mattbell

I went down to Abu Simbel yesterday.



Abu Simbel was officially a temple to Isis, but it's real purpose was twofold:
- Stroke the pharaoh's ego
- Scare neighboring civilizations into providing tribute.

The temple is filled with scenes of the Egyptian army slaughtering and enslaving other civilizations.  They made  sure to be racially inclusive.. they had a Nubian, a Hittite, a Greek of some sort, an Assyrian etc. 

Anyway, Abu Simbel was very impressive, and well worth the 3-hour drive each way through the Sahara.

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So I have this thing about blogging at various ancient monuments and other nice places.  For example:

 
 
Ephesus, Turkey

 
Ankgor Wat, Cambodia


Taba, Egypt


Akko, Israel


Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Having a laptop has been seriously wonderful.  I chose one (EEE PC 901) that has around six hours of battery life, weighs around two pounds, and costs only $350.  It's good enough to handle email, browsing the web, writing documents, and other basics.  The version of Linux that comes with it is kind of wonky though... any attempt to do something out of the ordinary (eg use an ipod as an external hard drive) has been a pain in th ass.    The computer also crashes half the time when coming out of standby.  Even so, it's wonderful, and it beats lugging around a full size laptop.  It's also a great conversation starter... apparently people haven't seen subnotebooks before.

Turkey time

I haven't written about my week in Turkey. Turkey for me was defined very strongly by the people I traveled there with – a couple of friends from the US plus a friend-of-a-friend. They brought with them an intense intellectualism that I've really missed on the trip. We talked about all kinds of things – economics, psychology, religion (easy solutions to the Middle East crisis), and history. These discussions were usually intermixed with beautiful Roman ruins, Turkish baths, beautiful old neighborhoods, or other cultural treasures.

Things only went downhill when one of the friends left for the US (she had to get back earlier) and the other friend and the friend-of-a-friend started dating each other. I found myself in the odd situation of sometimes feeling like a third wheel on my own trip despite expressing this concern to them multiple times.

We spent a few days wandering Istanbul. However, despite the incredible beauty of Istanbul, the real highlight of Turkey was our car trip around the west coast. We started in Izmir and concentrated on various ruin sites. Ironically, the most well known ruin (Ephesus) was the least impressive. The real highlights were Pamukkale, an ancient Roman bath and city built on top of bizarre Yellowstone-like terraces of calcium carbonate from a nearby hot springs, Aphrodisius, a former Greek city spread out across a broad meadow, Miletus, a Roman ruin that is half-sunk, Atlantis-style, into a lake, and Pirene, a former Roman town perched on the side of a mountain. The locals we met out in the country were also a lot friendlier than they were in Istanbul. The tourist hustle was much weaker, and people started conversations with us out of genuine interest instead of as a play for our cash.