Middle East

Istanbul

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Arriving in Istanbul I was delighted to see smiling, laughing, joking people! I am so tickled to be in Turkey! I had forgotten how open and fun the Turks are…laughing easily and so funny! What a relief from the oppressive atmosphere of Oman where I felt like I had to walk on egg shells!

Much to my surprise, I was met outside the arrival hall by Darrell, a Couchsurfing “friend” that I had corresponded with for several years on one of the forums. I don’t know how Darrell recognized me at the airport…probably the hair. I had no idea he was going to be in Istanbul! So we took a taxi to another couchsurfing friend’s house in Bakirkoy where I was going to stay for 3 nights. Apparently it was a secret kept from me because Dilek knew Darrell was going to be in Istanbul. She had prepared a traditional Turkish meal of rice and lentils and condiments for us and then Darrell left for the Peninsula Hotel in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul.

It was so much fun meeting Dilek after years of being on the Couchsurfing International Politics forum with her! The first night after Darrell left we stayed up late talking a mile a minute about everything under the sun. I am enjoying her insights. She is the consumate cs host! ! I told her I was enjoying seeing her in her own country…being a Turk!

Dilek and I and Dilek's Childhood Friend Standing


Bakirkoy is a lovely middle income neighborhood and Dilek, my friend, is still living in the house she grew up in. Most young people move out, but in her case, her parents moved out she said laughing. Our walk-about the next day included a buffet meal I had been looking forward to, a visit to a pastry shop where I wanted some of everything, and a yarn shop where I saw more yarn than I had ever seen in my life! I was introduced to the tram and the train and bought a transpo card I could use on either.

Then the next day Dilek took us on a walk-about to see some of her secret haunts…one being a shop that sold a fermented beverage called Boza…popular in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, according to wikipedia. It is a malt drink, made from maize (corn) and wheat in Albania, fermented wheat in Turkey and wheat or millet in Bulgaria and Romania. It has a thick consistency and a low alcohol content (usually around 1%), and has a slightly acidic sweet flavor. It tasted to Darrell and me like slightly fermented applesauce. It’s supposed to cure everything under the sun and locals often stop by for a glass.

My last and only visit to Istanbul had been in 1995 on our way back to the states after a trek in the mountains of Central Asia. I was astounded at how developed, Istanbul, at least, had become! I certainly don’t remember a tram! Or the train!

I didn’t visit the Blue Mosque or Aya Sofia or the Bazaar or a hamman or the underground Cistern because I had done that in ’95 and wanted to see more of the rest of the city.

I did visit the Suleymaniye mosque which had been closed for restorations since 2008, and since re-opened to the public in November 2012. It’s the largest mosque in Istanbul with four minarets, symbolizing, I am told, the four centuries of imperial Ottoman rule. It’s architecture is a blend of Islamic and Byzantine architectural elements and took 8 years to construct. It combines tall, slender minarets with large domed buildings supported by half domes in the style of the Byzantine church Hagia Sophia which the Ottomans converted into the mosque of Aya Sofya. People going in for prayer now put their shoes into plastic bags and carry them into the mosque with them…leaving them on shoe racks just inside. The women are still made to sit in the very back of the mosque in their own section behind a railing while the men fill the main cavernous interior. It is a bit touching to see so many men washing their faces and hands reverently before entering. It seems a religion for men.

After 3 days with Dilek, I checked in to the Peninsula Hotel so it would be easier to meet up with Darrell for dinner. Darrell was hilarious! We met some delightful travelers in the hotel where Darrell was quick to robustly tell early morning people in a hushed breakfast room that he was a farmer from Indiana and that we were couchsurfers. And then go on to tell them about the people he knew on Couchsurfing!!! Of course he was met with quite quizzical looks! He’s Anabaptist but I think his mission is to get everyone in the world to join Couchsufing! LOL He was off to Uganda after Istanbul. Couchsurfing is his world now.

I stayed in Istanbul an extra day because I had an opportunity to do a walk-about through old neighborhoods near the Spice Market with a young Turk, also a member of Couchsurfing, who had stayed with a Mexican friend of mine in Oaxaca. Onur was really interesting…had lived in Columbia 9 years, traveled all through Mexico, Central and South America and I don’t remember where else. I enjoyed his take on Turkish politics. Turkey is like the U.S. in many ways…very diverse with many minority groups. It is booming economically. At the moment he was in-between jobs as an IT engineer.

