(Southeastern Anatolia)…The bazaar in the small city of Şanliurfa was a revelation, a time capsule that is both 11,000 years old (so scholars believe) and modern and vibrant. It is a Kurdish town, and immediately noticeable were the mauve scarves decorating the heads of both men and women. Some boast filigreed patterns in silver thread. The bazaar is the usual maze of alleys with shops, and into one a tailor invited us.
He sat cross-legged on the floor (probably had done since early that morning) and sewed thick sheep fleeces into jackets and waistcoats, whole ordering us tea. The “getting of tea” remains a joyous mystery to me throughout my travels in beautiful Turkey.
Hospitable Turks asked you to join them for tea, and therefore tea was summoned. It would come quickly, with accompanying sugar and spoons, but at no time did I see money exchange hands or anyone come back to collect the tulip-shaped glasses and trays. I was certainly not asked for contributions, and I rather think I would have offended if I had asked.
Perhaps there is a monthly charge? Who knows? Şanliurfa—its name was lengthened with the addition of Şanli, which means “glorious” in Turkish, in recognition of the city’s contribution to Turkish independence against the French—is famous for it being the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, who hid in a cave from the King Nemrut, who wanted to kill every child due to some unfavourable prediction. The cave can be walked to from an attractive area of plazas, mosques, gardens and pools, visitors crouching low beneath a green cloth (separate entrances for the genders) to sip the water that kept the prophet alive. The pools contain hundreds of carp, around which surround legends: If you see a white one, you will go to heaven; if you eat any one, you will be poisoned, for this was the site where Abraham was sentenced to burn by Nemrut but where the fire turned to water and the wood pile turned into fish.
Behind the pools—called the Balikligöl—are restful, idyllic caravansaries where old men talk about the past. The Second Crusade (1145-1149) also started when Islamic forces recaptured the city. It is a fascinating place, with patios opening up to reveal domino-playing, old men and an area of honey-coloured houses where I bought a grapefruit that was the sweetest fruit I’ve ever eaten.
One dinner was had sat on very low, backless seats (better to feel, perhaps misguidedly, that somehow you belong there and can watch the scene unfold without being seen yourself) outside a döner kebabı restaurant, a small hole in the wall, where the jolly proprietor sat outside with us and chopped the ends of and nibbled hot chilies to make sure they would not blow our “foreign” heads out of the bazaar. After hearing horror reports of travellers being mobbed in small, dusty, brown Harran, about 30 kilometres south of Şanliurfa, it came as a wonderful surprise to hardly seeing anyone. Where were they all? Where were the children? In school, it seemed, wearing blue uniforms.
A few residents shepherded sheep in the shade of the ruins of Harran’s university, which is the oldest Islamic university and thus perhaps the oldest on the planet from any faith or nation. Camels plodded around, and hoopoes and Burrowing owls swooped and hopped. Harran is small and poor, which must differ greatly from the 8th and 9th centuries when scholars flocked here to learn about astronomy, religion and medicine, some decades before Islam’s greatest university in Baghdad was even conceived. Beehive-shaped houses dot Harran, but most are used now for storage or tourism.
Numerous tarmac’ed but equally dusty roads crisscross the desert that after not being totally sure where we were continues across the border with Syria to forlorn places such as Büyük Çayli and larger Ceylanpinar. We ate honey on the comb while watching a Lebanese ground agama (Trapelus lessonae), a lizard that almost was indistinguishable from the sandy ground around it. Agriculture has started, thanks to the controversial GAP (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi) reservoir and dam project that seeks to tame the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
We span northwards to the glorious mountaintop town of Mardin. Essentially, at least for tourists, Mardin consists of one street, Cumhuriyet Caddesi, which contains the very comfortable Artuklu Kervansaray hotel. Walking beneath an arch, we admired an ornate doorway, only to be invited in by the owner, an old woman, who introduced us to her son, his wife and their daughter. More tea was served, and more lost-in-translation but heartfelt conversation was swapped, followed by an invite to climb on their flat roof to see the view of the Mesopotamian plain stretching from Mardin all the way, perhaps, to the Golan Heights of Syria and Israel and the crusader and Knights Templar castles of Lebanon. Several restaurants also have rooftop perches, and an antique shop had two kitschy watches bearing former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein’s face that it would not sell for any price.
The next morning we visited its twisty bazaar and a Syrian Orthodox Church (the Kirklar Kilisesi) for which the keeper of the key suddenly appeared. This interests me, the word “kirklar.” In Scandinavia and Scotland, churches have a similar etymology. Atatürk wrote out a Roman-style Turkish alphabet on a napkin in the 1920s, but presumably the word for church had a pronunciation in the Ottoman dialect of Arabic. Answers, please. We were told that Pope John Paul II visited. We had the dark, dusty place to ourselves. Carved above the entrance is the church’s date of formation: 569.
Paintings of the church’s holy fathers, the earliest ones quite comical, line the walls. Approximately six miles away along a thin road is the far larger Syrian Orthodox monastery of Deyrulzaferan, that is, the Saffron Monastery, so named for its yellowish hue. Until recent years this was the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Church’s patriarch, who now lives in Damascus. Obviously, Damascus is in Syria, so that fact speaks volumes concerning this area of Turkey’s links to the religions and peoples of wider Mesopotamia. Deyrulzaferan has a large courtyard, two floors, a church and two remaining brothers who speak Aramaic, the language, supposedly, of Jesus Christ. There are also nuns. One room contained the crumbling remains of two small sedan chairs in which the patriarch was ferried. A mountain with caves stands behind.

