Finding History II

11th November 2006 Somewhere near Aswan.

As I write this we're gently cruising down the Nile on our Felucca, lying in the sun, and generally just blobbing out. I bought some supplies this morning - 24 bottles of water and 24 bottles of beer. I also picked up a kheffiyah and along the way sold my watch. I got about 50 bucks for it so I've actually come out ahead on the haggling today. More so considering the watch was just a cheap knock off I picked up in Thailand.

5pm - Stopped for dinner and beer and discover the booze is non-alcoholic. Egypt strikes again! As the sun sets we're sitting around on deck having a smoke on a water pipe. Life doesn't get much better than this. The guys at home would be so jealous - I must send them a card and let them know what they are missing as this is definitely the best part of Egypt.

12th November - On the Nile.
12.30 pm - not much happening today. Got woken at the crack of dawn by the muezzin then paid a quick visit to a temple at Kom-ombo. Back on the Felucca in time for a quick rain storm. Not what we expected in Egypt with the desert so close.

5pm - We've just noticed how the crew on the felucca are preparing our meals. All the food and utensils are being washed in the Nile ... I foresee a lethal case of the shits somewhere in the immediate future!! Still it's probably irrelevant as we've been swimming in the river several times. So if dysentery doesn't get me he Bilharzia still might.

There's a mixed bunch of us on this boat. Tim and Anton (South African) are OK. They've been working in Israel before coming here and are looking after a pair of Hungarian guys who don't speak much english (and even less Arabic) and are trying to save them from being ripped off by the locals. There's an Aussie called Richard - a physio by trade having a bit of a world wander. And lastly, but not leastly, there are what I like to call the hard core trio; Seamus (Irish) and Michael and John (both Aussies). They're into their pot and generally having a good time as often as they can.

6pm Still moving downriver after dark which is a little hairy as we have no lights on our Felucca. It makes it hard for the multitude of tour barges, that ply incessantly up and down river, to see us.

13th November Still on the Nile.

7am - Wow what an eventful night. We sailed as close as we could to Edfu after dark. As the light dropped we could see these filthy black clouds and lightening way off in the desert. Assumed it was a sandstorm. We somehow lost the guys on the other Felucca so just tied up and had some dinner.

Then it started to piss down. The rain was coming down in bucketfuls and there was absolutely no shelter on deck where we've been sleeping at night. We quickly looked like a motley bunch of bedraggled souls so the skipper and his offsider took pity on us and invited us to share the small cabin they have at the front of the boat. Talk about cramped - just try getting 8 people into a space designed for two. It made drunken twister look mundane! Poor old Anton got hit on majorly by the skipper. Tim's a blonde chap and the Arab's love blondes (of either sex). They have a saying "Women for work, boys for pleasure". He fled outside and ended up sleeping outside in the downpour muttering something about preferring pneumonia over a stretched sphincter.

9.15 PM - caught up with the guys from the other boat. They were happy to see us as we're carrying all the food. Their night had been as wet as ours but worse in that they had bugger all to eat.

We met another group of Felucca cruisers today. Turns out their trip was an absolute horror. Drugged food, girls sexually molested by the crew, and widespread tummy bugs. One girl was so bad (ie running at both ends) they resorted to putting a life jacket on her and towing her behind their boat. Not so pleasant for her - but less shit splatter on board .... apparently.


Our Felucca captain gave us a good send off. Though Anton copped it again. The captain was imploring him to stay with him. Even blew him a kiss or three as we were on the bus leaving. Needless to say we thought it was hilarious. Anton was less amused.

Finding History

So I've just moved house. Shifting is always an interesting experience. Not so much for all the hassle and stress, but more for the stuff you find that you forgot you even had.

After having most of my possessions packed away in boxes for the best part of three years opening some of them turned up all sorts of unexpected stuff.

Case in point the travel diary I kept from a trip I did almost 13 years ago. Here are a few excerpts:

4th November 1996 (Bangkok)
Went temple touring this morning (Golden Mount and Golden Buddha) in a tuk tuk. A nerve-wracking experience in BK traffic - involved a lot of flinches and prayers. Pretty cheap though at 20B an hour but you have to put put up with the scams the drivers try to snooker you into. Usually gemstones. I bought a watch for 600B which promptly broke when I tried to put it on.

Bangkok 1 - me 0.

Somehow in 35 degree heat I've managed to catch a cold. Go figure that one out!

