We arrived in Guilin a little ahead of schedule because of a lot of train difficulties (you can only buy a ticket from the city you are leaving from, and only a certain number of days in advance, and they all always sell out)

Our main reason for visiting Guilin was to go to the Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces. The pictures in the Lonely Planet are of mountains covered in bright green terraces.

We decided to go with a tour from our hostel. We got on the bus full of Chinese tourists in the morning and headed to yet another minority village. We opted out of the "Long hair show" where the local women did a dance that included uncoiling their long hair, brushing it, and putting it back up (other people told us later we were smart to skip the show). From there we went to another village to begin the 40 minute hike up the mountain.

The terraces were beautiful, and an amazing feat of engineering. Our map said the park covers over 15 km of mountains, all terraced for growing rice. I really liked standing on the top and looking down over the hills.

Today we were planning to go to another village, but we woke up to pouring rain, our first of the entire three month trip. We decided that we should instead spend the day in the hostel, watching movies and playing on the internet.

From here, we will take a night train on Wednesday night to Hong Kong, our last stop of the trip. We will be back in the states on November 24, just in time for Thanksgiving!

After a few weeks in big cities in China, we decided that we needed a break, and headed to Fenghuang (in Hunan Province), according to some website, the 2nd prettiest town in China.

The village is set on a river (the Tuo river) and is home to several minority groups. Any time there are minority groups in China, there are costumes for the tourists to put on, and have their pictures taken "being minorities" We tried to imagine this happening in the states....

At night the women of the village sold little paper boats with candles in them, to send down the river. We had a good time wishing our little boats along (most of the time, they would end up completely in flames, or a wave would put out the candle).

We decided one day to take a boat ride down the river (since we decided earlier against the Yangtze River Cruise). We went to the ticket office, where we were told you couldn't just buy a ticket for the boat, you had to get an all inclusive ticket for all of the sites, for 148 RMB. That seemed a little ridiculous to us, since we had already seen the whole town, and didn't feel the need to go inside any of the buildings. So as we started to walk away, a woman approached us and offered a boat ride for 60 RMB each. We started negotiating with her and got the price down to 30 RMB each. Then we started walking. The boats all left from up high on the river, went down through the town, and then came back. We walked and walked and walked, until we were outside of the town, and then we kept walking. At this point we stopped the women and tried to ask where we were going (they didn't speak any English). We renegotiated a price to 20 RMB each and then continued walking. We ended up in the industrial outskirts of town for our boatride. The scenery was ugly, and we realized where all of the candle boats had been going....down the river to float in trash piles...however, we were only paying a few bucks each for it, and we thought it was pretty funny. We had been promised an hour ride, and after we returned to the launching point after a half an hour, we realized this meant two times down and back and opted to be done.

From Fenghuang, we planned to go to Dehang, another minority village in the area. Unfortunately, the train ticket system foiled this plan, and we ended up staying the night in a big ugly city. We decided to skip Dehang and head right for Changsha, to see the birthplace of Mao. Unfortunately, the ticket system ruined this plan as well, and we ended up going right down to Guilin, a few days ahead of schedule.

Please note the split that goes all the way from the front to the back. This way when the child squats, they are able to use the bathroom without getting their pants dirty. They still get the public sidewalk dirty, but that is another matter.

Chongqing is the world's largest city, at least according to the Lonely Planet. And after spending a few days there, I might have to agree with them.

We visited with Liz and Jason (friends of Cuttino's from PC Georgia). Liz is teaching as a private citizen, and Jason was crazy enough to sign up for another round of Peace Corps. They were lucky enough to be placed in the same town, same university, and actually as next-door neighbors.

PC China is definitely different from your average PC experience. The city of Chongqing has double the number of people of Jordan or Georgia, just inside the city limits. There were millions of buses, people, taxis (although never when we wanted them!) stores and American chains. It was all kind of overwhelming, but luckily we had our guides with us!

We went to the old part of town one day, to check out the market and a temple. The other day we went to "downtown" for more shopping and a walk along the Yangtze river.

It was nice having another vegetarian around, especially when we went for "Hot Pot" which is a Chongqing specialty. You take a pot of boiling water and put it in the middle of the table, and then throw in a billion hot peppers and some oil. Then you take platefuls of raw vegetables, tofu and meat and throw it in to cook there on the table. When you take it out, you dunk it in some more oil with garlic. Some of the best food we have eaten! (the lotus root and tofu were the favorites!)

From Chongqing we decided we had had enough of giant Chinese cities and headed down to Fenghuang, to check out the village scene.

In Xi'an, we stayed at one of the best hostels I have ever been to, the Shu Yuan. The staff were incredibly helpful and the hostel organized all sorts of activities. And they had really good American food (which we all had been craving!) and a free beer for each guest each night.

