Far From Glamorous

Q, Casa and I arrived safely in the Netherlands a week ago, and that marked the end of first segment of our big trip - hooray! (Separate posting with map to follow.)

Looking back at our postings so far, I can see how we tried to pick out positive stories and focus on enjoyable bits – probably to keep up our own spirits first and foremost. To be fair, it is a bit misleading if we have been painting nothing but rosy pictures. The truth is that our travelling was quite smelly, dirty, itchy, heavy and, well, hard.

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I recall back in Bandar Abbas, Iran, at the very beginning of our big trip, I sat in a small and stuffy hotel room, counting out the mosquito bites from previous night's ferry ride - 9, no, 10, wait, that was a double? I had to do it a couples times to confirm since the construction noise next door kept on distracting me - apparently it is okay for hotels to open for business when half of it is still being built.

The total bite count was 10 - I did a quick math in my head about how this would turn into a pretty disastrous situation should it continue, and the thought scared and depressed me a little. Then I realized the discomfort around my belly and back and neck weren't caused by insect bites after all. It was heat rash – painful and itchy red patches all over. Of course this would happen if you wear the same sweat-soaked clothes with 8 kg of motorcycle gears in 40+ degrees for two days – DUH! A moment of stupidity later, I felt a sudden panic – this was from only two days, how would I manage more?  "Ugh, check this out," I cried to Q, "My body is telling us to get outta this region." No response from Q. I turned around and saw him passed out in bed from sheer tiredness.

In the following few days we tried to head up north as quickly as possible to beat the heat. Unfortunately the frequent military checkpoints made it rather difficult – I calculated that there were about four of them to each gas station we come across.

Because of the heat, we often got exhausted by midday and needed to pull off the roads for a nap. To find a shady spot to nap is hard since trees were hard to come by also because of the heat.

The first day we headed in Turkey, we welcomed a thunderstorm in our dry and cool hotel room. Like little kids, Q and I were so giddy and excited about it. We probably wouldn’t be as enthusiastic had we known that the same thunderstorm would follow us for most of Turkey. :)

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There you have it, our travelling was far from glamorous. In fact it is pretty darn hard at times. Luckily even the worst parts somehow make good stories after a while. Just like life.

Let the game decide...

We're in Bolzano, Italy, watching the game in the football world cup between Uruguay and the Netherlands. It's exciting, because it's the semi final. If 'we' win, we'll go to the finals! That's been a long while...

So, what will be decided. Today, if Holland wins, we will go to Holland quickly to watch the final on home turf. If they lose (they just scored 3-1, so I guess it won't happen), we will go to either Germany for the final, or Spain, whoever wins...

Let's see how it goes!

Back to the roots

We have left Asia behind and are now in Europe, Greece to be precise. We finished two weeks of Turkey and are now crossing through the home of the Olympic games on our way to catch a ferry to Italy.

Since Turkey we have picked up CouchSurfing again, and Greece is no exception. We made a last-minute request to a few people in the second largest town of Greece, Thessaloniki, and the family of Maria, Kosta, their son Michelangelo and a whole farm of animals, ranging from dogs, cats, fish, one horse, chickens, you name it, have agreed to host us. To our relieve, they don’t live in the downtown area, they live in modest house in a small coastal village some 30 minutes south of Thessaloniki.

Our hosts in Greece, with their home-grown pumpkin

We were welcomed with some delicious foods after a 13 hour driving day, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that among others the cheese was of their own making. Now on our second day here and we are learning more and more about the self-reliance they have built for themselves. They have their own garden in which they grow a lot of produce, lots of which they use themselves, including cucumbers, tomatoes (some of which they sun-dry), lemons, limes, courgettes (zucchini), herbs, prunes (tasted their home-made prune marmalade), pumpkins (pumpkin pie).

Home-made prune marmalade and pancakes

The horse and Michelangelo

Tonight we enjoyed a wonderful simple, but oh so delicious meal together with the family. Barbequed sardines and oyster mushrooms, and also home-made tzatziki, a delicious salad (you guessed it, most, if not all, ingredients were from their own garden), home baked bread. Simply gorgeous! I think we can learn a lot about self sustenance, I mean, Shu and I do make the odd product ourselves, but we never grew anything other than the odd herb plant, but we don’t come in the least bit close to what our hosts are doing here. And best of all, it is simply delicious and healthy!

