHT and a coke. Eventually I got back to the office where some backpacker types had shown up. We lounged around outside as 10a came and went. At about 11a the mini bus showed up. It was NOT a coach as pictured here

It was a mini bus/large sherut. And it already had a lot of people on it. The driver started trying to load our luggage in the back. There was clearly not enough room, so he left it in the street and went back to the drivers seat. I ended up squeezing the luggage in and barely getting the doors closed. So I walk back around to get on and me and this girl are standing, there are no seats left. She starts yelling at the driver, first in English to no avail then in Hebrew which worked better. They were going to try and make us sit or stand in the aisle but she got them to reconfigure things so there were two more seats (one had been folded under luggage). So I got the seat where luggage surrounded me on three sides. We were going to switch eventually but it wasn't so bad (and she was all the way in the front). As we start to go a Chinese lady (traveling alone and somewhat clueless) decides she needs to get out and go to the bathroom. This established a precedent. Now is a good time to go over the crew, but I would only meet people much later.

An African couple

An Arab lady with two young daughters. Later I learn she is from somewhere in the west bank but lives in Cairo w/ her husband.

3 young Arab ladies, one of which kept playing music out of her cell phone like she was the only one there ( they sat in front of me).

2 Swiss tourist dudes, one of which was wearing a t shirt that says "Egypt" and had the pyramids on it.

2 guys of Euro/latin American extraction (I forget even though I talked to them a fair amount).

David - American guy mid 20s, traveling w/ Rufus a british dandy also in his 20s. They were doing an Arabic program in Cairo somehow affiliated w/ the UK government. Rufus while cool was almost a caricature british dude, well dressed, witty, low key and prone to make threats involving his dad's connections to the UK ambassador in Egypt (seriously).

The clueless Chinese lady who always waits till the last minute to potty.

The American girl (I forget her name, It was becky or something ending in "y" I think. She had been to Israel a few times and spoke Hebrew.)

2 American dudes w/ thick southern accents of really ambiguous ethnicity (Samoan maybe?)

Brent. Canadian guy.

We leave out about an hour and a half behind. The drive from TA to Eilat is mostly uneventful. We stopped somewhere in the Negev where there is a Mcdonalds, gas and a snack bar. I had a surprisingly good prefab chicken sandwich. One American was asking if I spoke Hebrew cause the labeling was not translated, but I just said something like "It's a sandwich, how bad can it be?". We also picked up a dude by the highway in the middle of the desert, who apparently had prearranged his trip. I later learned that he is (supposedly) a publisher, and he's responsible for translating Harry Potter into Arabic. We don't see anything of Eilat but hotels and a big mall. The Red sea is, in fact, very blue. We arrived @ the Israeli border station @ something like 3:30p. We get off and some weary looking people get on. We are put in a line and enter the border station. I called the (hott) Israeli border guard "maam" which she thought was cute, she replied (in an American accent) that noone had called her "maam" before. I was a little disappointed I thought we would have to walk like 100 yards of desert, but you just walk through a duty free shop and a little bit of sidewalk and "welcome to Egypt".

Google maps: Taba, Shamal Sina' Egypt

So on the Egyptian side you show some guys yr passport, then you get your bags checked. At this point you need to know about baksheesh, a footnote is available if you don't (1). The border guard looked thrugh my bag manually and he took interest in my GPS unit. He asked "What is this?" I said "GPS" and he said "GPS?" and I confirmed and held on to it. He said "go to passport control and come back for this, I must talk to supervisor" and I said ok and moved along. At this point a 30ish guy in a nice white shirt and gold tie is snapping "MazADA? MazADA Tours?" at people and we all congregate with him and he asks for passports. We hand them over. Then I get a bad feeling that my GPS might become border guard baksheesh. So I head back to check on it. The guy is still there, still has it and says he still can't give it back. I was about to ask for his name (so I can at least say "Said has my GPS, can I have it back?") and he chats with another guy and then hands it over (to my surprise admittedly). So things are going great. A little time passes. The Chinese lady freaks because she has no visa, but she is able to buy one. And the Mazada guy goes in with the passport agent and calls us out by name to get our passport back and walk through. I used a pretty filthy but still modern bathroom on the Egyptian side. We then get our passports checked by another guy on the outside, then we are done. This is where our bus should be. Its not there.

The mazada guy leads us to a spot on the curb and tells us to wait. Immediately guys with trucks (and some without) are offering rides to Cairo. We are sitting in the Sinai sun in the afternoon. There are several other coaches there, they occasionally fill with sunburt, chubby, scantily clad Europeans and leave. A good hour goes by. We start talking. Someone jokes that the bus is broken down. After about an hour and a half waiting the Mazada guy comes over and announces that the bus is broken down, but it is "being repaired at a local shop". We will have to wait a little longer. He offers to let us stay in the Hilton lobby but the group doesn't trust him to get us all back OUT of the Hilton lobby so we elect to stay, searching for shade in the bus shadows, palm tree shadows ect. At this point some people start talking to drivers. The southern dudes are negotiating away but come way thinking it's a bad deal because they don't know the conversion rate. Rufus finds a guy who says he'll take us to cairo for 600 genay (about $120) which for 8 of us would be a damn good deal. But then he hedges saying he can only take us to Suez.

Google maps: Suez, Egypt.

