Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Cappadocia Panoramas
Click to see full size... they're huge ;) Zoom in on a few to see the elaborate multi floor multi room 'Flintstones' apartment complexes! Some are in use today... including at my hostel... my room in fact.
If you are interested in how to make panoramas, search the internet for 'Hugin' - free, automatic - very wow!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Istanbul
Another late night arrival in a new city with no plans other than to
wait until morning to attempt to make any! ;) It's worth noting that
this was my second attempt to fly from UAU to Turkey... missed the
first flight then waited two weeks to try again as I had been strongly
considering staying longer anyways. Funny how the low cost airline
thought a 2 day wait for the next flight would be a hassle. Gotta love
traveling without a schedule. The visa for Turkey is puchased at the
airport on arrival ( I did at least check ahead on that): Canadians
60usd 45 euro Norway 60usd 40 euro everyone else 20usd Nice huh... kind
of insulting. Something to do with Canada passing a bill a while ago
now officially recognizing the Turkish history of Armenian Genocide...
Istanbul has some great sights and good tourist amenities. A suprising
number of people get food poisoning though!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Out of Dubai
for a flight to Istanbul. The hostel in Sharjah gave me my own room for
the dorm membership price ( $15usd vs $20usd )! The manager was
glad to see me as he had just bought a new laptop... ;)
I made a day trip to the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi just 2 hours south
of Dubai. Abu Dhabi is Dubai without the ultra-mega projects... just
mega-projects and even less parking than Dubai. The drive down the main
drag all the way through Dubai was amazing and we didn't get to desert
until halfway down it seemed. Every station on the extensive elevated
transit system has 20% to go before it's done.. amazing. Wow.. they
either finish all of it or none of it. I was told there's a seperate
company building every second station! They didn't build out to Sharjah
though... where the slightly cheaper housing is.
Dubai seems almost like a one street town. It's
unreal that the "one street" has massive buildings along it with short
buildings or even just desert behind! It's so much so that it looks
more like a movie facade and in many ways you could argue it's an apt
description of Dubai. It seems very shallow and artificial. I think it
brings out a lot of envy in tourists who love to hate it. Some feel
it's built with petro dollars inflated by OPEC and then placed in front
of them at premium prices with not a scent of Vegas style perks. In fact
you definitely feel like you are expected to be the tourist revenue
that replaces the depleted oil that keeps them in their god-given
retirement palaces. Entitlement? A lesson to be learned? What's been
done so far is amazing though... maybe they can pull it off. Maybe
they'll learn tourism in time?
The local Emirates only make up 17% of the population ( and the best
place to spot them is in the shopping malls). The paper has stories
about the recent realization of loss of identity and culture due to
this imbalance. I'm not sure they considered this when they started
nor do I think they know what to do about it. They need the
population. Many buildings are still empty now and more are still
being built! Without the population they have no business or middle
class and without business they don't need all this infrastructure
they've built. I don't know how this is going to end. I talked to an architect who said there are more planned
project dollars halted now than are underway
- amazing given the huge projects being built now.
Many foreign workers don't seem to
like it here. You don't feel very free and if you run into a
member of that 17% of the population you might get a reminder that you
are considered beneath them. A young Phillipino woman almost had a
nervous breakdown in front of me telling me how badly she wanted to
leave.
Another interesting point: You get paid differently
depending on where you are from. People go through the hassle to get
Canadian/American/European citizenship then use that passport to go
back to Dubai and get paid double.
Picture: Young women about to be arrested for taking off their hijab
( the big black gown that soaks up all the sunlight ) and being
immodest on the beach. There are westerners on the same beach in
bikinis. The guy in white called the cops. The woman in black is with
him. I didn't want to get caught taking pictures so this is it (and
could get me in trouble as it is ). The girls tried to make a run for
it. Two got away, another was grabbed by her hair by the man in white.
All but the two were taken away by the police. Maybe tbey just got
dropped at home ?? :o
Yes... I'm now in Istanbul! More soon.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
O man
Oman... it was such a covenient bus ride away I couldn't resist.
Immediately after I bought the bus ticket an American woman coming the
other way recognized me from Calcutta last November and gave me some
info.. expensive and almost non-existant public transportation. Off I
went anyways. Arrived at 10pm and stayed up all night at a 24hr
restaurant... made a bunch of new friends.. pic.. all Indian expats
working here ( but not as many as Dubai ). The 'Lonely Planet'
guidebook budget choice was still 'budget' at 10 Riels (27usd) but my
first room had bedbugs. I've already lost one battle with bedbugs in
Mumbai and was very happy there was another room available - switched -
whew.
I walked to the Sultan's palace. Above you see a picture of the back of
the palace on the water.. you might notice the red anti-aircraft guns
if you click on the picture to see the large version. He has a large
boat docked near my hotel as well.. I think it's his personal yacht but
it's maybe 6 decks and looks more like a small cruiseliner.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Dubai !
I stuck it out at the airport until morning then headed into Sharjah
and then to the youth hostel in Dubai. This city is nuts.. it doesn't
make sense. So when I missed my flight out 4 days later ( horrible
traffic.. idiot taxi driver.. checkin after security.. and me only
giving myself 4.5 hours.. earliest I've ever left! )I didn't feel all
that bad and am still here trying to make sense of this city. First of
all... 80% of the population are 'visitors' most of which are workers
from India here to construct the city. The construction is hectic; for
example, the transit system is being constructed all at once... all the
huge elevated stations as well as downtown underground stations seem to
be at the same stage of construction! It's like they hire and train 50
crews at once and then lay them off or more likely hire them into other
projects later... (except many projects are being slowed, stopped or
cancelled due to the world economy). There were 10,000 one way
tickets out of here in the past while... and to try to take their
mind off of their 10 billion emergency loan from Abu Dabi the paper had
a story about "the bottom of the oil barrel" in Edmonton! Ok.. well,
the Edmonton story was just a neat coincidence.
The worlds tallest
building is here as well and just last summer surpassed the CN tower in
Toronto as the worlds highest freestanding structure period! It's
opening December '09 but get this... a Spanish guy in the hostel snuck
in and climbed all 162 stories! He didn't get spotted by security until
the top ( and by then he was on floors without outer walls.. keeping up
against the inside wall to keep from being blown off! The security
didn't actually aprehend him until he got back down to the bottom. At
the police station they erased all his pictures ( but I recovered them
for him.. then he decided not to share them with me ... grrr -
understood - I saw them though.. wow)! I'm not sure if he's been
extradited or is in jail... he had to go back to the police to get his
passport the next day.. no response yet on the internet!
Pics...
tallest building, 7-star tallest hotel, indoor ski hill etc. etc. etc...
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