Kaş, once an unspoiled fishing village, is now a relatively unspoiled tourist town on the southern bulge of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The area around Kas belongs to the Top 100 diving destinations worldwide. This is because this area have an high amount of underwater life, combined with very clear water (up to 40 meters visibility) and beautiful underwater landscapes. Actually there are around 30 different dive spots and many great places for swimming and snorkelling:  a destination really worth a Turkey holidays, in my opinion. Always, while I’m afloat on the sea surface, I know that a more or less intense underwater life is going on just under my feet: this fact simply makes me feel dizzy!  What then,  if you are bathing or -better- snorkelling a diving spot notoriously crowded by baracudas, stingrays, sea-turtles, rare snails, dorades, jack-fishes, soldier-fishes, octopusses, muray-eels, trumpet-fishes, brasses of many kinds, as well as huge groupers? What would be your feeling when so many amazing underwater lifeforms are to be seen regulary in unpolluted and crystal clear sea waters like Kaş’ ones? Would you realize at last, that a crowded, sunken and parallel world coexists with the one we are used to  ive in?

Illustration Friday topic is: mesmerizing

Kenya wildlife is the main attraction to many visitors. The country offers a wide selection of National Parks were it is easy to watch wild animals. Young travellers really on a shoestring might think to avoid them at first, due to the cost of lodging there. Moreover you need a car since there no public transportation which allows tourist to freely wander within a Park boundery. So car hiring is the only chance, but usually  the main car rentals are not exactly cheap. Yet it is possible hiring private cars from individuals, or retail car shops, so making your cheap holiday a cheaper holiday. That’s what I did with my friend Andrew, a fellow traveller from Perth, who I met one morning at Uhuru Park in Nairobi. An almost brand new Toyota Corolla rented from some Indian car traders at a very reasonable rate at our disposal! What else? We just had a great week in Amboseli National Park hanging around among enormous elephants all day long, and camping at night in confined and secure sites: yes!

A Malta holidays presents an opportunity to discover a country and a different culture only a short distance away from Sicily. The island strategic position, in between Europe and Africa, half way Gibraltar and the Middle East made it a perfect stronghold for the consecutive colonizers. The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Angevins, the Aragonese, the Knights of Saint John and the British were amongst them – all with just one goal: to control the middle of the Mediterranean. Traces of these cultures can still be found throughout the island: Phoenician tombs, The Roman Villa and several Roman and early Christian catacombs; The ancient city of Mdina with its Arab past (as does the place name itself). The capital city of Valletta is an open history book on the era of the Knights of St. John, when Malta was the southest  stronghold of European Christianity. This role seems to work even nowdays: Malta is on the route of the boats carrying migrants from Africa, but the Maltese government, just like the Italian one, does not shine in providing help and hospitality. Recently a leading Italian NGO has filed a report to the International Criminal Court  and the International Court of Justice in The Hague calling on them to investigate Malta’s ‘failures’ to adhere to international maritime rules with regards to search and rescue. While the Italian, Maltese and French governements debate on the grotesque topic, if the migrants status is that of political refugees or clandestines, at least 1000 Africans shipwrecked and drowned since January 2011, in the effort of  reaching our coastlines. Long live Fortress Europe!

Someone told me on the Vietnamese boat people who had landed on Pulao Kapas’ beach many years before.  I came across the boat’s wreck a few days later. The boat’s left over, nearly completely buried by the sand, really struck me. I stopped and stayed by that unplanned and clandestine monument a long while and   felt distinctly the very tragedy that was behind it…
Since a few years Italy is first in Europe for illegal immigration by sea. Some 25.000 desperate people somehow reached our shores in 2008. During the last three days, from dec 24 up to dec 26, about 1500 African  migrants have landed in Lampedusa Island, nearby Sicily.
Due to jingle bells and the like, Italians mostly have not paid much attention to this significant occurrence, while the ghosts of Christmas ideals rerun on Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Channel Five…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: clandestine

I like to edit again an old post written on November the 22, 2006…this fellow had a totally anti-routine life…it’s worth taking a look at his “biography” that my friend Gino edited recently in his blog.
Enjoy!

