New chapter

Last year, when I finished my studies, we decided it's time for another journey. It was already July when we could afford a nice trip to Asia, so we planned to go in November. We found an interesting offer - a flight from Kiev to Abu Dhabi and from there to Bangkok with Etihad Airways.
This time we decided to see Thailand and Cambodia (and, in Martin's case, Burma).
I wanted to see Angkor very much, because I'd read about it quite a lot. We wanted to see some more of Thailand too, so we started to search for some information. We planned to go to Ayutthaya.
We had no idea that nature had other plans.

Home, sweet home

We moved to Krakow after the trip and we know it took us way toooo long to finish all posts but it was always a pleasure to refresh the memories of this journey :)



to be continued...

Serbia through windows

We continued hitchhiking but after some time decided to move. That's when we got a ride from a Bulgarian who didn't know what he was doing (since we had '5 KM' written on a paper). We asked for Niš or Belgrade and he said he'd take us a bit. Then in the car we talked (he spoke English well) and we found out that he's going to Belgium. We stopped the conversation after mentioning that our destination was Slovakia and waited patiently till Belgrade to find out how far is he eager to take us. There he offered a ride to Budapest. Since it was much more than we expected and very very kind, we accepted.
26.9. We stopped on highway around Budapest yesterday evening. It was dark, cold and rainy. Our driver left us near a hotel he liked. It was supposed to be cheap but not for us. We found out that the very cheapest room was 46eur and the receptionist was very unpleasant. Anyway, we took the room although she didn't want to sell single room for two people. At least she didn't argue. And it was good to finally take a hot shower.
Room itself was small, with one cupboard, a bed, a chair and TV. Not much for such price..
In the morning we packed our stuff and tried hitchhiking in the rain. We had a good spot and first car we stopped took us to Mosonmagyarvar. There we walked on wet grass and my shoes were soaked. Our spirits rose when we saw Slovak cars going our way. But what we stopped was not a Slovak car. It was a Polish truck. We saw it on a crossroads. It had red light so i ran towards the driver and asked if he's going to Bratislava. He agreed to take us and we went with him to the border, then got out to try another car while he was buying a vignete and got in again because noone would take us.
In Bratislava i bought my favourite roasted chestnuts and we had halusky and kofola for lunch. Then we went to Poprad by train. I got the last ride with 50% discount (my Slovak ISIC expires in a few days).

The Catcher in the Rye

When we started hitchhiking near the border, we saw many Turkish trucks that reminded us of cities we've visited.
Since no one wanted to take us from the border, we walked a bit further. We passed first village and continued. There we got a ride to Plovdiv with volvo V40. We stayed there at night somewhere in the fields close to the end of the city. It was very comfortable, soft and was perfect save mosquitoes.
In the morning we got up, found a nice spot and after a while got a ride to Sofia. I think our driver was a WizzAir pilot, that would explain his uniform.
We spent 2 hours trying to get on the way to Serbia and we managed with the 2nd car. The lady took us till the border and gave us water. It felt like Turkey :)
Again, crossing the border was quite fast and custom control ended with few questions.

Last party in Istanbul

Again in Besiktas. We stayed there two nights, met more Besties, including Tony's new flatmate and two people from Warsaw. After welcome party we went to Grand Bazar for a quick shopping. We bought water pipe tobacco and Backgamon :)
In the evening i managed to meet with Ayser from SAS 2008. We talked a bit of SAS, our friends from there and nearest journey plans. We parted early because we were all supposed to get up early in the morning.

It was rather hard to get out of Istanbul. We tried hitchhiking, then took a bus to what was supposed to be a better spot and got stuck somewhere in the city. I almost lost all hope when a nice sibling pair stopped to help us out. Help was not quite what we expected. It was so much more. They took us to a bus station and bought us tickets to Edirne, the last town before the border. At the station Mato met a boy, around our age, whose brother works in Bratislava. What a coincidence.

In Edirne we walked to a better hitchhiking spot. One local man took us from a gas station to the Bulgarian border and we got to EU.

Bye bye, hospitable Turkey!

Around Black Sea to Düzce

During our passport control, Tony talked to one driver and arranged us ride to another few clicks.
Later we stopped for a break and hitchhiked by 7 more cars till Giresun.
The driver in the last car with his friend took us to bus stop and almost force us to go by bus to another town and not to hichhike anymore. When we told them we don't have money for bus, they were eager to pay for our bus. We were stubborn and wanted to hitchhike anyway. It took us some minutes to get away. The bus stop was located in worst part of the city. Far away from some good spot, so we had to walk quite dangerously around the road.
 
