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Dec. 10th, 2004 @ 06:55 pm
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If you want to catch up to what I am at now you can check out my new blog about my hustles in toronto, you can find it at Press Pause Symphony
Craig Desson |
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Press Pause
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Oct. 26th, 2004 @ 11:52 pm
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If anybody comes across this blog and wonders what I am up to you can find me at
Press Pause |
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Home
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Aug. 12th, 2004 @ 11:47 am
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Well i am back in Canada and it is a very bizarre
experience. What I remembered as home seems foreign to me. I spent the last three days with Annie from Concordia; on my last night we went upscale, spending the evening at the Cairo Opera House and a late dinner at a seafood restaurant. We stayed up all night walking along the Nile. Cairo is the real city that never sleeps, in the summer families picnic and walk around up till the 4:30 call to prayer because its too hot during the day.
As i walked off the airplane i saw rain for the first time in two months, in front of me was a women wearing a Concordia backpack. Everyone was like me and spoke English and I was not use to being one with crowed. Shopping was also bizarre; I had to remember what was expensive and what different
prices meant. I was amazed by the amount of producers you could find in stories. Whenever somebody spoke English I would turn around because i assumed they were talking to me. Overall I am glad to be back in Canada but i really miss Cairo, i miss seeing people, in Egypt there are so
many people you cannot fit on the street, here the streets look empty. Also knowing that i won't be hearing the call to prayer five times a day, from hundreds of mosques in Cairo saddens me because i know i will never hear something like that in Canada. I have a feeling however, that I will be back in Cairo sooner rather then later, just because I felt I had such a connection to the place. Anyways I am back in Canada, so feel free to drop me a line.
Craig |
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Canada Day
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Aug. 6th, 2004 @ 06:14 pm
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Well Vonghan, my friend from Australia just sent me my Canada day photo, so here it is.
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The Israel Visa Stamp
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Aug. 5th, 2004 @ 01:29 pm
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Whenever somebody mentions they are traveling to Israel somebody else
inevitably says, 'make sure you don't get your passport stamp' like you
have never heard this before and they belong to some important Middle East Think Tank. For those who have never said the sentence 'I am going to Israel', this is referring to how some countries like Syria won't let you into their country if you have an Israel stamp in your passport. So Israel will just stamp a piece of paper which they place inside your passport. This is all fine and good if you happen to be flying into the country but if you are crossing on land this advice means nothing. Although at the Egypt/Isreal border Israel will not stamp your passport the Egyptian border guard, could not care less. So inside your passport is a stamp that says a bunch of things in Arabic and Taba. As a result, any Syrian or Saudi who knows a little bit about geography will know that crossing from Taba means crossing into Israel. Although your passport will make it look like you left Egypt and vanished into international thin air. My advice, ask for as many Israeli border stamps as the border guards will dish out, then ask your country for a fresh passport when you travel to countries that are at war with Israel. |
| » Israel - West Bank |
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For two weeks I have been in Israel and the West Bank, but mainly in
Jerusalem. Jerusalem for one, once you get their you feel like their is nowhere else to go afterwards, you feel like you have reached the center of the world. Secondly, you don't want to leave because, you feel like your witnessing history, and who knows maybe the day you leave is the day the messiah decides to show up. Now my journey to Israel consisted of a snap decision, taken at 9pm before the night I left. Laura, this British girl and myself just decide to leave the next morning on the 6:30 AM bus to the border. A big group from the hostel decided to make it an epic night, we headed out to the Cairo Jazz Club, then spent the early hours sitting smoking Hooka in a back ally Cairo Cafe. At 6:30 we were off and we arrived at the border around 2pm. Now every traveler that has crossed into Israel has a story, normally about how many hours they were held up for and how cute the people who work their are. I, to my dismay found that i do not look very treating in the eyes of Israel and got would have been cleared in half an hour had it not been for Laura. Laura you see has family in Israel but decided not to mention that because it involves a whole long line of questions as to where they live and what they do. She also did not have a return ticket or any money on her, so as far as i could tell the police were not so much concerned that she posed a threat to the country but rather that she
simply did not posses the life skills needed to handle the country, Which was untrue. The border guard kept asking (insert Isrealie accent here) 'what will you do? No money? where will you stay? No money?", and so on. In the end they gave her a two week visa, which i
saw as a test run of her ability to survive in the country, and me a
one month visa as opposed to the standard two month visa, simply because as far as i could tell for associating with her. Well we made it into Israel and headed off to Tel Aviv following a disasteris attempt at hitch-hiking to Jerusalem. Anyways I will end my Israel update here, simply because i have been working madly on a much larger one. But i worry it has become way to epic, and that i have begun to think of it as my magna opus of my travel updates, lets just say I am on draft 3. As for me I am back at the Dahab hotel. I am doing very little know, and nursing my sunburn.