OMG, up and down hills! My poor knee! But we stopped to have lunch finally in a working class neighborhood and and I sampled Turkish tripe soup, Işkembe Çorbasi, which was wonderful. Not as sour as the Polish tripe soup and not as spicy as the Mexican Menudo. We were going to go to a Klezmer concert that night at a synagogue but I was beat and literally limped my way to the tram which took me back to my Sultanhamet hotel.

BTW, Sultanhamet, near the Blue and Sofia Mosques and the Grand Bazaar, has completely changed since ’95! Total Tourist! Streets full of smart cafes with white table clothes!!! Many offered a hookah pipe.

So after a week in Istanbul I flew to Antakya just on the mediterranean coast…and about 30 miles from the Syrian border. My plan is to take the 3-hour bus tomorrow to Adana where I will stay with Gursel, a couchsurfer, a couple days before working my way to Antalya where I hope to see Tijen, another couchsurfer, and then to stay with yet another couchsurfer, Gunes, in Bodrum and then fly back to Istanbul from Izmir. I will stay a night with Dilek and pick up my big bag she let me leave in her apartment before flying out to Oregon and back to Oaxaca. Whew! I think when I get to Oaxaca and my own apartment and my own bed I won’t want to leave it for a month!

Adana Turkey

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Map of Mediterranean Coast

After Antakya, I took the bus to Adana where I stayed with a lovely couchsurfing host, Gursel, and her daughter Nida in their beautiful high-rise flat.

The evening of my arrival we sampled traditional Turkish food in a popular restaurant. And later, Gursel took us to a specialty cafe that served a to-die-for dessert called Künefe, a shredded pastry with cheese, that is actually famous in Antakya…it’s origin. Lahmacun is a kind of Turkish pizza but my friend Dilek bristles at this comparison. And of course Kabob is skewered and grilled beef, chicken or lamb.

Kunefe


Lahmacun


Turkish Lamb Kabob

The highrises in the “new city” are chock-a-block together and there wasn’t much to see walking around from Gursel’s apartment. But no worries!  She spoiled me with home Turkish cooking and of course many good conversations over the three days I stayed with her. I also really enjoyed her bright vivacious daughter, Nida, who wants to study in the U.S. after high school.

Gursel had asked me to cook something for them but alas I was unprepared and couldn’t think of anything original on the spot except maybe Mexican food and of course there were no available ingredients. I’m sorry, Gursel! From now on I will be prepared for cooking for my hosts!

After having been in Thailand for several months I was not prepared for the cold spring in Turkey, so Gursel kindly gave me one of her sweat-shirts and a warm pull-over to sleep in. Thank goodness for Gursel! It was freezing cold all over Turkey!

One evening we visited a huge open but covered market where I bought some really sharp paring knives for $3US and a yummy soft leather bag $7US for my newly acquired iPad that was handed down from my son in Hong Kong. I was wishing I had room in my baggage for more!

The last day of my stay, Gursel drove us through bustling Old Town where we saw the tallest clock tower in Turkey and out to the Seyhan River and the Taskopru Bridge…a 4thC Roman bridge that has the Sabancı Central Mosque, the largest mosque in Turkey, at one end and the Hilton Hotel at the other. We wound up having a Turkish coffee at the lake behind the dam where locals spend time at the many coffee and tea houses on the banks.

Adana is Turkey’s 4th largest city, 2 million people, and is an agricultural and industrial boom town in the middle of the Cilician Plain…the commercial capital of the eastern mediterranean coast. Click on the photos to enlarge:


Manti


Manti is a smooth yogurt soup with Turkish dumplings…kind of like Ravioli. There I go again! BTW, there is no better yogurt I’ve had in all the world like yogurt made by the Turks!

Oman!

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After the family reunion on Koh Samui I flew back to Bangkok for 3 days while I waited for my flight out and for more last minute dental work. And got to meet up with Tim who I knew from Couchsurfing forums and who was also waiting for his flight back to England. A lovely man!

Then I flew out to the Sultinate of Oman, a small Arab state on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emerates to the northeast, by Saudi Arabia to the west and Yemen to the southwest. Off the north coast is Iran, and on the south coast is the United Arab Emirates and Musandam, an exclave of Oman. At its narrowest, the strait is 21 nautical miles (39 km) wide.

