Humble Opinions

Sri Lanka is a wonderful country! I'm here for only a week and my dear friend Amal KarunaRatna, with whom I started my PhD program with about 20 years ago, is my host. It's also a poor country. Crippled by a constant war between the Singhalese Sri Lankans and the Tamil Tigers in the North for the country, plus inept and corrupt government and inefficient bureaucracy, the country has only rudimentary basic infrastructure: roads, schools, and other services. Bureaucrats are so poorly paid that things get done only when they're bribed, or they're commanded to by their bosses, who have been bribed. Teachers and hospital employees are terribly poorly paid. Today our driver, Mohinda, was picked on by a tired and frustrated police officer and was fined 1000 Rupees (about $13), about two day's pay. To take care of the fine, we had to go to one place to get the forms to fill out, then another place to actually hand over the cash, and a third place to recover the dr...

I took a couple of days off to see Gallipoli, the site of the WWI fiasco that killed thousands of Australians and New Zealanders (and French and Canadians, and Britons) in a useless attempt to capture some territory held by Turkish forces so as to control the Bospherus Strait, linking he Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Many more Turks also were killed, so it's of great importance to them as well. More importantly, the Turkish defense was commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, the man who soon after lead the Young Turks movement, essentially a political rebellion against the old military guard, that created a united Turkey. Ataturk saw that long prosperity for Turkey lay with the progressive West rather than with the East. So the story of Gallipoli is something that all Turkish children learn about. Kemal Ataturk ; (Inscription on Gallipoli Memorial put up by Turkey in 1934, also on Ataturk Memorial at Tarakina Bay, Wellington.) "Those heroes who shed their...

From Braga, Portugal I probably didn't give Braga, Portugal, a fair chance. After all, the VirtualTtourist website lists the 800-year-old city as one of the beautiful cities in the world. It also says that in a very religiously conservative country the people of Braga are the most conservative, verging on fanatical. It certainly showed up in the city's total lack of any nightlife - I went searching for a cafe or bar where there would be people listening to music and talking. There simply aren't any. Maybe it's just that I was in Academic conference mode. The food served at the conference dinners was interesting though. The staple seems to be dried salted codfish, reconstituted in water or milk, served on beans, or inside a pastry, or on bread. And of course thinly sliced ham. That's it. Even then perhaps I'm not being fair. Salt cod (water), salt cod (milk), in pastry (three kinds), on bread, mixed into beans (three kinds), sliced ham, tomatoes, cucu...

Madrid and Barcelona were way too rushed. I spent too much time messing about making arrangements for trains and flights to and from places and too little time just enjoying the places themselves. Anyway, I did get to see some of the wonderful architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona: Park Guell, Casa Batllo, and the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia - still under construction. I got lost in Madrid trying to reach the Prada Museum via the back streets and instead found, in short order, the red-light district, some very up-market apartments, and the financial district where I stumbled into an art gallery just opening an exhibition of neo-realist photography spanning the fascist periods of Spain and Italy through to the late'50s. I should have slept on the train from Madrid to Barcelona but instead spent most of the night in the dining car with a Peruvian family man with a US green card who takes a class in Madrid every Friday for his accounting qualification, a Canadian IT specialist o...

From Last days in ... I succeeded in my first solo crossing of a Cairo street today, and I rode four times in a Cairo taxi in the last two days. So, having faced death, it's time to move on to another challenge. Off to Madrid where the Basque separatists have just announced that their "permanent ceasefire" has expired and they're all set to restart their campaigns. I'm in the cafeteria at Cairo airport. Like all airports, it's a monopolist's paradise - I've just paid the same for a bottle of water as I paid for two people to share a huge lunch earlier in the day. From Last days in ... My guide and friend, Mr Ibrahim, took me for a walk through some parts of old Cairo yesterday afternoon and today. Wonderful history of course, most of which went in one ear and out the other. Not that I was uninterested, but it's hard to keep track of which sultan built which grand mosque to honour which brother he had murdered in order to gain the sultanate ...

From Diving in Dahab I'm staying an extra day in Dahab. I ate with the professional dive instructors from my dive shop last night and I was invited to a party tonight: a local restaurant has just recruited a former student of Jamie Oliver and this is his opening show. Why not stay? I miss a day in Cairo, and almost certainly loose any opportunity to easily take a day-trip to Alexandria. An excursion I'll have to look forward to for the next trip. From Diving in Dahab I made two more dives yesterday, this time armed with an underwater camera borrowed from the dive shop. I've posted some of the results to the online picture gallery: From Diving in Dahab But I've probably finished my diving for a little while. My ears and sinus's were taking a beating, so better to let it go for a bit. So now I'm just taking walks along the shore. Life's pretty tough. From Diving in Dahab

I'd seen just about all of the amazing temples and monuments that I could handle for the moment so I made a spur of the moment decision to change my plans and take the plane from Luxor to Sharm El Sheikh on the night of the 29 May. My booking agent in Cairo and the people at the Luxor airport couldn't have been more helpful. They cancelled my train trip and hotel and bus for the next two days and rearranged to have me collected at 12:30am in Sharm El Sheikh and driven the 120 Km to Dahab. This has saved me more than two days of travelling and sitting about, and give me more time near the Red Sea and back in Cairo. Service and courtesy towards tourists in Egypt is very good. If they could get the toilets to work it would be great. So here I am in Dahab , about half way down the East coast of the Sinai Peninsular. On a clear night you can see the lights of a Saudi city that no-one around here seems to know the name of. The Red Sea is THE place in the world to enjoy scu...