Round the world adventures

At this point I'm on the plane in just over 12 hours. So a few final stories as to the last 2 weeks of traveling. Last time I was still in Turkey, doing the quick last minute tour the travel agent put together for me. I got to do the hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia, it was pretty cool, but the balloon was me and a bunch of French senior citizens, not the friendliest of people, despite my French skills I didn't really bother talking to them too much, I just enjoyed the scenery. I then went off for my second day tour of Cappadocia. It was good, but a lot of what I saw was similar looking to what I'd done the first day.

Then my favourite, the overnight bus again, off to Pamukaleh, a guy I met from India who was on my tour was also on the same bus to Pamukaleh and coincidentally the same tour I did of there. Pamukaleh was pretty cool, the tour there was only a half day one, we got to see the famous pools, which look a lot nicer in the pictures but they were still nice to see. That day I took a train over to Selçuk, which is near the ancient city of Ephesus. So I spent the night there and then did a full day tour of Ephesus, a lot of Greek history there, again good trip... sorry for the lack of details, but I just don't have the same writing enthusiasm I started with 6 months ago.

After that, again overnight bus back to Istanbul, once I arrived I figured I'll just myself to the airport as there wasn't much time to do anything else, especially lugging my backpack around. So I was able to catch a subway right into the airport from the bus station, pretty convenient. So I don't know why they say to show up to the airport 3 hours in advance as the check in counter for my flight wasn't even open until a bit more than 2 hours before the flight. So I killed some time in the airport, had an extremely overpriced coffee, Turkey is a relatively cheap country, but I can honestly say this airport inflation is a bit ridiculous, like 15 liras for a coffee and muffin... whatever, not a big deal. So I boarded my plane with the same crappy airline, Turkish Airlines, yeah I'm not too happy with them, but they're the only ones who fly from Turkey to Israel, just my luck... Although to my surprise they didn't say a thing about my passport expiring in November, as they shouldn't. I've thought a lot about this situation recently and it really doesn't make sense to me. I mean why even bother having expiration dates if we're going to come up with stupid rules like this... or better yet why not just make the expiration date 6 months earlier... please, don't even attempt to answer this as I'm sure the answer will be ridiculous or otherwise annoying to me, so I'll just accept this as general stupidity and go renew my passport, although I may cross out the expiration date and mark it 6 months earlier than what it says, since it doesn't really expire on the date it says, no it's actually useless 6 months before, even to countries that only grants you a 3 month visa to stay there... well I could rant about this for while so I'll stop now. I just really want to send that fucker from the Bangkok Airport a postcard from Israel wishing him grave misfortune.

So my flight to Tel Aviv was alright, I was quite annoyed with Turkish airlines as they still hadn't replied in regards to any of the complaints I made, seeing as they pretty much screwed me with this flight, I would have at least expected a bump to first class or something, instead I'm stuck in coach as usual... fine, so Turkish airlines gives you a huge list of dietary restrictions to choose from when booking the flight. Normally I just know better what I shouldn't eat, but oh, look at that, they actually have "no lactose" as an option. Great I don't have to ask "is there milk or cheese in this?", the reason I don't like asking this question is for some reason people then follow up with the question "oh we can put cheese in there, you want cheese, get this guy some cheese", no! I'll get sick from cheese, if someone asks if there are peanuts in food are you going to then offer them peanuts... sorry in a ranting mood today, probably because I don't want to go home much... So back to the lactose thing, the flight attendant brings me a vegetarian meal, I said "well, I didn't ask for a vegetarian meal, what the fuck is this?" pointing out the cheese all over it. I tried to explain to her that cheese makes me sick and that "no lactose" and "vegetarian" are very different. Unfortunately Turkish people don't really speak English much better than Thai people and I just gave up. I didn't really care so much about the food as this was a pretty short flight, just the principle of the situation. This is like serving meat to a vegetarian, anyway, enough about that. Turkish airlines received another complaint from me on that one, they actually did try and contact me finally at my brother's house but I was out at the time. So my point is, fuck Turkish Airlines, they suck and have horrible customer service. It took 2 weeks to even attempt to contact me after my initial complaint.

Now that's out of the way, some more interesting stories. I finally arrived in Tel Aviv and met my brother at the airport. It's really nice to see someone you know at the airport. I've been on well over 10 planes in the last 6 months and I'm always left to find a taxi or bus or some form of transportation to wherever I'm going, and sometimes I didn't even have that information. Followed by a home cooked meal, it was a good night. Got to spend a bit of time with my nephew and niece. My time in Israel has been pretty relaxed as I've already done most of the touristy stuff to do in this country. I had nice Shabbat experience with the family, more food than is ever necessary, but about the only Jewish thing I've done in a long time.

