Hypertravel with Hardie #5: the Mideast

Hi ya’ll, welcome to the fith episode of Hypertravel with Hardie here on YouTube. Actually our fifth episode here was really the sixth episode in the original Hypertravel book, but mostly left out here because of the misfortune I encountered in South Africa, being robbed in broad daylight on the streets of Nelspruit, South Africa, not Jo’burg, but a bucolic smaller city, leafy and green until the streets turned mean and left me standing there with not much to spare but my self-interest and my self-preservation instincts, forcing me to return to Jo’Burg for a temporary passport, but no camera, unfortunately. So, I finished my trip with only a 3-month passport, including all of southern Africa, including Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique. I even continued to East Europe to make my rounds there, which I dutifully wrote up, but without a camera to document the digs. Ukraine was nice; I remember that much, that slice of a little southwest corner, featuring Lviv, that was the northeastern culmination of my southeastern foray that included Romania, Moldova, and now Ukraine, even Poland. Before it’s all over, I’ll also visit my one-hundredth country Andorra on this trip, but the more important thing is to hustle a quickie passport ASAP back in LA, and that’s possible if you’ve got a trip planned. So, I told them I was going to Mexico. They bought it. So August and September weren’t too good, but October 2009 is looking up. C U down the road. I always stay in Mexico during my interim travel. Maybe I’ll write more on this for another East Europe episode, if I can find some pictures. But this episode is mostly about the Mideast. So, that means a nice return to the one-region/one trip format. But it’ll still be hub-and-spoke with Cairo at the center, not point-to-point like the good ole USA or something similar. No, this is the Mideast, not the Midwest, and I’m lucky to even have good travel conditions considering the shit that’s gone down since. Almost as if by design, there’s a screw-up in Cairo with two competing hotels, but there was a happy ending, and good wifi, so no real problem. The main problem are the multifarious travel options in a tricky region, so that takes up more time than the pyramids for the first few days. But wifi is much easier, and cheaper than travel agents, so it all eventually works out. The pyramids at Giza are incredible, of course, Sphinx and all that, and the Cairo Film Festival is like icing on the cake. The current plan is to take a cheap flight to Lebanon, and then proceed from there, so that’s what I do. Beirut isn’t especially cheap, so somehow I end up in the Christian suburbs, not downtown, where I usually like to be, depending on prices. That means TV porn and Alcohol to boot, neither of which I crave, but that’s okay. Part of the deal is that I can hopefully get a Syrian visa at the land border with a bus from Beirut, so that’s what I do. It costs me hours at the border and a shout-down from the ICE man, but I get onward trans to Damascus, and arrive before dark. Hey, the apostle Paul was blinded on the same road, so I should feel lucky! At least I’ve got decent digs in Damascus, so I’ll see more there than Beirut. It’s old-fashioned, if not Biblical, but fine for the walking, so I even stay another day due to the runs in my buns. Next stop will be a taxi drive to Amman, Jordan, and that comes off withoiut a hitch. Amman, Jordan, is middle-class, neither rich nor poor, so no big deal. The big deal are the ruins of Petra down the road, made famous by Indian Jones, I believe, and well worth the waiting to get there. It’s csrved, BTW, not constructed. From there it’s back to Egypt, by a different route, of course, no return to Beirut necessary, when a ferry ride to southern Egypt will do fine, thank you. That means a ride from Aqaba to Nuweiba, and an option to chill at Dahab, groover central, time permitting. But I passed on by, like a ship in the night, on to Cairo after midnight. From there I’ll go south to Luxor, which is something of a revelation in itself. That’s because of the massive temple columns, a hyperbole to the Greek version, but these came first, so an alternative to the pyramids, and a fashion forward to the future. The Greeks would refine them to architectural perfection, but the Egyptian version were the original. Combine them with arches and you’ve got something truly revolutionary, castles floating in the air! Or so, it might seem. The ruins of Karnak are nearby and the ancient site of Thebes is beneath and underneath, making modern Luxor something truly exotic, what with the Nile River flowing nearby. It’s a chill deal compared to Cairo, too, so worth the ride for the extensive look. The trip gets more complicated now, and that means a cheapo flight to Yemen, San’aa to be exact. This is the icing on the Arabian cake, of course, as timeless as it is timely. The traditional architecture is unbelievable and the traditional people are similarly fashioned. That means daggers, dirhams, and of course the imminently chewable qat. It also means that I got totally lost my first night, wandering the meandering streets without counting my turns carefully enough, dead reckoning, so finally getting totally lost in the darkness. That’s what taxi cabs are for, of course, and business cards, too, if the hotel has them and the counter help is not too busy chewing qat to help find them. Life is far from perfect, no matter the country or religion, but where there is a will, there’s a way, in lieu of any better cliche’, so when the taxi crossed a path that I’d already crossed earier in the day, I yell at him to stop, and i walk it home from there, landmarks succeeding where street names and numbers often fail, business card or not. Yemen is my new travel hub and the next stops are Doha, Qatar, and Dubai, UAE. Doha is flooded, but that will soon pass, and so will the traditional old quarter that almost resembles San’aa, as the new Miracle Mile springs up along the other side of the bay. It looks impressive, but it’s empty, all just speculation as to what the neighborhood is really worth, as the traditional Arabia gives way to the newer more modern model. The only people there are construction workers, so conclusions must wait. This is all ‘old hat’ to Dubai, of course, long accustomed to such speculations and re-workings of old metaphors. UAE is hardly even arabian any more, really, unless you’re counting coups on the soles of old shoes. Because most of the inhabitants are foreigners, now, and more than a few of them Filipino, fleeing their own population boom and income bust, ditto for the Russians and other assorted Slavic country citizens. English is the lingua franca and dollars can easily pass for dirhams. Oman is right down the road and something of an anomaly of its own design. It’s an old sailing port of ancient renown, but left out of the more modern oil-rich money that passes for mideast currency. So, it’s not as poor and traditional as Yemen, but not so rich and modern as UAE. It’s even accessible by bus from Dubai, so something of a walk in the park that is the Arabian peninsula. The Muscat souq has the traditional frankincense and myrrh, even if the malls lack the latest fashion that make the models twirl on runways. But I’m good there for a few days. And the Iranian island of Kish is right across the bay from Dubai , so I go there to stay a few days, also, and let the resident Filipinos fill me in on the scene. It’s enlightening, of course, even more so since it’s the only way I could get into Iran without a guide or visa, and cheap as dirt if I stay with the visa runners. They’re all waiting for their visas, and the local TV station updates them every day, many here longer than a month already, biding their not-so-precious time, as long as their in-laws back home know how to manage their money. That’s the scoop, my friends, I now older but wiser, as the axe would soon fall on all that is Arabia, like chessmen on a chess board, first Tunisia, and then all the rest, finally Syria just a while ago, I forget when, since it’s all so confusing and disheartening, usually, but sometimes good. If you like, then subscribe, and I’ll see you back soon with more from East Africa, and maybe East Europe, too, or at least London and the UK, so ubiquitous as to almost be overlooked. Thanks!