Home-grown tomato

The family loves doing all this, and with the economy being hit hard in Greece, it reaps it rewards in many ways. And it is a great for them to keep local traditions alive as well.

True back to your roots.

Turkey Experience: Ups and Downs with Casa

We spent a few days in the Cappadocia region, known as the Grand Canyon of Turkey. We thoroughly enjoyed it with Casa, who fared well even with some ups and downs.

This post is dedicated to our friend Sonya and Sonya-alike, who encourage us to more blogging. :)

Turkey Experience: Fell in Love with the Back Door

It is common for tourists to enter Turkey through the western region, like Istanbul. However for us, we had to take the back door after Iran: Northeastern Turkey, and we saw the endless grass pastures, open horizon, peaceful lakes, free-running horses, wild flowers, gorgeous mountains.

It was B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. And we so fell in love with it. 

We will go back to this amazing place on earth one day. We simply have to.

Iran Experience: English and Motorcycle Angels

It is our firm belief that in every Iranian city or town, big or small, there are at least one Iranian who speak just enough English to help translate any motorcycle problem we may have, and invite us home for dinner – we call him our English Angel; and one Iranian who seems to know a whole lot about motorcycle mechanics and can either fix the motorcycle problem on the spot - he would be our Motorcycle Angel. And the best part – both these two guys would magically appear within ten or twenty minutes of us stopping and without us looking around for them. Okay, five minutes tops if in the dead centre of a small town – I know, much faster than Abu Dhabi ambulance service. We had two breakdowns with Casa in Iran to enforce our belief.

Breakdown #1 – Day 6 in Iran. Casa’s rear inner tube suffered a spectacular rupture – turned out the special-tough tube was too thick for the extreme hot weather we were riding in. And to my brilliance we ditched the backup rear tube just before we left UAE because of my concern with the weight we were carrying. So there we were on the side of busy highway trying to fit the 21’ backup front tube into the 19’ rear tire as a temporary solution. There were several delightful show of Iranian hospitality during this rather painful process: some police gave us some water, one truck driver gave us a hand, and another one offered us much needed food.

As mentioned in previous posting, big motorcycles are scarce in Iran due to government regulation, so finding an inner tube of right size became a real challenge – not to mention it was a Friday (weekend) so all shops were closed. Delijan was the first immediate small city we stopped in. A couple minutes in front of the only hotel in town resulted in a fairly large group of spectators, including our Motorcycle Angel Hussein. He quickly made several phone calls and his cousin Mehdat – our English Angel appeared. After an hour of Hussein riding in and out, we received two inner tubes for US$ 14 only on the spot! Mehdat explained to us later that Hussein managed to find a store that had the tubes, called the shop owner to open the shop and got the goods for us with us sipping chai all the while!

Mehdat invited us over to his home where we can replace the new tube more comfortably. That was a great idea, so was a mid-afternoon watermelon break, followed by a refreshing shower, followed by a picnic with Mehdat’s very curious family, followed by a lovely dinner in a family picnic house, followed by a sound night of sleep in their guest room. We loved how Mehdat answered all our requests with “Why nott?” and “Yes, you are rightt!” – you can imagine how grateful we felt. Above: Mehdat and Hussein

Above: Picnic with Mehdat’s family. By the way, Iranians are obsessed about picnics!

Above: Dinner picnic under grape vines.

Breakdown #2 – Day 8 in Iran. We stopped for a photo, and then Casa refused to move again. It turned out that the rear bake pads were completely eaten away due to a poor adjustment made the previous day. This time around we were in the middle of a small town – so small it was not in our map! Professor Salman, our English Angel appeared just in time to help Q communicate with our Mechanical Angel who was apparently a local motorcycle shop mechanic. I reckon the shop got a flurry of emergency phone calls that sounded like this: “Is this the motorcycle shop? Yes, we have two tourists who are stuck here with their motorcycle. No, they don’t seem to have much clue of what they are doing. Yes, it is next to the bridge. Okay, so someone is already on his way.”