But we demure thinking "that's not a bad deal but we ALREADY have tickets we should get to Cairo w/o paying anything". Some more time goes by. The Mazada guy comes back and says "OK so the bus is being repaired but it might be a while so we can either keep waiting or I can try to arrange local transportation." People groan and heckle. We go for the local transportation. So after a while he talks to the same guy we had been talking to earlier. They get two small minibuses for our 20 passengers. They load us in and put our luggage on top. There was much concern in my van that they were just going to toss it up there and hope fore the best. Noone could think of the Arabic word for "rope" as in "are you going to use rope?" But rope emerged. While packing the luggage the driver would jokingly call himself "Bedouin villain" whener his Kaffiyeh (around his neck) would cover his face. "Bedoui Villain" got in and started the vehicle. The Mazada guy got in and a burly, sharply dressed (he kept primping, adjusting his coat which he wore in the desert heat, or his tie which he wore untied around his neck. He had an uzi on his belt, but as I pointed out - no clip in it. Later Rufus told me he saw a clip on his belt). We sat there a while. It was uncomfortable, my knees were against the metal of the seat in front of me. Then the Chinese lady asked how long the drive was ( 5 hours to suez, 3 after). Then she asked to get out (of he window seat) to go to the bathroom. She went and came back and got back in. we sat in the running vehicle for a while (the mazada guy had left). After 30/45 minutes we got out. It's dark by now. The Mazada guy comes back and explains that the problem is that these guys can only get us to suez because of their permits, and he's working on arranging transportation to meet us in suez.

Some more time goes by. We learn that the Swiss guys have a 3 am flight they are trying to catch in Cairo. Poor saps. Eventually the Mazada guy comes back. The problem now is that he must arrange security including a police escort for us. People are freaking out, wondering if we will really get out at all.

We have sodas, use the rest room, hang out. Eventually Mazada guy comes back and loads us back on the vans. We wait a while. He tells us he has the escort and we start to leave at like 8 PM. Somebody asks "What about the transportation @ suez?" The mazada guy says that now these guys can take us the whole way.

We cover about ¼ mile, and get pulled over. Then the mazada guy pays some kind of fee for us. Then we are really off. Our police escort is a truck with police lights and a half dozen dudes in the back w/ guns (we also picked up another security guy. He appears to be just a big dude. He's wearing like a flannel shirt and has no weapon of any kind)

To be continued..

**********

12/13/2009

More than 2 years later I'm going to finish this story for posterity. So this is through the fog of memory wheras the above was fresh after returning.

The road from taba followed a winding canyon bed. Bedouin Villain flew down the road, clearly knowing the curves. At this point it was dead night, you could see the stars over the canyon rim, the light reflecting off the walls and the police lights of rou escort, which kept up with our furious speed. After a while we emerged and without stopping to talk the police escort just slowed down and eventually diappeared behind us. I later read in Cairo newpapers (and on the internet at home) that there had been hijackings and some political unrest in this general area, so maybe all the security was warranted. Or maybe it was all part of the Mazada scam.

After we came out of the canyon we where in what seemed to be open desert, just blackness and stars, and our vehichles barreling down the road. after an hour or so we had a rest stop. There were 2 buildings, a restaurant we stopped at and another a few hundred yards away on the opposite side of the road. The restaurant had a big nice tour bus parked in front of it that was marked as a Saudi bus. It was pretty lat at this point but the restaurant was open, and probably a regular stop on this route. And was pretty dirty and full of surly men. I went to the restroom which consisted of stalls and holes in the floor (painted though!). Later I was outside and the Arab lady with the children was telling the Mazada guy that she would not let her children use this restroom and was walking through the dark desert to the other building. Some of the passengers got food which they reported as being expensive and awful. I still had a reserve of my high quality snacks so I skipped it. We had been there 20 minutes or so and people started gathering around the van thinking we'd be getting ready to go when Bedouin Villain came out to the porch with fresh coffee, which he leisurely drank. Then he got a sheesha pipe and smoked it for a while. Then another coffee. The we see him get up and think we are finally leaving. He comes back with a prayer mat and does some prayers. We joked that we couldn't really complain about this delay, that having Allah on our side was probably a good idea (though it struck me as odd to do prayers randomly in the middle of the night, but maybe it was a make up prayer). Then he got another round of sheesha. We were shocked. Finally we got back in the van and went barelling through the desert. Hours and hours went by with nothing but blackness.

One topic of conversation was what was going to happen at Suez. Mazada guy had told us we were going all the way to Cairo. I didn't believe it. We had negotiated with this same guy who had told us he could only go to Suez. We had a small bet going on the question. Eventually a line of lights broke through the darkness. It was the Suez canal. It is a really strange thing to see at night because it sort of hovers on the horizon, a totally straight line. We got closer and eventually drive under it. On the other side we go through a checkpoint and into a parking lot. We are told to get out and get our luggage. I win the bet, gettting five Egyptian pounds (less than a US dollar) from all the losers. Mazada guy swears he has arranged for another van as Bedoin villain drives back to the other side of the canal. We all agreed we would miss the villain as he was a fun guy and an amazing driver.

There was a van in the parking lot that Mazada guy negotiated with to take us. He agreed but Mazada guy needed another van. While we waited wild dogs begged for food. Becky petted one and they all started following her, which evetually became threatening. One of our security guys threw a rock at the pack which got them to back off but they continued to pace a perimeter around us. Eventually and other van pulled in and Mazada guy worked out a deal. It was unclear if he had actually called them or if they were just coming to look for customers.

We got back on the road, in our new slightly more comfortable vans. Shortly the topic of conversation turned towards whether or not the Swiss guys would make their flight. Not long after Suez (it seemed) the sprawl of Cairo started. After seeing a little bit of civilization we crossed under a big highway. Then the vans abruptly pulled over. Mazada guy told the Swiss guys to get their things, apparently we were dropping them here for the airport. As they started to get their things a cab pulled over behind us. The driver got out and came over and talked to our driver. Meanwhile another cab driver got out and started helping the swiss guys with their luggage. When the first driver saw this he was furious and ran back there. They started yelling at each other vehemently. Mazada guy jumped in our vehicle and we spun out. As we started moving we saw the 1st cab driver start throwing haymakers, landing one or two on the other cab driver as the Swiss guys cowered by the side of the rode. The fight disappeared in the distance. I can only hope that upon the fights' conclusion the winner took them to the airport without further incident.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We drove through the outskirts of Cairo, and eventually to downtown. We dropped one person off before the final destitnation, the Chinese lady. She had booked some kind of inclusive deal with Mazada and we could only pity her. Of course the hotel said they didnt have her reservation but took her anyway. Then we went to a Cairo hotel (I think the Sheraton but Im not sure) where we were unceromoneously dropped and told to find further transportation. Which I did, luckily, cabs are not hard to find in Cairo even though it was around 4 in the morning.