7th November 1996 (Bangkok-Cairo)
4am - currently flying over Saudi Arabia and can see cities and oil rigs in the gulf all lit up like candles. We made the airport safely tonight but did see a American tourist getting ripped off in Khaosan Road over a tour. The people at the travel agents looked like they were about to deck him. Their country their rules I suppose. But if the guy hadn't been so obnoxious to them maybe they might have been prepared to compromise?

Flying on Egypt Air which is interesting, Food is ok and the service is good but I think me and Lisa (my travelling companion) are the only westerners on the plane.

8.30 am - Drama in the wee hours!! Lisa was majorly culture shockede on our arrival (to be fair I was too but perhaps not quite as openly as her). A tout tried to rip us off and our taxi driver subsequently did as well. The 20 pound fare from the airport was probably about right but then the driver added on a heap of extra charges which I'm sure were dodgy.

7.45 pm- What a day!! It began with Lisa still being apprehensive about being ripped off by unscrupulous Egyptians. This wasn't helped when we were accosted at the hotel's reception by a pair of gentlemen offering us a deal to go and see the pyramids. Lisa was very worried and I was none too confident myselof either!

The deal was 25 pounds ($NZ11) for a ride to Giza, Saqqara and then back to the hotel refreshments included. Too good to be trues we thought. However this guy (turns out he is a dentist .... "just call me Doc'")was very insistent. He even pulled out a folder full of glowing references from other backpackers as well as a TYNT article in which he featured.

At this point I began to be convinced ... barely. Lisa was very dubious and left the decision up to me (if something goes wrong I get the blame?).

Took the chance and it paid off!

First he took us to a cafe for coffee and a nargileh (water pipe). Spent a very happy half hour there. Then it was off to a papyrus institute. More free drinks. I caved and bought a scroll for may father. Fisher, an errant Aussie whom we'd collected on the trip bought two.

Next it was off to the pyramids where we were plonked on the back of some very scrawny horses and rode round the area for about three hours. Poor creatures - they are so badly looked after that they literally drop dead from exhaustion (there was evidence to be seen!). I refused to trot or gallop my steed. I felt bad enough riding it to be honest.

We went inside Chrephen Pyramid. If you suffer from claustrophobia I'd suggest giving it a miss. I climbed the Great Pyramid (against all the rules - more on this later) and thenj it was off to the Stepped Pyramid at Saqqara. Spent the late afternoon and dusk walking around the ruins.

The Doc' bought us dinner then helped us book a felucca crusie on the Nile. The total cost of the day (including the cruise that we're about to go on and its associated travel and accomodation) was less than $NZ100. Not bad for a first day in a new country.

That's the saccharine stuff. I'll pull out some of the dodgier episodes and post them later.

Bus Trips From Hell

A word to the wise from one who knows.

If you're about to take a 12 hour bus trip and you're feeling a little peaky then think long and hard about delaying your journey.

Do not do what I did in Turkey last month. While eating dinner an hour before an 800 km trip from Istanbul to Goreme I started feeling slightly nauseous. Not wanting to be a big girls blouse and go through the hassle of rebooking bus tickets I decided I'd tough it out. After all how bad could it be??

As it turned out - very.

An hour into the trip I developed the worst case of food poisoning I have ever had in my entire life. Frantic gesticulation to the bus attendant saw paper towels delivered. Even more frantic miming of being sick finally got what I was after - a bag to be sick in. And only just in time too as I was literally handed said plastic bag at the exact moment my stomach decided it was time to blow the ballast. Thus began the 12 most miserable hours of my life.

Imagine, if you will, sitting in a superheated bus (for some reason Turkish buses are kept at about 30 degrees) while your stomach is tying itself in knots and you feel as if your intestines are trying to crawl up your throat.

Then, as you sit there in abject misery dry retching because there's literally nothing left to come up, you feel a deadly twinge in an area located just below your stomach and grimly realise that you're about to be running at both ends!!

Dear God please kill me now.

All I can say is I'm truly thankful that intercity buses in Turkey do make frequent rest stops. If it were not for them I believe - no know - an already gruesome situation would have been far worse.

And far messier.

I do have an extreme amount of sympathy for my fellow passengers. Especially the poor woman behind me who ended up being sick in sympathy, (the trend of one person chucking setting off others holds true) and the endangered soul in front of me who may have got a bit of carrot splatter from my first outburst. To those who suffered while I spewed I heartily apologise.