Two men were trying to almost force us to go by bus and wanted to pay for it but we were stubborn and hitchhiked. When we got to Giresum, it was getting dark but boys decided to take one last ride. Jackpot. Tony found people from Bolu at the traffic lights and they took us! They just rearranged some stuff in the car to make space for us. They couldn't believe we're not hungry and bought us dinner.

Tony's father took us from Bolu to Düzce. We spent there one day resting and the next day in the afternoon we went to Istanbul.

What about some wine from Georgia?

In the afternoon we arrived in Hopa which is very close to Georgia so we decided to go to Batumi and buy some famous Georgian wine. We caught a ride straight to Batumi. On the border I had a nice talk with a border policeman. He recommended me to see Kaczynski blvd in Tibilisi.
Batumi is very pleasant, i must admit it looked better than Odessa. It felt very European. We agreed with Martin that its atmosphere reminded us of our own countries from the early 90s.

We spent the night near the beach. We wanted to sleep on the grass, because there were only stones on the beach. Unfortunately, the rain woke us and we moved to a nearby bower. Sometime during the night three men woke us to tell us that we should go away but when they saw our tired faces, they let us stay.
In the morning we moved to the beach, walked around the city and bought some wine, beer and Georgian tea. Then we hitchhiked back to Turkey with a very nice woman who spoke Russian. I tried to communicate with her but my Russian wasn't very good.

As fast as possible - Turkey again

We'd done 36 hour bus marathon from Bandar Abbas through Shiraz and Tehran to Tabriz. There we met with our friend Payam and his wonderful family. They were so nice to us that we felt they're our family as well. We spent the night in their flat and in the morning continued to Turkey. Payam took us with his car to the end of Tabriz and we hitchhiked from there.

Our drivers were very kind, they even took us further then they'd supposed to go and turned back after that. I'm not even talking about sharing food or drinks, we so got used to it ;) Then we walked a bit to the border crossing (almost everyone was surprised that we didn't take a taxi and some workers were joking about taking us with cement mixer car :) We left Iran on September 18th 2010.


When we arrived in Turkey I happily took off my scarf. Well, I have to admit it was tiring after some time. From the border we hitchhiked to Igdir (we did whatever we could to avoid Agri). We stopped a member of local city council and he arranged us accommodation in a teachers' house. We met three girls who were teachers there and we had some tea with them. 

In the morning, after watching celebration of a national holiday, we continued North. I was amazed and surprised how different it was from every image of Turkey i had in my head. It looked rather like central Slovakia or Romania, mountains were covered with trees, it was so green everywhere. Totally impressive.

Qeshm Island, the hottest place we've ever visited

It was late afternoon when we took a boat to Qeshm Island - the biggest island of Iran. On the way we saw huge container ships and we felt so small in our little boat.

Queshm island has special status in Iran, it's free trade and industrial zone. It is partly independent from the central government and makes strategic point near important Strait of Hormuz.

One thing you definitely shouldn't do is visiting Qeshm Island during summer, temperatures are close to 50°C which makes it impossible to walk the streets.

Using all possible connections, Mohsen arranged us a small flat located above a mosque. It was spacious studio with kitchen and bathroom. As usually, there was a cute lizard in the bathroom and cockroaches in the toilet.

When we were leaving flat, we tried to catch our fellow lizard and we were pretending that we put it into Tony's bag as a joke :-) Tony was a bit afraid of it. Anyway, we let it go back to his favorite place and left the mosque.

We visited Portuguese Castle, Khorbess Cave Complex and Fallen Star Valley.

The castle is located precisely in front of the Fort on Hormuz Island. It was strategic position, because no ship could pass between the islands unnoticed.

Portuguese Castle

Khorbess Caves were formed more than 2000 years ago and you can see some reliefs carved on the caves' walls. We spent a while resting in a gazebo below the caves (we needed rest more than ever, the heat was killing us). Boys were playing chess, a gardener was watering plants around us, pure idyll.

Then we went to see definitely the most impressive thing on Qeshm - The Fallen Star Valley. The name itself promises something amazing. And we weren't disappointed. See for yourselves.

 The Fallen Star Valley

On the way from Fallen Star Valley we reached a small village where we asked some old guy for water. He went to his house, closed the door and in a few minutes brought us big bottle of water. It was so refreshing. Following the road out of the village we also passed by some youngsters playing football and pack of dogs, for which we became object of interest.