I did get to spend 2 days at the Dead Sea with some other family over here. Always nice to just float in the Dead Sea, not much going on at night though. Some entertainment at the hotel but it ends early.

I had originally planned on going to Eilat for 2 or 3 days, do some scuba diving and maybe cross into Egypt but due to my delay in Turkey I had to skip that. I spent 2 days in Jerusalem, walked around the old city a bit, walked around the center, had a fallafel on Ben Yehuda. My brother also managed to get me on a City of David tour for free. I'd done this one many years ago but they've actually discovered some new stuff there as recently as 2005. Also the water tunnel is always fun, it's a fairly narrow tunnel that goes for 0.5k and has a spring running through it. Spent another evening in Tel Aviv with family, went for dinner in the Old Port of Tel Aviv which I never actually saw. Nice little area, a lot of restaurants, looks like a lot of clubs around there too but it was a bit early for the club scene, I wasn't much in the mood for that anyway. Now I'm pretty much getting ready to go. Spent another Shabbat here, leaving at 3AM to the airport. I'll be back in Canada soon enough. This is the end of my trip, but I don't think it will be the end of my travels.

So a lot has happened in the last few days. Nothing according to plan, I am not in Israel at the moment. My last day in Thailand I did get to the Grand Palace which was quite impressive. I ended up getting a tour guide and she was pretty informative. Afterwards I took a boat ride through Bangkok, there's a river as well as some canals that the boat goes through. It wasn't really exciting but an interesting boat ride, nice way to kill an hour. Then I met some random Thai guy who told me about some stuff I could do in Bangkok and that I should be able to get a tuk tuk to take me to all these places for 40b. So I went to see the lucky buhda, the guy there told me a bit about it but at the moment I don't really remember what he told me. I got some pictures there and went on. I went to the export center which has great deals on jewlery that I wasn't really in the market for... so that was a bit of waste, but a Thai lady tried really hard to sell me saphires and other stuff.

The stop was pretty nice, it was another temple that was quite high up, I don't remember the name of that one at the moment, although I should have a picture on my camera somewhere that says it, so I'll update this later. But you can climb up a round staircase for a while to the top and get a nice view of Bangkok. After all that I took a ride back to MBK (shopping mall) for dinner and then back to the hotel. I had prearranged a taxi to come pick me up, the drives name is Big, but he's a really small guy. So I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare yet had some issues.

So I try checking in to my flight with Turkish airlines only to have them tell me I can't go to Israel because my passport expires in less than 6 months (Nov...). I was quite infuriated by this as I was sure I would have no problem getting into Israel. After talking to a brick wall for a while I had no choice but to give up as these people were truly useless. My flight was connecting in Istanbul, Turkey so I decided to see if I can just go to Turkey instead and sort all this out. I wasn't really interested in spending more time in Thailand as my visa for Thailand had expired. So I was able to get to Istanbul so that's exactly what I did. I spoke to my brother (who lives in Israel for those who don't know) and he's been in contact with Border Control who said that what happened to me is ridiculous and that 6 month rule is not enforced and Turkish Airlines should have been aware of that. So they said I can get another ticket and if I have trouble checking in they gave me a number to have the airline personnel call (border control) who will tell them that I can enter the country.

I got a hotel in Istanbul, old city, it's really nice there. I ended up going to some of the tourist sites here. See two palaces, a lot of mosques, and then I eventually ended up at Galata Tower which overlooks the city. I ended up meeting an Israeli/American girl from New York. We ended up checking out some other sites and I was getting back to my usual backpacking travels which I thought were over. Istanbul was fun, but I ended up talking to a travel agent and booked a 5 day tour around Turkey. So I just took an overnight bus last night to Cappadocia, around 6AM the bus had a flat tire and I we were stuck in the middle of no where. They couldn't change the tire so another bus had to come pick us up. About a 2 hour delay and I was booked on a day tour for 9:30AM. I managed to still meet with the tour at 10:00AM, I missed one small thing of the tour but still got to do the rest. Unfortunately I was really tired with the overnight bus and not having a chance to relax at all, just going straight on the tour, but it was a good day trip. We went to check out this underground secret village that was used sometime BC. It was where catholics practised their religion during a time when it was banned. It was so well hidden that it was only discovered by archeologists in 1951. Then we went to see the Ihlara Valley. Took a walk through that and then had lunch. Afterwards we went to see some more sites. In Cappadocia they have a lot of rock formations that were used for living a long long time ago. Unfortunately due to my lack of sleep I didn't absorb as much as I usually do from the tour guide. But it was a good day. Tomorrow I go hot air ballooning over the area and then continue the tour on the South part of Cappadocia.

