Istanbul

I have no idea what year it was I went to Istanbul, but the highlights were eating fresh fish straight off the boat, and seeing the Dervishes, which was completely otherworldly.

India 93

Malaysia 92

I really liked Malaysia. Highlights I remember include great Chinese food, and drinking beer in some posh flat that overlooked the city.

Syria

I think this was about 97. I have a very vivid image of seeing all the posters and billboards of the President, on the bus from the airport to Damascus. I'd never been anywhere with such a cult of personality before. We ended up sleeping on the rough of a hotel, as it was full.
The ruins were unbelievable. They are so complete (not ruins then) that you didn't have to use your imagination. A whole street of columns set against a brilliant blue sky tends to put some stubby post in a damp field in England into perspective.











Towl with hair.

Skye, Scotland

As with a lot of these photos from my previous life, I can't remember what year I went. I guess it was around 94. I can usually remember what I was reading though. I read a book by Henry Roth, about a small Jewish boy growing up in New York. I also remember it being so windy, that someone had put wooden planks across the window of the house where we stayed, just in case the glass blew out.

From the look of it, I was going through an over exposed black and white period.

The castle below isn't actually Skye. It's Eilean Donan, the Kyle of Lochalsh. If you've seen Highlander, the movie, you may remember it.

Morocco 95

There never seems to be any middle ground with people that have been to Morocco. They either love it, or have an awful time and come home complaining of being pestered to death. I loved it. Apart from some bother in Marrakech, people were either friendly or uninterested. Fes, (or Fez) is still one of the most amazing places I've ever been. I remember great bread, delicious steaming stew from giant pointed pots, and fresh mint tea.

Russia 92

I think it was an April or May that I saw Moscow. It was nippy. At one point I thought I saw a mass brawl breaking out, but on closer inspection it was a group of people all trying to buy an ice cream from a big fat white coated woman, pushing a silver cart.
A woman who sold entrance tickets to a museum didn't have enough change (maybe she was from Chile originally), so she gave me the quantity of tickets that my smallest note would buy, about a metre of tickets. I could have got a coach party in.

The train is The Trans Siberian. I sat on it for 3 days, to Irkutsk in Siberia. My watch was on Moscow time, the Americans in the next compartment were on US time, the real time was unknown, and the woman who worked on the train was miserable all the time.