Alexandria, Egypt

A few meters under the earth and water of Alexandria is centuries of history. Artifacts from Pharonic, Greek, Roman, Islamic and Christian origin lie underneath this ancient center of learning. Euclid thought up geometry here. That's pretty damn cool. You'd think with all that history this would be a tourist trap. While there are plenty of museums and the new library does put it on the Architectural map, the city really doesn't have too much to see... or at least that is my one day, traveling during Ramadan, take on it. The buildings of central Alexandria speak to its former glory. Earlier during the last century this was a place where people from all over would come together and share ideas. Before the ousting of foreigners, literature and poetry would be created in this European styled city. Note on the library: amazing building, but while I appreciate the idea of marking the exterior with words from every alphabet, I didn't feel it in practice.

Ramadan means that the places of interest have limited hours and the only establishments I can get lunch are Western restaurants. If I wanted to eat KFC I would have stayed in Taiwan. It also means that it a bit harder to meet people since the fasting during the day changes schedules and at night people gather with the people closest to them. I walking around thinking how much I missed my friends and family when I was invited to sit to a street site iftar. It is common for wealthy folks to set up tables of food for the poor, those without families and travelers (that'd be me) to break fast when the sun starts going down. Even though I didn't speak Arabic, it was nice to sit with folks for a date and a simple meal. The other Iftar I was at was during the train ride back to Cairo where we were stuck on the tracks for an hour an a half for the two hour trip for a while delaying arrival until after dark. People were passed dates, sweets and friut. It was nice to be included.

Before Alexandria I stopped by the Egyptian museum. My favorite thing about the place was how the few placards decribing the artifacts were yellowed antiques themselves. I can beleive that they will have to excavate the storerooms of that place considering that the museum itself was piled with stacks and stacks of priceless antiquities. While walking around alone I easedroped on tourgroups with guides speaking Italian, Japanese, English, French, Mandarin, Arabic and other toungues. I have gotten used to being surrounded by words I can't understand, but it is great walking around and catching the ones I do.

Ain Sukhna, Egypt

The work week here runs from Sunday to Thursday. My hosts work at an American school and they had a planned trip to the beach and last Thursday I tagged along with about 70 teachers. Being an educator abroad is a sweet racket. For the same amount of education and certification to be a teacher in America one can teach in another country and live the good life. The job is reminiscent of the Foreign service where you can do 2 years here before you move onto 2 years there. Except instead of stamping passports and spreading the policy of the government, one is interacting with rich folks’ kids, working on a Masters or other certifications by correspondence and have every summer off. Other perks include the ability to exotic places, housing allowances and a worldwide network of professionals that choose to do this as a career. And the poorer the country, the farther the Western sized wages go.

The resort was good. It was in this huge beach house community/compound on the beach. The Gulf of Suez is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and off in the distance one could see the huge ships shuffling across the horizon. To the north was this chemical plant whose product I couldn’t determine, but whose spherical high pressure volatile organic compound tanks reminded me of home. The water was clear and shallow and when tired of the sea salt, there was this huge pool in the middle of the hotel. Kids were led through the Chicken Dance in Arabic and the adults could lounge all day and then spend the night smoking hookahs, drinking beverages and whatever else old folks do. The food there was pretty good and came in large quantities encouraging gluttony. The buffet rule, which is a coronary of the law of diminishing returns, was in effect; the food just isn’t good the second time around.

When talking to the teachers over cappuccinos and overprices liquor I would hear “third world” a lot. Really? I can count the number of child beggars I have run into on my fingers, haven’t seen any violent protests or people run over, dead along side of the road. The lives of the people I see seem to have value. But maybe I have a skewed view of what third world means and maybe I am not really seeing it all from the luxury resort and the highrise flat. I hear there are places here called Garbage City and the City of the Dead where Cairoians pull survival and shelter from the garbage dumps and people dwell in the mausoleums of the sprawling cemeteries. There are massive closely spaced apartment blocks that spring up from the desert where clothes drying on the balconies of the shaded alleyways probably never see the sun. These homes are not topped with satellite dishes. Every time I passed through Los Angeles I would wonder how an area encompassing Beverly Hills, Compton and Disneyland made any sense. Actually, even with the experience of Cairo I still wonder the same thing.

Cario, Egypt

The pyramids were big. That’s a bunch of rock those Egyptians brought up into the Giza plateau. Those monuments survived empires, sandstorms, being scavenged for building materials and flocks and flocks of tourists. I remember as a kid I would look at diagrams explaining the architecture, positioning and theories of why these things were created. They were one of my main reasons for being here. Truthfully, they live up to the hype.

What the glossy magazine articles don’t mention is that the last of the seven wonders is smack dab in the middle of a noisy suburb. Or that the immense area of the structure is patrolled by camel jockeys and kids hawking cheap papyrus imitations and wooden figurines of dead Egyptian royalty. If the heat and sand didn’t make me exhausted, it was trying to come up with new witty ways to say no, I don’t want what ever you are selling and will you give up trying to start a conversation with me? The longer you get tourists to talk the more likely they will buy something they don’t need. A war of attrition this was.

On the other side of the pyramids is sand. If one can ignore the dude trying to get you to climb one of the smaller pyramids for 20 Egyptian pounds, all one can hear is the silence of the wind. Egypt is mostly desert and if you look off into the distance you can see Libya a mere 2000 kilometers away. Or maybe just sand, I am not sure. The inside of the Pyramids have been gutted of artifacts of interest, but you can still fork over a wad of cash to climb through into an empty room. I have heard it was over rated, but I did anyways since I wanted to look at the architecture a bit closer. Big rocks make the pyramids. And sloped sides make them less dehumanizing. That’s what I learned.

Seriously, the engineering, ingenuity and management skills required to get these things made is impressive. And they would still be all bling bling if the limestone casings weren’t chipped off. Walking through the graves of the once richest men on Earth, I couldn’t help think how silly the whole endeavor was. Or not… as far as human creation is concerned these geometric structures are as permanent as we can get.

Cairo, Egypt

The sand here is a fine powder that coats anything on the street and mixed with my sweat makes my hair coarse and my contacts dry. I breathe it in when I was walking around downtown, kicked up by the decades old taxi cars that run to and fro across this city searching for fares that might earn the sometimes educated drivers another few Egyptian pounds to feed their family. Women with lipstick, mascara and a burquas stand in the heat to drink mango juice and then leave to have the glasses they used to be used again by smartly dressed business men trying to alleviate the thirst caused by the draining heat. And while men align themselves to Mecca five times a day, the satellite dishes that crown the tops of the sand colored building point towards the heavens channel news, dramas and sports from the corners of the globe... Oh, and of course, porn.

Cairo is a sprawling city of about 25 million people. It might be technically in Africa, but it feels like the Middle East. People here are polite and go out of their way to show hospitality. Most women are somehow covered, displaying their modesty while giving them the freedom of invisibility. Men read the Koran on the Metro, but they do so with their eyes closed since they know the words by heart. There are always men on the street here; unemployment is something like 20 percent. Traffic police in white uniforms are positioned every few hundred yards slinging old Kalashnikovs without bullets under their arms, looking bored. At this level of underemployment productivity and efficiency suffers. Getting a gig is hard enough. People here are too smart work so hard that that one will work yourself out of job. Things here take a little time to get done.

Crossing the street here in Cairo is fun. I have wondered where on this trip my love of jaywalking, street food and shady bars would get me intro trouble. Cairo has plenty of all of those. Well, maybe not too much of the latter. My favorite social lubricant, ethanol, is strictly controlled here. Westerners can the get ripped in private all they like, but many Egyptians will avoid any situation involving alcohol. Like the shoe stores here selling Dessels, the liquor stores here carry fake booze such as Finelandia and Johnny Waller. If you come to Egypt make friends with an expat by using your freshly stamped passport to buy 3 liters of imported liquor.

My host here, an amazing painter I knew from Houston, has this brilliant flat in Maadi that you can see the Pyramids in Giza from on a clear day. Maadi is a pleasant tree-lined suburb that has the greatest concentration of Westerners in Cairo. They are seen in the softball park drinking beer with hotdogs on the weekends while the mosque in left field announces the call to prayer. This is a place drenched in tradition, custom and history and rightfully so since civilization as we know it started around these here parts. So how does the palpapble tension between the old and new, rich and poor, East and West find a resolution here? What I am begining to understand in my travels is that I just don't know. I guess the point is that it doesn't.

Bangkok, Thailand

I am scribbling this while waiting for my fight to Cairo to taxi out. It is only now, as I skim through the in flight magazine, that I realize that I will be in Egypt for Ramadan. While a month of fasting seems like no fun, I do expect lanterns, short tempers and some amazing iftars. Bangkok was wet all day. Today I wandered the alleys of Chinatown and the halls of the National Gallery kinda damp. And not just me… laundry does not dry when it is this humid. My pack exceeds weight load limits due to the wetness of my clothes. I hope Cairo is arid.

