The next day we woke up early as we had still quite a few places we wanted to visit before heading back to Tunis. We hung out for a couple of hours in Tabarka spending most of our time exploring a cool fortress that is not normally open to the public (one of the people working on the renovation of it gave us a tour).



After that it was off to the main destination, the Roman ruins of Bulla Regia. At this point since the jeep had successfully navigated around 70 miles on a combination of very rough roads and later on a highway at high speeds we had assumed that it had made it through our little adventure unscathed. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

About an hour into our drive to the ruins (and about 10 miles from the Algerian border), the Jeep's transmission skipped. Soon after that as we were driving through the main road of a tiny one-road town called Babouche when we noticed smoke coming from the hood of the car. We immediately stopped both vehicles and when we opened the hood we saw flames shooting out from the engine of the car. Without a fire-extinguisher handy Matt and I just ran back and started dumping all of the bottles of water we had accrued during the trip onto the fire in the hopes it wasn't oil based (which it fortunately wasn't) until we had the fire out. After we no longer were worried about the immediate risk of the flaming car we then focused on the pool of pink fluid leaking from under the hood of the car which Matt correctly guessed to be transmission fluid.

Needless to say this flaming car caused quite a commotion and we were soon surrounded by half the town with everyone looking at and being quite amused by the silly Westerners. Fortunately, our entertainment value only lasted for a short while and after about an hour the crowds had dispersed.

At this point everyone basically decided that our adventures were over so we gave up and called to have the Jeep towed back to Tunis (3 hours away). During the 2 hours we were sitting around waiting for the tow-truck we cracked open a couple of bottles of wine which was a good thing for Katherine and Matt since it helped them sleep on the way back to Tunis while they were stuck in the cab of the tow truck, whose driver was happy to take twisting turns on precarious mountain passes in a fully-loaded tow-truck at much faster speeds than we were comfortable with in the lowly Isuzu.

At the end of the day we made it back to Matt and Laura's without any further incidents and we spent the evening eating enchiladas and reliving our little Tunisian adventure.

We woke up early to get a jumpstart on the day for our camping trip up to the North West of Tunisia (close to the Algerian border) with Andrea's friends Matt, Laura and Katherine. One of the main reasons why we decided to go camping was everyone had off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha, which is a holiday that is focused around every family buying a live sheep and then slaughtering it (frequently in their front yards). So, since Andrea and her friends had been hearing sheeps bleating pretty much continuously for the previous several days they decided that they wanted to be as far from civilization as possible when the entire population of Tunisia decided to become amateur butchers.

In addition to the five of us going on this trip we also brought along Murphey (Andrea's 75lb Bernese Mountain Dog), Keira (Matt and Laura's 80lb German Shepard) and Pepsi (Katherine's ~40lb dog). Since we had such a full-load of people and critters we decided to take both Matt and Laura's 15 year old Isuzu SUV and Katherine's brand new Jeep Wrangler

After about 2 hours of driving we made it to our first destination which was a town called Bizert. Once there we let the dogs run around and play a bit along the beach while we admired the views from the “Cape Bizert”. After we had enough of stretching our legs/paws we decided to continue on to the next stop, a secluded little fishing village called Cape Serrat that was located on what was supposedly an amazing beach. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of driving we kept finding ourselves right back in front of a massive prison compound that was about 15 minutes away from Cape Bizert (this prison hopefully is not foreshadowing later parts of my trip...). After our third loop around the prison we gave up and decided to get some lunch back in Bizert.



Back in town we found a great little hotel restaurant that had great Tunisian food and even better, they were willing to sell us some beer to take with us to drink at night while we were camping. Not only that but the proprietors of the restaurant were also able to set us up with good directions to Cape Serrat and we were finally on our way (and only 2 hours late). After two more hours of driving through some amazing landscapes of cork-trees and open fields we finally arrived. The entire place was deserted of tourists since tourist season ended in September and the only people around were a couple of locals who were somewhat perplexed to see a bunch of white people showing up in the middle of winter.

At this point we decided to drive down the beach a bit to find a good place to set up camp. The beach however had a channel carved down the middle of it parallel to the coast line from when the tide came up. The channel didn't look particularly deep and it appeared like crossing it would be the only way to get somewhere a little more private to set up our camp. Besides, Katherine had just bought her Wrangler and was itching to test-out its 4 wheel drive capabilities. So, Katherine and Andrea crossed the channel in the Jeep without any problem and started exploring the beach. The rest of us in the Isuzu weren't as comfortable with the river crossing though as the water went up quite deep on the Jeep and we were afraid the Isuzu's lower clearance might cause some problems.