Aug. 5th, 2004 @ 01:08 pm
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| » The Western Desert |
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It has been about two weeks since my last update and I have gotten up to much in Egypt. I left tranquility of Dahab for a rather audacious trip across the Western Desert. The area is a golden blanket that begins where the fertile reach of the Nile ends and spreads east all the way to Libya. In the heart of all this sand are four Oasis, that you can reach by bus. The whole trip would take a week, and in the end I would only go to the first three of the oasis. The oasis are not small pool of water, a few palm trees and a camels but large green and fertile valleys, that support many villages and town, but all surrounded by miles of nothing. The first oasis I visited took six hours of driving from Cairo and I arrived in the late afternoon.
When I stepped off the bus onto the dusty main road of Bahariya I was at first approach by a young man with a white turban and a grey grown, he introduced himself to me as my new friend and before I got my bags had already asked that I have a cup of tea with him. His English seemed decent but I would learn his vocabulary extended only to trips to the white desert and his passion for us being friends. As a consequence, as I dropped my backpack into his British mandate era Land Rover, I already had promised that I would present myself for a Bedouin dinner that evening, and breakfast the following morning.
Bahariya, would be amusing with other people, but along it is very queer. It was like drinking from a glass of milk that you where unsure if it had turned or not. With the heat of the afternoon, all the stores were closed, with metal garage doors pulled down in front of them, except for the butcher shop with raw meat floating in a basin on the sidewalk. Donkeys pulled watermelons on carts and Land Cruisers slipped between them. However, as the afternoon wore on and the pavement became as hot as the sun, I had little to do but wander from one side of the town and back again.
At seven I arrived at my Bedouin friend's house. It was built from cement blocks, and was next door to a mosque, made of cement brinks pained yellow. The conversation went back and forth between me not being interested in buying one of his safaris and how much he appreciated having friends from around the world. When he gave up and realized I would not purchase a tour from him, he asked for a pen. He said he kept an agenda of friendship, and for me he would write, 'although Craig did not want to visit the desert with me, we will remain good friends'. Overall a very strange dinner.
I left his home and spent the rest of the nigh in the market. Chickens in cages held together with string. The street was lit by the passing headlights of trucks, stores and cafes would be suddenly lit then fall back into darkness. Men sat on plastic patio chairs and wooden benches on the side walks. The sky was covered with stars and the street was covered with dung, and I was covered in dust. So after some tea I went home and to bed.
I left Bahariya the next afternoon, on a trip that would take me even farther west and deeper into the desert. The next oasis Farafa had only one hotel; partly because the town is very small and secluded and partly on account that a trio of brothers runs the town. One brother is the mayor, another is a hotel owner, and the last was recently elected as the Member of Parliament. Together they have made sure there is only one hotel in town and that the bus stops in front of the one hotel, where tourist are told that this is the special stop for forginers. The town was one main street and the restaurants ran out of food by 6pm. My room was the first one to have TV in it, but there was only two channels, one was soap operas and another dedicated prime time to an international squash tournament. All the buildings in town where one story and so just above them I could see the desert mountains.