We visited Xi'an in order to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, but since we arrived on the day of the election in the states, we decided to postpone the warriors in order to watch election returns. Cuttino and I set out from the hotel, looking for a fancy hotel that might have satellite tv, and therefore coverage of the election. The only hotel we could find with a tv was showing old basketball games of Yao Ming playing, and those men were not about to let us change the station. So, dejected, we returned to the hostel to try and watch it on the internet. I find it funny that we would have had a much easier time in Rajef, Jordan (everyone has satellite!) or even Iran to watch the American presidential election than we did in China.

Luckily, this wasn't 2000, and the election was called pretty early so we didn't have too long to wait (hitting refresh as often as possible on nytimes.com, hoping another state had turned blue...)

We watched Obama's acceptance speech, streaming from the internet with the hostel staff, who I think were a little confused what was going on. That evening we celebrated with a 1.5 litre, four dollar bottle of champagne. We tried to find other Americans to share our excitement with, but alas, there were none to be found.

The next day we finally headed out to see the warriors, which were unbelievable. Each one is carved individually with a different face, outfit, and even the tread on the shoes. We first watched the little movie about the warriors, which was informative, and kinda funny. There were several long "re-enactments" of warriors, with each warrior running up to the camera and then being killed. From the movie we visited the three pits, starting with #3, the smallest one. This was definitely the way to go, since it saved the biggest pit for last. It was all quite impressive.

From Xi'an we headed down to Chongqing, to visit Cuttino's friends from Peace Corps Georgia, Liz and Jason, who are both teaching at a university there.

We were very lucky in Beijing to have Jon as a tour guide. He spoke some Mandarin (way more than any of us) and knew the city really well. All we had to do was follow him around as he took us to some amazing sites.

The first day we did Tiannamen Square, the Forbidden City, Silk Street Market (lots of knock offs for pretty cheap) and the Night/Stick market.

At the Silk street market, we shopped for new clothes. Since all of us have been wearing the same clothes for the last two and a half years, we were pretty excited to find something new. Cuttino and Tighe both found some nice shirts and we had fun bargaining for them. However, when I was looking at shirts, I think we harassed the woman too much (four people bargaining is a bit much I guess) and she ended up getting angry. She got up close to Cuttino and said in his ear "I think you big crazy!" So I didn't end up with any shirts, but it was entertaining at least.

In the stick market, the boys ate friend scorpions (apparently it tastes like fried) and we checked out all of the other creepy crawlers for sale.

The second day we did the Summer Palace and the Olympic stadiums. Even though the Olympics had been over for a while now, there were still thousands of people at the stadiums. We paid a steep 50 yuan each to go into the Bird's Nest, where we were able to go down on the field. They lit up the Water Cube at night, which looked awesome!

The third day we headed out to the Great Wall. I had no idea what a hike it would be to get to the top! I was exhausted. It was very crowded (as is everything in China, and with Chinese tourists, not Western ones...) However, we walked a little past the top part and suddenly we had the Wall all to ourselves. It was kind of cool to get away from the crowd. I highly reccomend walking ten minutes past the top! After the Great Wall we went to the Temple of Heaven which was another pretty temple.

The last day in Beijing we went to the Lama Temple (which we had walked past a thousand times since it was next to our temple) The guide book says this is one of the most important temples in China.

From Beijing we booked a night train down to Xi'an, to visit the famous Terra Cotta Warriors

After spending a wonderful night in Kashgar (those hot showers felt amazing after not showering for around five days!) we headed out to the bus station to try and get a sleeper bus for the 24 hour ride to Umruqi.

The woman at the information booth told us that we were not in the bus station, that we couldn't get tickets there. However, there were road maps and time tables everywhere so we decided to ignore her. Tighe brought the phrase book and got in the shortest line. The woman sold him tickets and we felt very justified.

Then we found out we were in the wrong place for our tickets. He had inadvertently bought tickets for the train to Umruqi, and we needed to go to the train station in order to go to Umruqi. Turned out to be the best mistake ever. The train was exceptionally comfortable, and we were actually able to book tickets all the way through to Beijing.

The 24 hour ride was on a "soft sleeper" which meant we were in a little cabin with four beds in it, two sets of bunk beds. The ride to Beijing (a 43 hour train ride) was in a "hard sleeper" which is a little rougher, three story bunk beds with no real walls between the compartments. However, being on the top bunk of the set allows you to feel as though you are above everyone and is actually a pretty comfortable way to sleep.

We made friends with the four year old in our car and spent many hours play fighting with him. Whenever only one of us was down where his bed was, he would point to the other's beds and ask where we were. At one point Cuttino lifted him up to see Tighe, reading in the top tier and the kid thought that was the greatest thing ever.

We managed to arrive in Beijing in one piece, after pretty much constant travel. We were set to meet up with Jon, a friend of Tighe's from middle school who was living in Beijing (thank goodness for facebook keeping people connected!)

is very very painful.

We left our homestay in Sary Tash, Kyrgyzstan at 5:30 in the morning (after a disgusting breakfast of cold fried eggs). We were at the border by 8 am and ready to cross. Our driver put us in a semi-truck that we believed was going to take us across the border, and maybe all the way to Kashgar, China.