As I looked at the art in the National Gallery, I realize that I am not alone in trying to make head and tails of Bangkok. At the back of the museum there was an annual exhibit of contemporary young artists. Amongst the Buddhist influences work and the sci-fi-esque images were art that filtered the frenetic madness of Bangkok through imagination and paint. Fascinating cityscapes and commentary on the sex trade were my favorite pieces. Take beautiful poor young women who are sold by their families as indentured flesh and you have fodder for good art. While might be accepted and established, from the impression I get, I don’t think the industry is well liked by Thai society.

What I did like was Muay Thai. Oh man, those kids are fierce. And I mean kids because some of the fighters might have been like 17 max. The contestants have the same look at the Buddhist monks seen the back of the bus; streets kids put onto a mission. As a foreigner I paid an order of magnitude more for my ticket then the locals. The tout pointed out that I didn’t pay Thai taxes, which is the most brilliant and superfluous argument I have heard about the 2 tier pricing here. But the price did buy me ringside seats.

I didn’t see buckets of blood or any body breaking their shin by kicking someone in the head, though one match ended by knockout and there was a cut forehead in a bout. I can imagine the fury of the fighter with the cut; unless he inflicts more blood on his opponent he loses the fight no matter his technique. I also understand the conditioning for the core muscles. If I took even a couple of knees to the kidneys I’d be pissing blood for a while. Now imagine 15 minutes of blows the sides. No thanks I say, I’d rather be the fat American drinking lagers with a British sailor watching from a distance thinking about how lucky I am.

Ko Pha Ngan/Ko Tao, Thailand

I got used to being alone of Ko Pha Ngan. It was nice. I was surrounded by unnatural beauty (because natural beauty to me is the bladerunner scene on the way down to LaPorte, Texas) and had the playground for the future of Europe to mingle in. Meet only five other Americans down there, a couple of which (fratboys) I wish I didn't meet. Seriously, who after paying 40 bhat for a street pad thai says "khap kun khup, bitch?" If you are going to insult someone look them in the eyes and say it in a language they can understand.

The Full Moon Party was... I got tired on the same party every night leading to the event, so skipped out from the festivities for a while. They bought in extra sound systems for the big night and boated folks in from the neighboring islands. The only thing different from the other nights I spent there was the beach was better zoned. The raves, drug dealers, police, harbor, lifeguards, drunk college kids, and more ravers each had their own little area. I was alone and was taking it easy that night, but my johnny black was a little too strong, which put me in a bad mood the rest of the night.

I got respect for the Thai DJs running the decks on the beach. Who knew you could turn dance music into a cottage industry. The DJs here only have one bag of CDs/records so I got sick of the music quick: it was predominately a combination of club hip-hop and Euro club/trance. I would have gladly lost my mind and shook my ass to some Solid Groove (best dance music of 2006!) drums, but alas. But think about it... These kids don't have exactly Oink accounts set up on their satellite internet and they can't exactly run to the local record store on their remote tropical island when they choose. The DJ at the old school drum and bass club spins vinyl that cost, what 7 quid each, when originally purchased. Given the issues with currency exchange rates and location, these guys are holding it down. As a side note: Some of the Thai fire spinners project rockstar better then Axl Rose did before he got fat.

I got on a ferry to Ko Tao the next morning... I've taken up snorkeling. That might not sound big, but if you consider that I am a terrible swimmer and water deeper then the crown of my head scares me paralytic, it is a big thing. Ko Tao is the smallest of the 3 major southern Thai islands and is known worldwide for fantastic diving. I even considered taking a diving course... I know this traveling thing is about conquering my fears, but let's be reasonable. The first time I went snorkeling was on a boat tour of Ko Pha Ngan where I strapped on a life vest, tried to figure out how to breathe through a tube, put on a mask, held on the to side of the boat, stuck my head underwater and subsequently panicked...

In Ko Tao the water is clear and in the protected coves the fish will swim up to you if you are wading and take a nip off your legs to see if you are still awake. Spent a night in Laim Than where I just watched from the surface and then donned the snorkel again in Tanote Bay. I started slowly with just sitting on the sand and practiced breathing and ended a few trips into the water later when I lost my snorkel in deep water and scratched up my knees trying to get onto a nearby rock. It is so beautiful and peaceful underwater just like the aquarium a the dentist's office, but this time no one is going to drill holes into my skull.