Actually there was a weird sort of symmetry to the whole occasion. You see the last time I was really ill from food poisoning prior to this occasion was on a bus, in Turkey, travelling to Goreme, exactly 11 years previously.

Spooky.

Suffice it to say I won't be doing that trip again ... ever.

Travels and Travails

As a part of my recent overseas trip I spent a week and a half in Turkey. It'd been 11 years since I was last there and I was really looking forward to going back as I'd absolutely loved the place and have spent the last decade urging almost everyone I know to make sure they went there.

Suffice to say it's changed a lot, and not all of it has been for the best. More on this shortly.

Firstly let us muse on the dubious benefits of flying Easyjet. This was a first for me and I can honestly say if I can avoid it in the future I will. I guess the adage pay peanuts get monkeys rings true because there was a lot of monkey business on my flight. This was mainly, no solely, due to a group of Turks and their English girlfriends who were making the most of the inflight bar.

Suffice it to say one gentleman over-indulged and ended up giving one of the stewardesses some aggro. He didn't take kindly to being told to stop being so passionate with object of his affection. As a result of his outburst he was greeted at Sabiha Gokcen airport by the police who informed him of the error of his ways. This didn't do a lot for his temper which was then further inflamed when he learnt his girlfriend and other companions had abandoned him at the airport. Nothing like being spurned like a rabid dog to get the emotions to boiling point.

The next thing you know he storms onto the airport shuttle bus demanding to know where his girlfriend was and who had shopped him to the police. The fact that the airline had done it failed to cross his alcohol addled psyche. Labelling all on board the bus a bunch of racist c**ts he stumbled off the bus, clasping his duty free cigarettes, and disappeared into the night.

Then he came back five minutes later and did it all again.

A couple of policemen duly arrived and hauled him off for another talking too. All in all he was having a bad day.

And that's how I arrived in Turkey.

Pondering International Travel

I just got back this week from a lengthy trip around various parts of Europe. I'll write something more meaningful in due course but for now I'd like to make a few observations.

Britain; why is it, in a nation where cooking shows run 24/7, that no-one cooks and supermarkets are dominated by disgusting frozen heat and eat meals?

Foxes in Marylebone central London?! What the hell?

If ben Nevis wasn't adjacent would anyone ever stay in Fort William?

Why is it that Parisians have a fearsome reputation for dealing with tourists when the reality is they're actually very nice. It's Londoners that are the cantankerous ones.

Frankfurt - why do I always get stuck there?
And what's with the toilet paper at Frankfurt Airport? I know Germans are an austere lot but that bog paper is beyond a joke. It's like sandpapering your colon.

Thank God for Changi Airport in Singapore. The internet is free (as opposed to the 20 Euro/hr you get stung for in Europe), and it even has designated smoking areas in the terminal. Some even have their own bars. It gets my tick of appreciation, all the way from the bottom of my black little lungs.

Oh and another bonus. No barbed wire sandpaper there either.

Trails and Travails

OK so I'm on the road again. It's been 10 years since I was last in Europe and now I'm revisiting some old haunts as well as my love interest. I'll update when and where I can but what follows is a precis of one of the longest trips I've ever taken.

[take note; flying direct to London from NZ is a very bad idea - especially at Christmas]

22/12 2.30 pm Leave flat for Wellington Airport. It turns out there's no such thing as check-through baggage to Heathrow thanks to US Homeland Security. All arrivals to the USA have to go through customs and immigration. Thanks George.

4-5pm Wgtn - Akld. The usual domestic cattle class crap. If you're taller than 5'9'' then legroom isn't something Air NZ redgards as essential.

5-7pm Stuck at Auckland Airport with all the other Xmas travellers. Ick. Who takes 3 year old children on international flights? It's just asking for trouble.

7pm-10am (US WT) Ah the joys of timezones and the international dateline. It means I get to relive the 22nd of December. The flight to San Francisco's taken about 11 and a half hours and my normal habit of not being able to sleep on planes is running true to form. Still it was a good chance to catch up on a lot of films I've missed lately thanks to be an over-worked and anti-social bastard. I've managed to cram in Superbad, The Simpsons, Stardust, Invasion, and the Bourne Supremacy. Big ups to Air NZ for it's individual digital content on demand setup.