Boy were we wrong. The trip ended up taking 5-6 hours, with four semi rides, 45 minutes standing in a line of pushing truck drivers (who were all bribing the guards to take their passports to the front of the line), a hike up a mountain covered by trucks belching smoke, and more money.

When we finally arrived we convinced a man to drive us to Kashgar. We got to spend the next three hours coasting along (he didn't seem to like to use the gas) and listening to his favorie station at full volume. He didn't seem to mind when the religious music ended and it turned to static, we listened to that at full volume as well.

We originally planned on going straight onto to Umruqi, but after our horribly long day, we changed our minds and stayed in Kashgar for the night.

In Khorog we met up with an NGO called MSDSP (I forget what it stands for...mountain, development, project, sustainable, I think those are all in there) They should be the model for tourism in any developing country. What they provide is a list of drivers, and a list of homestays all along several routes in the Pamir mountains. All we had to do was decide which driver we wanted to use, and how many days to travel for. Easy as pie.

The first day of the Pamirs was my favorite day of the trip so far. The weather in Khorog was perfect, with the leaves all yellow and red and warm enough for a t-shirt if you were sitting in the sun. We drove along a beautiful river, which we found out was actually the border with Afghanistan. Our first stop was Garm Chasm, which is a sulphury hot spring. We all went swimming and took pictures of it oozing hot water. Never thought I would be in a bathing suit that close to Afghanistan! That night we stopped in Ishkashim, where we had an amazing veggie cabbage and potato soup. (The food in central asia up until this point had been pretty rough going for a vegetarian...mostly large bowls of meat soup, with meat fat floating on top, so this was a big deal!)

The next three days included us driving in the most beautiful mountain scenery, stopping to climb around ancient ruins, and staying with friendly families in homestays. We stopped at several icy cold lakes, and crossed a pass that was the highest I have ever been in my life (15,200 feet!)

Leaving Tajkistan was quite entertaining. We were at a high mountain pass, and had to get out of the car, while it was searched by Lucky, a cocker spaniel drug sniffing dog. The soldiers took a really long time searching our car, while we chatted with some other back packers headed in the opposite direction. When we were getting back in the car, I noticed one of them pocketing a small baggie full of white powder. Our driver turned around and pointed at the ground, he said "We put the heroin right there, and she couldn't find it" and laughed.

One of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and the home to my current favorite day of the trip.

We arrived in Penjkent, a wild west type town on the Uzbek border. There we were required to register with the country. This included 2 hours of filling out forms, 30 bucks, and several stops (change money, copy passports, pay at bank, go to registering place) before it was completed.

Our hostel owner in Penjkent was able to hook us up with a driver going to Dushanbe, the capital. They were worried about snow on the passes so he made sure we got a four wheel drive vehicle (a Niva) And thank God we did! The roads were unbelievable, I'm still not sure how we got through some of the places! It was a beautiful drive and our fellow passenger was a lot of fun. On the top of one of the passes we started a snowball fight with some Tajik girls who thought we were hilarious.

In Dushanbe, we were lucky to get to meet up with Maggie and Jessica, friends of friends who are living there to learn Tajik. They showed us a good time at all the ex-pat hang outs and shared Russia stories with Cuttino.

From Dushanbe we needed to go to Khorog to start the Pamir mountain part of our journey. Unfortunately, the guy with a four wheel drive wanted a ridiculous amount of money (as much as a plane ticket would have cost). Luckily, a Tajik woman took pity on us and helped us score seats in a Marshutka going that way. Maybe not luckily....we ended up riding backwards for fifteen hours over the twisty roads ever. Cuttino and I were both really car sick for a good portion of the way. But by the end, the group in the car had become like a team. We all sat together for meals and after dinner we had a singing/dancing party in the bus. They made two of the little boys (about ten years old) get up and dance for everyone. Then the two brothers started singing traditional Tajik songs. This may sound fun, but in actuality it was two boys yelling at the top of their lungs, really off key, with no discernible rhythm, for a VERY long time.

We arrived in Khorog around 1 am, and our friend invited us to stay in her house, which we gladly accepted. She made us a traditional breakfast in the morning, with Pamiri tea, which you stick a big hunk of butter in before drinking.

From there, we booked our Pamir trip....

Crossing into Uzbekistan included our taxi driver providing several bribes so that he could drive us to the hut, instead of us walking in the rain. He then walked into the area where the officials were working (cutting a giant line) and bribed the man to put a different date on his passport, very lightly. Apparently his first offer of money wasn't enough, and he had to add more.

This began our trip in the police state of Uzbekistan.

The currency in Uzbekistan comes in very small denominations. The largest bill is worth about 60 cents, so when I exchanged $200 (on the black market from a lady with a HUGE purse) I got quite a stack back. So much that I wanted to throw it in the air and roll around in it.