Once Katherine came back from exploring the other side of the beach they decided to try crossing the channel at a different point that appeared to be shallower which would hopefully be an easier path for the Isuzu to follow. The Jeep went into the water and within seconds had submerged above the tires and all the way up to the hood! Katherine slammed it in reverse but the car was completely stuck and since the car had no snorkel it was in serious danger of the engine flooding and being completely stuck in the Mediterranean sea's salt-water. To make matters worse, night was fast approaching and since we were so far out in the middle of nowhere it would take hours for any sort of help to be able to reach us.

As soon as Matt and I realized what was happening we tried to jerry-rig some tow-straps to get the Jeep out of the Sea. Matt went over to the Jeep to try and see how bad the situation was while I ran over to some fishing boats to find some line that could be used to pull the car back to land. By the time I had found some pretty weak looking rope Matt was back and looking for carabiners which fortunately we had both brought along. We strapped up the cars and almost immediately after putting pressure on the rope, it snapped. By this time our little adventure had attracted the attention of the remnants of the town and we had a couple of people over trying to help us. A few minutes later I found a significantly thicker rope attached to a boat anchor. I removed the anchor and Matt hooked it up to the cars again and this time when we attempted the tow, the rope held.


Once the Jeep was out of the water we could see just how precarious the situation had been. The air-filter was completely soaked through and there is no way that it would have been able to permit air to flow to the engine for more than just a few more minutes. We also could see that the air intake was above the water level by less than an inch meaning any little bit of settling would have resulted in the engine flooding with salt-water. However, amazingly other than the soaked air filter a mostly detached piece of plastic undercarriage cover and the inside of the car being completely flooded with water, the Jeep was in amazingly good shape. Even more amazingly one of the guys who came over to watch/help us get the car out of the water was a mechanic who helped us make sure the Jeep was back in operable condition.

Needless to say that by this point in time it was getting dark, we hadn't started setting up camp, nor had we put together dinner. On the bright-side Matt, Laura and Katherine were all in Tunisia studying Arabic and Andrea spoke French so we were able to communicate at least on a fairly basic level with the locals. At first we were just extraordinarily grateful so we offered them the beer which we had purchased from the restaurant earlier (and they eagerly accepted). They then insisted on preparing our food for us (using the food we had brought for camping), and suggested we set-up our camp right out front of their hangout by the water.

Pretty quickly though we started to get quite nervous especially as several of them became uncomfortably “forward” with the women in our group. What made us further cautious is that Tunisia is a very family-centric culture, and it is not that common to have a group of six unmarried men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, especially considering that we were there in the middle of an important holiday which people would normally spend with their families. On top of that the locals brought out some moonshine and were very adamant that we take one of our cars 20 minutes away to buy more beer for them. Given the situation we we couldn't imagine that alcohol would improve things but we didn't have much choice. Lets just say we were all quite happy that we had brought along our own pack of fairly large dogs as company (particularly as Tunisians tend to be fearful of dogs).

Fortunately, Matt and Andrea made it back from the beer-run without any problems and soon after they returned our dinner was ready. The food was actually fairly decent and once we had finished eating we made it clear to our hosts that we would not be camping there that night. Apart from us having to pay a pretty hefty sum for dinner (which was made mostly with our food and which fed the 6 locals as well) there were no problems with our leaving and we took off to our next stop of Tabarka.

While everyone was happy with our decision to leave we were still in a rather awkward situation. Instead of staying in tents with the sketchy locals, we now had to drive 2 hours on pretty horrible roads, with a car that just came out of the sea, in pitch black with the hope of finding some hotel in a tourist town during the off-season who would be willing to take 5 random Americans and three large dogs (remember dogs aren't liked in Tunisia). Fortunately, other than one random suicidal cat that tried unsuccessfully to end things for himself (and us) by jumping out in front of the car while we were crossing a bridge, the drive to Tabarka went by without any problems.

The difficulties began though when we tried to find a place to stay. We drove by virtually every hotel (at least a dozen) that we could find and 2/3rds of them were closed for the season and the remaining ones wouldn't even let us leave the dogs in the cars in their parking lots much less take them up to the rooms. Finally, Andrea got through by phone to a hotel in the city-centre who said they would be able to help us out. The hotel turned out to be fairly nice and very well located (and the manager got quite a nice tip for hooking us up) so on just the second day of my vacation I was already well into quite an interesting adventure.

So, after too long in coming I finally started my travels around North Africa and the Middle-East. My flight went from JFK through London Gatwick to Tunis where I would be starting my trip. Amazingly enough, the first leg of my trip arrived in Gatwick at like 5:00am (over an hour early) and that plus my already pre-existing 2.5 hour layover meant that I had a long time in a really boring airport before my continuing flight to Tunis.