It is on the Hormuz Strait which is the body of water between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. It is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the world’s most strategically important choke points. About 20% of the world’s petroleum, and about 35% of the petroleum traded by sea, passes through the strait making it a highly important strategic location for international trade. (Which is why the U.S. has ships anchored there.)

Muscat is spread out for 40km along the coast. The whole metropolitan area of Muscat has about 800,000 people spread out over about 580 square miles with the rest of the population, mostly tribal, in small towns and villages in the mountains.

I was picked up at the airport by my Couchsurfing host who I stayed with for 3 days near Muscat…the capital city. She is from Australia but is in Oman teaching English. The day after I arrived, she needed to attend a meeting so she drove me to a gas station out on the highway where I could pick up a taxi to the Mutrah Souk (indoor market with winding aisles and goods galore), sit along the corniche in view of the sea and just people watch. There is a port here (there were 2 cruise ships docked here) so the locals are used to seeing tourists walking around in this part of Oman.

It was my great good luck to be in Oman during the Muscat Festival when Omani customs and practices were demonstrated and we had permission to take photos of people although some women did wave us away. At the airport, upon arrival, I was given a bag with a cup, a thumb drive, a white polo shirt, a couple promotional DVD’s concentrating on eco-tourism and a slick-backed tourist book listing the week’s festivities which included an international biking competition through the mountains.

Click on this link for a video:
Omani Tribal Ritual

I also took a tour of the city on a hop on hop off bus although Muscat is fairly uniform in color (country code (white)) so there wasn’t much to see. My knee was hurting so I didn’t stop off at the palaces and museums. Sigh. I mentioned to my host that the neighborhoods looked similar to the newer white-washed suburbs of Las Vegas! She is still probably shaking her head and telling her friends about this remark from a stupid American! LOL

After the third night with my host I moved to a hotel, the Husin Al Khaleej Hotel Apartments (a huge suite of rooms apparently for big families) for about $30US) in Seeb City Center, a coastal newish middle income section with large homes, located several kilometres northwest of Muscat City. No tourists there!

My own experience as a solo foreign woman was interesting indeed. I saw no foreigners in a week in the country other than Europeans who got off cruise ships at the port in Old Muscat. And a few young people headed into the mountains to off-road in the mountain washes. And I was the only foreigner that I saw in Seeb City. I saw only a handfull of women on the street although I did go to a mall about 20 minutes away by taxi where I saw plenty of women…all covered of course.

So where to eat. There were a few Turkish tea houses nearby with men only that opened about 4pm until about 4am. So I asked the Muslim receptionist in the hotel where I could find typical Omani food. She sent me to a restaurant with a narrow walkup to several small tiny private rooms where I sat on the floor and ate alone. I should have paid attention to this.

The next couple days I walked down from the hotel a couple blocks and found 2-3 small take-out cafes. I ordered and ate at a table on the sidewalk in front…crossing my legs and having a cigarette after. Finally (low-wage people are usually Indians) I got the feeling that the Indian waiters were uncomfortable with me there. On the third day one of them handed me a menu and told me in English to go back to my hotel and call in with an order and they would deliver it.

I noticed that hardly anyone went into these cafes either to eat or to take out. Men would drive up on the service road and honk. A waiter would run out, take the order and return with it whereupon the men would drive off…presumably to their homes or work. I also have to say that no Omani men looked at me in a lewd way. In fact they didn’t look at me directly at all and I didn’t look directly at them. But I felt very conspicuous and I found myself oddly wishing I could cover up like the local women. Even though I had been in Muslim countries before (Egypt and Morocco) in the past, I was in areas that were either inundated with foreign tourists or in big cities like Cairo. And indeed in Egypt I WAS propositioned. “30 minutes I give you banana.” Whatttt? I see no bananas. Duhhh!

What I didn’t know while in traditional Oman was that people, when they are not working, mostly stay home.

Homes Are Peaceful Abodes For Muslims

So, I was a woman…a foreign woman…dressed in (what in virtually every other country I have been in recently…even Turkey) the ubiquitous black tights and top. And I was on public display. I still want to talk to my couchsurfing host about this.
Read More

Around The World Again 2012-13

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Well, Facebook has cut into my blogging time. But since I am living in Mexico I love to keep up with my couchsurfers and friends I have made traveling besides friends left behind in the U.S. People say they prefer face-to-face interactions with friends but in my case that is mostly impossible.