In Uzbekistan we had several people to meet up with. One of the Peace Corps staff from Cuttino's post used to work in PC Uzbekistan (before they were kicked out) and so she gave us a woman's name to meet up with. Turns out, this woman knows my friend from high school, Emiliya because they work together. So the first night we went out with Nodira and two returned Peace Corps volunteers, turned Foreign Service Officers. The second day Emiliya showed us the sights of Tashkent.

In Tashkent we were finally able to eat Georgian food, something we had been looking for ever since we had to cancel the Georgian portion of our trip. The food was delicious, and the atmosphere excellent at the restaraunt, even if Cuttino had to order Georgian food in Russian.

From Tashkent we took an overnight train down to see Bukhara and Samarkand, more stops on the Silk Road. Both cities were beautiful, but completely over run with European package tourists. Who expects to see tour buses in Uzbekistan??

Both cities were fun, although a little disappointing after Iran. In Iran, the mosques and madrassas were all actively being used, in Uzbekistan they were all full of souvenir stalls with pushy salesmen.

We enjoyed Uzbekistan but were eager to move onto Tajikistan, and the Pamir highway.

The prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan drove us down to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. We were happy to find another nice, tree-lined capital city. Although rather quiet and small, Bishkek is a beautiful city. We found a great hostel type place with beds shoved in lofts throughout the huge house to stay in while we were in Bishkek. We had a great time wandering the streets and walking through the parks.

One day we went to the State History Museum where the entire ceiling (of a two story building) was covered in murals depicting soviet history. There were some exhibits as well, but the ceiling was definitely the reason to go to the museum. It exulted the greatness of living under the soviets, and even went up through the space race and cold war, with a picture of a skeleton cowboy wearing an American flag and riding a nuclear missile. I highly reccommend the museum.

From Bishkek we went out to Lake Issyk-Kul. Unfortunately, we were a little late in the season, so swimming was no longer possible. But we enjoyed walking on the beach with the donkeys and cows. The mountains were beautiful and the lake was very relaxing.

After the lake we headed back to Bishkek, to catch a car to Osh, about a 12 hour drive through the mountains. On one of the mountain passes we saw our first snow, waiting for the tunnel to re-open. While it was a long drive, the scenery was spectacular. We arrived in Osh and prepared to head out again, this time to Uzbekistan.

...It is absolutely nothing like Borat.

We arrived at 5am, after a red eye flight from Dubai. We were a little worried, because the official stance is that you can't get a transit visa on arrival, but everything we read said it was no problem. Thankfully, it all worked out and we were able to enter the country.

Almaty is a beautiful city. The streets are wide and tree lined. Coming from the heat of Dubai (and the rest of the Middle East) it felt quite chilly. And it was fall! I didn't realize how much I missed seeing the leaves change color until we saw it in Almaty. The trees were beautiful and we enjoyed walking along the streets.

Unfortunately, we found out that all of the hotel rooms were booked (some sort of Fall Fair) or EXTREMELY expensive (waaaay out of our price range). So, we ate an overpriced lunch at Gloria Jeans Coffee (and loaded up on caffeine, since we hadn't slept in quite a while at this point) and headed to the bus station, to catch a 5 hour bus to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

On the road, I saw ten or fifteen trucks, each loaded with two to three large missiles each, driving down the road. Unfortunately, I was the only one who saw it, and since I know nothing about these things, and can't read cyrillic we don't really know much about them.

So, we continued on to Bishkek...

For the past two years, we have been reading almost monthly articles about Dubai in Newsweek (PCVs used to get them for free....apparently they don't have enough money for them anymore) The articles always talked about the ridiculous wealth and building sprees that were taking place in the Emirates.

They were all right.

We flew into the Sharjah airport, where there were an excessive number of men in dish dashes working customs. They didn't seem to care at all if they actually performed their jobs, they were just there to look nice. The guy doing our passports left for a while right when we got to the window, took a break to talk to his friends, and another to talk on his cell phone.

We were very lucky to be staying with friends of Gary's while in Dubai, as they don't really cater to the backpacker market. We stayed in "The Greens", an apartment complex right in the middle of the action. Our wonderful hosts, Dan and Autumn and their adorable daughter Kenna took us out to see "Mall of the Emirates". We figured since we had been seeing ancient covered markets in the other parts of the middle east, we should check out what the new covered markets look like. The mall was huge, crowded and expensive. It was interesting to people watch, seeing as only 5% of Dubai is actually Arab (the rest is all expats). Inside the mall were both a ski resort (complete with ski hotel, and ski cafe) AND a Krispy Kreme donuts (Cuttino was excited)

For dinner, we went to an Indian restaraunt, and had some delicious Indian food (nice change for me, since I think I ate rice and yogurt EVERY day in Iran...)

On the way home, we stopped to look at the Burj al Arab, the 7 star hotel in Dubai. We had to check it out online later, to find out what exactly you got for you $28,000 per night. It doesn't seem like you get much other than a horribly gaudily decorated room and limo service....I'll stick to backpacking...