1. Baksheesh is an Arab and especially Egyptian concept similar to tipping. But it's also like charity in that poor/destitute/cripple/sick people will ask for baksheesh. Sometimes kids just randomly ask for it for no reason. I had read that people will do stupid crap like open doors for you and expect baksheesh, and like if you visit a free mosque you still have to give baksheesh to the caretaker. But I must say I had very little illegitimate demand for baksheesh during my stay.

2008-05-03T21:38:00.001-07:00

Last September I went to the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinian Territories and Egypt.

It was of course a very interesting trip as few places pack more history (not to mention current intrigue). For some it also seemed like a risky proposition, not a vacation type scenario, but at this was (and remains) a calm period for the region and other than the certainly visible presence of security (kids in uniform with large guns everywhere, the occasional interrogation) Israel felt pretty safe and manageable, not to mention friendly. Then again, Israel did bomb Syria while we were there (now its generally conceeded that Israel bombed some type of nuclear facility but at the time all that was reported was that Sryia said Israel "violated it's airspace") so things can always change quickly.

Cairo was all bustle, all night. A huge cacophony where whole families are out in the middle of the night and the sidewalks constantly flow with people and the streets flow with cars. Throw in a hundred grand old mosques and the ancient pyramids just on the outskirts of town and you've got it.

Maybe I'll get back and write more about this trip but it's already been like 8 months so i wouldn't count on it. I'm mostly laying a tiny bit of groundwork for the next post which is a good story.

Slideshows available here for Egypt and here for Israel.

2007-11-25T10:32:00.000-08:00

We spent the latter part of our Thai holiday at the beach. We chose Ko Chang, an island near Cambodia, primarily because of elephants.

We took a short (and cheap) flight on bangkok airways and besides the fruit in the lunch smeeling exactly like bleu cheese, it was pleasant. Trat airport is tiny - an airstrip and a couple small pavilions. Then a shuttle takes you though some durian and rubber orchards to the ferry to the island.

Ko chang is a jungle island that is in some way supposed to resemble an elephant, but I don't get it. But they do have elephants here, and we rode one (I bathed and Allison fed it too). Allison asked our elephant's name and the mahout said "sii nueng" which means "41" in thai. But the elephant riding was great - we had a long ride though the jungle.

The beach was very nice too, the water was crystal clear and warm. One big problem of Ko Chang is transportation. The island is big enough that you can't walk to places but there are no real taxis/tuk tuks/ any hireable transport. On top of this our hotel would shuttle you around but at truly exorbitant fees (we're talking $20 US one way for a couple of miles and no way back, when we had maybe paid $20 total so far in the trip for taxi type transportation) This may have to do with the islands status as a national park, and I'm all for that, but it meant for us that we had to eat in the hotel a lot (the hotel's food was good though). Finally we solved this dilemma by taking our lives in our (my) hands and renting the ever popular motorbike, which I then drove us around the mountainous island on the left side of the road on.

The other thing Ko Chang is famous for is waterfalls, and the one we went to (Klong phu) was very cool, literally and figuratively. You hike up a sort trail to the waterfall where you can swim in the icy, pristine, water. I loved it, though I got in trouble from a thai park ranger (I guess that's what he was) for swimming in the upper pool of the falls - I thought I had seen other people do it.

2007-11-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

Ayuthaya has some of Thailands best (and most hyped and touristed) ruins. It is also a pleasant little town if you prefer that to the rush of Bangkok.

One note - we stayed @ the Krungsri River Hotel, which is very convenient to the train station but on the wrong side of the river for the tourist stuff and the restaurants, and the only way across is a giant highway bridge with no sidewalks, thus any time you want to go anywhere you enter the tuk tuk/saamlaw gauntlet - you will have to negotiate the price of a ride. Lots of the guys are fair enough with you but some aren't and this can be stressful wen you just want to get something to eat and wish you cold walk but know you can't. I had an altercation with one guy who told us one price and then asked for almost double when we got to our destination - feigning misunderstanding. After some heated argument we met in the middle and I realized we were fighting over something like US $2, but mostly I resented being taken advantage of.

2007-11-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

We came to Lopburi for monkeys and ruins and it did not disappoint. As I was telling Allison to secure all her belongings a monkey ran up and snatched her bag containing a water bottle. He then sat down, unscrewed the cap and drank her remaining water. I tried to get the bottle back from him but he ran off with it, and chewed on it some more. I guess he figured if I wanted it back there must be something good about it. We also got a good meal in Lopburi - duck noodle soup from a street vendor, there were plenty of mystery parts floating in there, some of which I determined to be liver, but still it was delicious.

And while you couldn't describe Thai trains as comfortable, they really aren't that bad either. Aging yes, and on the way back, no AC but not overly crowded, and not full of livestock.

2007-11-25T09:13:00.000-08:00

Bangkok is a megalopolis with around 7 million people, but apart from the traffic, it is not nearly as daunting as others (such as Mexico City) because for the most part there are clusters of skyscapers popping up from large expanses of area. But development continues out from the center, seemingly forever.

