Catching a Movie..

Syrian cities have a lot of decrepit movie theaters. Posters of past shows are stapled over the entrances and they're all for T-and-A or B-grade action flicks. My favourite was for one called "Lunar Cop" which had the tagline, "He came down to Earth to clean up the mess!" For the sexy movies, Lonely Planet warns that censors usually remove the scenes depicted in the posters.

I had a couple of hours to kill one afternoon so I asked about the next feature. It was "House Bunny" with Anna Faris starring as an ex-Playboy model who ends up as a sorority house mother. I went in.

The theater was completely dark so I waited for the film to start in order to have enough light to find a seat. But the projection on the screen was so dim I ended up taking the seat closest to the door. Even then, I wasn't sure I wasn't about to sit on someone. (Imagine watching TV through two pairs of sunglasses and you'll get an idea of how dark it was in there.)

I couldn't hear anyone else and thought I was alone until 10 minutes into the show when I saw a lighter flash and the ember of a burning cigarette a few rows ahead. The smoker began to emit a high-pitched giggle at unusual times and banged his seat occasionally. He talked sometimes, too, and I don't think he was on a cellphone. He particularly enjoyed a scene the censors appeared to have missed which briefly showed Anna Faris' bare backside.

The lights came on when thew show was over, and I could see that many of the seats were broken. There were some where only parts of metal bolted to the floor remained. I was thankful I hadn't tried to find a seat further in.

The experience cost less than a dollar, but I don't think I'll be doing it again. Unless, of course, "Lunar Cop" is playing.

Meeting Syrians...

There were 17 people packed into the minibus that took me from Turkey into Syria. Three women from one family were wearing burkas and there was a "discussion" at the border when one of their husbands tried to convince the Syrian guard that the women shouldn't have to remove their veils to reveal their faces. He lost and each of the women, for just a quick flash, lifted the black fabric.

This made me worried that Syria would be ultra-Conservative and that I'd have a hard time getting used to it after relatively-liberal Turkey. Fortunately, there are women here without burkas, chadors or hijabs. Some wear T-shirts and are perfectly comfortable approaching handsome Canadian tourists to offer a welcome to Syria.

Lots of people come up to talk to me here. Even Syrians who don't speak English know how to say "Welcome to Syria." They ask, "What is your country?" and when you respond they say, "Canada very beautiful." A group of teenaged boys added an extra "George Bush finished!" followed with "Obama!"

The only time I've seen Syrians unfriendly is when they drive. I saw one laying on his horn while a traffic cop helped an old man with a cane cross the road. In Iran and Turkey, drivers deftly steer around pedestrians. Here in Syria it's like they're aiming for you!

Life Aquatic...

I and a group of tourists were fleeing pirates on the Aegean coast when this photo was taken. We'd staged a mutiny earlier in the day when the boat's crew refused to use the sails like the tour company promised, and also for the fact they continued to blast techno music on all decks despite our repeated requests to turn it off.

The final straw came when the captain ran us aground on a reef because she was too short to see over the bow and missed the warning buoy. She also never offered to pay for the beers my fellow passengers drank at the bar on shore while we waited for the boat to be freed.

I was selected to lead the mutiny because I had the best hat, but things didn't go well. The pirates caught us, and even though we fought them off, they stole all of our ice. Many of the passengers were Australian and their brains rotted when they drank warm beer. A Slovenian passenger remained sane and urged us to turn ourselves in to the coast guard. We made him walk the plank.

So now we are fugitives on an uninhabited Mediterranean island. The cellphone I'm using to text this post will be destroyed immediately to prevent tracking. We've burned the boat. My methods have become unsound.

The horror. The horror.

Gallipoli

Over here, the Turks' defence of the Gallipoli Penninsula and the Dardanelles against the Allies in the First World War is seen as the first victory in the country's battle for independence, which ran from 1919 to 1923. This has a lot to do with the fact that the lieutenant colonel credited with the Turkish success at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal, later led the independence fight and became the first president of modern Turkey.

More than 40,000 soldiers from Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and India died in the nine-month Gallipoli campaign in 1915 before it was finally abandoned. Also among the Allied dead were 49 soldiers from the British colony of Newfoundland. On the other side, the Turks lost close to 80,000 men.

