WIN ATRIP FOR 2 TO TREK THE INCA TRAIL IN SOUTH AMERICA! FROM INTREPID TRAVEL
WORLDWIDE 2008
ISSUE #16 $6.95 >GST INCLUDED
TRAVEL CULTURE
ISSN 1449-3543
#24 get lost! ISSUE #16
get in the know! The Seine River starts in Burgundy and runs through north-western France to the English Channel.
france
PARI5BY NUMB3R5 text: arwen summers images: steve davey+manami yamazoe+various
Paris – city of lights, capital of clichés and a place full of surprises. Beyond the pictureperfect views of the river Seine and routine pilgrimages to the Eiffel Tower, the vibrancy of Paris is such that even the 16 million annual visitors don’t make a dent in this animated metropolis.
T
HE FRENCH CAPITAL IS DIVIDED INTO 20 arrondissements (municipal neighbourhoods) that curl around the river in the shape of a snail, the ultimate Gallic stereotype. The minutiae of daily life within these lively and varied arrondissements makes Paris more than just a well-worn stop on the tourist trail. get in the know! The motto of Paris is a Latin phrase translated as ‘She is tossed by the waves but is not sunk’.
ISSUE #16 get lost! #25
france
8:00am 6th arrondissement Let’s Get Physical
The Jardin du Luxembourg was created almost 400 years ago as a private park, but thanks to the French Revolution, everyone can now visit these beautiful formal gardens – and hell, they do. I beat the tourists by getting up early and joining the morning joggers, avoiding the perfectly groomed Dior-wearing Parisiennes walking their French bulldogs. I admit there’s another reason for my uncharacteristic urge to exercise: the morning is the best time to spot the very fit local pompiers (firemen) doing a spot of training in rather tight black lycra leggings. No doubt the Parisiennes have been on to this for years. With my fitness levels, however, any attention I manage to attract from the boys in black is likely to come from my wheezing and gasping rather than my gazelle-like stride.
9:40am 5th arrondissement ( ) Insha’llah God Willing
Forget Notre Dame – from hijab shops to halal butchers, the influence of Islam in Paris is evident, and nowhere more so than at the Great Mosque of Paris. Smack bang in the middle of a nondescript bourgeois quartier, the mosque dates from 1926 and was built to honour the north African countries that fought with France during World War I. The beautiful white edifice is both a striking slice of the Alhambra in downtown Paris and a reminder that Islam is France’s second-largest religion. I take a seat at one of the copper-topped cafe tables under the fig trees in the courtyard and attempt to do the newspaper crossword while sipping on sweet mint tea.
’’
The influence of Islam in Paris is evident, and nowhere more so than at the Great Mosque of Paris.
’’
image: emily hughes
9:15am 5th arrondissement A Fatal Weakness For Pastries
The Parisian attitude to breakfast seems to be – why bother? Black coffee and a cigarette suffice for most, but I can’t survive without something solid. I wander down rue Mouffetard, a narrow cobblestone road. It may have been one of the main Roman thoroughfares of Paris but I wouldn’t fancy trying to reverse-parallel park a chariot here. I get away from the tourists and buskers and head down the hill until I find the local market at the bottom. Everything from pungently ripe brie to roasting chooks sits displayed in cabinets on the side of the road, but I head straight for the boulangerie and grab a freshly baked chausson aux pommes (an apple puree-filled croissant) before continuing on down the road to the Great Mosque of Paris. #26 get lost! ISSUE #16
image: thibaut guilpain
get in the know! In 2004, France implemented a law to ban the wearing of religious symbols in schools – including headscarves, causing controversy among the Islamic community.
image: linus mak
11:00am 20th arrondissement Trash Or Treasure
After the tranquillity of the mosque, I want some action. I find it at the least organised and most fascinating of all the Parisian fleamarkets. The sprawling fleamarket at Porte de Montreuil is like the strange love child of a huge garage sale and an oriental bazaar. As I emerge from the Métro I’m assailed by the total chaos of 500 stalls in a diminutive area. Hundreds of people jostle for space in front of heaped piles of clothes and junk. The narrow market alleys are filled with the bright colours of African prints on generous behinds and the raised voices of hagglers put my timid bargaining skills to shame. This is the place to pick up designer clothes for a steal, but after half an hour of rummaging through what looks like my grandma’s cast-offs, I decide I’m probably not going to find any Chanel today. I resort to browsing the strange collection of other items for sale, from caged birds to bicycles and sneakers that seem to have fallen off the back of a truck.
2:20pm
4:30pm 18th arrondissement
While Père Lachaise cemetery in the east of Paris swarms daily with Jim Morrison pilgrims visiting the grave of the Doors’ notorious singer, Montparnasse cemetery is a groupie-free necropolis of tree-lined avenues and old tombs. Home to France’s intellectual and artistic elite (the dead ones, anyway), this peaceful cemetery is the final resting place of such notables as writers JeanPaul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, singer Serge Gainsbourg and poet Charles Baudelaire. If only I understood Sartre’s conception of existentialism, I’m sure this would be the place to ponder it.
14th arrondissement No Bones About It
I cross the river to the foot of the Montmartre hill, avoiding the dodgy sex shops of Pigalle and the tourist hordes of Sacré Coeur to visit la Goutte d’Or, one of the most down-to-earth parts of the city. Home to a huge community of Africans, the neighbourhood is famous for its market, the marché Barbès, where all kinds of spices, tinned snails and a range of unidentified dried things are on offer. This is also the place to come if you’re in desperate need of corn rows or an emergency hair straightening – every second shop is a hairdresser specialising in African hair, and if the shop’s not a hairdresser then it’s a beautician or a tailor, fulfilling all your fluorescent nail extension needs and bespoke requirements.
I’m in the right frame of mind for a visit to the Catacombes, the creepy result of a novel approach to the overcrowded Parisian cemeteries in the late 18th century. Thousands of bones were exhumed, chucked willy-nilly into carts that crossed Paris late at night with priests chanting the last rites, and were then tossed into a huge Roman-era limestone quarry under most of the south of Paris. It was only later that some bright spark had the idea to arrange some of the remains of these six million bodies in a ‘decorative manner’ and open the place to the public. Mmm. Decorative manner. Surrounded on all sides by skulls, femurs and tibias, I try to avoid making eye-socket contact with anything and trek through miles of bones before emerging at the exit to have my bag searched. Yep, the security guard was happy to confirm that ‘bone theft’ is a daily problem. Haven’t these people heard of vengeful spirits?
My favourite French custom, the aperitif, consists of having a pre-dinner drink (or two) to get you in the mood for the evening to come. Today I decide to skip the drink(s) in favour of a shisha, or waterpipe, with its promise of honey-scented tobacco. Shisha tea rooms first opened in Paris with the arrival of north African immigrants and are no longer just places for nostalgic older folks to puff away the time. Much like karaoke, the pleasure of shisha is all in the social interaction that goes on while you pass the dutchy to the left-hand side. Although the youth of Paris have taken to shisha tea rooms with gusto, I’m a little nonplussed by the experience. Nonetheless, I’m glad I tried, as the total smoking ban in cafes that comes into effect in Paris in 2008 could spell the end of these sweetly scented cafes.
14th arrondissement Being And Nothingness
3:00pm
A Hair-raising Experience
6:00pm 3rd arrondissement Don’t Forget To Inhale
1:30pm
13th arrondissement The Fruits Of My Labour Paris has not one, but two Chinatowns, which makes it hard to decide where to go for lunch. By flipping a coin, I decide to head south to the 13th arrondissement, home of the first Chinatown in Paris and the largest in Europe. This formerly uninspiring working-class neighbourhood was transformed in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the arrival of thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants and now boasts some of the tastiest pho (rice noodles) this side of Ho Chi Minh City. After a bowl of the best from Pho Bi Da, I end up wandering around Tang Frères, the huge Asian supermarket built by two Laotian brothers in a former railway warehouse. I try (and mostly fail) to identify some of the bizarrelooking fruit on display but somehow leave with a locquat and a persimmon. get in the know! Despite the cliché of the smoking Frenchman, 70 per cent of people in France favour the ban on smoking in public places.
ISSUE #16 get lost! #27
dhows,dolphins cigarette text: lara dunstan
images: terry carter
S
AILING OUT OF KHASAB’S HARBOUR shortly after daybreak on the open deck of a traditional wooden dhow, it’s hard to decide where to look – should we direct our gaze at the pod of handsome bottlenose dolphins swimming playfully beside our boat or at the flotilla of some hundred or so speedboats heading directly toward us? For the moment, the scores of shiny aluminium boats with their enormous outboard motors have our attention. Occasionally airborne in the chop of the sea, they buzz by us, their cargo of sheep and goats looking decidedly uncomfortable as they bounce hard across the waves – although not as uncomfortable as they’ll be when they reach shore and have to clamber over massive grey boulders to livestock trucks. We look enquiringly toward our Omani host Abdulfatah. “Iranians”, he tells us with a grin. “They’re going shopping.” Every day Iranian smugglers make the trip to Oman in the early morning and sell their contraband to the waiting buyers from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) before #30 get lost! ISSUE #16
hitting Khasab’s ‘Iranian market’, a small quarter of wholesale stores. The bronzed smugglers hang out in the coffee shops until the temperature drops, making the return journey in the late afternoon, boats laden with groceries, household items, electronics and, most importantly, cigarettes. The illegal American cigarettes Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Kent are the most desirable in Iran. As long as the Omanis still want Iranian goats, the smugglers will make their way here. Once the speedboats have passed, the dolphins prove highly distracting – despite the spectacular surroundings of Khasab’s harbour, with its craggy apricot-coloured cliffs and sparkling turquoise sea. Swimming in a school of around a dozen, the glossy grey creatures play with the bow waves of our boat. They’re smiling and have a glint in their eyes, or so it seems. While this may be my imagination, they are certainly cheeky. The captain and his crew keep watch, darting back and forth across the carpeted deck of the dhow, whistling and clicking their tongues to call the dolphins over. When the crew signals to us that they’re swimming on the
starboard side, we cautiously make our way to that side of the boat, and cling to the nearest pole so that we can watch them without reeling overboard. But the mischievous creatures give us just enough time to snap a photo before – with a wink of an eye – they plunge underwater and disappear. It soon becomes apparent they’re swimming beneath the boat. A short time later the captain signals to us, pointing to the port side where they have reappeared and are now riding the waves once again. They clearly enjoy their morning surf. Abdulfatah tells us the dolphins play the same games with his dhows every day, so when we don’t get the shots we’d hoped for, because it’s a little windy and the water is chopped up, Abdulfatah invites us out on his boat the next day. This is how we find ourselves, less than 24 hours later, sailing again out of the stunningly situated port of Khasab, the small low-key capital of the remote Musandam Peninsula. This tiny enclave of Oman is separated from the rest of the country and is situated on the northern-most tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Surrounded by the UAE
get in the know! ‘Starboard’ comes from the Old English word ‘steorboard’, and was the side ships were steered on.
oman
sm gglers
Only hours from the bright lights of Dubai, the Musandam Peninsula in Oman couldn’t be further away in atmosphere and natural beauty.
and the beautiful waters of the Persian Gulf, or Arabian Gulf, as the Gulf countries prefer to call it, the Musandam at its closest point is only 55 kilometres from Iran. The journey across the Gulf can be completed in just over two hours, explaining the daily stream of visitors. The Musandam is easy to visit from Dubai as well as from Oman’s capital, Muscat. While Muscat is an hour and a half away by plane, Dubai is only a relatively simple three-hour drive away, depending on traffic and the length of procedures at the sleepy border. But the peninsula is worlds away from Dubai in look and feel, and you notice the differences the moment you cross the border from the UAE. Oman is cleaner and has been more sensitively developed than its neighbour,
’’
The Musandam’s arid and arresting landscape is pristine.
’’
get in the know! The sails on dhows are called ‘lateen’ sails – and have been in use since the 8th century.
ISSUE #16 get lost! #31
and the Musandam’s arid and arresting landscape is pristine. There’s not a speck of litter. Nor are there any of the ugly, enormous electricity transmission towers that crisscross the UAE, marring its majestic mountains just over the border. The low-rise, whitewashed Omani homes are more modest than the Emiratis’ imposing three-storey villas. And the understated Musandam mosques are squat, with bulbous blue domes, in stark contrast to the UAE’s slender, intricately decorated mosques. The swollen domes, decorative arches and flourishes of extravagant detail hark back to Oman’s historic ties to Mogul India and the East African colonies of Zanzibar and Mombasa. There is a particularly charming fort at Bukha, the first town past the border, with a single chubby watchtower, scenically sited by the shallow azure-coloured sea. If you stand ‘just so’ you’ll see another small, creamy-coloured stone fort (really just a walled watchtower) on the hill overlooking this unassuming administrative town. The road up here is easy to find, and the view – across lush date palm oases and into the palm-filled yards of homes ordinarily concealed by high walls – is fascinating. The road from Bukha onwards to Khasab must be one of the world’s great drives. We loved it so much we drove it twice in one weekend. The smooth, sealed, two-lane road skirts the coastline the whole way, hugging the majestic Hajjar Mountains. Aside from the mountains’ immensity, their rough and rugged form and their stark beauty, it’s the colours of this imposing range that make it so memorable.
#32 get lost! ISSUE #16
get in the know! Minarets mean ‘beacon’ in Arabic, and are where the call to prayer is issued from.
oman
At each village we come to, we drive away from the coast into the sleepy main street to explore. Most of the villages consist of houses that are modern and modest, with colourfully painted iron doors decorated with outlines of kitsch palm trees, arabesque patterns or the Omani flag. Occasionally there are remnants of old stone houses in serious disrepair, and in the tiny town of Al Jadi there are so many in one quarter that it resembles a ghost town. Some of the crumbling buildings boast pretty star-patterned decorations at the top of their stucco walls and there are disintegrating doorframes through which you can frame National Geographic-style shots of minarets surrounded by date palms. Everywhere there are goats clambering over piles of stones, munching on the weeds that climb between the mounds of rocks. Each village is fascinating in its own small way and each is worth a stop. Al Jerry has a picturesque beach lined with fishing boats and a blue-domed mosque. At Al Harf, on top of an empty plateau at the most northern point of the peninsula proper, you may get to watch an enthusiastic game of football on a rocky makeshift field. Have your camera ready, as the drive from Al Harf around the point, down to Hana and on to Khasab, is the most scenic part of the route. It offers
spectacular views of the pale cliffs along the rocky coast and the Musandam’s famed khors, or inlets. People are more open to strangers in Oman than they are in the UAE. Maybe it’s because life is simpler here in the Musandam, but as we travel through the villages we see old men sitting on chairs outside their homes chatting, smoking and reading the newspaper. Sometimes they stare as we drive by, as locals do to strangers in small towns everywhere, but mostly they smile and wave. Even the women are more at ease with foreigners. One looks out from behind a halfclosed door as she combs her freshly washed hair and smiles. Another lady, covered in black and wearing a delicate gold burqa mask on her face, sweeps her courtyard. She turns as we pass slowly to see who is cruising down her little street and returns my smile with one twice as wide. Everywhere there are goats. They wander through the dusty streets of the sleepy capital, Khasab, down the labyrinthine lanes that snake through the town’s myriad date palm oases. They loiter outside the mosques, forts and souqs, eating the scraps people feed them and whatever else they can find in the trash. Back on the waters of Khasab harbour, the dolphins finally leave our dhow as we turn the
’’
Even in the haze that often gathers around the mountains’ jagged peaks, softening the whole scene like a watercolour, they are still striking. The colours of the outcrops play a large part in this, with their stripes of silver-grey, orange, rust red, apricot, peach, and cream-coloured stone, their clearly delineated layers of history and time. These mountains took shape some 70 million years ago and the bands of rock and lava and oceanic sedimentary strata found within are rare on the surface of the earth. Opposite the mountains, narrow creamy sand beaches separate the clear shimmering sea from the road. A simple mosque sits serenely on one beach, the peeling hull of an old wooden dhow is strategically positioned for a photo op on another. Other than these sights, there is only the occasional palm-frond shelter, beneath which craggy-faced old fishermen maintain their massive nets or simply watch and wait patiently for the boats to come in with the day’s catch. When the boats do come in, the men bound into the water with their dishdashas hitched up sarong-style around their waists. We drive with the mountains on our right. At their base, a short distance from the road, and secluded within dramatic ravines, sit small fishing villages. They’re scattered along the coast and as we drive around each successive bay we come across another. Fish and dates are the main sources of income in the Musandam, along with trade with the Iranians.
