Smokin’ in Cairo
Just to prove I’m not moaning on Facebook about nothing, here’s the lead story for this week’s English version of Al-Ahram newspaper. ‘For once, as it turns out, the burning […]
NOTEBOOK
Canter past Patagonian icefields. Sail the tranquil waters of Lake Como in Italy. Sip coffee in a Palestinian village. Listen to the ancient voices of Australia’s Arnhem Land. Climb the mountain paths of northern Albania. Let’s go!
All quiet on the North African front…
All quiet…until tomorrow, when I visit the former North African front of World War II, the village of El Alamein on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast,130km west of Alexandria. Here was fought […]
Horsing about in the desert – from Giza to Sakkara
Pink, Princess and Apple (To’faa): it sounds like picnic of Barbie dolls rather than three horses heading out for the 35km round trek between Giza and Sakkara pyramids – from […]
Cruising the Nile on the cheap
Hi all, here’s a story I had published in Australia’s Sun Herald newspaper recently about cruising the Nile in Cairo. Enjoy! October 4, 2009 Exploring the Nile in downtown Cairo […]
Time travel and the adaan
Legend goes the mosque in Shali town, in the Siwa oasis, was the last to use a live adaan. Now, they’re all voice recordings that vary with every mosque. Sometimes, […]
War and Peace (the short, Austral-Egyptian version)
The blog is quiet: I’m stuck inside working all week. Really, I could be anywhere, not in the raucous hype that is Cairo. The only difference is the phone is […]
Open for business
There’s a bunch of boys outside my window clapping along to the beat of a drum. They couldn’t control themselves – football-mad Egypt just beat Italy in the Under 20s […]
The post-feast hangover hanging over Cairo
Well Ramadan has ended, and so has Eid el-Fitr, the three day ‘small’ feast that follows. It’s back to work, though the first day was a lot quieter than a […]
Wraps off the republic
Battling hijab hair and the basic black wardrobe, fashion is flourishing in Iran. Click here for a link to this story in the Sydney Morning Herald’s travel section…
Cash cows vs cash crisis
I’m taking a jump from markets in Morocco to a global wage comparison survey just released by UBS. The annual survey finds that Zurich workers are the best paid in […]