Anyway I’m off on another RTW journey using AirTreks which is less expensive and less trouble than trying to negotiate multiple airline web sites. A friend I met through Couchsurfing will be renting my apartment until April when I return to Oaxaca.

Left Oaxaca Nov 1 for Oregon where I had multiple medical check-ups and in the process missed my flight out to Hong Kong to see son Josh. But I will be seeing him at a family meet-up the end of January on Koh Samui Thailand.

So this is my itinerary this year:
Oaxaca>Oregon
Oregon>Bangok Nov 18
Bangkok>Oman Feb 12
Oman>Istanbul Feb 19
Istanbul>NYC Mar 13
NYC>Oregon Mar 19
Oregon>Las Vegas not scheduled yet…sometime after 1st of April
Las Vegas>Oaxaca middle of April

So if any of you friends out there will be in any of my travel destinations at the same time as I am give a holler! 🙂

Following Uprising in Egypt on Twitter

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Protests going on from early morning and people will remain in Tahrir Square all night. It’s spread all over the country and other countries. Three dead. It’s after midnight there and twitter, cell phone, TV and all the rest have now gone down but there are some iconic pics that have been coming out of Egypt. And YouTube is full of video. This uprising is a really big deal! Even a friend in Serbia is all but afraid to hope.

My fav post:

Lessons of Tunisia:

To the Arab dictators: u r not invincible.
To the West: u r not needed.
To the Arab people: u r not powerless

The Enemy That Almost Isn’t

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Iran: The Enemy That Almost Isn’t
Posted: 23 Feb 2009 02:00 PM PST

Crooks And Liars.com

“One of the things that I’ve found most disconcerting about American news coverage of Iran is the complete disconnect between what our own (and international) intelligence reports say and the almost rapturous assurance by the media and public officials that Iran is heading full bore towards our nuclear annihilation. Sean Paul Kelly @ The Agonist:

The Financial Times is reporting today that Iran has enough uranium for a bomb! Oh dear. Except their reporting is very, very lacking in the physics and engineering department.

Here’s what El Baradei recently said about Iran and the bomb:

SZ: In your report it says that Iran is gaining an ever greater mastery of uranium enrichment. Can the USA and Israel accept the fact that Iran is on the threshold of becoming a virtual nuclear power?

ELBARADEI: The question is, what can they do? What are the alternatives to direct negotiations? As long as we are monitoring their facilities, they cannot develop nuclear weapons. And they still do not have the ingredients to make a bomb overnight.

How hard is it to google this sh*t?

Update: As Paul Kerr, from Total WonKerr, just wrote to me in an email: “Here’s the number of weapons you can make with LEU: zero.” Any questions?

Hurts your “Oooh…be scared of the bogeyman” fear-mongering when you inject actual facts and science into it, doesn’t it? Whirled View and my buddy Cernig look further.

Douglas Saunders at The Globe and Mail looks at how the way we view Iran affects our attitude towards them:

What if the world’s biggest threat, instead of growing in size and menace, simply vanished?

Imagine if Iran, after years of extremism, found itself led by a president who had been elected on a platform of women’s rights, a free press, foreign investment and closer relations with the United States and other Western countries.

Imagine if, in response, the U.S. government made a public, formal apology for the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency overthrow of Iran’s elected government, the act that had sent the country on the path to extremism in the first place.

Imagine if the Iranian people then began holding pro-U.S. demonstrations.

And imagine if that moderate Iranian leader offered to accept peace with Israel, to permanently halt funding of Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and to submit fully to inspections as it abandons any nuclear-weapons programs in exchange for better relations with America.

Ah, imagine. It could never be so easy. But wait. Don’t I recall something from my pile of newspaper clippings? Ah yes, here it is, and not even yellowed. Amazing how fast we forget things.

Mohammad Khatami, the pro-Western reformist, was elected in 1997.

Madeleine Albright, the U.S. secretary of state, issued the big apology to Iran in March of 2000. “Certainly, in our view, there are no obstacles that wise and competent leadership cannot remove,” she said. “As some Iranians have pointed out, the United States has cordial relations with a number of countries that are less democratic than Iran.”