The next day we spent the day eating a whole foods restaraunt, doing internet, and relaxing by the pool. Rough life.

From the Dubai we flew onto Kazakhstan to begin our Cental Asian leg of the journey.

Big thanks to Dan and Autumn and Kenna for letting us crash with them!!!

Iran was such a whirlwind tour, and we saw so many sites, that it's really not possible to describe all that we did. So I'll give a short description of each of the places we saw.

Crossed the border at Bargazan: The border guards fingerprinted us (they apologized the whole time) because the government requires them to. Seemed to be the first time they had done this, as it took them half an hour to find the forms, and they didn't have actual fingerprinting ink. We used regular passport stamping ink, which not only made for horribly smudged fingerprints, it also stained our fingers blue for the next two days.

Tabriz: Saw the covered souqs and the mosques with our uber-liberal guide. Also went to dinner at his family's house and met his lovely wife and daughter.

From Iran"

Kandovan: From Tabriz we took a day trip to see this Cappadocia-like village of people living in hollowed out rock buildings.

From Iran

Tehran: Flew to Tehran, in time for "Quds day", the last Friday in Ramadan, celebrating Jerusalem and Palestinian resistance. We managed to avoid it, but watched on the news HUGE numbers of people marching in the streets. Also went to the US Den of Espionage (former US Embassy) to check out the anti-American murals. The only actual anti-American stuff we saw or heard for the whole trip...

Kashan: Fin gardens and old beautiful houses with huge courtyards and fountains

Abyaneh: Another picturesque town. This one was mostly older people, because all of the young people have moved away, to the city, for jobs.

Yazd: Famous for "wind towers" which are used for cooling the buildings and Zoroastrian sites. Saw the eternal flame that has been going since 400 something AD, as well as the Tower of Silence, where they used to (up til 50 years ago) put their dead to be eaten by birds, to avoid fouling the earth with dirty dead bodies.

Esfahan: "Half the World" as a writer described it, by going to Esfahan you can see half of what is available in the world. The Imam Square has some of the most beautiful Islamic architecture I've ever seen. Esfahan also has palaces, bridges and more parks.

Shiraz: More mosques and shrines.

Persepolis: Outside of Shiraz, amazing ruins.

Then, from Shiraz, we flew on to Dubai, to check out the "new" side of the Islamic World.

Iran was a country full of surprises. It was the first time I felt any culture shock since our trip began.

The first surprise for me was the openness of the people to criticize the government. In Jordan, we never said anything bad about the King, and certainly not in public. But there we were in Iran, in public places and the border guards were apologizing for the ridiculousness of fingerprinting us, a man on the street was apologizing for his government and our tour guide himself was criticizing Ahmadinijad.

I was also surprised at how much wearing the veil bothered me. I spent two years watching women cover their hair, and didn't think that it would be that big of a deal to do it for eleven days. It was. It was hot and uncomfortable. The main problem was that the style of wearing it, is to wear it pushed back as far as possible on the head, with the maximum amount of hair shown in the front. This is great and all, but it makes it really really easy for it to fall off. I spent probably 20% of my concentration thinking about the stupid thing, and worrying that it would fall off. Every five minutes or so I would need to pull it forward again. And I wasn't really able to turn side to side, look up, bend down, or really move at all without it falling off. Turns out, wearing a scarf is waaaaay more work than I realized!

The last surprise was how friendly everyone was! We would sit in the park, and people would approach, eager to try their English and talk to the foreigners. I'm used to people staring at me, and talking about me, but it was interesting to have everyone coming up to talk to me. And not just talk, almost everyone who talked to us invited us to come with them to eat, or drink tea, or see something. Several apologized that it was Ramadan and they couldn't buy us food. And every single one of them LOVED Americans. A few mentioned not liking George Bush, but they were just as likely to say they didn't like their own government.

It was a trip filled with surprises. The next post will give a quick rundown of the places we visited (going with a tour guide and a private car means you see a LOT more than you do on your own! Every night I would have to get out the tour book and write down all the sites we saw just so I wouldn't forget them)

Large bang in Spanish cityAhmadinijad says "The nuclear age is finished"Experts: Quds day* revives PalestiniansAyatollah: Palestinians should be the model for all resistanceRussian Pundit: All muslims unite for Quds dayPalestinians protest Israeli plan to dump toxic waste in West BankPresident Bush admits defeat in UN General AssemblyTurkey shocked by baby deathsPresident Ahmadinijad slams unjust world systemAyatollah: Britain is the main force behind zionism * The Friday we were in Tehran was the last Friday of Ramadan, which was declared "Quds Day" the day for Jerusalem. There were protests all day, and on the street corners they gave out the cool "Down with USA" posters. Unfortunately we didn't get one (our guide made us return the one we posed with).

In order for Americans to travel to Iran, they must be on a tour. We chose Gashttour because of their recommendations in New York Times and on other websites.

