camel steaks... two for a foiver!

Well hullo there folkaroonies... for your information, the following is a prioritised list of things I would like to eat/drink:

• A Beer... a cold one... maybe an Erdinger or something...
• A sausage (as in a pork sausage - you durty bastards! Superquinn would do nicely)
• A bag of king cheese and onion crisps... hmmmmmmmmmmm.... tasty!
  
• A rasher (well, lots of rashers)
  
• A whiskey and ginger ale with a lime (again, several of these would be good, just enough to get me tipsy)
  
• A glass of white wine
• Sunday Roast
• And I'd also luv a burger king whopper meal (yes, I don't care what you think, all you French people out there... I can hear you now: "Zat is rreally onbelievabal zat you wud wont one of zose gressy omburgurs de merde")

So now that we've got that out of the way, a short update on where I am and what I'm at... I jumped on a bus from Shiraz yesterday and arrived in the desert city of Yadz, where I'm going to spend pretty much the rest of my visa time (7-10 days). There seems to be a lot to do here with lots of Zoroastrian sites (more to come on that in later posts), nomads and deserty stuff, so i'm going to use this as my base and generally flute around for the next while.

I've lashed in some photos from Shiraz and Persepolis, the Archemeden city of Xerxes which it's most known for. Persepolis is quite impressive. It was built around 500BC and then burned down by Alexander the muppet in 330BC (although its rumoured that his troops just got drunk and accidently started a fire... how we've progressed since then). I spent a good half day there with a canadian dude just wandering around musing about civilisations past.

So here in Yadz, I'm staying in this nice little hostel called the Silk Road. Its the most backpackery hostel in Iran and it's good to mingle with some foreigners again.

One thing that I keep on noticing though, is that even amongst backpackers and travellers, there's a kind of snobbery as to what they've 'done' and 'not done'... Inevitably when you meet people, they reel off the list of shit they've 'done': "Yeah, so I DID Turkey and then I DID Greece and Slovenia... after that I DID Georgia and once I've DONE Iran, then I'll DO Pakistan... yah, yah... sooper!". People are almost judged by the amount of shit they've DONE... with wilder off-piste stuff gaining particular kudos: "Oh, yah... loike I've totally DONE iraq... yah, yah... brill... best country ever! The jihadists ore loike sooooo friendly!"

Still though, I am adamant that my Irishness is my most significant asset when travelling. People are automatically postively predisposed to you... even if you're a complete tosser! There's two asian guys in the hostel... one is from London and the other from Amsterdam, but when the Iranians ask them "what country mista?" and they reply England or Holland, the iranians burst their shits and start with "Japan, Korea, China...", so these two guys have just resigned themselves to it and now reply to their heritage questions with an Asian country, just to save themselves going crazy! Ti-hi-hi... the concepts of multiculturalism havn't spread this far yet...

So when I arrived at the hostel last night, they didn't have any rooms in the dorms and I was fooked if I was gonna fork out for a single room so they let me sleep on the roof. But it was deadly, there was a brilliant view on the mosques and save the 4.30am call to prayers, the cool breeze let me sleep like a little babby. Although I did have to get up early this morning cos the sun was burning me...

I'd like to see some comments from McNamara's people... are you all dead or what! (note that redundancy is no excuse for not commenting)

Speaking about work, I'm reading that armageddon has hit the banking system with the collapse of the Lehman brothers etc.... I used to know this guy... a right dickhead (no names mentioned) who worked there... so I'm happy about that. I hear that they're not gonna pay salaries at the end of the month and that these swish bankers are reduced to clearing their canteen cards by stocking up on chocolate bars... What a funny thought! Only two weeks ago, they were jetting around on super-dooper expense accounts sucking the economy dry... Aah no, only joking, poor them! (-ish)... But seriously, economic decline brings it's own opportunities so I'm not worried (yet)... My dad keeps tellin' me that I've never lived through an 80's-esque recession and that I shouldn't be such a smart-ass, but in fairness, if you bought property in Ireland in the past year or two, I have no sympathy for you! (Did you think prices would rise into perpetuity).

One final piece of useless drivel is that I can't figure out how to go overland from India into SouthEast Asia. Burma seems to be a black hole that you can't get into from the north. So my options are a flight (boo-hiss...) or else going from Kathmandu in Nepal to Lhasa in Tibet up into China and then back down around into Vietnam... this would add considerable expense and time and bureacratic visa effort, but it could be interesting to stick China into the itinerary...

Apparantly there's an 'all-you-can-eat-for-60000-rials' on camel steaks at a hotel around the corner tonite so I'm off to stretch my stomach muscles and get into form...

Ur man in Iran... C to the P ;-)