I left Farafa the next day for Dhalkla. While outside the sole coffee shop a man with fake black Oakley sunglasses asked me about ridding in a taxi to the next Oasis, with the chance to escape another ride with the upper Egypt bus company I accepted his offer. The taxi was a white station wagon, with a roof rack, three rows of seats and a tiny Qur'ran hanging from the rearview mirror. The trip was 310 kilometers of sand. I sat in the front seat between the driver and a man who knew how to speak Arabic very loudly in my right ear. I looked straight ahead at the road which was a bridge over the sand. Above us was sky and below us was sand, with the taxi being pressed between two endless horizons. I kept looking for my seat belt, and once the driver noticed he asked 'into who, into what are we gong to run into out here.' We drove for 2 hours into nothingness then we drove for a few hours more. You cannot forget the way the desert is filled with nothingness, you think how each square meter has the potential to be a place where a memory is made or a bottle thrown but most of it will never experience a moment but just bear witness to the infinity of its surroundings. Needless to say I arrive in Daklar four hours later and was dropped off at a nice hotel.
Hotels are what I am into now; in fact I have decided to move into one for the next month. I am currently in Cairo and am currently living in a hotel. The hotel is on the roof of an old building, it’s a collection of huts, and lots of travelers. I have been living in the hotel for a week and plan on not leaving till August. Although I do plan on checking out Alexandria. Cairo is the kind of place where you wake up in the morning and say to yourself 'I am in Cairo'; it’s one of those cities that is so big that its daily operation is a great achievement.
Anyways in till later,
Craig
Also I never sent it out but I for those who are interested I wrote about my time lazing on the beach in Newbie and Terreabeen, but only put it up on the blog, to check it out go to livejournal.com/users/theorientalist
Jul. 16th, 2004 @ 02:06 pm
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| » Mut |
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Here is an email i sent to my parents in lue of a real update, on account of the slow internt of the western desert i was unable to spell check it
proceed with caution
hey guys
hope you did not think i was dead cause you had not heard from me in a while, but in fact i am alive and in mut. where is mut, i have little idea, but its somewhere in the middle of big desert desert. Mut is an oasis abd fir for the past three days i have been travavaling between three oasis, bhyria, farafa and now the dhalkla oasis (in the mut part of it). to get here i crammed myself into a tax built for seven (their were nine of us in the taxi) and for for four hours traveled though all sorts of different kinds of deserts, the sand dune kind, the plains of yellow sand kind and even the gravel kind. when we claimed a hill, i saw nothing but desert, the only none desert was a military check point (very furthorw 'where you from' 'canada', 'very good, on you go') and a store where we stopped and i bought a hoho. now i am in a really nice hotel, surprise there are the first tourist i've seen since i left Cairo, and i do think their might be cnn on the satalight, although all the Egyptian men want to watch is britnaty spears videos. anyway i am going to take the overnight bus to cairo tommrow, asumming my massive blister does not do me in.
much love
craig
Jul. 8th, 2004 @ 05:35 pm
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| » Tarabeen |
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Me and my friend Von sit on the beach, sometimes we have a waiter bring
us food, but mostly me and my friend Von sit on the beach. I am in
Tarabeen. Tarabeen makes Dahab seem like a filthy, sprawling suffocating
metropolis. In Dahab people talk slowly, in Tarabeen they do not talk at
all. Tarabeen is a Beduine village turned, 'how about chill out'. There
is a single road, with huts made from palm tress, sitting along the red
sea. Taking a swimming is like having a bath in warm tea. 3 miles away
is Saudi Arabia, Von swam a bit too far and got buzzed by a military
helicopter. Drugs are
popular in the area, but i cannot understand why because if the town got
any more mellow peoples limbs would start falling off. If things got any
slower, the Red Sea would freeze over. I will stop it that here.
What marks Tarrabeen is the language, the Egyptians for the most part
speak Hebrew, without hesitating every foreigner is greeted with Shalom.
Now before i lead my readers to think i have discovered some enclave of
Egyption/Isralie brotherhood, I should point out that the Hebrew is
explained by the fact that no European or Americans visit Tarrabean its
all tourist from Israel, which is less then an hour away. But still its
inspiring to here people switching back and forth between Hebrew and
Arabic, even if its just to order a smothy.
