West Asia

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Daytrip to Farasan Island

Getting to Farasan Having retired around 1900 and with 5h difference with Malaysian time in my body clock, I woke at 0100.  I managed to doze till the alarm at 0400. We had been advised verbally to have the car join the ferry queue at 0430 (but officially 0530 report time on the ticket) for […]

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Heading south

Flying to Jizan I woke at 0230 after 5h30 of sleep that wasn’t very deep.  I tried to doze some more but gave up at 0330, opting to stay up. At around 0620 I summoned a ride to the airport.  The driver, had trouble locating me at first and it got a little stressful.  Fortunately, […]

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Dream standby flight

Standby flight Having slept around 2200 last night, I stirred around 0400 and got out of bed around 0630, an hour before my alarm.  I made it to the 0800 bus from KL Sentral which got me to Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 1 at 0900 (it got to Terminal 2 at 0845). When things […]

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Exploring Nicosia

North Nicosia With no natural light in our room, we were rudely awakened by my daily 0700 alarm.  Then my hope to doze for a few minutes were dashed with problems with a tenant’s garage door at home. Our hotel supplied an awesome breakfast and soon after that, we departed for a walk on the […]

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Crossing back to “the south”

Above: People dining on Farenomeni Square. Today we return to “the south” or the Republic of Cyprus.  We departed our lovely apartment in Gazimagusa’s old city around 0930 for the 1h drive to Ledra Palace Crossing. We managed to find parking without too much difficulty or circling around.  Once parked, we waited for the car […]

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Ancient Salamis and more

Ancient city of Salamis Our plan for the day was to go to the ancient city of Salamis as early as possible, then swim in the evening.  Information on Salamis’s opening hours were hard to find but I guessed it would be 0900.  Getting there soon after 0900, I noticed that it was 0800. While […]

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Abandoned resorts

Above:  Abandoned hotels run for kilometres along the waterfront where we swam. Moving to Gazimagusa We wanted to leave our Dipkarpaz accommodation late morning so that we’d get to Gazimagusa and not have to wait to enter our next accommodation.  However, a power outage at breakfast meant that we’d be without any fan or air-con […]

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To the Karpaz Peninsula

Kantara Castle Today we move on to Dipkarpaz Peninsula, which is the north-east tip of the island.  Google Maps suggests that it would be a 30 min side-trip to add-on the Kantara Castle but we already knew that they’re too optimistic with travel times on the windy mountain roads. We had taken things easy this […]

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Two castles in a day

St Hilarion Castle We have two sights planned for today.  I thought we’d do one as early as possible and the other at the end of the day.  That way, we would avoid the worst of the day’s 36 degC heat. After an awesome breakfast on the rooftop, we headed out about 0845 on the […]

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Bellapais Abbey

Getting from Larnaca to Girne Today we move to Northern Cyprus or the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus, depending on your point of view, for a five-night stay. We had a choice of the 0845 or 0915 bus to Nicosia, in order to make it across the “border” to collect our rental car at 1100 on […]

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