La Siren Nuweiba

"Men are birds without wings, and birds are men without sorrows"

Birds Without Wings (620 pages)
Louis de Berniéres
received from Corty in Istanbul
given to Arynn in Gezer kibbutz

Back in Syria I was watching a lot of BBC, the only English language channel consistently available on their satellite TV. One night the beeb was covering the Booker Prize nomination. One striking thing they mentioned is criticism that the Booker is ...

... offering night dives for about $55 which myself and another guy signed up for, making it my second dive that day since I had a dive scheduled already with African Divers at 1:30. Unfortunately I had to eat the first lunch pretty quickly because it was not served until 1. Oh well, I am going diving in the Red Sea, I can manage.

African Divers had their driver come pick me up outside the resort at 1:30 and I was taken to their place ...

... scary, instead of going against the current about 500m back to get in where there is break in the coral we decided to high tail it and go over the coral. We didn't realise how quick the tide was going out! There was some really hairy times as there was heaps of Sea Urchans with their massive poisonous spikes in the reef and I swear my chest was only mms from them sometimes. After a few close shaves we were over the coral and could slow our flippers to a ...

On the long list of crazy experiences I've tried, enlisting in the Israeli Defense Forces in a basic army training course geared towards foreigners has to fit near the top. Going in, I kept describing it to friends as "fake", but it's basically turned out to be...rather real. My commander got really ****** when I used the word "fake." Essentially, if I did want to do aliyah and join the IDF, this period would count towards that service requirement. Plus, for all the ...

... not once did they ever ask me about what I was up to, all they seemed to care about was themselves, I heard all the usual travel stories that you get about Thailand etc, after a while you just get a bit sick of it. The ride was quite a comftable one and we passed through lush green fields as we made our way up the nile. We would often stop and pick up passangers or try to pick them up, our driver was a bit of a maniack and would always be ...

... that was good to hear. Weird to think I'll be in Singapore a week tomorrow.

Ferry was supposed to leave at 3 but I don't think we boarded until 4 at the very earliest. All the foreigners were pushed to the front of the que. I certainly wasn't complaining. I think we paid more though. Got on the ferry which in fairness was modern. Spent a very long time sat on my seat after handing in my passport. We didn't leave for ages. Maybe 6pm or so. So already 3 hours late ...

... you, and put some sandwiches and your bags in." But, the Dead Sea was highly-patrolled, too. Then, one day, I realized I shouldn't be putting all my mutilated, poisonously-stained eggs in one basket. Looking at a topographical globe, I noticed both Turkey and Iran were covered in high plateaux. They must be terribly cold in the winter that was now approaching. It'd be exhausting to travel there. I decided it'd be a better time to go to Africa instead. I'd ...

... and they took us up the shorter but steeper "Moses route" up the mountain (I guess if you are going to follow in Moses' footsteps, you might as well go all the way).  It was amazingly beautiful -- you start out through this steep canyon, and then the route becomes pretty twisty and precipitous.  After about 1 1/2 hours, you stop and have to get off the camels, and then the last part is on foot up over 700 stairs !  Ronan, Sean and Mimi ...

... pillars of Islam and other details about the Muslim religion; the choice to cover themselves in among the most intriguing to me.  However, I can see that if I was to live in that environment I would absolutely cover up to avoid unwanted advances by the seemingly endless number of men.  There are definitely woman around, perhaps many in the home caring for the I think it was 3.4 average children, but they are scarce especially at coffee shops or out ...

... Day 255 Observations (April 24th 2008)

· Time to go i
The signs were there when we woke in Dahab yesterday morning hinting that maybe, just maybe, we'd hung on in Egypt one day longer than we should have. The power in our room died at 6:30am taking our air-conditioned comfort with it. Then the hot water tap stopped dispensing emm, hot water meaning we had to shower in not only salty water but cold salty water. Shortly ...