Before traveling to Iran, we joked that we would be watched by our "minder" very carefully, and we were ready to be very careful to watch what we said in public. Turns out, our minder was really just a bilingual guide.

Also, we were surprised to hear the topics our first "minder" brought up. In fact, we decided to compile a list of topics we covered, all in public places...

Topics covered and quotes from our minder:

"It's a pity women have to wear the veil"

What do you think of Ahmadinijad?

Life was better with the old government (pre Revolution)

Homosexuality exists, he knows lesbians and gay men. They do not receive the death penalty, only imprisonment

He would like to read "Satanic Verses"

Prostitutes (he told us how to find them....look for the girls wearing too much make up, looking side to side and chewing gum)

Death Penalty (for four reasons; pedophilia, drugs, adultery, and murder)

Birth Control (the pill is ok with a doctor's note, but not condoms)

911 Conspiracy Theories (all Jews got out of the towers before the planes hit)

How to bring alcohol past customs

Israel and visiting without getting stamps ("Have you been?")

Fanatic Islam

Self flagellation and black clothes are anti-Islam

He likes polygamy

Drawing pictures of Mohammed is ok

Young people need sex

Iran needs nuclear power, but of course they are making weapons on the side

and lastly, we met his Communist, artist nephew, who goes by the nickname "Fidel"

Topics not covered by our minder:

Abortion

AIDS

From Istanbul, we took another overnight bus to Goreme. For the first time in our trip in Turkey, we were on a bus without any Turks, only tourists. We think this is the reason that the service was terrible (usually you get water, and chemical tasting cake and stuff). When we arrived in Nevshehir (the town outside of Goreme) they asked who had booked tours. We said we hadn't, and they pulled us off the bus and told us we needed to take a smaller bus to Goreme. Instead of taking us to the bus, they took us to a tour company office and proceeded to try and convince us to take one of their tours. For three people who hadn't slept in the past 24 hours, and who are very cheap, this was not a good tactic. He asked us how we planned on seeing the surrounding villages and Tighe told him "We will walk". When he realized he wasn't selling anything, he finally took us to the bus. It was full of other tourists, and before we left, he made it clear that if you had booked a tour, the bus would take you to your hotel, if not, it would take you to the bus station. Lovely tour company really.

Luckily, the rest of the experience in Cappadocia made up for the jerk bus company. We stayed at Shoestring Pension, in actual caves. From Cappadocia, we took several hikes around to see the "Fairy Chimneys". If you look at my pictures (link on the right) you will see what these "chimneys" really look like. They made for excellent, immature photo shoots.

While in Cappadocia we also visited an underground city called Kaymakli. The city went down 8 stories underground, but we only visited four levels. It was very confusing inside, and very large, but with very small and narrow tunnels, and (luckily covered over with grates) large drops.

In Cappadocia we decided that we couldn't do Eastern Turkey without a trip to Mt. Nemrut. The price had gone up a lot in the years since our guide book was written, and we were already over budget, but we decided it was a trip we couldn't pass up. And all of us are glad we went. Cuttino said it was the best part of Turkey.

Unfortunately, getting there was kind of a pain. We were told our bus would arrive in Malatya (famous for apricots) at 10pm. We booked a hotel and were ready to go. But then our bus didn't arrive until midnight, the taxi to town cost 21 YTL (the bus back to the station cost us less than 1 each...) and EVERY single hotel was full. Noone seemed to speak much English in Malatya so we were told there was either "Snow", a concert, or a government exam that was filling all of the hotels. Turns out it was a government exam, that in Turkish sounds a lot like the word "snow". We ended up convincing a hotel to let us sleep on the lobby floor. This wasn't as bad as it sounds, as we were in a room with a door that locked. And it saved us money!

The next morning, we met up with Kemal, at the tourist office, a man directly out of the 70s, complete with bell bottoms. He was very helpful and set up our tour to Mt Nemrut, which left at noon. From Malatya, we drove two and a half hours up some crazy mountains to a hotel in the complete middle of nowhere. From the hotel we took a bus up to Mt Nemrut to see the site at sunset. Mt Nemrut was a monument created by a meglomaniac to himself. There were giant statues of all of the gods, and him. Unfortunately, it was knocked down by an earthquake, and now there are just giant heads lying everywhere. Very bizarre.

We also went up to Mt Nemrut at sunrise, to see the heads again (they lie on two sides of the mountain, so one side is lit up in the sunset and the other in the sunrise. It was freezing cold, but very beautiful.

From Mt Nemrut, we headed to Dogubayazit, for our last stop in Turkey. There we saw the Ishak Pasha Palace, which was a deceptively far hike from our hostel. We saw our first real rain on the way down, and luckily were picked up by some nice guys and were saved getting soaked on the way down.

From Dogubayazit we headed across the border to Iran...

From Syria, we crossed into Turkey. Took a while, since they had to write down all of our information, then type all of our information, and the man doing it didn't really understand any English. Therefore "Timothy" (Tighe's dad's name) became "Chiboche?" and my last name became "Slemens?"