The flight to Tunis finally boarded and we left Gatwick on time and arrived in Tunis also on time at around 12:30pm. You'd think that 3.5 hours would be enough time for my backpack to make it onto the continuing flight but unfortunately with airlines operating the way they do that was not the case. So, after waiting for all the bags to finish being offloaded onto the carousel and realizing mine was not among them I went to the lost luggage person and somehow with my non-existent French and Arabic and the person's non-existent English I managed to find out that my bag decided to take a later flight and would be arriving after 8pm.

At that point I went out into the terminal where my friend Andrea was waiting to pick me up and from the airport we went straight to lunch at a good Lebanese restaurant close to Andrea's house (I hadn't eaten a real meal in more than 15 hours). From there we continued on to Andrea's gorgeous house in the “La Marsa” area of Tunis where I got settled in.

Once back at Andrea's I spent a couple of hours of catching up with her and re-acquainting myself with her great Bernese Mountain Dog Murphey and meeting her newly acquired Tunisian housecat Max, who had recently decided to adopt Andrea as his new owner.

From there Andrea and I took off to pick up her friends Matt and Laura for dinner at a local Indian restaurant to plan out a trip around the North West of the country for the next couple of day since they were all off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha. On the way to dinner we swung by the airport to pick up my luggage, but of course it still hadn't arrived. Fortunately, after dinner we made a my third trip to the airport of the day and this time my backpack was there safe and sound.

So, since I have decided to create a blog to update people on all of my forthcoming travels I figured it would make sense to go through some old emails and post some of my writings from previous trips.

In an attempt to get ready for my travels around North Africa and the Middle East I have decided to start a blog!

As a way to start off the New Year on the right foot I have decided to finally send a very summarized conclusion to my Asia trip report (since it is now over 3 months late) and to update everyone on my life in New York.

So, for those of you that have been wondering; yes, I am still alive and have actually been back in the US since the end of September. In my previous trip report I had left off with my arrival to Laos. Unfortunately, I only stayed in Laos briefly because of the continuous torrential downpours (I guess they call it the rainy season for a reason). But I at least had a couple of days with reasonable weather in a really nice town up north called Luang Prabang as well as in the south at a series of islands in the Mekong river called Si Fan Don.

From Laos it was back to Thailand, this time to visit the south of the country and to get some sun and relaxation. I started on the East Coast of the country at Ko Pha Ngan island where I stayed in an incredible bungalow overlooking the sea. It's amazing what you can get for $5/night in some of these places. After a few nights at Ko Pha Ngan I headed over to the west coast to the island of Ko Phi Phi, an island that had been devastated during the tsunami. Coincidentally, this is the same island where The Beach was filmed. Anyways, my goal at Ko Phi Phi was to volunteer with the reef cleanup after the Tsunami, but unfortunately they stopped using SCUBA divers for that the week before I arrived so I ended up just enjoying some more sun and relaxation.

After Ko Phi Phi I spent a day in Krabi and then left for a 20 hour trip via 3 buses, two trains and a van ride to Northern Malaysia. This was one of the more exciting trips as there had been a surge in terrorist activity in Southern Thailand so there was a lot of armed military personnel everyone on the trains and other places. I also was the only non-Thai person on virtually all of the legs of the journey.

In Malaysia I went directly to the Perhentian islands to enjoy even more sun and most importantly SCUBA Diving. I also figured I'd be productive and in addition to just doing some fun dives I'd take a class so I signed up for a 3 day Rescue Diver course. The Perhentian's were great both above and below the water with a laid back atmosphere and some really fun people. Upon leaving the Perhentian's I went to the Cameron Highlands, the Taman Negara rainforest (the oldest in the world), and finally Kuala Lumpur.

From Malaysia I took a flight to Macau where I spent one day wandering around the former Portuguese colony. From there I took the Hydrofoil to Hong Kong which I also briefly explored for a few days. Finally from Hong-Kong it was off to Mainland China for the final part of my trip.

I arrived to Xi-an China and spent a few days in this city, although the main purpose of my visit there was to see the Terracotta Army, a group of more than 8,000 life size soldiers built out of clay that were buried with emperor Qin in 210 BC. The most amazing part of the army is that every single soldier is distinct with unique facial features and expressions.

After Xi-an it was off to Beijing where I spent several days exploring the ancient sites including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Tiananman Square, and most impressive of all the Great Wall. The final stop on the trip was Shanghai where in addition to seeing the city I got to hang out with my friend Hillary who has been working there as a teacher for the past year.