We took a a couple of different boats (one a scary fast longtail boat and the other a relaxing ferry) to get to the historical district downtown. This was in the thick of summer and Bangkok's weather was typical - brief rain in the morning, and balmy sun for the rest of the day with big fluffy clouds providing a little shade and a spot shower or two. Allison found the heat stifling. I got a hat to cover my freshly shaved head and was comfortable (if profusely sweaty, but that doesn't bother me most of the time). We visited the ornate Grand Palace complex, the giant reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, and the urban crunch of MBK.

A note on green papaya salad (som tam). It sounds delicious, and it can be. But there are whole dried chilis in there. I don't know if you are supposed to eat these, and if so, how, but I (who likes spicy food mind you) tried valiantly to eat this but made myself pretty sick and couldn't even eat whatever noodles I had ordered besides. So I say if you order this, pick those peppers out before you start eating.

2007-07-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

Thai Holiday

This is the view from the Jain's window in Bangkok, on the first day of our trip. We had arrived at Suvarnabumi the previous night after roughly 20 hours of flying, and taken a long (but still cheap, probably in the cab for an hour for less than US $10) cab ride through the Bangkok night. As is often the case there were dramatic thunderstorms in the distance (as was also the case this morning). The Jains were ideal hosts, feeding us often and providing substantial logistical support.

Our clocks were severely tweaked from the time change and we woke up very eaarly for pretty much the entire trip. So this morning I started playing with the SLR I had borrowed from Tim for the trip. There were several odd fauna about, including a monitor lizard that swam by and a strange looking squirrel. Later Allison asked Mrs. Jain what was the thing we saw that looked like a squirrel and she sais "That was a squirrel".

2007-04-27T09:05:00.001-07:00

Now I deliver

six months later.

2006-11-28T19:49:00.000-08:00

Mexico City is big, the hugest.

more to come...

Pictures to follow.

2006-10-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Austin TX likes to party, any night of the week 6th steet is hopping.It also claims to be the "live music capital of the world" and that may be the case, but as far as I can tell that doesn't necessarily mean "good live music".

While in Austin I did a barbeque pilgrimage to Lockhart TX. You can read the full review here.

We also made a side trip to the sleepy town of Bryan TX.

2006-09-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the length between posts, but travel has been slow and on my last trip (Boulder, CO) I forgot the camera. But here are some shots from TS Ernesto in VA.

And a few Richmond VA beauty shots.

2006-08-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

2006-08-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

I was in Miami last week, little Havana to be specific, calle ocho to be specific-er, sitting in front of Versailles to be specificer still. Cuban Ameicans were celerating the hospitalization and ceding of power of Fidel Castro. It was a somewhat sordid spectacle, cheering the sickness of an old man, but hey, many of these people have good reasons to hate the guy.

2006-07-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Nashville Skyline

Speant a night in Nashville, saw a little country (rockabilly) on broadway, and speant a lot of time in traffic driving back. Nashville seemed pretty fun, maybe I'll get back some time.

2006-07-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

Is NOLA Still Under Water?

Well yes, and no. I last week's brief stay I was only ever in the parts of New Orleans that had never been severely affected by Katrina and her aftermath, that is downtown and the French Quarter. These areas were business as usual. But there was improvement over when I was last in the city last fall. It used to be the case that when you drove over the canal on I-10 (the major highway into the city) you immedeately saw lingering damage in the form of watermarks and strikingly thousands of abandoned cars. The cars have finally been moved and the wtermarks are being painted over. There also used to be huge piles of garbage nearby that are no longer visible. So now you could truly travel into the city, stay a few days and leave without knowing the reckoning that took place.

But it is my understanding that there are still very large areas of the town that appear to be untouched since the storm, which underlines the magnitude of what happened - we are almost a year past the disaster.

I heard an interersting conversation about people buying properties cheap in Lakeview, fixing the houses and selling them at huge profits. I found this bewildering, not on the part of the developers, but that the market would have buyers for exepnsive houses right on a faulty levee. The person talking had a line that went something like this: the government (the administration and the army Corps of engineers who build levees) was so embarrassed by what happened after Katrina that they will build impenatrable levees before the next major storm hits the area. This seems like a dubious proposition. I'm not sure such levees can be built and if they can the government has not yet demonstrated that to the point that that I'd be willing to bet my financial well being on it. But then again, New Orleans attracts a different kind of folks.

till next time.

2006-07-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

Let's bring back the blog ok? I will be travelling a lot soon so then this will live up to it's name but for now lets talk about some records.

Bring back O'rourke

The new (ok so it's not that new anymmore) Sonic Youth is a decent record, but doesn't quite live up to the hype. You have to envy a band like SY sometimes because they can put out somthing very basic, that sounds like outtakes from 15 years ago and get good reviews for it. And you also have to admire the way they can get away with really dumb lyrics and still be considered a smart band:

Sleepin around. All over town. What will the neighbors say? ... what you did was wrong... nuthin you did was right. always end up in a fight.

That's just bad. Did I mention I've been reading a lot of reviews? The basic story line goes like this... After a decent string of records following their late 80s brilliance they had definitively lost their way w/ NYC Ghosts and Flowers, a noise and ambiance record that completely jettisoned the pop song format. There was no real singing, no verse/chorus structure and very few riffs. So they were written off, they had after 20 years decended back into the NY experimental noise morrass from whence they came. Then a couple years later they put out Murray St. Now I didn't think it was all that good of a record, they brought the pop songs back but left plenty of noise in. My problem was that the songs weren't that good and that there were only 7 of them (and one of those was a Free Kitten throwaway*). And I thought I remembered the critics at the time not liking it any more than may. But reading them now, I either had a false recollection or they have been rehabbed, because now it is agreed that Murray St. is brilliant. And then comes Sonic Nurse. I loved that one but critcs say it almost lived up to Murray St. It is a real album, it shows growth, there are several new and good sounds that Sonic Youth had never shown before in their 20+ years, like the classic Unmade Bed (a great bass line, Steve Shelley at his best, Thurston's voice actually working) I love You Golden Blue (meaningful ambiance) and even Peace Attack.