I've still got a few more days on this tour and I'm still trying to book a ticket to Israel. Slight change of plan but it's been fun, Turkey is a pretty good stop, and now I'm getting a bit of Europe in the trip too.

This will be my last entry from Thailand, and Asia for that matter. Since last time I've done quite a bit. I did the rock climbing trip in Krabi, it was a good time, never done real rock climbing before and evidently I'm out of shape, but I managed alright. Krabi night is pretty quiet, usual people trying to sell you crap... Caught my flights up to Chiang Mai, definitely a good decision to fly, would have been 20+ hours by bus or train.

Chiang Mai is a pretty nice place, a lot bigger than I expected. The first thing I did when I got there is sign up for a trek, I wanted to go 4 days but it's low season now and not enough people signed up for that one so I still got to do a 3 day one instead. It was one of the more interesting things I've done in this country. Only 4 people in the group (including me). We drove maybe 2 hours or so, stopping to pick up some supplies (mostly food). Then we were walking. There are many tribes and villages in the mountains and you can only get there by foot. It's a bit uphill but not too bad. We only walked for 2 hours the first day to get to the first village. It's quite different from any other village I've seen. No electricity, no running water, everything is hand made, but they live alright. It's right by a river so we could go swimming in there. Had some authentic Thai cuisine and our guide made us drinking cups out of bamboo, they use bamboo for everything.

Day 2 we went on to another village, again roughly a 2 hour walk. Once we got there we had lunch and then went on an elephant ride. Now my second time riding an elephant in this country. Then back to the village, this one was similar to the first one although the tribe was different... Different religion, different language, both were not Thai speaking.

The last day rather than walking back where we came from we took a bamboo raft down the river all the way back to where we started. This was a lot of fun and took around 2.5 hours. I have some pictures and video that better describe this. Fun trip for 3 days, nice to really get away from everything, not touristy at all, except they still try to sell you massages and hand made goods.

Had an early night out in Chiang Mai, the next day I took a Thai cooking class and learned how to make some nice Thai dishes, also came with a recipe book so hopefully I can do it again. Later that day I did a Thai boxing class... except I'm a bit out of shape, and practice. Also the class here was a bit more intense than what I'm used to. But I held up alright, and I was the only one, so I got a private 2 hours lesson for ~$12 CAD, not bad. I was hoping to see a Muay Thai fight, but that was the following night and I'd be gone by then. It was only 400b there which is pretty cheap. It's 2000b in Bangkok which I'm not really willing to pay. I'll have to come back some other time to see one.

My last day in Chiang Mai I rented a bike again, it's really convenient transportation. Costs 150b for the day, a taxi anywhere will cost probably that much or more. Went to see some temples and the Royal Palace where the king stays while visiting the north. Very touristy but nice to see. Then I took the overnight train back to Bangkok, nice ride, I got a sleeper seat which turns into a bed, I actually slept pretty well on it. Arrived in Bangkok at 8:00AM, one hour late, of course, nothing's ever on time in this country. I was going to go to Ko San Road but everyone I've met tells me it's shit and ever the taxi driver and tour desks were saying it's not so nice and been dangerous lately, so I decided to just stay in the city. I'm in a proper hotel for just one night, which is still only ~$30, not too bad. I've spent most the day just walking through the shopping centers and markets, although it's given me a bit of a headache so I went to go see a movie. Bangkok is quite an impressive city, but it's just another city really, not too much to see. I will get off to the Grand Palace tomorrow, I don't plan on doing much else here. My last night in Thailand, I was going to go party and all but I'm not really feeling so great today so I may just relax, done plenty of partying on this trip anyway... Tomorrow night I'm off to Israel... last part of my trip, or is it?

Nearing the end of my travels here, since the last entry I've done a bit more scuba diving and also gone to Phuket. I finished the advanced open water dive course. I can now dive to 30m and dive at night, the night one was pretty cool, but of course the visibility is not as good. On the deep dive I did see some sharks, big ones, but they don't get too close, then they just swim away.

I met an English girl in Ko Tao and we've been traveling together for the last week or so but now we've gone separate ways. From Ko Tao we went across to Phuket. Phuket town itself is not really very interesting and no one speaks English there. We stayed at Phuket backpackers which is a hostel, first one I've stayed in here, it was actually quite nice and clean. We only stayed one night though and then went off to Patong beach which is the big tourist one in Phuket. Patong's got everything, McDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, etc... and tons of markets, you can't really go 5 seconds walking around Patong without someone trying to sell you something. I found some good deals here and there.