Anyways, I hope this summary wasn't too boring but I have heard from a lot of people asking what happened to my trip updates so I figured I might as well conclude them. Also, if you are interested I picked some of the better photos from my trip and posted them on line so feel free to take a look at them at:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2118707181

After returning from Asia I had about a month to get readapted to the real world and moved into my new apartment in New York before starting my new job with a big management consulting company. So far everything is going great. I love my apartment as it's in the middle of Greenwich Village, one of the most happening parts of town, and the job is also good although sometimes it involves some fairly excessive hours.

My last day in Vietnam was spent visiting Ho Chi Minh, the former leader of the country. Uncle Ho as he is affectionately known in Vietnam is revered as a hero and the Vietnamese government went so far as to embalm him against his explicit wishes. So, following in the footsteps of those other communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Uncle Ho is stuffed and visible in his giant mausoleum for the interested tourist (except of course for the 3 months of the year when he is shipped off to Russia for maintenance work).

Visiting Uncle Ho requires waking up early (he only sees visitors in the morning) and going to his massive mausoleum where you wait in line while dressed respectfully (clothes covering knees and shoulders, no hats, etc.) After about 45 minutes in line you make it to the mausoleum itself where speaking is not permitted and you are basically rushed past his body in about 20 seconds while surrounded by dozens of armed guards and security cameras. Overall, it was an interesting experience just to see the amount of pomp and circumstance associated with a corpse, although I would suggest his Russian maintainers take some lessons from Madam Tussad cause Uncle Ho isn't looking so good anymore...

After Vietnam my plan was to take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Unfortunately, when I tried to book my ticket I learned that an ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) conference was taking place in Vientiene at the time and for the next 6 days no tourists would be allowed into the city. Since every mode of transport to Laos from Northern Vietnam goes to Vientiene I was required to make some changes to my itinerary. In the end I decided to fly to Bangkok and visit Northern Thailand before crossing the border into Northern Laos and then go south through the country until crossing back into Thailand to visit southern Thailand.

These changes actually worked out really well because in Laos there are no ATM machines and much to my chagrin I realized my ATM card was about to expire at the end of July. So, flying into Bangkok allowed me to take out some much needed cash to help tide me over for the rest of my trip. An additional benefit was at this same time my future roommate Aaron was planning on going to New York City to look for apartments and being in Bangkok made it a lot easier for us to coordinate things. In fact, I spent a total of probably 12 hours over a 3 day period on email, the phone and Messenger trying to figure everything out (which is nothing compared to the amount of time Aaron had to spend actually looking at places). In the end it worked out well cause we found a really nice place in Greenwich Village (at least that's what I've been told). For any of you that are interested my new apartment as of August 15 is 277 W. 10th Street. You can find a map of where the apartment is here: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=277+West+Tenth+Street&csz=New+york%2C+ny&country=us

Apart from trying to find an apartment in New York, I did manage to do a couple of other things while in Bangkok including getting a couple of custom tailored suits, visiting a few temples, doing a bunch of shopping, and eating some AWESOME food. Although probably the most fun thing that I did was watching an exhibition Soccer match between Real Madrid and the Thai National Team. The game was a blast despite some serious challenges I had getting to and leaving the stadium that was only 25km (15 miles) away (it took over two hours to get there and almost three hours to get back). Once I arrived to the stadium I bought a general seating ticket from some touts in front of the stadium and since I was 30 minutes late for the game the touts sold it to me for less than half of face value. Even better, after entering the stadium we found seats within 5 rows of the field! It would have been nearly impossible to have better seats. Not surprisingly Real Madrid won the game three to nothing.

After almost four days in Bangkok it was time to head north and my next stop was the old capital of Thailand called Sukhotai. Despite its former glory Sukhotai is currently a very small relaxed town that happens to have dozens of old temples and other ruins scattered throughout. I arrived to Sukhotai around 6:00am after taking a night train from Bangkok and once there I rented a bicycle and went all around the city admiring the 800 year old ruins. That same evening I was off again on another night train to Chang Mai. Unfortunately, during this leg of the journey I couldn't get a sleeper car and the train was the local (not express) train which meant that it stopped every 30 minutes or so. Of course since I was sitting in the aisle seat at every stop I was awoken by passengers getting on and off the train. All in all not a very relaxing train ride and when I arrived in Chang Mai at 5:00am the next day I was exhausted. The very first thing I did upon checking in at a guest house was sleep for another 5 hours.

Once I had recovered a bit from the journey I made my way down to the guesthouse common area and started talking to some Brits and Canadians who had signed up for a three day trek of the mountainous area around Chang Mai. I decided to join them and the next morning a group of 12 of us were on our way. The trek was awesome with some spectacular views and some surprisingly difficult terrain. The first day was particularly challenging because it was very uphill and an incessant light rain made the ground really slippery. After about five hours of hiking we made it to the local hill tribe village where we were staying the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of an "ethnic hill tribe" experience since it was fairly obvious that the villagers were used to receiving masses of tourists and the village was more of a tourist way station than an authentic tribal village. Despite the lack of the cultural experience the village was very picturesque and that evening from the terrace of the bamboo hut where we stayed the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen appeared in front of the verdant green hills in the background making for a spectacular landscape.

The next day we continued the trek with another 5 hours of hiking eventually stopping to stay the night in another bamboo hut next to some very impressive waterfalls. It was really nice being able to jump in the river and feel the waterfall pounding against you after a hard day of hiking. The third and final day of the trek involved a short hike (about 2 hours) until we met up with some elephants. We finished the trail section of the trek with an hour long elephant ride where I got to sit directly on the elephants neck which was a lot of fun (despite being hosed off with mud by the elephant next to me). After the elephant ride we went white water rafting for an hour and a half through some fun (and really long) class 3+ rapids. The most remarkable part of the white water rafting was the incompetence of our guides who were telling us to do the exact opposite of what you actually should be doing. Fortunately, everyone survived without incident and surprisingly enough nobody even fell out of the boats. The final stop on our journey was bamboo rafting where I got to steer a 8 meter (25ft) raft with 8 people on it down a river with a bamboo pole. Not as easy as it sounds. When we finished the bamboo rafting we ate lunch and then got back into the truck to return to Chang Mai.

After another day and a half in Chang Mai wandering around the night market and enjoying the Thai food it was time to continue on to Laos. I booked a trip that included a bus ride to the Thai border town of Chang Khong and then a two day slow boat journey from the Laos side of the border to Luang Prabang. The six hour bus ride to Chang Khong was uneventful but I met a bunch of really cool people including some Italians, Brits, and Israelis during the ride. After arriving in Chang Khong (a little one street border town) we had dinner and went to the only bar in town which happened to have a live band playing. The band was decent and it was particularly entertaining that the lead singer must have had at least 10 costume changes while we were there. The next morning we crossed the the river into Laos and found our way to the boat that was supposed to take us to Luang Prabang.

We arrived to the boat in the morning to find that it was already almost full, although much to our surprise more and more people kept getting on. In fact, we sat around for over an hour and a half as as additional passengers kept coming onboard. People were forced to sit on the roof in the rain and huddle up in the cabin next to the captain. Eventually we departed on what we thought was a cramped boat, but little did we know that the worst was yet to come as the boat proceeded to make another half dozen stops picking up even more people and goods at each one!

About two hours into the trip I noticed several of the crew members running back and forth with a panicked look in their eyes and at the same time the captain started making a beeline to the shore. Fortunately, we made it back to shallow water fairly quickly because as soon as we were next to the bank water started filling up the bottom of the boat. At this point half the people on the boat had to get out so the crew could start ripping out the floorboards with crowbars in order to access the leak to try and repair it. Watching the repair process was actually quite entertaining since fixing the hole involved a pair of pants, a t-shirt and a lot of rice (no joke). Needless to say the more than a hundred people on board weren't too trusting of the hasty repair work but eventually everyone was coaxed back on and we continued the journey. Surprisingly enough, the rice and pants did the trick six hours later we arrived safely in the tiny Laotian town of Pakbeng to stay the night.

Pakbeng is out in the middle of nowhere and therefore is rather underdeveloped. It actually reminded me of a town from a western movie both architecturally with its one dirt road, and in personality since it is in a somewhat lawless opium growing part of Laos known as the golden triangle. Electricity in Pakbeng is very sparse and where it exists it is on for only a few hours a day so the candlelit atmosphere added to to the city's charms. Definately an interesting place. The next morning I left to meet the boat for the second half of the journey and discovered that rather than using the hastily patched up boat from the day before we had been split up on two smaller boats to finish the journey. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully although the scenery was incredible and I arrived to Luang Prabang by mid afternoon.

That pretty much concludes this installment of my travelogue and as you've probably noticed I've decided to fill up your mailboxes even more this time by including a couple of visual aids to better demonstrate what I'm writing about. Hopefully it doesn't fill up your mailboxes too badly and if you're interested in seeing a few more pictures I posted some up on my Imagestation account at http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2122504814&code=17638029&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite.

Anyways, stay tuned for the next installment which will include Laos and maybe even Southern Thailand.