Fortunately, we were bigger so they just left us sweating and walking, trying to catch some ride to our place.

In the evening we arrived on a beach. Mohsen took a huge tent out of his small backpack. We were surprised how it could fit in. The plan for dinner was obvious, get some fish from local fishermen and prepare it on fire.

So two of us went to fishermen village and asked some people where we can get fish. They told us that we have to wait till sunset when fishermen come back from the sea with fresh fish.

When it became so dark that you could see stars, we were visited by two policemen who were going around the beach on a motorbike. They were probably just customs officers on their night watch. They were curious what we were doing there, where we came from and lot of other questions. We were trying to convince them that Mohsen was Bulgarian and his name was Mike. I think they didn't believe us :) Anyway, they told us that we were lucky to meet them and we started to call Mohsen by his incognito name - Master Mike. They brought us fish. And even supported us with a bit of gasoline for fire and regularly checked if everything was ok and no one disturbed us.

So we cleaned the fish in the sea and our brother Mohsen aka Master Mike prepared it on fire for us. He even had a bit of salt and some spice for it. During preparation we realized that something was watching us. It turned out to be a fox which was attracted by fire. It was looking at us from safe distance. Its eyes were like two small red spots in the darkness. Like from some horror movie.

Fish was very delicious! Like from some luxury restaurant. We should asked some Michelin inspector to taste and review it ;) During the night we got some more checks by our friendly policemen. It was funny because they didn't speak English and we didn't speak Persian. Tony was learning new Persian words and he was our main communication link with them.

In the morning we packed the huge tent into Mohsen's small backpack and caught a ride back to the city. We convinced Mohsen that hitchhiking is the best way of traveling and I guess he believed us when we went by taxi for free :)

our host

Last sunset 

Khorbess Caves

Hormuz Island

The first island we visited in Persian Gulf was Hormuz Island. The name may seem familiar now if you follow latest news and heard about Strait of Hormuz.

We went there by small boat with some local people and two goats. Amazing journey. The boat was going very fast so we had to hold on to whatever we could.

First we visited an old Portuguese fort. We didn't know that then but we do now that it's called Fort of Our Lady of the Conception, as it states in Wikipedia (vide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_of_Our_Lady_of_the_Conception_in_Hormoz_island ).

View from top of the fort

View of entrance

It faces another fort (or castle) on Qeshm Island. we found a guide and he showed us around. the fort is almost forgotten and it falls apart because there are not enough funds to take better care of it. We could see how the ground level changed, especially when we entered the church within the fort. The columns seem really small now but you can imagine how high they once were. The good thing is that you can clearly see that arches are made of coral (well, it was 16th century).

There is also a small exhibition of things found there (especially military, like cannons or cannonballs).

After visiting the fort we had to rest because of the heat and sat by a shop. There were children staring at us. Some of them were too afraid to come closer but had to do it anyway, since we were sitting right next to the entrance, trying to catch a patch of shadow. We had some water and continued.

Mohsen invited us for a ride by a boat around the island.

And that's something really worth doing. The island is very diverse, it's covered by sedimentary rock and volcanic layers but it's also very colorful from iron (reddish), salt (white) and shiny mineral on beaches. We could see that water created some caves and it would be very exciting to go canoeing around Hormuz.

The only thing that spoiled the view was litter and crashed boat. I mean, it was not very dirty and i know people live there and it's no reservation but that one thing took away the feeling of visiting a place where civilization hadn't come yet. And some beaches look like such a place. We got off to walk around a bit and saw a cave where water came during high tides.

I don't remember exactly if it was before or after the ride around the island but while we were waiting for another boat, there were some kids playing in the water and when they saw us, tourists, they were shouting "Mister! How are you? Thank you!". We didn't react (except of laughing a bit), so they gave up after a while.

If you ever be around, visit Hormuz and enjoy. But if I ever go back, I guess it will be in December or January :)

Persian gulf we are coming

We were supposed to meet Mohsen aka our Brother aka Master Mike at the bus station in Shiraz. He was going to travel with us to the South and show us some places there. As a student of tourism he knew a lot about the country. I was surprised by the amount of tourist guides for almost every place in Iran. Unfortunately, they were mostly available in Farsi or Arabic language, but still just looking at the photos you could create a picture of this amazing country in your head. Some of our friends advised us not to go to the South in summer, but we decided to go anyway. For the future references, we don't advice anyone going there during summer :-)

Waiting for Mohsen, we found a nice green spot in front of the Station. Some time later Mohsen showed up and we moved into the station building for ticket hunting. Ticket hunting is pretty popular sport in Iran. There is a lot of bus companies who are selling tickets for various destinations with various prices around the country. We just wanted to get to Bandar-e 'Abbās, old port city on the coast of Persian gulf. The city remember even Darius the Great and Alexander the Great too. Nowadays it's still important as a major Iranian port mainly for imports and touristic layover for these who wants to visit Qeshm and Hormuz islands.