Meanwhile back on the Beach Von and myself picture ourselves in a Huge
Grant film set in the 19th century. We laze, when we get board we face a
new direction. When i tire of looking at Saudi Arabia i look at Jordan,
when i tire of hummos i order Taziki. I have a wealthy patron, her name
is the tattered Egyptian pound, and she treat me well. There is much to
do in Tarabeen, but mostly i sleep.
As for now, tonight i leave for Cairo where i will begin my desert trek
to various oasis'. The first will be the Bahariya Oasis, then the
Farafra Oasis, then the Dakhla Oasis then finally the Kharaga oasis. The
whole thing should take over a week. I have little idea of what the
Internet situation will be, so i won't be checking my email as much as i
used to, but i will do my best.
Jul. 5th, 2004 @ 03:36 pm
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| » I believe in Moses (but id rather worship false idols) |
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Alright i am many updates behinds but here is my tale of climbing the much revered Mount Sinai.
On the ride their i felt like i was slipping though the night. The minibus had no windows. It was two in the morning and i listend to my discman imagining the Isrealities lost in the wilderness. The rocks were shapped like daggers, all pointing to the sky. I slide open the window and the wind blew though my hair and between my teeth. Driving though the night reminds me of the 417 and the back seat of my parents car, a safe place with dim lights, sliding under an arc od darkness. A muslim girl fell asleep on my should. I saw four shooting stars and montains. I saw an arm of our galaxy forzen like a paralized cloud. We passed though militaray checkpoints where men dressed in white, with guns slung behind their shoulder raised their gate and waved us though. At that point i fell asleep.
New theological questions emerge when you climb Mount Sinai at three AM on a Sunday night. For those without a zillion years of early childhood religious education, Mont Sinai is where Moses was revealed the first 10 commandments, all the while the Isrealities where worship false idols below. So as you climb for 3 hours over jagged rocks and steep mountain passes you realize that Moses must have been sure he was really on two something to do this, especially without the help of mini beduine convenient stores that sell hot tea and coke cans as old as Abraham on the trail up. Maybe Moses just simply failed to mention he was only able to complete this task because he hired a beduine to take him on a camel to the top. After climbing for hours in the cold and compete darkness, worshiping things made of clay at the bottom the mountain did not seem like such a bad idea. Once you reach the top, you run into more Beduines, this time they are renting blankets, which gives new theological implications to how God was able to protect him while he stayed in the top (although its suppose to be Ezra's cave, which i relived myself in, having no idea it religious/historical significance at 5 in the morning, God help me). On the way up you pass groups of travelers all carrying flash lights and when you look down the mountain you can see little packs of lights of bus groups from all over the world moving up the mountain.
After the Gospel Choir, the Russians and the Egyptian school children had left i was alone on Mount Sinai, except for a Christian man. He wore two sets of glasses, one for reading and another for the sun. He was praying on a rock. I wanted to stand on his rock. He saw me and climbed down to great me. He said he was from Lithuania, then a guest of wind made a book stumble from his hand. It was still cold and I was wrapped in a blanket. His crucifix knocked against his nose as he picket up his book. I smiled and he took off his hat. He said he was a pilgrim and he lived at the bottom of the mountain. His home was the monastery, it was made of bricks and had been their for hundreds of years. I said i was far from home, then he left me their. I climbed onto his rock. I pushed my forehead against the stone. I prayed and mountains touched the sky like fingers and clouds broke against them like waves.
All together is was an amazing experience. I am still two weeks behind typing what i have seen and its all in my note book i just have to type it in. i am back in dahab know where the Internet flows like smoke from a huka so i will be sending another update, proably about Newiba in a week. The plan is now to spend a couple more days here on the beach, mainly because its a good place to get thinking done. Then i am planning an epic 1000 mile treck though the western destert, where i will visit a couple oasis. From their it will be up to alaxandria and then back to Cairo, where as hard as it will be for me to believe but my trip will be almost done by then.
p.s. The egyptian guy who runs the internet cafe is playing Leanord Cohen, how strange. I asked and he says he is a big fan, weird.
Jul. 3rd, 2004 @ 04:36 pm
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| » Canada Day |
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It's quite difficult to celebrated things like National Birthdays on the other side of the planet but when one loves their Queen and country they find a way. Although I spent the day craving Poutin and Canadian Public Broadcasting, the only way i could celebrated was to fasten a crude Canadian flag out of the back of my journal and tour around Newbia and photograph it next to camels, pictures to follow.
Craig
Jul. 2nd, 2004 @ 01:06 pm
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| » Dahab 2 |
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Well everyone this is just a minor update, i am currently working on a post about my trip up Mont Siani, but that will have to wait in till tommrow. I am still of course in Dahab, in fact i am here much longer then i imagined i would be, but Dahab is that kind of place. Just like the weather, nothing changes in Dahab. The same 10 pond egyption breakfast each morning, the same snorking stop, the same place to watch the EuroCup. There are few few reason to leave Dahab, you can eat well for 10 ponds, sleep in a hotel room with a private bath and a balconey for 10 ponds and besides renting diving gear, and internet cafes there is not much to spend money on. I like Dahab, but its also a trap, because before you know it you have lost a sense of time and you have been here a week.
I wake up, read, eat breakfast, fall back asleep, eat again, go on the internt, write, write, take another nap, maybe snorkole then head to Adam's bar to watch the Euro cup which i am only somewhat intersted in. Although i am quite content in Dahab i miss the culture of Cairo, and Aswan. As anybody who has vistied Egypt will tell you Dahab and the Sinai is very differnt from the contry.
In fact my biggest past time in Dahab for the past two days is reading about the upcomming federal election in Canada. This is a private passtime because as much as this election fills with me with terror and excitement nobody else seemsto really care. Canadian politics, unlike Middel Eastern politics matter only to Canadians. Today i read an article in the Globe about how the rest of the world does not care that we have a sepratist party holding a bunch of seats, or that the country is splity 30/30/30, or that we had a big sponsership scandel and the liberals are going to suffer a big lose, gay marraige and pot laws may raise a few eyebrows but other then that it just me and the online globe and mail webpage.
Because of the time differance between Egypt and Canada watching the election unfold, which is euphoria for an information junky, is impposaible. I would have to find an internet cafa open a seven in the morning if i wanted to here the tail end of the results, never mind getting up at three to here then start to roll in on the net.
Hopefully tommorow I will leave for Taba, which is on the Israeli border, i think i am more excited to visit the holy land then egypt, but wheater i can leave tommrow is starting to look dicey. Inshallah I will be on the 1030 am bus for Taba, but then again inshallah means just that inshallah.
Also while chatting to my girlfriend on MSN yesterday afternoon i found out that her play won best of venue at the Ottawa fringe, yeah i know how to chose them :)
Well intill then
craig
Jun. 29th, 2004 @ 12:04 pm
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| » Dahab |
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In Dahab the waves cover the beach and the Europeans are more beautiful then we are. The hotel owner wears a cowboy hat. When he speaks English he has an Australian accent. At night i can see lights from a city in Saudi Arabia. The wind from the Red Sea bends the veils across the faces of the Beduine children.
I bussed from Luxor, it took 15 hours. During the night I crossed a bridge and arrived in the Sinai peninsula. Sinai means sin, or rather the sins of the Isrealities who wandered aimlessly though this region because of their ignorance of God. In the last thousand years not much has changed in Sinai.
Dahab is where Israelites, Germans, French, Russians and Australians come and wander. There is the scuba shop, the koshery, the beer garden, the Internet cafe and the beach. Helen who is a scuba instructor came for a week, she has been here six months, Jason came for six months to work and has been here two years, and Beth came to do nothing, and one year later she still sits on the beach reading last years best selling paperback.
I have accomplished nothing since arriving in Dahab, I ate at a koshey, slept, ate again and soon I plan on reading.
In the afternoon i walked to where the paved beach and the sand stretches from the sea to the mountain. Brown children swam naked in the water. I had heard Bedouin children do not like tourists so i hide my wallet in my back pack and worried they might throw stones at me. Two camels sat with their hooves in the fine sand thats burred underneath the pebbles. I talked to a man who drives a taxi, he has a child for every week he has not worked. Between his teeth are gaps, too much sugar in his tea I think.
Before Dahab was Luxor, i remember little. There were many monuments. All were standing in sand and some where older then others. What has not left me is the politics. Today it acurred to me that Israel and Gaza are a two hours drive from here, not just a thing people argue about. People love their politics everywhere and here the actual politics are middle east politics (i hope that made sense). I am surprised by the attitudes of people here, for a part of the world drowning in violence people are tolerant and want peace. Most have the same political rant, they hate Blair, but not more then they hate Sharron but not more then they hate Bush. However, following their disgust of Israel, England and the United States everyone I have talked to has pointed out that it is not the Americans or Israelis they hate just the politics. What has struck me the most with those i have spoken to is there respect for Christians and Jews and their belief that they have a place in the Middle East. All want democracy and many are embarrassed by the lack of it in the region, but in till the Israelite/Palestinian conflict is solved this will not happen. One very nice Egyptian many pointed out that the root of the problem is that most Egyptians are not educated and have little idea of what is going on.
Anyways, I should go, i have accept an invitation to visit a good friend of thefamily in Israel and will, assuming i can find my way out of the hendoist wilderness of Dahab i will be in northern Israel around the 30th. Its nice talking to everybody, and if anybody has taken offense at my reading of the politics (not that likely) or just thinks i am plain naïve (more likely) let me know.
Later,
Craig
Jun. 25th, 2004 @ 02:57 pm
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| » Aswan |
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Hello all
Well it has been a while since I last updated my blog, so here goes. for the past few days i have been living in the youth hostel right next to the train station. Awane is hot, very hot actully aswane in the afternoon is about 45 degrees, although a cool breze blows off the nile you can't escapte the heat. As a result i spend my morning going to sites and monuments and my afternoon hindout in the a/c, only to emerge like everyone else at dusk. at night the town comes alive, its very diffrent then in canada, everybody goes at nigh, every night of the week, you see familes walking around with their children up to midnight. The people are very nice and in the evening when i have not westerns to hang out with i can just walk up and down the main drag, in front of the nile and strike up conversation with egpytions. I do admit i am getting a little borad of aswan mainly because there are not to many tourist here, most of them are here as part of package tours and simply shuttled on and off ships, but since i am here for two moneths i am taking my time and will not be leaving till sunday, when i will boad a train and take it to Luxor where i will spend a week or so. overall i am still getting use to adjusting to travling life, it reminds me a lot of frontier college in that there are not as many distraction as back home, no tv, no movies, no music (i don't walk around with my cd player cause i just feel like i am flaunting riches) and no friends ( i miss everyone very much) so like frontier college i just have to learn to get use to chilling out and enjoying my time, which means i spend a lot of time just walking up and done the the nile talking to people and saying to to boat trips (captions come up and harrese every five minutes into going on one of their boat trips).
anyways that is all for now, and i will send out another big email on sunday or monday when i leave for luxor.
in till then
much love
c
Jun. 17th, 2004 @ 04:55 pm
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| » day three |
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Cario, which i fell onto three days ago is a city of thiry million people, each of home are going in four diffrent directions at once. When you step out onto the runway at the Cairo airportnobdy lays a leal or reef of flowers around your neck or directs you to a tidy tourist desk, well stacked with brouchers but rathr you are pulled along by a loud current of sweaty infants, saudi buisness men, old women with rinkeld pimpels and young women in veils who will never make eye contact with you. Your swept into a shuttle which brings you to customes where men in military uniforms stamp passports like they were mosquitoes. finally, before you can even look back you are tossed face first into Cairo.