The road from Bukha onwards to Khasab must be one of the world’s great drives. We loved it so much we drove it twice in one weekend.
’’
get in the know! Telegraph Island was part of a telegraph link built between Britain and India in the late 19th century.
ISSUE #16 get lost! #33
confessions
text: tom maclachlan images: magda bytnerowicz
T
HE YEAR WAS 2003. THE HOWARD Government had left its nation’s most famous ‘traitor’ languishing in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay for two years. Forget his alleged faults, we reasoned, Hicksy was a fellow Australian and deserved a good rescue. Our plan was vague – drive a hired car to Gitmo (600 kilometres away), storm the base (home to 10,000 soldiers trained to shoot intruders on sight) and drive away. With Hicksy in the boot. We hired a hatchback and set off. The problem with missions in Cuba is the Cubans. They have no respect for a grand plan and would much prefer you talk about it over dinner than complete it. Harbey, a waiter with a ridiculous moustache who served us our first Cuban lunch, was also the first obstacle to our success. Harbey had seen just one other gringo in his life and once he shook our hands he refused to let go. On the first night of our mission, we enjoyed a ride on Harbey’s horse and cart, a trip to the cinema (a television on a stage at the local school – when you’re earning the equivalent of 30 cents a day, shouting gringos to a movie is no small gesture) and a home-cooked meal. When we tried to leave, Harbey told us a sad tale about his five-year-old son who was addicted to television. The child spent most afternoons perched in front of an old black-and-white set at his grandmother’s house. Harbey had already sold his favourite pig to buy his hut and had no more money. To get a television, and thus to get his son back, Harbey would have to save for another two years. We sympathised with him – we sympathised
#96 get lost! ISSUE #16
with all the Cubans we met who told us similar stories – but we had a mission to consider. The next day we said goodbye to Harbey and punched the whole 500 kilometres to Gitmo in a stretch. Guantanamo Bay is an unassuming coastal town full of stores with bare shelves and dissatisfied window shoppers. We were also unable to find what we were searching for: a sign to the naval base. This huge US compound, known the world over, was nowhere to be seen. The Cuban government regards the US as illegally occupying the land, so the lack of advertising was perhaps understandable. After hours of following bad directions from locals, we found the entrance – a rickety boom gate manned by a single Cuban guard. My friends and I hadn’t banked on such flimsy security and started to high five each other. Our joy was short lived. This entrance was in fact 60 kilometres from the actual base and the Cuban guard, standing between us and glory, refused us entry. Undeterred, we scoured for another way in and found a local who told us of a secret route along the coast – the ‘back way’ into Guantanamo Bay. When, at the end of this suggested road, we found two Cuban policemen, we felt hurt and betrayed. A trap? We soon found ourselves in an interrogation room fielding a barrage of questions in Spanish, the most repeated being, “Why the fuck are you looking for David Hicks?” (direct translation). My story was that we wanted to get a photo to send to his mother. The cop narrowed
’’
After a lazy three months travelling through Latin America, my friends and I were feeling useless. While in Cuba we decided to we would do something worthwhile. We settled on liberating David Hicks.
We soon found ourselves in an interrogation room fielding a barrage of questions in Spanish, the most repeated being,“Why the fuck are you looking for David Hicks?”
’’
his eyes and asked the one question that he had wanted to ask since our arrival: “Are you from Al Qaeda?” This was too ridiculous. With Chris and Olly suddenly looking quite serious, I stood up and admitted that we were three bored travellers who thought liberating a prisoner of war would be a fun way to pass the time. Now that we were here, arrested and accused of terrorism, the mission seemed unrealistic. “Just let us go and we won’t do it again”, we promised. And so, with a chuckle, our interrogator did. That night we were on our way back to Harbey’s house. David Hicks was not in the boot. We did pass a surprisingly well-stocked appliances store however, and the next day we were able to drop a television on Harbey’s bed. Harbey’s handshakes quickly turned into hugs and he refused to let go again. Hicksy is now out of prison and we have received a letter from Harbey. He reports that his son now stays at home most afternoons. Mission (somewhat) accomplished.
get in the know! Guantanamo Bay was first invaded by the USA in June, 1898.