We spent one night in a couchsurfer's house. He was Mohsen's friend who actually wasn't in the city but his brother let us in.

There is one rule valid for all bathrooms in the South. In every bathroom there is at least one reptile which size is directly proportional to the size of bathroom where it lives. When we were passing by public bathrooms we joked there is a crocodile living there. At the beginning it's uncomfortable to share bathroom with small reptile but after first use of bathroom you realize why they live there.

The reason are huge cockroaches living in the hole serving as a toilet. Some of them are even jumping when something is falling down to the hole which is so strange and creepy. Especially if you don't wanna miss the hole, you have to come pretty close and this small bastards are jumping up to 20 centimeters. Getting bit from them is something what could bring you nightmares and fear to use toilet again. They have a big antennae which are used for exploring. I don't know how they are hiding in the hole but they could survive everything. :)

Despite all creatures living in bathrooms you are safe. During summer day people are not walking on the streets if they don't need to. Mostly sitting in cars where various unit of air conditioning is a must. Temperature is not falling under 26 °C during the night and keeping around 40 °C during the hottest part of the day. For someone living in the central Europe this temperature is devastating.

We didn't know that until we got off the bus in Bandar-e 'Abbās. It was around 4 o'clock in the morning and we almost experienced thermal shock. The temperature outside was 33°C, while in the bus there was only 16°C (you gotta love air conditioning!).

Persepolis

We wanted to visit the ceremonial capital of ancient Persia very much. At first, it was supposed to be the furthest we get in Iran but our friend Mohsen encouraged us to go to an island in Persian Gulf. But let's go back to ancient times.

Persepolis was established around 515 BC and was famous for its greatness and then, maybe even more, for its destruction in 330 BC.

Persepolis now doesn't look very much like a city. Most of the buildings are just outlined by short walls, there are no roofs, gates and columns are reaching for the sky.

We also went uphill to see tombs on the hillside and to watch the city from above. We also drank Kofola which we brought all the way from Slovakia.
The taste was still same as home, even after thousands of kilometers by hitchhiking.

Although a lot of reliefs and sculpture from Persepolis are now in museums around the world (among others National Museum in Tehran, British Museum and Metropolitan Museum) the place is still unique.

When we were hanging around close to one tomb we met Khamron. He was sitting in the shadow and waiting for us. We were so surprised by meeting him there. He travelled 13 hours with friend who was our driver from Sarche to Persepolis just to see us for few hours. Would you do that?

Khamron

Shiraz, the city of poets, literature, wine and flowers

After the night in the desert we walked around Esfahan once more and left the city in the afternoon, heading to Shiraz by VIP bus. VIP bus had bigger chairs than regular bus and there was only 24 of them, we could almost lay down after unfolding them. The journey was quite pleasant, we got some water and food in funny bus-shaped boxes.

We arrived in Shiraz in the evening. It was getting dark but you could feel feast everywhere. It was the night Ramadan ended. Lots of people were walking around, having picnics everywhere they could find a patch of grass (even green zones between roads).

inside of citadel

Karim Khane Zand's citadel

We found our host and spent the rest of the evening in his flat. We learned to play Backgammon, a game very popular in the region (also called Nard or Tavla). And we got totally crazy about it.

We spent the next day walking around the city and realized that the most interesting monuments of ancient Persian culture were actually outside Shiraz. But we visited Karim Khane Zand's citadel and baths.

Citadel was beautiful from outside but once we stepped inside we were quite disappointed. Almost all paintings on the walls were destroyed during revolution. There was just a few things worth seeing.
That was valid for all parts of the city which we saw. But people were great as in any part of Iran with small exception of Sarche.

Our host was quite a rebellious man, he was partying, playing poker with his friends and drinking whiskey. In other words, doing things that are nothing special for us in Europe but can get you into real trouble in Iran.
Half of our group decided to go for the underground party and the others stayed at home to rest for next day.