10am - Arrived in San Francisco. Was expecting a bit of a rigmarole with security (having the word journalist listed as one's occupation on immigration forms has been known to create all sorts of problems) but it's turned out not too bad. Though dear old Uncle Sam now has my photo and fingerprints on his database - not really too happy about that as I'm hardly a threat to democracy. The homeland security announcements in the airport are a little disturbing too. It's all a bit Orwellian and paranoid for a simple Kiwi lad such as myself.

I've now been up for 27 hours and on the road for about 20 so technically over halfway to London.

23/12 11am Frankfurt. At the risk of sounding like a whining bitch I have to truly say that flying Lufthansa truly bites. Seriously it's like airtravel in the 80s and 90s. The plane is dated, the AV system id a series of crappy blurry monitors in the aisles and don't get me started on the food. Forget about war crimes tribunals for former members of the Nazi regime, the caterers for Lufthansa need to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity such is the state of the food they provide. I know airline food isn't much at the best of times but the slop Lufthansa serves up is a vicious assault on taste, decency, and culinary standards.

Spent the flight stuck next to a very irritating German chap. Despite having acres of legroom on his side he feels the need to co-opt mine as well. Having an overweight middle-aged Kraut trying to play footsie with me in the dark of night is not pleasant. I've now been awake for 38 hours.

12.20pm Frankfurt. Bugger! Fog at Heathrow is causing flight delays. Flights are being cancelled left right and centre but mine is still listed as delayed - phew. No word as to whether we'll make it to Heathrow today but it isn't looking promising.

1.35pm Still stuck. They're talking about leaving at three but nothing definite. Can't leave the gate area in case I miss a boarding announcement.

4.30pm Wishful thinking on my part - Still in bloody Frankfurt. Lots of angry passengers wanting to know what the fuck is going on. The famed German efficiency isn't providing a lot of answers. We're now on the plane but no word on when it might actually leave.
My questions are; Why was this plane nowhere near the departure gate? And, why would you only have one person handling all the ticketing for several hundred frustrated passengers?

5.20pm Finally in the air. The flight into Heathrow is surreal. There's heavy fog, yet clear as a bell above 500 feet. I can see the lights of London glowing and shining beneath the fog -it's a surreal sci-fi sort of sight. Apparently the visibility on the runway is just 100m so they've had to reduce the numebr of flights into the airport for safety reasons. Heathrow's only handling 24 flights an hour which is why so many flights have been bumped/delayed/cancelled. I found out later hundreds ended up being stuck overnight and have had their travel plans turned to shit. Looks like I've had a lucky escape.

6pm London (GMT) Finally arrived and through customs. Been awake for over 48 hours and travelling and in transit for 40 - it's not quite as bad as the 42 hour train trip I once did from Istanbul to Damascus but it's pushing it pretty damn close.

Bliss

After chasing politicians around in the tropical heat for four days nothing beats kicking back on a nice quiet beach.

I give you Pangaimotu Island.




I mean, seriously how cool is this.

Though I did end up with one of those patchwork sunburns. The peril of travelling solo is that there's no-one to smear the sunscreen on the parts of one's back that can't be reached single handedly. I would have prevailed upon a dusky maiden to do it for me but unfortunately they all had boyfriends who were far bigger and stronger than I.

Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

I must say I am glad my flight home is tonight. I had considered taking this one.

Actually I suspect my employers would have preferred it if I'd been on that plane - for news purposes of course (I'm almost sure they don't want me dead)

Bumf.

It's been a while since I did a substantial overseas trip. About 11 years to be precise (that's not counting a couple of jaunts to Australia and elsewhere in the South Pacific). So I was a little bit surprised when I went to collect my tickets from the travel agents.

You see in the old days your travel envelope was fairly straight forward. Tickets, luggage tags, and maybe an immigration form was what you got.



Something kind of like this.

However when I opened mine I was staggered to find 17 different pieces of paper awaiting my perusal. The three essential pieces you see above and 14 other bits of extraneous shite.



In that carbon negative pile of glossy pamphlets are; warnings about not leaving the country with unpaid fines, advertising for Duty Free stores, warnings about drug smuggling (apparently it's a no no - who would have guessed?), warnings about what you can and can't take on your carry on luggage, and even a print out of what I can see and do at my ultimate destination.

Call me a grinch but this is overkill.

Also while it's laudable that Flightcentre is giving me dutyfree vouchers, But I really don't see the point in them giving them to me if they expire in October when I'm travelling in December.

How Not To Leave a Country.

Again I'm being lazy and blogging something I recently posted on a discussion group. But given the length I really can't be arsed typing it out twice (even if it does blow my semi-anonymous blogging status). It's yet another tale from my multitudinous fund of OE stories - enjoy.