Inshallah is a common Arabic saying for 'God willing', and it is from this saying that cairo opperates. God willing that you will cross the street because there are no crosswalks or street lights, God willing you will find your way home because their are coutless streets but few street signs, God willing the food you bought off the street is well cooked, God willing the train to Aswan will take 12 hours, God willing the musem is still open and God willing yuo will make it across the street.
When i showed up in Cairo on a hot yellow afternoon, I felt like i was in a dream where you forget how to speak and read. I asked the airport shuttle bus driver to let me off at the train station, in the center otown, which he understood as the under the overpass where the man on the donkey is selling mellons. With a giant Mec backpack, a camera bag and a stylish grey side bag I looked like Captine America. Each person i asked for directions to the train station too me in a new direction, i passed a large gang of school kids that cheeard as i passed 'welcome to egypt'. When i did arive at the station i found that I could get a train ticket to Aswane as early as the next day, Aswane of cours is the most southern town in Egypt.
At this point i could direct your attention to serverl events that have happend in the past few days, like the manic late night taxie drive though the back streets of Cairo to the pyramids, or being harrased into buying 15 ponds of 'pure perfume', the orginal asking price was 100 ponds and after gave into his coutless please to buy he showed me a photo of an akwarde and bewilderd looking mohamud ali, which made me feel better since 'the greatest' had been taken in by the same guy. But of all the experiances the most rich was my trip to Coptic Cairo. I took the MEtro to the coptic part of town which is a small walled off area of thin street, a few churches, a single synagaog and tiny homes, most of which are built on top of cripts. It was wall after four and all the churchs were closed and as a result all th tourist had gone home, leaving me and those who live their. What was left was childing kicking soccer balls though empty allyways, old monks with prayer beads and a roster crowing a top a roof top. Away from downtown Cairo with its horns and touts i felt like i was in a village. I met and had a long conversation with an elderly jewish man about jews in Cairo and as we chatted we sat next to on old coptic women who was pealling potoats, when he noticed by dirty hands the women invited me into her house to give them a wash. I also drank some mange juice with a an english speaking prision inspect, he was just watching his fathers shop and as we sat children came running back and forth in front of his shop, a truly feeling of peace.
As for the fact that i am alone i find it difficult but i figure it will end up being rewarding in the long run. I have about two or three conversations a day which consiste of more thenthe how much is that fallaful or I do not need a taxie. INfact i feel trhis budding platonic relainship with my Rough Guide to Egypt guide book. I go where it says to go and when it suggest the haning church for 'an early exampl of coptic architexture" i do not take its suggestion lightl. when i am board i let it tell me about the significance of the music of sufi dancing or the early history of the coptic church. We walk hand in hand though the street of Cairo. Really the challage is learning to enjoy nobody else company but my own, i have not met to many other travlers and the ons that i ahve are part of tour groups and so are not intersted in meeting new people. but in the end 'travaling along can be a most rewarding experiance' or at least that is what my Rough Guide tells me.
I guess i should reveal that i am actuly writtign this letter on the overnight train to Aswane. The first class compartment is like th wide seats of ariplane buisness class dropped in a greay hound bu. The 800 kilomiter trip follows the nile, all the way down but out the window all i can see is darkness and the odd single light from a single house. Anyways the music on my diskman is from the graduate and maybe this is what this trip is about.
The Futurs in Plastics
Craig
Jun. 15th, 2004 @ 06:23 pm
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| » I am here |
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i have arrived in cairo, safe and sound after a trip that took well over a day. i however, am quite exhusted and will wait till tommrow to write about what has happend.
Jun. 13th, 2004 @ 07:04 pm
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Jun. 10th, 2004 @ 01:00 am
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| » Bon Voyage |
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The next time i update this blog of mind I will have reached my destination. I though before I left I would leave this copy of the email I sent out to all my friends before I left.