But the new record is a "return to rock". One persistent "compliment" is something along the lines of "what it used to take them seven minutes to do they can now do in 3.5" What? Why? This is Sonic Youth we are talking about. Is there some known quantity of songy goodness that a band has to give you and then leave as soon as possible? Should everyone be the Minutemen? So all those songs that were longer than 3.5, that was just amatuer filler that they have finally learned to cut out? I'm a sucker for loving all 4:37 of Schizophrenia? The 6:37 of Teenage Riot**? And those are tight songs, this is leaving aside spacey but good stuff like Expressway to yr Skull or Diamond Sea. Sonic Youth do not get credit for recording short songs.

On top of that several of the songs here have incongrous riffs butted together. it's almost as if SY knew the mad props they would get ofr short songs and cut out all of the stuff that might make the music make sense. But as it is it feels cut and paste.
Take the Nuetral. I love the light and airy opening riff, but then it's butted to this very generic grimey rock riff. It's not helped by embarrasing lyrics: "Close your eyes and lose the rest...close yr mind and feel the best".

What a waste? Exactly.

The only new sound here is Do you believe in Rapture which is cute and all but neither a song that you want to listen to repeatedly nor one that works with the album. And Lee has the worst song here, Rats, which while not the Pearl Jam cover you fear, might leave you wishing it was.

Say something nice? I don't hate it, it's enjoyable. It's Sonic Youth you could play at a non tightly screened barbeque. I like Incinerate and Turqouise Boy a lot.

* I say this as a Free Kitten fan. But you know people could say "tell me the difference between Free Kitten and when Kim sings?" there used to be an easy demonstrable difference, but Plastic Sun just sounds like mediocre Free Kitten.

** I guess you could cut the inro, but I'm keeping it.

2006-03-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

So last week I speant a couple days in Kentucky and a couple in St. Louis.

Kentucky has a lot of horses. Really. They also have lot of of people who smoke cigarettes (at 28% of the population they are the smokinest state in the US). This makes it ironic, or at least interesting, that they are the 1st state to charge state employees who smoke a monthly surcharge for their health insurance.

I had been to St. Louis once before, but this was a quick and work filled trip so I can't say I got much of a feel for the town. But the story of Aaron Woodson, a young boy killed by a truck passing his schoolbus was sad.

2006-02-21T22:38:00.000-08:00

So I got jokes. The old site for jokes is here but it's a group thing were none of the other members seem interested in it any more so I think I'll move the jokes over here.

I noticed the other day that my dogs (fru fru) shampoo says "not tested on animals". Don't I want it to be? Aren't I testing it on my dog?

Also, I think it would be a good idea to cut of one of your arms, in case you ever need to murder someone. Not only would the cops never take seriously a witness that said "it was the 1 armed man" but I bet few people would even be able to tell the cops that with a straight face.

2005-11-27T10:09:00.000-08:00

In ruined city

Someone could come to New Orleans and stay in the French quarter and not really know anything is wrong. Beyond that, there are pockets of near normalcy: some streets in the Garden District, bits of downtown. But beyond that, there are still vast tracts of destruction and decay.

There are mammoth debris piles near the 17th street canal (the site of one of the major breeches) out of which some materials are painstakingly separated out for burning. But these giant piles of garbage are manified when you see that there are huge areas that seem untouched since the storm, like it could have happened yesterday with cars still on fences, appliances and mardi gras beads strewn. This clean up is a massive project.

And then there's the discussions of rebuilding. I morn New Orleans but what scares me most is that it will be rebuilt. The political pressure at all levels, from the mayor to the president seems to me to be irresistable. Bush says he will rebuild it, Nagin says he will rebuild it. Both say "better, or stronger" but all plans say "the same". I heard it directly from the Army Corps of Enigneers that their goal is to build the levees to pre Katrina strength - that is their mandate. I heard Mayor Nagin assure New Orleanians that the 9th ward will be rebuilt, where it was and for the same low income residents. All of this adds up to the same thing happening the next time a hurricane gets within a couple hundred miles of NOLA.

But bon temps can still be had there. It still has it's charm.

This piece captures the situation well.

2005-11-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

Wow I didn't realize I never finished the Spain stuff. Suffice it to say Sevilla was great and Granada breathtaking.

2005-10-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

Today we took a quick Altaria (but not the quicker Ave) train from Madrid to Sevilla. The train left from Madrid's Atocha station, site of the most casualties of the March 11, 2004 terrorist bombings.

2005-10-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

Me gusta Espana.

But we knew that already. Tapas style eating is my cup of tea. Small plates of good stuff, a drink or 2 and on to the next spot.

Today was an art day. Classical in the morning at the Prado, and modern in the afternoon at Reina Sophia. At the Prado you have Velasquez, Goya, el Greco, Borsch and others. They have 1 Rembrandt. I was quite unimpressed with it. Noone would stop at that run of the mill royal potrait if they didn't know it was a Rembrandt (to prove this theory, the un had walked right by it until I pointed it out to her). I liked the Goya, escpecially the dark stuff.

We took a break for lunch and sat in Retiro for a while after failing to find the pond. Then we headed over to Reina Sophia. It houses a lot of great modern art including Picasso's famous and great Guernica. They have a lot of cool sculpture and I have now been hipped to Miro. They also have a good amount of Dali (I still can't decide if he's cool or lame). And as if I didn't have the Pixies' Debaser firmly planted in my head (because I was headed to Andalucia the next day and that song's chorus is "I am un chien Andalusian") the museum was showing two films in an exhibit, one of which was Un Chien Andolou, the surrealist film the song was about in the first place.

In Madrid we didn't do real siestas, so we ended up being pretty tired.

2005-10-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hola ellos! En Madrid now (via Amsterdam and Copenhagen). I've had computer problems so the blogging thing has gone out the window. But I'll try to work backwards at some point.

peace for now.

