Back from holls....

Afternoon,

Just a quick one. Me and missus have returned from sunny Ibiza. What a place! We really enjoyed it. As long as you stay away from San Antonio which is full of drunks and druggies the place is stunning. I have never seen such clear water in the Med.

But the good things don't last. Tomorrow I am off to Jordan. I'm flying to Amman via Paris and then by car to Rashadiya where the plant is. The work is only 4 days so back by thursday.

I'll update from there if I get a chance.

OK, can't chat, have to go, gotta be up by 4 am tomorrow to catch my flite from Heathrow.

Cheerio,

Alex.

Off to Ibiza...

Wheyhey,

Its that time of year again. We are off on holiday. This year we have changed the way we do things. Unlike last year where we did it the toffs way by going to Thailand, flying business class all the way and staying in a private apartment, this time we have taken a gamble.

We have booked the cheapest holiday ever. 260 squid for two persons for a week. OK, that does have its drawbacks. It is allocation upon arrival so we don't know where the hell we are gonna end up. We figured as it is Ibiza it can't be that bad, whatever they give us... (Famous last words...)

As long as the socalled 3-star hotel is not right on top of Manumission or Pasha I don't think it can go that wrong. And even if it does, I'll just use my Sofitel/Hilton/Marriott/HolidayInn/FourSeasons/Compass priviliges pass and book somewhere else. Who gives a monkey.

The flights are rather early but that is another reason why it was cheap... Flying from Stansted which is close to where I live is much better than having to use the busy other ones like Heathrow, Gatwick and City. If I get a chance while I'm out there I might update the Blog but don't count on it... I'll be mostly drinking beer and watching nakked ladies on the beach. (If my wife lets me hahahahaha)

More later,

Alex.

Indonesia Revisited....

Afternoon,

I forgot something when I was writing the Jakarta entry. I had the most bizarre taxi trip I have ever had.

On thursday morning Mr Marwin Ng (yep, that is how you spell his name...) of the rep company called me in my hotel and asked if I wanted to go for lunch in some restaurant down the road. As I am always up for some free grub I said yes. He told me that he would send someone to pick me up from the hotel. At 12 there will be somebody there to pick you up. OK, no worries, 12 o'clock in reception.

I get down there at 12 and the bellboy of the hotel points to a car and says there is your ride. I get in, this guy drives off. He drives, further, further and further. Suddenly I realise we are on the road to the airport. I try asking the guy where the hell we are going but he only speaks hurgy-flurgy so no luck there. He just keeps smiling and saying sorry sorry... strange....

So we actually get to Soekarno Hatta, the international airport for Jakarta. The guy stops, opens the car door and points to some door. By this time I am pretty much confused, maybe Marwin wants to have dinner at the airport. As soon as I get out the taxi driver slams the door and tears away. Hmmm.... this is starting to look strange... Luckily I have my cell phone with me and I call Amir, Marwin's dad as that is the only number I have with me. I tell him, I am at the airport, where is Marwin? He goes, -Why are you at the airport? -Well, your driver took me here. -No he didn't, he is still waiting for you at the hotel! Fuck buggery bollocks.... So I tell Amir that I will go back to Jakarta and I will see him that evening for dinner. So there I am, I am at the airport, I haven't got any ID on me, not much cash and no creditcards, brilliant.

So I jump in a taxi to get back to town. At least this taxi driver, Sirot, spoke a bit of english, well, at least enough to laugh his head off at me.... As we are cruising down the toll motorway to get back to Jakarta there is a hold up at the toll gates. My taxidriver stops, unfortunately the woman driver behind him doesn't. She slams into the back of this crappy Datsun with her huge 4 by 4. A lot of bits fall of the Datsun and the cab driver is out of his car in a jiffy. He starts shouting and screaming at this lady in the 4 by 4 and she calls the police. Great. I am sitting in the back of the cab, am the only foreigner there and I am not arrying my ID... this is not turning out to be a good day for me.

Luckily after an hour of talking between the pigs, the woman driver and the cabbie all seems to be sorted and finally after 3 hours I am back in my hotel. ( I just kept quiet in the back of the cab because when the pigs see a foreigner at a car crash you normally end up getting stung for money... I guess they missed me...) What a mess...

Later that evening Marwin, Amir his dad and myself have a good laugh at it all over 49 beers. What puzzles me is Who was that cab for? It must have been a private cab as I didn't pay the guy?!?!?! So someone must have missed their free cab and possibly their flite as their ride to the airport was hijacked by me. Never mind, some you win, some you lose...

I guess the moral of the story is check your ride before you get in...

Taraa,

Alex.

Turkey, my old friend...

Afternoon all,

After I got back from Indonesia I had only a few days at home to annoy the missus and then it was off again. This time I had to go back to a site where I had been before. I had to go to Elazig Cimento in Turkey.

I have been to Turkey many times before and I love it. The people are really friendly and the food and beer is stunning.

Elazig is in Eastern Turkey, about 300km from the Iraq border. It is inland and has a beautiful climate, cold winters and stunning summers. I travelled (again) with sodding KLM. Crap flite as per usual, rubbish staff and shite food and no entertainment system on any of their planes.

I got to Istanbul at 02:00 am and my flite from there to Elazig left at 05:00 am. So I had to kip on the airport floor for a few hours. The flite with Turkish Airlines was good as per usual, nice staff, nice clean plane, good food and on time. Got to Elazig at 07:00 am. The company driver was there to pick me up and he drove me straight to the cement plant. After a company breakfast of olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh honey with honeycomb, bread and cheese it was time for work.

The rest of the day was spent sorting out their scanner problems. When it got to 17:00 I was starting to get tired. I had been up for 36 hours and was ready for bed. Then the site people came up to me and told me that they had organised a trip up the mountain for me so I could see something of Elazig and surroundings. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I was knackered so I joined in. We went up the mountain to a place called Harput.

You can probably find it online somewhere, it is on the tourist trail. In Harput we had a stunning meal of grilled kebab of different varieties, ayran ( a sort of sour milk), several dips and fresh flatbreads. If you are wondering why no beer, Eastern Turkey is quite religious so there isn't that many places where you can score a beer, which is a pity as Turkey's main beer is Efez which is ace.
http://www.efesbev.com/our_group/turkey_beer_operations.aspx
The plant people then took me around the village to see some sites.

This is a tomb where some old turkish kings have been buried.

This is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, eh, sorry Harput.

This is the view from the top of Harput looking down towards Elazig.

This is the cement plant in Elazig.

The next day they took me out again this time to some volanic lake 20 miles from Elazig. We had a stunning meal there, this time with booze as the two guys that came with me were partial to a drop of booze as well. We polished of two bottles of raki (a sort of turkish ouzo...), loadsa beers and we talked the evening away. One of the things we discussed is that there is a lot of Turkish literature but not many people outside of Turkey have heard of these writers.

For the uninitiated Orhan Pamuk is the most famous. If you are interested read 'My name is Red' or 'Snow'. Two excellent books by the foremost writer of Turkey. Other ones to try are Yashar Kemal's 'Memed my hawk.', or his 'Wind from the plain'. Another good writer is Ayse Kulin, try her book 'The Bridge', it's good. Another one worth a shot is Ahmet Altan, his book 'Love in the days of rebellion' is good.

As this was only a short trip I was back in the UK by friday late after another crap flite by my worst enemy KLM.

When I got back to the office on monday I found out that I am going to Jordan on the 25th. So it seems that we are on a roll here, trip after trip after trip.

More importantly first I'm going to Ibiza with my wife for a week of laying on the beach doing nowt, just rest and relaxation, it's time for it. We are going on friday... We haven't had any holls since we went to Thailand in december last year. Bring it on!

Cheerio,

Alex.

Indonesia Rules!

Off to Indonesia...

Some local style houses in Pedang, Sumatra, Indonesia.

The view from the Red Top Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Morning all,

Again I'm a bit behind as I haven't had time to update... Bloody work....

I spend 10 days in Indonesia a few weeks ago. The trip out there was crap. The main reason was that I flew KLM again. This airline seems to be doing its utmost best to become a low cost airline like Ryanair. This was a 12 1/2 hour flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and then a two hour hop to Jakarta. On their crappy plane no personal entertainment system, no nothing. All they had was a few monitors that all looked like they had been bought at a car boot sale. They all had different colours, well... shades of blue... And another thing that is starting to piss me off is that when they serve drinks they now even don't give you the can when you get a drink, just a small plastic cup... wonderful... Cheapskate bastards...

When I arrived in Jakarta I was pretty much dead, 17 hours in economy class wedged between fat american holiday makers... The sales rep was there to pick me up and he took me to down town Jakarta to the RedTop Hotel. This place was good. Good restaurants and a good bar.


I stayed in Jakarta for 4 days and had a good time. It's a big, smelly, noisy, chaotic place, ace! One of the guys that worked in the hotel took me around Jakarta when he had a day off.


The food was exceptionally good. Loadsa good hot spicy stuff and all at low low prices. I ate all sorts of wonderful stuff. Frogs, crispy eel, fresh river fish, spicy noodles, chicken satay, spicy pickled veg, all bloody good. It must have been good as I didn't get, ehh.... ehhh.... you know, the Tijuana Quickstep, the Delhi Trots etc.


After 4 days in Jakarta I went to Padang on Sumatra. The job there went fine. Only the guesthouse of the cement company was crap. I arrived early in the morning, slightly hungover, slightly overheated as it was 35 degrees with a 100% humidity. Then they tried to put me in a company guesthouse which was overrun with ants, no airco, no curtains, dirty etc. I made it very clear to the, very friendly, guesthouse people that I would not be staying there. I sorted my self a good hotel in Padang itself. So an hour later I was settled on the beach in the Bumiminang Hotel.

After 12 days eating my way around Indonesia it was time to go back to the UK. I endured another 17 hours of shite KLM flights with rude and uneducated cabin crew.

Then at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam I had a run-in with the Dutch Customs Gestapo.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia while I was in Transit I had a bought a nice bottle of Vodka.
When I tried to check-in in Amsterdam for the Heathrow flite the wanking dutch tossers of the customs took my bottle of me. I had the bag in Kuala Lumpur sealed for customs so I could take it through security. What annoyed me even more that if I had bought it in Amsterdam in THEIR duty free it would have been OK, total f&^&^%king arseholes. The woman who took it of me was trying to patronise me by telling me that Malaysia is a different country then Holland... That was when I raised my voice quite a bit and started to refer to her family lines etc. After a while of bickering I gave up and told them to have a good party on my stolen booze and I even offered them a solution of what to do with the empty bottle. Needless to say they did not agree with my idea of sticking it up one of their body cavities.

So KLM are doing their level best to annoy as many passengers as possible, I hope they fucking go under as soon as possible, what a bunch of dumb bastards!

OK, more later,

Alex The KLM fan.