We went from Aleppo to Antakya (Antioch) and changed buses for Antalya. From there we headed down to the coast, to a "town" called Olympos. This town wasn't really a town, but a collection of hippy tree house hostels. I wasn't a big fan of the town, but it was worth it for the coast. From the hostel we walked through Roman ruins, down to a beautiful bay on the Mediterranean. From the water you could see Roman ruins up in the mountains. The water was the perfect temperature for swimming, with occasional, cold, fresh water currents flowing by.

Although technically a treehouse, our dorm room had a/c and electricity. Overall it was a very nice atmosphere, and it would be nice to go back some time and try out all of their extreme sports (paragliding, ocean kayaking, white water rafting, waterfall rapelling, etc)

Luckily Turkey has wonderful, clean, comfortable buses, because we have spent a lot of time riding them! From Olympos we took another overnight bus to Istanbul.

Istanbul is a special place for us, because it is where Cuttino and I got engaged. Two Januarys ago, overlooking the Hagia Sophia and blue mosque, with an amazing sunset in the background he popped the question.

On this trip, we stayed up in Taksim, in quite possibly the world's smallest dorm room. They somehow managed to fit three sets of bunk beds in a room the size of a closet. Luckily we only spent one night there, because we were invited by my uncle's friend to spend the night at his house over on the Asian side. There we spent a lovely day, playing with his two adorable children and uploading millions of pictures (link on right)

From there we took yet another bus...

We had been toying with the idea of going to Lebanon ever since we started planning this trip. But because things are so iffy in the Middle East, we didn't decide to go for sure until about a week before. We also decided it was better to tell everyone after the fact, to prevent parental heart attacks.

We took a large boat of a car out to Beirut and arrived to a wall of humidity. After two years in super dry Jordan, it was a big shock!

From our hotel we walked to downtown, an area with a beautiful square, and a Rolex clock tower. There were guards posted on the corners of the square, which actually served to reassure us. In the square we had an afternoon beer (such a change from Jordan during Ramadan, where you can hardly find it even at night). We then wandered down to the Corniche, along the Mediteranean. All along the way were beautiful new buildings going up, right in front of old, shot up buildings. It was a very interesting contrast, which you can hopefully see in some of my pictures (link on the right)

That evening we went out to check out the Beirut night life scene (with our hostel owner and a friend of hers). We had a great time and it was interesting to see so many women, so scantily clad, in a middle eastern country!

I felt very safe the entire time we were in Beirut. The people were friendly, the streets clean and well maintained, and the food absolutely delicious. We were careful to stay away from the south, and the areas we were in all felt very safe.

From Beirut we decided to head to Zahleh, towards the Syrian border, because we heard they had some vineyards. It was about an hour's drive, through the mountains. We stayed in a beautiful old building, with huge rooms and high ceilings. From our room we heard lots of people laughing and yelling, and decided to investigate. We found the "casino" of Zahleh, basically a big outdoor area with a river, cafes, arcades and lots of Lebanese families out having a good time. We spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening wandering around with the families and eating delicious food (we even managed to get free icecream because the vendor's daughter went to North Carolina State)

Unfortunately, we decided that we needed to leave Lebanon, not because we felt unsafe, but because we simply couldn't afford it! I can't wait to go back some day, some day when I have money!

After two years of wanting to go to Syria, I finally got my wish.

We flew from Cairo, and thanks to some nifty passport switching around, were able to enter Syria. First, we headed to Damascus. Wandered around the old city, saw the covered markets and beautiful architecture. I was worried about eating and drinking because it is Ramadan, but Syria seemed much more relaxed than Jordan, people were eating drinking and smoking all over. Tighe even saw some women drinking water in the mosque.

The nightlife was a little lacking in Damascus. In fact, the only place we could find to have a beer was basically a speakeasy, full of old, single, Syrian men drinking alone. All the place served was beer in cans....no food, no nothing.

From Damascus we went to Beirut, but I'll save that for another post.

After a few days in Lebanon we returned to Syria, and headed for Hama, famous for it's waterwheels, and proximity to the Crac de Chevaliers. Hama was also a pretty quiet town, not sure if this is because of Ramadan or if it is normally like that. The Crac de Chevaliers was pretty amazing, very very well preserved and large, and it even had a moat! All of us were reminded of the David MacCaulay (sp?) books about castles and cathedrals while walking around in it (if you haven't seen these books, go out and buy them, they are amazing with great illustrations!) Unfortunately, the castle was also covered in all sorts of debris. It seemed as though there was some sort of concert/speech/something that needed a lot of chairs that had never really been cleaned up after.

From Hama we headed to Aleppo for some more covered souqs. Unfortunately, I got sick while there and it forced us to stay an extra day. Luckily we had a very nice hotel room to sleep in, with a/c and everything.