The whole drama was over in under an hour. As we pulled away from the site everything quickly returned to its normal state like nothing took place. Well, except we now have an invitation to Professor Salman’s for dinner.

It was an interesting dinner. I was asked to cook the only Chinese dish I knew – yes, some Chinese women can be that undomestic. Judging from how quickly one of the guys switched back to his leftover Iranian stew, I am not sure the locals enjoyed the food as much as Q. After dinner we received an invitation to stay up to one month in their house if we can be English tutors to their two college relatives. “Please”, said one of them, “we beg you to stay!” It took some effort for us to decline the offer – the Salmans may still be puzzled as to why the two budget travelers would turn down offers of free food and accommodation. Looking back now, as much as we felt frustrated and desperate, everything with Casa worked out just fine in the end. In addition, we gained some priceless experience interacting with locals. So maybe it is not so bad to have a mechanical breakdown once in a while after all. In Iran that is.

Iran Experience: Casa Craze

The Iran leg of the trip has been full of challenges and surprises. One of them was the crazy reception our motorcycle received, which by the way we have lovingly named Casa – yes, that’s Spanish for “home”. :)

Casa drew a sizable crowd very quickly wherever we stopped – at gas stations, grocery shops, restaurants, hotels, you name it. Not only the crowds would continuously ask us questions, they would go as far as touching and posing next to the motorcycle. As we found out soon enough it is illegal for Iranians to own motorcycles with over 200 cc engine capacity in Iran, so with 800 cc, our Casa naturally stands out in this motorcycle-popular country. At first we found the unwanted attention very annoying and frustrating, later on we still found it annoying and frustrating, but got used to the crowds and started taking photos of the crowds. Check them out!

 

 

So much for a celebrity experience! I am pretty certain I heard a huge sigh of relief from Casa when we left Iran. :)

Hello from Iran

We started our trip from Abu Dhabi on Friday 4 June and 2,500 km later we have arrived at the Caspian Sea coast in Iran. We plan to cross into western region and Turkey in the coming couple days.

So far the biggest excitement was spending eight gruelling hours at Bandar Abbas port, having a spectacularly ruptured rear inner tube and trying to find replacement, and driving through crazy traffic via the scenic pass to Caspian coast. Reliable internet is hard to come by so this is just a quick note informing everyone that we are doing well.

We miss our friends in Abu Dhabi dearly and want to give a shout out to all of you for your support during our last few days in the Dhabi!

And BIG thank you for all the family and friends who have "donated" your support - Sorry I seemed to have confused a lot of people in my last post - we don't want any money donation - your encouragement is the best gift we can ask for.

Our Big Trip and Please Donate!

Here is a question for everyone - Suppose you didn’t have any constraints, give it work or relationship or financial, where do you see yourself live? Now obviously we all have commitment of various sorts, but the answer does brings out that dream buried deep down somewhere by the daily routines.

For Q and I, our answer is - on our motorcycle!

To all our family and friends, we want to share with you our latest development and plan. We have decided to leave UAE after three fruitful and exciting years, and take this opportunity to realize one of Q's dreams – riding a motorcycle around the world for about six months, a.k.a. going on a Big Trip! As for me, I am just happy to be wherever Q is. *Aww!*

Ever since the decision was made, we have been working frantically to get ourselves ready for moving and the Big Trip. In short, it is shear madness right now and we can't wait till we get on the road! In terms of where-to afterwards, well, we don’t know yet but we have our eyes on a few countries and will certainly try very hard to get to one of them.

As you can imagine, this will a huge change in our lives – not only because of change of location but also lifestyle – we will get to be modern day nomads and live frugally again - how cool is that! I reckon Q will grow an afro towards the end! Here is a sneak preview of what we plan to do – everything is subject to change!

Right, now that you know our case, this is where we will plead for your donation- we desperately need encouragement. Lots and lots of it. We will not be able to enjoy the trip nearly as much if not for your support, interest and smiles. Please donate generously.

Love,

Shu & Q

Asparagus!!!

Yessssss, white asparagus in Abu Dhabi :)
Last night we enjoyed two portions of beautiful white asparagus at our local German beer cafe, of course complimented with a delicious (but expensive, we discovered later... what to do) glass of Riesling.



(First test post from my phone, pardon the image quality...)