2005-10-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

I was offended by a Danish newspaper graphic. All the headlines are about Turksh ascension to the EU (it was announced that initial negotiations will begin in a couple years, which pretty much mean that Turkey will be in the EU eventually) and one paper had a woman in a Burka made of the EU flag.

Guys, nobody in Turkey wears the Burka. In fact they never have. But even the hijab (a small headscarf) was until recently discouraged (I think now it's a little more accepted in the name of religious freedom. In Istanbul I saw a few, but only on teenage girls). The insinuation though, that Turkey will seek to foist strict Islam or conservative Islamic culture on Europe is ridiculous. Turkey is secular, almost as uch so as Europe itself. There are reasons to be against Turkish EU ascention, but the idea that Turkey wants to oppress their women is silly.

2005-10-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

So Copenhagen is a fun town.

The un and I did a little Rick Steves tour, ate some Smorbrod, did some shopping, and got a little lost a couple times.

Neon advertising is ubiquitous on historic looking buildings, but it's tastefully done and works, in a minor league baseball outfield kind of way.

That's the thing about Copenhagen, it feels totally harmless, maybe a little too harmless. Even the red light district feels innocent, even the agreesive panhandlers seem safe.

And yeah, everything is expensive, but it's hard to really judge considering the exchange rate of a Kroner to a US dollar is something like 6 to 1.

2005-10-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

Allison booked our Copenhagen hotel in the red light district.

2005-10-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam's Schiphol airport is the single greatest airport I've ever been too. It's big, nice, fun and it works. There is stuff to do. There is an observation deck. There is even a museum (I didn't make it there though). Lot's of good food options, including an in airport grocery store.

There was also a weird blue-man-group-style message crawl in one stairwell with strange quasi political (and English language) messages. They made me laugh. The only one I can sort of remember was something like "Self confidence is ignorance".

2005-10-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

Sabiha

So it was me, a seemingly experienced British backpacker girl and a poor German girl who had accidentally come to the airport a day late at Sabiha Gokchen airport in the wee hours today. Then came a bunch of Amsterdamers on the same discount flight as me.

The weird thing is that I was sitting there thinking "boy all these guys are really tall". Then later I went and got in line and noticed, they were all around the same height as me (5'11").

Weird huh?

Also: I've now officially been to Asia.

2005-10-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Istanbul has mad traffic even at 3 AM.

I've got no good reason to believe it isn't backed up around the clock.

But mass transit is good, at least in touristy areas.

2005-10-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am cold people

So I've done most of the touristy stuff I wanted to do in Istanbul.

Today I wound things down walking the Istikal Caddesi and chilling in Taksim (Though I never found the Ottoman military History museum I was halfheartedly looking for) and then I headed back to Sultanahmet. I had a couple hours to burn and since the archaelogical museum was closed when I got there I decided to just sit and read on a bench in fron of Tokapi palace. While reading a young lady on the bench next to me struck up a conversation. She went out on a limb and started in English. At first I was trying to blow her off and keep reading. I was giving short answers and going back to the book.

Eventually I decided to be polite and make small talk. After talking about family and jobs and such I tried to talk politics, as I am much more interested in other peoples thoughts about public issues than how many siblings they have (that's just me folks). I asked about EU ascention and she said she didn't really know (but she did say she liked to watch the news). Her english was decent, though we did arrive at a few linguistic impasses. I was reading Soul on Ice, try explaining the civil rights and black power movements to someone with very little knowledge of American history and a tenous grasp on English.

As the conversation dragged on I start getting a little trepidatious. We had been talking for at least a half hour, and no sparks were flying. So I started thinking she wanted something from me - why continue the boring stilted conversation otherwise? Indeed she offered to tell me some story and show me something at the nearby hippodrome. I then decided she was a "guide" looking to show me around (for tips) and I declined, saying I had already been there (and I had). So now I was just looking for an out. She picked up on it, responding that I had a "spider in my mind", and that I didn't "trust her" (which I didn't deny) when I asked what she was doing for the day. I told her it was only fair as she had asked me the same thing - and I had answered. Eventually she settled on "I like green places" and that she had just come to the park to sit (a long way from her home on the Asian side if you ask me).

Somehow we ended up walking together, which I had been hoping to avoid becaus eI thought it would lead to a "guide" situation. We talked a little more and she was making some point about something I didn't get and I threw in one of my few turkish phases "Anlahmiyorum" (I don't understand) to which she replied snappily in Turkish. She explained in English that she had said a cliche meaning "It's your problem not mine". I told her she was right, that she speaks good English while I speak very little Turkish. We walked a few more blocks and she asked where I was goign and I told her I was going to the hotel to sit on the roof and finish my book. After another block we parted ways.

I said "nice to meet you". She said "nice to meet you". Then after a moment passed she turned and said "no it was not nice to meet you. You are very cold, cold people. You only want to talk about politics".

To which I replied "Uzgoonum" (I'm sorry).

I felt bad because It was never clear (and still isn't) that she was trying to hustle me. She could have just been a chatty girl. But still I don't feel that bad because I was plenty polite and is it my responsibility to entertain her?

2005-09-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Now I'm finally getting scammed! I was beginning to think I wasn't pretty or something.

The boat riding went down as planned. Sort of, that was scam one. I was armed only with a little info from the internet to look for "TML" for a ferry that would cost $5 round trip, and the ride would be about 2 hours each way, and a the far end I could get off and eat fish (take note, I'm desiring fish now, it comes into play later). Well I can't find no "TML" and I don't remember the name of the exact place I want to go (something like Anadolu Kavagli). I just kind of assumed ther would be one going north, south and across to Hadarpasha (the Asian side). I thought that pretty much all I'd have to do was find the northbound one, and take it all the way.