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In two days I, the once young, now Communications grad will be boarding a
plan in the early morning to Cairo. I am informing all of you of this
fact so as to stop sending me all these, jobs, offerers of money,
approved Canada Conciel grands, movie deals and record contracts that i
have been inadated with since graduation, all right, maybe not. I am
actually witting all of you to let you know i won't be answering my phone
for the next two months and you are receiving the first of the many email
updates of my trip to the middle east. For those who have not heard of my
trip, i will be taking the next two months, maybe more if i get a job in
Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Three places that i am not really sure why i am
visiting or what i plan to do when i get there. When i do arrive in
Cairo, at eleven in the morning on Sunday I will be able to claim the
title 'the loneliest man in Africa' for the sheer fact that i know
nobody. Nothing is planned and in fact i have not even packed my bag
yet. Overall I hope at the very least this whole excessive will allow me
to distract myself with the bigger questions of what i wish to do with my
life, even though i have a sneaking suspstion it will involve lots of
grant proposals and day jobs moving lights around, but then again who
knows? Maybe I will wish to fufille my childhood dream of operating a
back-hoe. Now, I should finish packing, but i will end with a promises to
respect your inboxs, and not send updates every time thoughts of 'how
traveling puts everything in perspective' or 'we are so lucky to be
Canadian' both of which are true of course. For those however who do want
more then these little email dispatches i have set up a blog. The blog is
called 'The Orientalist' and can be reached at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/theorientalist/.
In till Cairo
p.s. i will continue to write poor English in my email's so everybody
will be able to verify it is in fact me corspeonding with all of you.
Jun. 10th, 2004 @ 12:39 am
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| » Getting ‘Yellowed’ |
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I now know there are two ways you can get Yellow Fever, the least likely way to contract ‘Yellow’ is to travel to Africa or South America and the most likely is to hand over sixty five dollars to the Ottawa Riverside Travel Health Clinic. Once you get past the thirty dollars doctor consulting fee, a nurse will take you aside and stick all sorts of retro dieses up your arm. Being Canadian I really have difficult with paying for your health care with a visa or MasterCard. I of course know that every visit to a doctor is just builled to the provincial government, but it all seems to change when a doctor will not see you in less you can pay the thirty or so dollars, but it almost seems like to little. As if the gateway to prescription drugs, physiotherapy, immunization, rehab, paid days off work, and new children only costs thirty-five dollars. As for the immunization, this is all speculation, because my appointment is not in till next Thursday, which is turning out to be quite a day. After my immune system is ‘yellowed’ I booted it up to Montreal, to graduate from a little thing called University, come back to Ottawa for a reception at my parents house then head back that night because my flight leaves the next day.
Also, I bought a money belt today, it’s the same money belt my Girlfriend owns and it is the same money belt at the same price in every money belt stocking store in Canada. It appears the money belt market is cornered.
Jun. 1st, 2004 @ 08:36 pm
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| » CAI |
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I now realize that there is no fetish, obsession or
perversion the internet will not serve. A week ago I became sick of
rereading my Rough Guide, and decided to search the Internet for photos of other peoples trip to get a better idea of where I would like to travel. I am sure I have talked about this in an earlier post, but when I travel I create this 2 dimensional slide show of my trip, composed of pictures from guide books, websites and pure imagination of what my trip will look like. So about a week ago I figured I should add a couple more shots to my premeditated slide show. To begin with I figured I would search out images for the very begging of my trip, so I looked on the Internet for shots of Cairo International Airport. I should have known better, that not only am I not the first person to look interior photos of CAI, but that on the internet such an interest exists that somebody built a whole site about it. At the http://www.cruisinaltitude.com/ section dedicated to CAI I found dozens of photos of the airport, in both day and night, at arrivals and departures and a nice shot of some wide escalators, which I now know lead to the duty free shop. I cannot figure out why this information is useful, the site does not offer advice, reviews or tips about CAI, but a collection of hastily taken snaps. The worst part is the site is really well designed; somebody really wanted to make sure they were working on the definitive CAI photo site.
Check out a few of these shots
Or check out the CAI site
www.cruisinaltitude.com/airports/caieg.htm
May. 25th, 2004 @ 11:15 pm
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