Among the strange people that I met, Max Maxwell is certainly the most unfathomable. I firstly met Max in Boracay Island in 1990. Max came from Bombay and belongs to the Parsee upper-class.
At that time he was a fit, middle aged man who enjoyed beach-tennis, wind surfing and excellent Italian food. He basically travelled between Boracay, Koh Lanta, Laddak and Hong Kong, making his earn out of fashionable batik-shirts, rattan-bags, Tibetan amulets and first rate (yet fake) Ray-Ban sunglasses. Max had an enormous ego, he was desperately scornful and selfish and, for some reason, he always surprised me. He had seen the World, that was the fact! When some harmless tourist, tried to approach him by asking silly questions such us “have you been…?”, Max’s provocative answer simply was: “thanks for not talking to me!”. And that was all. As I said Max loved food and he was among Gino’s selected acquaintances.
At that time Gino ran the cosiest restaurant in Boracay -according to Max’s parameters- and one day at Gino’s, for some unpredictable reason, Max allowed himself to talk to me! Max abhorred “stupid talks” but, after a good beer (he used to sip beer always by the same special glass that he-himself carried in a bag), Gino and I had the chance of glancing over his wonderful life. Finally Max decided to present Gino his photocopied “biography“. The document (his masterpiece) stated the man “born in Bombay during a devastating cyclone” and amazingly went on with Max ”making friends with Miles Davis, art-directing Vogue Magazine, etc”. I still have the rattan-bag that he sold me and still I wear those fake Ray-Ban sunglasses;  Gino and I still disputed about his reliability, his clever scorn and puzzling behaviour, until on December 8, 2006 we  received a stunning report:

BREAKING NEWS:
MAX MAXWELL DIES IN GOA AFTER COMMITTING SUICIDE. HE LEFT A NOTE IN WICH HE SAYS :
“DON’T BE SORRY FOR ME. I’M THE ONE TO DECIDE MY TIME WAS OVER”

Illustration Friday ’s topic is: routine

I have been visiting once upon a time, the little natural reserve of “Ripa Bianca”, just a few kilometres from home, on May, the 25th. It is a very  little area, sponsored by Italian WWF , bordering the river: actually an ideal spot for bird watching.
And I was trilled by watching, just befor sunset, a magnificent couple of herons flying slow and steady: a mother heron with its baby.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: baby

Buddhist teaching is clear and logical: that we can neither define, describe, nor usefully discuss the nature of that which is beyond the perception of our consciousness. According to the teaching the ideas of eternal self or eternity in nature may be described indirectly by analogy and symbols. Otherwise it must ever remain in its truest sense unknown and unexpressed, as being to us in our present state unknowable.The concept of maya play a major role in Buddhism. Maya is the belief that everything, which one sees in this world is illusion, a product of the individual’s own failed interpretation and self-delusion.Buddhism has always set itself against illusions: the illusion of permanence and the illusion that it is possible to live in the world and avoid the suffering. What if one follows this disillusionment to the end, allowing it to concern his beliefs on Buddhism itself?

Illustration Friday’s topic is: fail

In 1959 China annexed theocratic and remote Tibet.
The Dalai Lama,winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, fled to India amid the 1959 rebellion and he is routinely vilified by the Chinese Government.
In recent decades, China has methodically begun exploiting the region’s timber and mineral wealth; Beijing continues to rule the small Himalayan state with a heavy hand, enforcing strict controls on religious institutions.
Since March 14, 2008 protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule in Tibet are turning violent, with shops and vehicles torched and gunshots echoing through the streets of the ancient capital, Lhasa.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: heavy

Modern Singapore is a city of concrete, glass, freeways and shopping centres.This city state is one of the Asia’s four “dragons”- the Asian economic boom coutries. The fact that so many western expats live and work in Singapore, lies exactly in its thriving economy, altough the place itself is really nothing special and the main interest for the population is usually (and simply) taking rest from the hustle bustle of everyday life as soon as possible. As an architect I have been frantically working in Singapore for several months and got damn bored in the week ends. On these occasions the best thing that ever happened to me, was visiting the city’s parks; among them is the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a botanical institution, a tourist attraction, a popular place with photographers, with its unique collection of orchids and a beautiful lotus lake…
While sitting and contemplating by the lake, Japanese poet Yugen’s haiku ironically resounded in my mind:
“Ah! If one could but make a clear and flowing river of this stagnant lotus lake!”

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: garden

In the Philippines, the western wind is called Habagat and the rainy season comes with it. The rains in Boracay were usually a bit oppressive to me, as the dullness went on for weeks, driving my mood to absolute lethargy; moreover I was running out of money quickly. All of us were waiting for new tourists to come, and waiting for their money too: finally art rescued me.
Silk-screen printing became an exciting activity, really more than a hobby! I bought good white cotton T-shirts and printed them with my own design…
Tourists, I reckoned, ought to like and buy my home printed T-shirts!
With no shop to run, I gave my multiple masterpieces to a local vendor who stuck them up his shop’s wall and said: “I’ll let you know…“
Nothing else to do but wait; I went back to my bungalow and kept on listening as usual, to the radio’s old sweetie American love-songs…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: multiple