Mustafa Kemal later became known as Ataturk, which translates as "Father Turk," and there are statues of him in every town, avenues are named after him, and his image hangs in just about every business. In 1934, he said something particularly conciliatory about the Allied war dead and I'll repeat it here...

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

And now, on to some business from my last post. I'm hardly surprised most of you figured I would be too scared to venture onto the catwalk shown in the picture. But you were wrong -- it was the only way to get to another section of the fortress, so I walked the entire length of it!

Culture Crashes...

Would you step onto this rusty-looking catwalk?

I said in my last post that Istanbul feels very European. Istanbul truly is where East crashes into West, and the differences go beyond the call of the muzzins from the mosques.

For instance, the catwalk in the picture is inside the turret of a 15th Century Ottoman fortification. There's a 20-metre drop to the bottom and I got to it by climbing a narrow stone staircase on the outside wall that was open on one side and didn't even have a railing. In Britain, tourist attractions like this that charge admission have barriers and warnings all over the place, as well as security guards to make sure no one jumps over them. But nobody stops you here.


Another difference between East and West is how entrepreneurs here string up balloons and charge people money to burst them with pellet guns. They set them up at parks and along the seawall, and one even strung balloons up the side of the ruins of a Roman aqueduct. Try doing something like that in Brighton and see what the police do.


It all means you have to be a bit more careful here. The Ottoman fortress was actually a whole lot of fun and was wonderfully quiet. I suspect it's because tour companies are afraid of being sued if they bring anyone there. And the culture crash produces some incredible sights. A few days ago I saw a young woman dressed in a full chador making out with her boyfriend outside a Shell staion. Really.


So did I step onto the catwalk? Place your bets and I'll reveal my answer in my next post, which should be from the Cappidocia region of Turkey.

Istanbul!

It took 76 hours for the Trans-Asia Express to go from Tehran to Istanbul, which is only four hours less than the Orient Express took to get here from Paris. Sadly, I lost my camera in the railway station right before the trip, so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like when the Iranian passengers tried to teach me Persian dancing in the dining car.

The dancing began right after we got off our Iranian train in Turkey and boarded a six-hour ferry accross Lake Van, which later connected us with a Turkish train. It was past midnight and the boat hadn't even begun to move when the party started. Many women removed their hijabs and someone found beer at a store near the dock. Finally -- in Turkey -- I got to see Iranians being themselves!

There was dancing every night for the rest of the trip. There was usually a fight every night, too. At one point an elderly man had a heart attack, and we also hit a car. I was even interviewed by a reporter who wroks for an Iranian women's magazine.

It was too late to check into a hostel when we finally got to Istanbul so I jumped into a van with some Iranians. I followed them to their hotel, and when I stepped out the door in the morning I had no idea where I was.

Istanbul is a remarkably European city. On the ferries between the European and the Asian sides they even serve tea on the decks. The food is fantastic so I may stay here a bit.

Khoda Hafez, Iran!

I've been spending a lot of time in Iranian cities which suffer eye-watering automobile pollution, so I was desperately seeking fresh air. The most popular car here resembles the 1960s Vauxhall Viva, burns leaded gas and lacks a catalytic converter. Tehran on many days is like living in an exhaust pipe.

I took a trip to the Caspian coast but that was disappointing. I was beginning to despair until I arrived in a mountainside village called Masuleh, which is so steep that cars can't get into it. Restaurants, hotels and homes are supplied by wheelbarrows and when the taxis at the bottom of the hill leave for the day, the only sound left is the murmur of conversations in the open-air tea houses. It was magical.

Unfortunately, the conversations I have with Iranians who speak English always end up being about how desperately they want to leave Iran. The government only allows most citizens to travel to countries that meet its moral guidelines. Ironically, one of these countries is Dubai, where a man told me he goes annually to meet with prostitutes. Another guy told me he was so desperate to see another country that he took a bus to Iraq. Women here rarely speak to me, so I don't know much about what they think, although a teenaged girl who was with her family in Masuleh told me she dreamed of one day visiting Orange County, California, which she's seen on satellite TV.

I admit it's only one segment of Iranian society, but when everyone you meet seems so eager to get out of Iran, is tends to rub off on you. So by the time you're reading this I'll be riding the Trans-Asia Express, a three-day train from Tehran to Istanbul, Turkey. Khoda Hafez, Iran, which is Farsi for "goodbye." I wish I could bring some of you along.