We did some tours around Phuket, did a half day tour where which included several activities. First we did a buffalo cart ride. This was funny because we thought it was actually going to take us somewhere, but they literally took us in a circle on a buffalo for about 5 minutes, amusing if anything. Next we did a sea canoe ride (which is really a kayak). This was nice, saw some walking fish, they're fish but they walk around on their fins through mud. We saw a fisherman on the same river catch a huge red snapper, that was interesting, got a picture of that somewhere. After that one we went to see Bang Pae waterfall, also right by there was the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project. Gibbons are a type of monkey. Then we went to go ride elephants, I've got some good pictures and video of that one. It finished off with a Thai sea food dinner, home cooked, was really nice. Good half day tour.

Next day we did a full day tour of the islands, starting off with James Bond island, I forget the real name, but that's where they shot Man With The Golden Gun (1974). We visited 3 other islands, went sea canoeing through caves, saw bats, monkeys more of those walking fish. Also the crew on the boat were very lively and entertaining, they were a big part of the fun that day.

The next day we rented motorbikes and went for a ride around Phuket, it rained a lot in the morning and we got soaked, but it cleared up nice later on. We found a go kart/off road buggy thing and did that and then found a Chinese buffet for dinner.

Next day I went off on my own to do another scuba dive around Phi Phi islands, pretty nice boat, around 20 people or so. Got to do 2 dives, first was Ko Bida Nok, second was Ko Bida Nai. Ko means island, nok means outside, nai means inside. Bida is one the Phi Phi islands. The first dive was good, but really strong current even underwater which made it a bit difficult to swim in a straight line, but saw a lot of interesting marine life. The second dive was much better, saw all kinds of cool fish, no sharks which I was hoping for as they had sighted leopard sharks there. However I did see a sea turtle which we followed around for 5 minutes, that was pretty cool. Good day again.

One more day in Phuket, we rented bikes again and went to see some of the other beaches, bit of a crazy day. I had taken my memory cards with me to burn them to disc and they had fallen out of my camera case. I knew where I had dropped them, since at this point I had only stopped once to take a picture, luckily I realized the cards were missing. I flew back there, miraculously the cards were sitting at the edge of the sidewalk, apparently untouched, unnoticed by anyone, lucky... So through all this comotion I forgot to check the fuel situation as the guages rarely work. Yeah I ran out on the way back to meet my friend. So I rolled the bike up the street a bit and saw some Thai people sitting around a shop, one guy says, come with me... we went across the street to his friends shop, he has gasoline in empty Thai whisky bottles, so I bought one for 30b ($1 CAD) and I was on my way. We had agreed to meet at the Phuket shopping mall, so I headed up there, found my friend, had lunch there and got back on the road for more sightseeing. We found a local market there which was interesting, we were the only tourists there and not many spoke English there, but it was fun. Then we tried to go to a museum but they were closing up for the day. The guy said we should check out Surin beach, ok, so on the way there my friend ran out of fuel, evidently she neglected to check hers... so I had to go off and find a station, filled up an empty water bottle with gas, back on the road... caught a nice sunset on Surin beach and made it back to Patong. I took a minibus to Krabi, which is where I am now, back on my own. I'm trying to go rock climbing tomorrow but it may rain. I could go diving again but I'd rather try something different.

Wednesday I'm flying back to Bangkok and then further north to Chiang Mai to do a mountain trek. Should be interesting. By the time that's done I'm back to Bangkok for 2 days and then flying to Tel Aviv.

I can say I'm looking forward to that, not so much to coming home shortly after. But I will be back in Canada in less than a month, this time has gone by way too fast. See you all soon.

I've been in Ko Tao for a few days now, and I'm certified to dive to 18m. Finished my PADI course, got to see some pretty cool fish under there, similar to what I saw in Australia except we went deeper and stayed under longer. I've decided to stick around and do the advanced open water course. This means I'll be going to 30m and be doing some cool stuff like night diving, photography diver, diving with a propulsion thing, should be cool and it's only another 2 days, then I may move on... I seem to always spend longer than I planned, but I like this place.

Today I took a day off from diving as I've been doing the course for 4 days, I rented an ATV and drove around this island, had to go myself this time as I couldn't convince anyone to join. The roads here are even worse than the last island, but on an ATV this made it all the more fun. I got to some nice spots on the island where you can look down into the water and see tons of colourful fish all over the place. After about 3 or so hours though I found it a bit tiring and decided I'd had my fun on that thing so I just returned it. Having an early night tonight as I'll be diving again at 7:00AM tomorrow.

Sorry for the lack of detail here, I'm being a bit lazy, but I'll have plenty of stories to tell you when I get back.