The covert operation

We’ve finally arrived in Aleppo, Syria. A country where Facebook is illegal, the women are veiled, yet you can buy fluffy, pink nipple tassles in the street. A perfect combination some might say.

Let me tell you how we got here. After surrendering my broken camera baby to Murat the Mullah’s capable hands for a couple of weeks, we left the sumptuous gaiety of Akdeniz Otel, Adana, and ventured east towards Syria.

The Turkish border guard swept us through, no problems. I cynically wondered what would happen next... and then, during a toilet stop at the duty free shop between the Turkish and Syrian border posts, we hear a very strange noise indeed. Much like a thousand people furiously wrapping and un-wrapping Christmas presents. Surely not, it’s only June. And isn’t this a Muslim country?

We moved a little closer to investigate and spotted a darkened room at the end of the entrance hall (I say room in the loosest sense of the word: It was actually entirely made of cardboard).

A woman in full Syrian dress waddled out of the “door” towards us, walking as one would if one was hiding a sumo wrestling suit underneath a burqa, eminating an odd rustling sound. Curiosity wetted, we move closer and our eyes were met with a wondrous sight.

It was like a cigarette factory in rewind. Giant cartons of cigarette boxes lay across the room, with thirty, maybe forty, people frantically grabbing and taping single cigarette cartons, and even entire boxes, around their arms, legs and torsos, before replacing their clothes, picking up their luggage and casually strolling towards the Turkish border.

Brilliant. It literally made our day, as we stood there with our ice-creams and sun hats watching them execute the most ridiculously overt smuggling operation known to man. Although, it has to be said, we probably looked equally as ridiculous.

If Canon can't then nobody can

In my last entry I very nearly wrote: 'These things come in threes, I wonder what wıll go wrong next?' And yes. Yes. They do come in threes. And they appear to be gettıng progressively worse the higher the number.

My poor Canon baby has broken. My beautiful Canon baby. My well-behaved, well-travelled, shiny camera baby has been blinded by a vat of sanitiser. All life exhausted, just a ghostly black screen eyeing me with its idle nothingness.

I just had to leave the stupid black box under the watchful beard and tiny spanners of a mullah named Murat down some side alley ın Adana, disturbingly close to a street lined with rotting goat's heads. (I'm starting to regret that Adana Kebap.)



But let's forget about that shocking picture of my camera's intestines for just a second (pictures courtesy of Mr Breslaw)...

We stayed ın the most superbly pink hotel last night - Akdeniz Oteli. Do look it up if ever you fınd yourself in Adana. Barbıe would be truly spoiled wıth the coral-coloured wardrobes, pale pink walls, baby pink lace curtains and pink floral wallpaper border a la MumandDad'sbedroom circa-1989. The picture of cherubs kissing on the walls just about topped it off.

According to our Lonely Planet the hotel has recently been renovated and has handsome furnishings. We think this might be less about the delicate room furnishings and more a dubious euphemism for the abundance of prostitutes in the very special hall-of-mirrors hotel bar. Just found this on a more recent Lonely Planet web page.

Insane... but totally sanitised

Rain. Bloody rain. Everywhere! Also hand sanitiser. Everywhere. No joke. I’m literally more sanitised than I’ve ever been before. And that, unfortunately, has nothing to do with sanity. The co-codamol and valium combination is safely eroding any remaining sanity.


We just spent an hour under the cover of the spice market drying our drenched feet and testing my new camera lens (did I mention I bought a new lens?), when a friendly one-toothed man offered to sanitise my hands. What a nice man! Ooh yes please, I said. But he tipped it up and nothing came out. He shook it. Still nothing. He prodded the top... still nothing! So he shook it and prodded it and shook it again... and BINGO! Whooooooosh... the entire bottle exploded all over me. All. Over. Me. All over him. All over his face. And the camera. AND THE LENS. Head-to-toe. Sanitiser to lens. It was like the fatal meeting of Bridget Jones and Mr Bean.

Aaron came round the corner to find me soaking wet and smelling like a toilet duck, frantically rubbing my camera with a useless, soaking wet piece of tissue... all the while being circled by a ragged man rubbing his bright-red, squinting eyes, muttering illegible Turkish expletives (see below).



We didn’t stick around long enough to find out whether he had actually blinded himself with his own stupidity. I didn’t fancy sanitising my lungs as well as my entire body and belongings. So we shuffled off to a cafe and are now looking out at the rain, ridding the air of all bad smells. I literally could hire myself out as a human air freshener.

We also lost £50 today. That was fun. Although technically I should say Aaron lost £50. The only feasible explanation we have is that instead of putting the money in his money belt, which was under his trousers, he just put it inside his trousers, so as we walked away from the cash machine the notes fell out of his legs, like a human cash dispenser.

Brilliant. Redistributing wealth to the needy. That’s the optimistic way I have chosen to look at it instead of beating him with my soggy umbrella.

We just booked a 20-hour train journey to Adana, which begins at midnight tonight. It’s a feeble attempt at chasing the sun but I’m not entirely convinced of its existence right now.

With two major mishaps under our belt I’m thinking maybe we should just take some valium and put ourselves to bed before boarding the train. A lot can happen in 6 hours.