There are only two times in Thailand where I really hungered for company. The first was the dinner before the Full Moon Party and second was when I without my camera and this huge two foot long fish, green and all the other colors of the rainbow. As the gay German tourist said to me in Koh Samui when I asked if he minded if I sit and watch the sun set, "Somethings are just too beautiful to be alone."

Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand

I decided last minute to pack up my stuff and leave Maenan to go to Haad Rin on Ko Phag Nan to meet folks who were gathering for the Full Moon Party. What I didn't really think about is that this is where Europe and the rest of the rich world's college kids go. Spring Break Ko Pha Ngan 2006, Baby! Seriously, I think I am the only American on this beach. Lost of folks from the UK, and Israel here. Since the bombings in Egypt this has become a choice destination to blow off a little steam after serving in the army. Behind the dark skin and the cool icy eyes of petite little Israeli girls here is the intimate knowledge how to efficiently use an Uzi. Yes, I also find that pretty hot.

The Thai have taken a pilgrimage site for rave culture and turned it into a well oiled tourism machine. I am staying in a teak bungalow about 5 minutes walk from the action and with a view that I could (and have) look at for a while. Things here on the surface of the island seem clean, safe and ready for drunken stupidity. The drink of choice here is buckets. Whiskey buckets consist of a small bottle of Mekong (Thai whiskey) a can of coke and a tiny bottle of Thai Red Bull. A couple of these things and one is ready for a long night of simple silliness, followed by an inevitable devastating hangover. Of course, perhaps when you take the other path away from the tourist alley of the loop between the dock and the falafel joint and one sees the clapboard shanties that the Thai folks who work here live in, many the story is more complex.

I paid for the rest of the week here and kinda and not too excited about that. I do want to go to the party, but the push for going to a remote beach away from the strutting young bodies is strong. I have been doing this party thing for almost a decade now and it is growing tiring. I think it is time for me to either open up a club or move on. Still, I can't find a reason to complain too long. I spent sunset today on a big rock looking at the water when pausing from reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I spent sunrise listening to Ray Barretto and looking at the different shades of colors and the rainbows in the ice crystals as the rays of the sun angled over the horizon. I could be in a many places right now (middle of nowhere Nevada for instance) and where I am is a pretty good one.

Ko Samui, Thailand

8am. Wake up and ponder the state of the universe in bed. 9am. Go for a dip in the ocean. 10am. Get an oil massage. 11am. Repeat dip in ocean. 12pm. Shower and eat tasty Thai food. 1:30pm. Listen to a Quantic rare groove mix while counting the shades of blue between the water and the sky. 2pm. Make sure there is a coversheet on my TPS report. 2:30pm. Write blog entry. Where does the day go?

I decided on Tuesday that I really needed to get out of Bangkok and head south where the beaches were calling my name. After a quick dinner with my hosts, it was a motorcycle taxi to the subway and then a quick hop to the train station. All sleepers were booked so I traveled 2nd class. A reclining chair on an 11 hour overnight train is the only way to travel if you got an upset stomach. Did someone say squatty potty? Oh yes. Got on a pick up and then headed for Maenam beach which my guidebook listed as 'backpacker'. Looking at the weight on my back it seemed appropriate.

I am staying at a place called Morning Glory. For about $US 10 I get my own bungalow, a meal and a few 6.4% Chang beers. Not bad when you consider that I am 20 meters from the water and there is an amazing view of Ko Pha Ngan which is only 20 km away. The place is frequented right now by German tourists, which is fine with me. Just as I did in Taiwan, I just pretend to know what is going on as everyone else around me talks in their secret code. Except near the end of Taiwan, I could start to understand a little Mandarin. As a side note, I really miss eating with chopsticks. In Thailand food is eaten with fork (left) and spoon (right) and the fork never gets put into the mouth.

Went to Chaweng beach yesterday which is the epicenter of tourism on the island. Even though it is technically a better beach, I am glad I am here instead since there is room to breathe here. Honestly, I would prefer to have company here on the beach since it is better wasting time with someone else. But being alone right now is good for me. This trip is about me adapting and learning and changing from my constantly exploring moving frenzy to sitting on my kiester is a bit of an adjustment. But with most things, I guess it'll just take practice. Time to go do exactly that...