Ready to leave Belgium for Singapore

After 2 weeks in Belgium I'm ready to leave. The beer is wonderful, and the whole city parties every night, but I can't really join in as everyone speaks French and I just don't. Two weeks is not long enough to refresh and improve the awful french classes I had in high school. Still, I suppose I can manage to order a few beers here and there...The best part of Belgium so far is the festivals. Beer gardens and outdoor concerts everywhere! And no one gets in a fight, the beer is reasonable (2 euro) and there's almost no garbage generated. I'm not sure how they do it... It wouldn't work in Vancouver.

Compared to England, Belgium is cheap cheap cheap. We're planning on spending the last few nights in Bruges and Brussels just so we can say we've been right across Belgium (we're in Liege now).

Wednesday we fly to Singapore. A quick flight to London and then 4 hours until our flight to Singapore. It's a 13 hour flight! I hope it's not full...The flight to England was bad enough at almost 10 hours. We've booked into a shit hotel in Singapore (...it's an expensive city), but we're only staying 3 nights until we fly to Indonesia for a month of island hopping, sun tanning and Komodo dragon watching! Hopefully these blogs will get a bit more interesting from Asia.

From Egypt to Belgium with London in the middle

I'm very pleased to be out of Egypt and back in a European country. Many interesting sights in Egypt, but they're all spoiled by constantly being harassed by merchants and beggars. Mostly by merchants. You can't walk anywhere without having junk forced on you, and you can't actually buy the junk without a 20 minute argument. At the end of the "negotiation" you'd better have exact change too because there's no way you'll get change from anyone. If you're wallet is still in your pocket, then that's a bonus. Most of the temple guides are armed with machine guns and harass you for tips. It's awesome. Even the cruise ships are constantly harassed by vendors if they slow down. These guys pitch shirts in bags up 5 stories right into your arms before demanding a ridiculous price (e.g. 10 english pounds).

Despite the people, Egypt can be a beautiful place. And the ancient tombs and temples are really more amazing than you could imagine via photos.But I didn't mention that the temperature ranged from 47-51C during the day. Ridiculous. That's 136F.!!!

Headed for Egypt...

We're in the Best Western by Gatwick, and headed for Egypt tomorrow to cruise the Nile. The hotel's internet is too slow to upload photos. Last blog for at least a week as we won't have any internet in Egypt...

37 in the shade...

Crete has been awesome. We've crammed so many activities into 2 weeks. But now it's time to say goodbye to sweating while sleeping and feeding the mosquitoes of the Mediterranean.
In Crete a cocktail looks like a birthday cake, and no one really seems to care what you do. I've seen enough elderly topless women to last a life time, and the nudist colony down the beach doesn't have a member under 75. We've traveled to lakes fed from underground springs, ancient forts built by the Venetians (apparently they make more than window blinds), monasteries, old cities, new cities, mountain panoramas, leper colonies, and caves. We've walked for miles along beaches, traveled to cities via coach, hopped on a fake train (it was just a tractor pulling carts on wheels) to touristy areas, and finally rented a quad for a 145km journey through a large city, along a highway, and through a dozen little mountain villages. Back home you get a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, but in Crete it's apparently just fine for two people to ride a quad down the shoulder of 40km of highway and then bomb around a mega city (where 4 or 5 vehicles somehow always manage to cram across a one lane road).

We bus back to the airport at 6:00 GMT (Greek-maybe-time) tomorrow

Sea turtles and sunsets

This guy came ashore around 7pm but I didn't get a photo until 9pm. He was alive when he crawled onto the beach but gave up soon after. The locals covered him partially with some kind of black cloth (I don't know why). But it was pretty neat to see a wild sea turtle (they can live up to 80 years...and this one looked realllly old).
At least he died on a pretty amazing evening as the ocean was calm and the sky clear.

Sunrise over the Cretan Sea

Trouble sleeping this morning so I went to the beach to watch the sunrise. It was worth it.

Crete

Crete is pretty nice. Here's what I know:
The ocean is like bathwater.
It's hot even when it rains.
Greek bartenders are the laziest people on the planet.
Sand gets everywhere.
Mythos beer is crap but cheap.
You can drink anywhere.
All inclusive is greek for partially inclusive hehehe.

Nap time on the beach!