Jeremiah's Strange Times

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 18:14:01 +0000 Subject: Beyond the gates Hi everybody! (Hi doctor Jerry) I`m currently eating a Hama speciality, its called  halawat al jibna , basically its creamed cheese wrapped in uncooked dough with nuts and caramelised sugar on top.  The guy selling it to me made me use what little Arabic I have, which basically led to the three of us laughing back and forth at each other for about 10 minutes. Its nice, although after 2 pieces I'm beginning to feel a little full....in a queasy sort of way. Our friend in the Krak Hama , a town in Syria, we thought it was gonna be pretty small, it isn't. Actually everything we assumed about Syria turned out to be wrong.  Banish all images you ever had of Syria and let me paint you a picture of a country with religious tolerance, almost European amenities, a beautiful landscape going from reds to blacks, to deepest greens. And to top it off a people so amazingly friendly its almost too ...

Heres my account of the rest of our time in Turkey.. as usual I seem to working backwards in this email.  After spending a few days in Ankara working out our Syrian Visas as related in Part 1, we returned to Istanbul for a proper look around, went out on the ferries, popped back and forth across the Bosporus a few times, generally chilled.  We also met an Australian pair we would race to Cairo, albeit they were travelling as part of tour. Istanbul by sea We also decided, in a misunderstanding of just how much time we had left, to forgo our trip down the Dardanelles to Troy and Gallipoli.  Instead it was straight down the coast to Ephesus.  Sat, 7 Aug 2004 15:03:35 +0000 Well here I am again, not gonna write much this time as not alot has happened in the past few days, well not a lot in comparison with the bureaucracy of doom of the past week.  Eoin's writing his email, so here I am writing mine. We're in Selçuk on t...