its seriously irritating.

eastern turkey as such a terrible internet connection, i can't even send and receive simple emails. 56k connections over seriously old and dirty telephone lines shared by 20 people 2000km from their backbone (which already has a bad enough connection to the rest of the world as it is) is seriously pissing me off. right now i wish i had a friggin satphone...

anyway we're stuck at the border town of Dogubayazit, waiting for my Iranian visa that is being processed in Erzurum, a 5hr bus ride back the way we came. we're staying in a hostel underneath the shadow of Ishak Pasa Sarayi, a palace built amongst the steep hillsides of the eastern Anatolian plains in the 16th century (i think). Around the bend we can see Mt Ararat, the current leading nomination for the landing place of noah's ark. besides that, its basically an armpit of a town. but there are quite a few backpackers who use the place as a stopover between Iran and Turkey, and climbers who want to do the 3 day Ararat hike (quite simple, only the last hour or so of walking with crampons)

the leader of the expeditions is Saim, a strong guy who summited Everest and K2 in '97 with the Turkish/Indian/Pakistani team(something someone might wanna help me verify) and here in the armpit of turkey we met *wait for it...*

ANOTHER SINGAPOREAN!!!

he's motorbiking to ireland on his Dominator, you can check out his website at www.livingadream2003.com. Dalbir is an incredibly cool dude, and we had loads of fun talking cock about NS days and such. great relief from the hand waving charades with the locals.

ok i'm sick of this net connection. outta here.

jo