The pro-American demonstrations, by all reports genuine (and unpunished), took place over several days in 2003. In that spring, Mr. Khatami sent a Swiss official to Washington to make the peace offer. In exchange for recognizing Israel, cutting off Hamas and proving it had abolished any nuclear-weapons plans, Iran wanted an end to sanctions, normal diplomatic relations with the U.S. and recognition of its role in the region.

So what happened? Well, nothing. George W. Bush was president, the Iraq war was just approaching the “mission accomplished” phase, and nobody in the White House thought it would look good to make peace with Iran, a country that only the year before had been made a rhetorical component in Mr. Bush’s “axis of evil.”

As one State Department official directly involved with the Iranian offer told me, “It was like we missed the biggest Middle East peace opportunity of the decade, just so we could keep saying ‘axis of evil.’”[..]

It was physicist Werner Heisenberg who found that the act of observing can affect the nature of the thing being observed. It is likely that simply by looking at Iran as a threat, we’ve made it one. Look again, and it might change.

Maybe it’s time to start looking at Iran a different way.”

Trouble In Egypt

Posted on by Laughingnomad

An explosion has taken place in the ancient area of Al Hussein-Cairo, Egypt, the number of killed and wounded is still unsettled.  How the bomb was exploded is not exactly specified.   It’s the most glorified and valued area for Egyptian and every Muslim; for both Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim this place is highly sacred. It’s the place where prayer is practiced every day, and it’s the place where Al Hussein (Prophet grand son) is believed to be buried.  It is also the place of an important market and center of business where hundreds of Egyptians make a living on selling goods and offering services to visitors.   It is well known that the place is a preferred spot for Egyptians and foreigners to spend an evening, says one Egyptian.

The news agencies are saying it was a militant Islamic group.

“Muslims usually comes to this place seeking spiritual calmness and peace of soul, not it’s ridiculous to claim that a cowered act like this would be made by a Muslim or some one who understand and believe what Islam is,” says this Muslim. He believes it was Mossad, the intelligence arm of the Israeli government.

But consider this.  If it was done by an Islamic group why would an Islamic do such a thing?  Here is one answer.

I know next to nothing about Islam but it just so happens that I just finished reading Bernard Lewis’ 2002 book “What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity In the Middle East.”  He takes 105 pages to itemize, often from journals and diaries, the gradual contacts of Islamics with the West, from the beginning of Islam, and the resulting modernizing influences of the West over the centuries on the Middle East. (This book was written for the Western reader so my apologies for copying much of what may already be known.) Then he goes on to say: Read More

Deconstructing A Childhood Religion

Posted on by Laughingnomad

This documentary shows how a “modern” articulate and caring non-practicing Muslim woman tries to come to terms with her childhood religion.  I could have substituted myself in the film, with the exception of the catalyst of 9/11, replacing the word “Islam” with the word “Catholic.”  Do we ever have a free choice of religion as an adult when we have had religion inculcated in us as a child by loving nurturing grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and the culture around us?   Where does religion stop and personhood begin. Or do they become one and the same?  Are we ever “there” in our personal “jihad” or struggle to know who we are.  What is our truth which is neither an overreactive denial of nor a blind identification with…our childhood religion?

Last Speech By Founder of Pakistan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

…………..I shall watch with keenness the work of your Research Organization in evolving banking practices compatible with Islamic ideas of social and economic life. The economic system of the West has created almost insoluble problems for humanity and to many of us it appears that only a miracle can save it from disaster that is facing the world. It has failed to do justice between man and man and to eradicate friction from the international field. On the contrary, it was largely responsible for the two world wars in the last half century. The Western world, in spite of its advantages, of mechanization and industrial efficiency is today in a worse mess than ever before in history. The adoption of Western economic theory and practice will not help us in achieving our goal of creating a happy and contented people. We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind.

May the Sate Bank of Pakistan prosper and fulfil the high ideals which have been set as its goal.

In the end I thank you, Mr. Governor, for the warm welcome given to me by you and your colleagues, and the distinguished guests who have graced this occasion as a mark of their good wishes and the honour your have done me in inviting me to perform this historic opening ceremony of the State Bank which I feel will develop into one of our greatest national institutions and play its part fully throughout the world.”

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
1st July, 1948

I  wonder, if he could have looked into the future, if he would have advocated for the partitioning.