From Aleppo we headed on out to Turkey

From Israel, Cuttino Seth and I headed down to Dahab, in the Sinai peninsula. The plan was to climb Mt Sinai for sunrise, but the infection I had slowed us down, and instead we spent two days relaxing in a beautiful beach retreat.

We went snorkeling at Blue Hole near Dahab, and it put the snorkeling I have done in Aqaba to shame. There were millions of fish, beautiful coral and lots of things I couldn't identify to look at. We managed to get there just in time, because about an hour after we were finished, the water was so crowded with people that I don't know how they could move!

From Dahab we took an 18 hour overnight bus ride to Luxor. In Luxor we stayed at the Bob Marley Hostel, totally decked out in Brazilian flags, pictures of Che Guevara and pictures of Bob Marley (not sure where the Brazilian part fits in...). In Luxor we saw the sites and managed to stay hydrated (it was very very hot, especially in our non air conditioned room!) We saw the Valley of the Kings (coolest part-King Tut's mummy, all black with tar, and teeny tiny), Valley of the Queens (with a little fetus mummy), Temple of Hatshetput (the guide called it Hot Chicken Soup) and the Colossus of Memmnon (sorry for murdering the spelling of all of those!). We also checked out the Karnak Temple and the Luxor temple (which we did at night-amazing!)

From Luxor we took the overnight train up to Cairo, which unfortunately arrived at 4 am. Luckily the hostel let us in to sleep. In Cairo we went to the Egyptian Museum (crazy, chaotic, unlabeled, hotter than anything and completely full of absolutely amazing artifacts) In the Egyptian museum we saw more mummies, including mummies of a giant crocodile, fish, horse and dog.

The second day in Cairo we took an all day taxi ride out to see all of the pyramids. We started the day with the older pyramids. Went inside the step pyramid (looooooong way down, and it smelled bad) and looked at a bunch of others. We finally made our way to the Pyramids at Giza, which I heard would be a disapointment after seeing them in pictures for years. Luckily, we weren't disappointed at all. We were convinced to ride camels out to the pyramids, and from the side we approached, it didn't seem very crowded at all. We rode the camels around for about 2 and a half hours, and were basically unable to walk for the next week! The only thing disapointing about the pyramids was the Sphinx. That guy is little!

On our last day we did Coptic (Christian) Cairo. This included a beautifully done museum with amazing cloth, art and icons from the old church.

The last day in Cairo was the first day of Ramadan. For the last two years I have heard how amazing the Ramadan nights are in Cairo, so we decided to head out to Khan al Khalili (the Islamic part of Cairo) for some nightlife. Unfortunately, Ramadan nights is nothing more than roving bands of teenage boys, throwing firecrackers and groping women. It was horrible and we left quite quickly after that.

From Cairo we said goodbye to Seth, and played a complicated passport switching game in order to fly to Syria (thank goodness we had two passports) since Syria will not allow entrance if you have been to Israel. Luckily it all worked and we were able to continue our adventures in Syria

After COSing (finishing Peace Corps) I traveled with my parents, Cuttino and Seth over to the Promised Land.

We crossed at the Northern border crossing, which included a ridiculous amount of waiting, pointless buses, and general sitting around. From there, we headed out to Tiberias, and the Sea of Galilee. The "sea" is much smaller than I expected, in fact, more like a lake.

From Tiberias we went to Jerusalem, the real point of the trip. There, we ate like kings (thanks to my amazing parents!) and saw the Biblical sites. It still surprises me how small Jerusalem is. We managed to see most of the city, but were slowed down because I got sick. I had a cold back in Jordan, and it turned into some nasty infection that required a trip to the Israeli Health clinic (so efficient nice and clean...but expensive!) and some antibiotics.

From Jerusalem, we sent my parents back to Jordan (thank god for Tighe who helped them from Irbid down to the airport!) and Seth Cuttino and I headed for Egypt....

On August 21, 2008 I officially completed my Peace Corps service. This wasn't marked by anything other than realizing I had all of the signatures I needed from the Peace Corps staff, and then walking out of the office door. It feels good though.

Before finishing my service, I had a whirlwind week and a half. First, my fiance Cuttino and his friend Seth arrived in Jordan (albeit at different times since Turkish air bumped Seth from the 4am arrival to the 9am arrival time). I took the boys down to my village since I had to help out with a group of nine British college students that arrived. We originally thought they were coming for ten days, but later found out it would be three weeks.

A few days after the boys arrived, we went back up to Amman to pick up my parents from the airport as well. They arrived safely and we all managed to pile in the rental car to head down to the village.

To add to the chaos, the new volunteer came down for her site visit the next day as well. Which made for six people staying in my house and nine in the center. A total zoo.

On my last night we all went over to Reem's house for some traditional Bedouin food and company. It was a great time, with her whole family stopping by to say goodbye. It was nice for my parents to see my adopted family in Jordan

The goodbyes were hard, but I was ready to start the next part of my life. Some other day I will post a sappy account of how much I miss everyone, but not today.