Well there's lots more boats than that, and they aren't clearly marked, and they go all different ways. So I hear something familiar - "Bosphorous" and say ok. Now I had glanced at a ferry price and saw 7.50 YTL round trip. So when this guy says "20 YTL" I almost said no. But didn't, I'd already wandered a lot at this point and wanted to get on a boat. I knew at least that this was in the general direction I wanted to go in. SO I say OK. I ask where the ticket window is and he says just to pay him. This is also bad but I do it. Then he doesn't have the right bills to make change, so he wanders off with my money, leaving me short.

Surprise, he actually comes back eventually with the 10 YTL he owes me. But still no ticket, I can just get on. Well at this point there are only 3 other guys up there, so I was sure that the way this would go down is that he would take us way out, drop us, and leave us. Then when the next ferry comes along we'd have to pay again because we have no ticket.

Turs out though he was running at least a semi legit operation. Lots more people get on and it's not really a "round trip", it just goes in a big loop, no stops. I wonder if everybody else paid as much as me though... All in all it worked out though considering this, a slow boat up the Bosphorous, is something I really wanted to do and if the going rate was 20, I wouldn't blink.

But then after dropping by the hotel room I really do get scammed. I still wanted fish and had noticed a poster for a fish place behind my hotel. (It's called somthing like Sabahattin in Sultanahmet). Anyway they got me with a tourist trick where they give you stuff you don't order. Turkish fish restaraunts don't usually have menus. You either tell them what fish you want or they tell you what they have and you agree on a price (more like they tell you market price). So as soon as I sat down I realized the place was a little too "nice" but I decided to give it a shot. I have speant no more than 7 YTL ($5ish) for any meal up to this point, but I wanted some fish. So I decided that I would do it unless it was more than 20. Well I ended up ordering bonito for 25. So then he brings out the meze (appetizers). And I submitted to a salad. The salad was brought out with a sort of milky fish dish. It rang alarm bells because I had only seconds ago ordered the salad. I almost said "No take this back, I didn't order it". But the fish was tunaesque so I assumed it was bonito (which in American sushi restaraunts at least is a kind of tuna). I ate it and waited a long time, presumably just to ask for a check. And just when I was about to do so the waiter shows up with a plate full of fish. Wow. I had fallen for the gambit - but only because the apetizer was plausibly my entree.

So my bill was 40YTL. Thats 5 for salad and 10 for soup or vice versa or 7.50 each. Any way you cut it, expensive stuff. And the entree was actually plenty. I was pissed but knew I had no case. "You ate it, you have to pay" would surely have been the answer.

The rest of the day was uneventfull, I wnet back to a tried and true Kuftechi from last night for dinner. I just didn't want any surprises at this point.

I'm back in the saddle tommorrow.

2005-09-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Hey Istanbul, how about some public trashcans?

A public trashcan?

I'd think twice about buying a Coke if I knew the commitment involved.

2005-09-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well I really touristed it up today.

It rained steadily until about 5p and my punk self did not bring a poncho, so I was soaked most of the time.

I started off at Tokapi palace, the palace of the sultans...

It was alright. They make you buy a seperate ticket to get into the Harem, the Sultan's family's private quarters. I bet they only get more money for it because of the titalation of the word "harem" in the west. I think you expect to see giant beds and mirrored cielings and poles. But mostly it's a bunch of relatively nice rooms. Nothin sexy about it really (except maybe the swimming pool, not that there was anything sexy about the swimming pool, just that it was one place where you could picture all the concubines frolicking together, perhaps naked). the rest pf the palace was pretty nice, but not overwhelming (I skipped the also extra treasury which may have had the wowee zowee jewels). The coolest part was the religious relics Sultans had collect. Some of Mohammed's (SAW) red beard hairs, a tooth and a "footprint" were there (how do you get a "footprint"? Did he step in cement for someone? Also seeing the prophet's sword and the swords of his companions was pretty cool.

Then I went over to Hagia Sophia, a giant church built by Roman (Byzantine) Emporer Justinian. It's got a weird cuteness about it. Maybe it's the blush pink color. And the Muslims who took it over during the conquest had really poor taste in erecting 4 minarets - 3 in gray stone and 1 in brick. It looks real unprofessional. On the inside they did very little besides inscibing a nice banner on the dome, no doubt saying "there is no god but God and mohammed is his profit. They also hung some big disks with Arabic on them.

I checked out a Byzantine cistern, a James Bond set which they had the forsight to build 1500 years ago.

And I went over to galata and climbed the tower.

Tommorrow I say less walking, more boat ridin'

peace.

2005-09-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

Atlanta World

Forgot to mention this: While I was taking the train in I'm 90% sure I saw a big Hense tag on an overpass (too quick to draw the camera). For those unfamiliar (who don't take MARTA) Hense is Atlanta's premiere graffiti artist. I don't know if he even lives in Atlanta but he's the one you see most and one of the best, artisticly. So he beaet me to Istanbul. Amazing.

Also not long after the guy sitting across from me was listening to Usher featuring Lil John and Ludacris' "Yeah". That song was ubiquitous among headphone wearing Marta patrons last year.

So the train pretty much felt like home.

On a related note, I guess I see where these cultaral imperialism alarmists are coming from. I don't really mind that young Turks like American music, I'm happy about it in fact, but why does it have to be crappy American music. The Usher song is, decent, but the other stuff I've been hearing is all April Levine and 50 cent. In other words, garbage.

2005-09-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Night Shots

2005-09-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Getting there

I started off yesterday by begging a ride of the developer at my um, developement to the train station and then realizing I forgot my camera. Well that wouldn't do, so I ended up having to take a cab to the airport. An expensive mistake (the camera, not the cab, I was running late and wouldn't have made it otherwise.) So I was dwelling on that during the 1st 2 fligths (Atl - Dulles, Dulles - CDG). I always try to sleep on long flights but it never really happens.

Air France gave some nice encoutrements: headphones but also a mask and earplugs. I should have kept the earplugs but didn't think about it at the time. And you know what else? I love airplane food. It is almost always good. I think I like the variety of tiny things. I don't know, I understand that this is a minority viewpoint.

So then we get to CDG very early in the morning, about 6a local time. I've always wondered why they show you the ugliest part of CDG first - the arrivals go through very cold ugly steel and concrete corridors. Ten the deprture area is reasonably nice. Whatver, they also sceintifically calculate the chairs to make them impossible to sleep on so I've read a whole lot of Eric Schlosser's "Refer Madness". I knew I had 4 hours to burn until the flight to Istanbul, scheduled for 10A.

Then it was delayed. Eventually at 11 or so they tell us to go to a different gate at the other end of the terminal. Then we wait another 30 minutes or so. Then they put us on buses and drive us way around to the plane. And we wait some more. A van marked "Nationale Police" shows up and the cops hustle 2 guys into the back of the plane, in hoods and cuffs. People chatter (at least one takes a picture). Once we boarded, one of the detainees is just yelling at the cops. I think he was speaking French and I like to think I heard him repeating "I'm a Morrocan" ("Magrebi, Magrebi")*. The assumption, I suppose most people had was that they were illegal imigrant deportees. So after a lot of this guy screaming and the cops failing to shut him up, the pilot starts complaining to the cops. He says the deportees are a "risk to the passengers". I don't know about risk (there were at least 2 cops per unarmed, cuffed deportee) but they were a nuisance. After the cops versus pilot thing wnet back and forth a couple times superiors got called and the pilot won. The cops and detainees disembarked and we got in the air at least 2 hours after we were supposed to.

In Istanbul I walked right past the Visa counter (with no line) to the passport counter and waited in a short line. Then the guy told me I had to have a Visa. Then I went and got in the now prodigious visa line. Then back in a now interminable passport line. I also copped out and let this little old lady in front of me at the very end, and turned out she had two other ladies with her and their documents weren't straight. Plus, she didn't have a visa.

A train and a tram later and I'm in the heart of the city. It is definitely a metropolis. And definitely European, with a little asian around the edges - especially in driving styles a commerce.

Iyi Geceler boys and girls.

*The implication being "I'm an illegal Morrocan, not Turk you idiot, don't send me to Turkey.

PS - 1 good thing about having to go back for the visa? I found a 10 quid bill on the floor.

2005-09-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Last year Hurricane Ivan hit near Mobile AL. I had been with a crew starting in the Florida keys and following Ivan's path to Panama City and then Mobile and then Biloxi MS (we overshot him a little). That storm damaged some buildings and dumped a lot of rain in Biloxi. It peeled some aluminum off our hotel and gave our satellite truck a scare, but sitting on the beach the next day it was clear that Biloxi would soon recover.

Not so for Katrina. Biloxi looked much worse when I arrived a week after the storm than anywhere I've seen after a hurricane. Last year Biloxi's floating casinos had water and wind damage; this year the giant barges had been lifted over the highway and placed over the highway 1/4 mile inland. Last year houses sustained damage; this year entire neighborhoods are rubble. The coastal highway looks like an earthquake hit it, several large bridges are knocked down, dominos style.

The cleanup effort is also much more massive. Biloxi is swarmed with troops, National Guard directing traffic as well as Navy Seabees working on construction, members of all US services mounting relief operations. In addition to that I met a Dutch sailor, spanish language media extensively covered Mexican troops in the area and we also saw the Canadian Navy. A flipside of the military relief operations is that travel around the small strip that Biloxi is on is very slow and difficult, which made the long hours of field work even longer, and made it much harder to feed things on time. In addition to the military presence there are police and firemen from around the country on the gulf coast. We saw the Atlanta Fire Department and the NYPD. There are also thousands of volunteers from the Red Cross and other groups as well as some individuals who came on their own.

We shot stories in other coastal towns: Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Waveland. Gulfport's major import is bananas, which accounts for the giant chiquita containers (as in the kind an 18 wheeler hauls) all over the place: on porches, in storefronts, in the street. The beach at Bay St. Louis is relative high ground and it was under lots of water. In Waveland I saw a boat in a Burger King drive through. All along the coast it was dusty, smelled like death, and was hot.

Many of the poor do not have house insurance and are now destitute. Among people who do have insurance many had only "wind and storm". What happens to them is that the adjuster will look at their house and say they will cover everything above the water line. One man in a story we did had a water line on his wall about 7 feet high, nothing below that would be covered. I don't know what I'd do if I were one of these people.

With only a few exceptions people were grateful for our presence. They would thank us for what we were doing, they want the country (and world) to understand their plight.

2005-09-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

I live in Atlanta. Earlier this year I was in Shreveport, and we contemplated a side trip to New Orleans for a couple days. I may have even couched the proposition in terms of "we should go again before it's gone". In the end we didn't go. I think it was 7 hours out of the way. Plus we had the puppy with us, so we would have had to find a puppy friendly hotel.

I thought we still had a few years. The way major hurricanes had always missed New Orleans in the past I thought there was some environmental reason they always missed, some force or cycle that the meteorological hadn't figured out yet.

That or magic.

It turns out it was just statistics, the same way you can actually win at a slot machine for a while but if you play long enough house always makes the money back.

So we didn't go. But we should have. My regrets would be amplified had I not been there once last year. I'm not going to pose like New Orleans is my favorite place or that I have a special connection, only that it was certainly a special place. It was genuinely weird for real reasons, it's multi hued cultural heritage and it's geographic predicament. And while I would not want to live there, it was a fantastic place to visit. And the un, she has never been.

(Sorry, I wrote this on Tuesday or Wednesday but hadn't had a chance to put it up yet)