Back in 1990 and 1991 when I was in my late teens I was living and working in Japan looking after a showjumping team. Initially I was all official and had a working holiday visa. All was sweet with the wonder that is Japanese bureaucracy. However after my first six months getting an extension proved to be a difficult task and I had to resort to some unorthodox tactics to stay in my country and in my job. The solution was simple - every three months I'd quickly flit out of the country and come back in getting a tourist visa.

Not strictly legit' but it achieved my aims.

So things progressed along this path for some time but unfortunately for me things changed. You see I wasn't the only Kiwi in a certain area of Hokkaido working in the horse industry and eventually the immigration department wised up and decided to check matters out.

Learning this I made efforts to make my status a little more legal and endeavoured to get my paperwork in order. Unfortunately the system decided not to play ball, in fact it decided to lodge said ball squarely in my fundamental orifice. I ended up in the situation where, not only did I not have a working visa but I also had no tourist visa either.

Matters got worse when immigration rang my place of work and a receptionist (long on looks but short on guile) blithely told them how long I'd been working and exactly how much I had been paid. At this point I decided a strategic retreat to New Zealand was necessary and this is where things began to get a bit tricky.

There I was at Narita Airport plane tickets in hand going through immigration when I struck up a conversation with an Australian. He like me had visa issues and was heading home to rectify matters. He was just ahead of me in the queue, presented his passport at the immigration desk, and a kerfuffle ensued. Two of the largest Policemen I'd ever seen promptly turned up and hauled him off for questioning.

I'm now slightly apprehensive.

I roll up to the immigration officer and hand over my passport. He looks at it, then at me, then calls for the police. Off I'm hauled to a small room and the interrogation, and the bizarre nature of Japanese bureaucracy, begins to unveil. Because I have no visa I'm told I can't be in the country. However without a visa I also can't leave it.
"Simple" says I, "give me a visa and I'll go".
"Not possible", says the not so friendly official,"a visa can only be issued by the Japanese Embassy in NZ"
"OK let me on the plane and I'll apply for one when I get home" says me.
"You can't leave Japan without a visa"

Bollocks.

Anyway while all this was going on files had been checked and my somewhat undercover work history was sprung. In no uncertain terms I was told I could face 6 months in jail and/or a hefty fine. Fairly heavy duty stuff for an 18 year old to handle. Suffice it to say I was shitting bricks.

The official sternly tells me I'm in big trouble (btw all this conversation was going on in Japanese), tells me to stay where I am and heads out the door. I. of course, do the complete opposite. As I still had my passport and plane tickets I was on my feet in a flash, out through the other door, past immigration and heading for the boarding gate at a great rate of knots.

Luckily for me the flight was boarding and I scuttled on and wedged myself into a window seat taking care to ensure there was at least one octogenarian between me and the aisle.

Five minutes later there's a commotion at the front of the plane. Very foolishly I look up to see what's going on and there's the immigration official I'd escaped from not 15 minutes before. His eyes meet mine and down the aisle he strides shouting angry imprecations and calling down all sorts of nasty curses upon my head.

Bugger!

A number of options were flashing through my head as he's screaming at me (in Japanese) to get of the plane immediately. I did what any other baka gaijin would do in such circumstances and stared blankly at him pretending I couldn't understand him(despite our prior fluent conversation). The poor man is now a bright shade of red, and heading for purple, as he speaks through clenched teeth in strained english. Again he orders me off the plane.

Time for plan B and in my best 3rd Form German I said;
"Einen bien auschlander. Nicht spechen sie englisch. Sprechen sie Deutsch?"

Now I won't say his face was reminiscent of Hiroshima revisited at this point, but it was pretty close. Veins throbbing his rage was approaching incandescent status.

And this is when my saviours intervened. God Bless Air NZ hostesses who will come to the aid of a Kiwi boy in distress. Pleading schedules, fuel loads, baggage priorities, and other such aviation priorities they efficiently whisked the protesting official off the plane and onto the airbridge. The poor bugger didn't know what hit him. Before he knew it the door was closed and yours truly had flown the coop and was home free and clear.

Needless to say when I applied for a visa when I got home it was turned down. I've never been back to Japan since - I'm still slightly worried about what might happen if I did.

So Much More To See

Lots of blank spaces that remain to be filled (sigh) So many places, so little time.



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