22 August, 2011

Easiest Way From Greece to Croatia? Italy

In my last post I had made it to Rethymno and met some cool people. Even did a tour of the Minoan Knossos. I left the day after that post for Santorini, Greece's poster boy. I must say that Santorini is dramatic. Three of five towns are built not just on the top of 500 meter cliffs, but down parts of said cliffs. The town I was able to get a hostel was Perissa.

15 August, 2011

13 August, 2011

Island Hopping in Greece is the Bee's Knees


I took the ferry from Çeşme to Chios (pronounced kios) on the 3rd. I was the lucky recipient of being the sole person to have to empty the entire contents of my bag for border control. The guy thought I'd some how come up with a way to fit cocaine into the air pockets of the foam cushioning in my bag. I was almost certain he was going to slice it open. Then had me answer a dozen times that this was indeed my bag. Thanks for being a dick just because I was American.
Chios isn't much to write about. The town is like most island towns here, it is built around the marina as the main focal point of the city. In Chios, the main road goes along the harbour and splits the shops and restaurants from the walk path. The affect this has is that it sucks; you don't want to sit in a cafe cause you have cars in your face and you don't really want to walk the path cause its uninviting. it does have a wall around part of it, but compared to other towns in Greece, its impressive. There is nothing resembling a hostel, so its not a great destination if you are traveling alone. I spent most of Wednesday morning trying to find a cheap place to stay. There are the hotels and pensions, but Greece has places that have a sign outside advertising rooms for rent. These are your cheapest option next to hostels. In the end I got one for €20. Always ask if they have cheaper rooms or will go less. Almost all will show you a room that isn't their cheapest, or they'll drop the price €5. The place I stayed had a great typical Greek lady running it. She was on the heavier side and hilarious. She spoke some English, but it was heavily accented so it was tough to understand.
It also turned out she was a level 2 reiki. She mentioned it to me when I asked her some places to see on the island. She said there was a sea cave that was great for reiki. She asked if I knew what it was, so I grabbed my big book of chi and turned to the reiki chapter. I tried to see if she'd do a session on me, but she said she couldn't for some reason.

07 August, 2011

Turkey Post, Finally

I've been neglecting posting lately. Mostly that's because of access to a computer. I'm writing this from my phone, which I hate. It's hard to type long prose and I basically can't proof it, not that I do too much proofing anyway. So FYI.
After all that fuss that the picketing agent gave me in Bangkok, all I had to do was walk up, say I wanna go in Turkey, and they gave me a visa. When I got to immigration, the hardest part was the 5 min. line I had to wait in. I'm not sure one person looked at me to see if I was even the same sex as on my passport. I guess it may be because they have women with burkas comings through all the time and checking a passport against a small slit where you can only see their eyes really means nothing. No, they don't have to remove them, but yes, you as a man will need to remove your hat.

03 August, 2011

Quarterly Update 3, A Little Late

Sorry this is a bit late. I hit 9 months on my birthday and there was no way I was writing then or the following day. Then, I was traveling, then I was behind on some other posts, and then I didn't have access to a computer. I am going to include the last couple weeks in this, so consider it a quarterly update, plus Turkey. I still didn't when I "wrote" this post. I used the speech to text function on my phone and am borrowing a computer from a guy at my guesthouse. That means that this will probably be full of spelling and formatting errors. So without further ado: