Back in the sands...

Afternoon all!

Another week goes by and I do another trip to Saudi Arabia, my most favourite place in the world, not! I did a job in the middle of the desert in the south of Saudi Arabia. This site was as remote as they come. We were 200 km from Sharoura and 160 km from Najran. Nothing but the cement plant in between. The only thing that was good was the drive back to Najran. We were on the main road to Najran when the saudi driver asked me if I fancied a short cut. Well, driving the deserted roads in the south is boring at the best of times so I agreed. It should knock of about half an hour of the 2 1/2 hour drive...

So the guy hits the brake and leaves the road and starts racing across the sands!

At some point he tells me that one of his mates has a camel farm just up the road (well, road...) and would I like to see it... So we swung by and low and behold, in the middle of nowhere there was this herd of camels eating the sparse grass... The tents were where his mate lived... They were bedouins...

Thats the camels... Smelly bastards...

This was the view 360 degrees around for half an hour... Luckily we were driving a big Toyota Landcruiser Patrol with big balloon tires on it...

When we finally made it back to the road this was the first availabe gas station... Modern stuff 'ey?

When I finally got to England after a two hour flight to Dammam, a 7 hour wait at Dammam airport, a 6 hour flight to Amsterdam and a 1 hour flight to Heathrow, I arrived at 7 in the morning and it was snowing. So in 24 hours from 35 degree heat to -2 degrees was a bit of a shock to the system... Then when we were bombing down the M25 we saw at least 5 shunts and crashes in the snow on the motorway. When we made it to the A120 my taxi driver took a corner a bit too fast and he lost it. We ended up sliding across two lanes before we ended up skirting along a banked side of the road. The car nearly ended up on the roof but with an incredible amount of luck the car swerved back on to the road and we managed to get back to Sudbury with only some cosmetic damage to the grill and front bumper... Scared the crap out of me though... (Ron, if you want to wake me up in the taxi you can just shout you know...)

By the way, KLM was on top form again. They lost all my luggage on the way back. Saved me having to wait on my suitcases and having to carry them myself. They dropped them off half a day later, incompetent bastards... At least I have made Platinum again on Skyteam...

Next week I believe I am off to Ecuador. I have to go back to Guayaquil for a small 4 day job. After that I should be Turkey for a week and that should be it for the year... Thank god, it has been a hectic year, I will not forget 2008 in a hurry...

Cheerio,
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.

South Africa

Afternoon all,

I am in sunny South Africa today. Knackered as hell as I left my house in England at 03:00 am on sunday morning. I arrived in Johannesburg at 21:00. My rep from the other company was there to pick me up. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive from Johannesburg to Klerksdorp where I stayed the night in a motel. As per usual when I arrive in a new country the next morning it was pissing down like the clappers. As the restaurant was in a different building from the motel I had a nice extra shower running from the motel to the restaurant.

The flight here yesterday was OK. I flew with KLM and for a change the food was good, the stewardesses weren't too fat to fit their arses between the aisles, everything was on time and we actually arrived on schedule. I don't remember too much from either flight as I was asleep for most of it. That did mean the buggers kept bypassing me with the food, bastards. I mean, what trouble is it just to put the tray in front of somebody who is sleeping???

This morning my new best pal Hannes drove me from the hotel to the site while giving me a running commentary on the social and economical developments in South Africa. Hmmm, this country still has a way to go before all aspects of the population are integrated. Never mind, tonight I'm off to my guest house which is called 'Little Dreams' guest house. According to the site people it is a nice place... we'll see... I think it has a website as well....
http://www.roomsforafrica.com/establishment.do?id=919

It don't look too bad from the online ad... Best of all it has a bar in the place so a chance to test the South African beers, Castle, Windhoek, Amstel etc....

I believe here is a Wildlife park a few kilometers up the road but after my experience with wildlife in Thailand (See entry 'A monkey ate my glasses...') I am staying well away from things that can bite, scratch, kill, eat, etc if I don't have a gun.

Speaking about guns I was asking Hannes about personal security and he stated that it is pretty safe here now and then proceeded to pull a handgun from underneath his seat. Hmmm, safe 'ey? So safe that he doesn't leave the house with a 9 mill strapped to his driver seat.... I think I might be staying in tonite hahahaha....

More later,

Alex in Lichtenburg.