(China)...China is a fun place to visit, but wow, is Beijing polluted. In the year before its biggest event in its history (well, except for maybe one or two previous events of Imperial magnificence), China should not start organising an Olympics event on Breathing. Those who can last a minute or more will receive a Gold Medal, or supplementary oxygen, whichever one they covet the most. That said, I have no doubt that the Olympics will pass flawlessly. The Chinese government will shoot a few thousand people, ban all cars, move the factories to the areas of non-Han Chinese and flap little red Mao books at the wind until all the soot disappears. As soon as the last event is over and the foreign TV companies have returned, then things will go back to being how they are. 
I did get some fresh air in the Gobi Desert, in and around the small city of Dunhuang, which is where the Silk Road split into two routes. It is a quiet place, well, at least for Chinese standards, although it did seem to have an inordinate number of taxi cabs for a city of 180,000 or so people that takes little more than 30 minutes to cross on foot. The taxis are all green, and they all idle by the road side, before getting bored, driving away somewhere and coming right back in the vain hope that a customer has appeared. No one has. That said, I saw many taxis charging across the Gobi Desert en route to one of the passes that mark the start of the two Silk Road paths, a roundtrip journey of between 140 and 200 miles, so perhaps fares earned in this manner are more than enough to keep away starvation.
The northern pass is called Yumen, the southern one, Yuanguan. Both are marked with Imperial Chinese forts of differing conditions of ruin, and they signified the empire’s westernmost limits. After them, all was potential danger. Today, at Yuanguan there are some ruined beacon towers and a rebuilt fort containing a museum; at Yumen, there is a small, ruined fort and some stretches of Hang Dynasty Great Wall, made from straw and mud, which predates the more famous stretches of Great Wall near Beijing by some 400 years.
The south road—for ancient travelers—was dangerous due to snowy peaks (there is less snow today) and bandits; the north road, because it travelled through the territory of the warlike Hun. One emperor decided he needed to make this route safer and negotiated pacts with what is now the Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan. He sent an emissary who had little luck the first time around. On a second try, the Hun imprisoned him for 14 years. By the time he returned to the Imperial capital of Xi’an and reported what he had found out, 28 years had passed. His intelligence proved the turning point to eventual defeat of the Hun. In those days, people had more time. Well, definitely more time that the taxis do nowadays. 
I visited a less famous stretch of the Great Wall, near to Beijing. I do not remember why I chose to go to the Huanghua area. Maybe it was because few other tourists do. The Chinese go there at weekends to enjoy boat trips on the lake. The reason Westerners do not go, I soon found out, was that it was impossible to access the wall there. You can see it, you just can’t get on it. I walked around the lake for two miles, past the small boat dock and watched large grasshoppers with pink legs flit around. The narrow path leads to The Chestnut Farm of Ming Dynasty. The fact that there was one, and I could visit it, and probably most other people do not know of its existence pleased me tremendously and almost made up for the fact that I could not stand on the wall. Almost.
On the walk back I spotted a steep slope through the chestnut trees and decided to scale it. No one was around, and perhaps the signs in Chinese did say “no admittance,” but I certainly could not read them. The hillside was very steep, but I scrambled up by holding rocks and roots, and 10 minutes later I was standing in a Great Wall defensive tower, with the sun behind me, and a lengthy stretch of Great Wall in perfect view on the other side of the lake. The tower itself was a clutter of bricks inside but intact out. A perfect 20 minutes, and no one saw me slide swiftly down through the chestnuts. Back in the Gobi Desert, I did see that it possesses colour, and even the flat, stony sections have magic to them. Two small villages manage to irrigate themselves—although as I drove through the desert, it did miraculously starts raining, albeit lightly—and produce red and green grapes, some of which is used for wine, but most of it for raisins.
The Muslims in Dunhuang prepare delicious kebabs over open grills, consisting of five pieces of lamb, two grilled grapes and a piece of fat, all rubbed in spices, most notably chili. I could have eaten them all night, especially at 1 yuan (14 cents) each.
The sand dunes at Dunhuang are magnificent, and nearly every one of them can be climbed. The entry price is steep, certainly for current Chinese standards, at 180 yuan (approximately $25), and then extra are camel and motorbike rides up the dunes and toboggan rides down. From the top of the dunes can be seen Moon Crescent Lake and a pagoda. An attempt was made to explain to me why this lake does not silt up, but I did not understand it. The only nationalities in attendance here were Japanese, Chinese (who are travelling for the first time in numbers in their own country) and the French. 
The former two groups constantly take photos of one another, flashing the V for Victory sign, while the latter holler and whoop as they run or slide down the hills. The Japanese come to this region to see the phenomenal caves at Mogao, which contain the largest indoor Buddha in the world, rising 108 feet. A second rises 92. Another cave contains a reclining Buddha, and every one of the 735 caves (about 10 can be viewed by visitors, who are not allowed to bring their cameras) has stunning art, painted under the light of oil lamps over the course of 1,000 years.
At the dunes, only the Westerners do not like to wear the bright orange plastic shoe protectors that keep the sand out of footwear. Long lines of visitors wearing these day-glo things slowly trudge up dune sides. My sand was later that day dumped out of my shoes onto a Beijing patch of grass, beside a statue of a Ping Pong bat and ball unceremoniously wedged under a flyover, unless, that is, the statue was already there before the road. 
Near to the Ming Tombs I had lunch at Friendship Store #2. A blank-staring waitress and a generally able translator were hounding to death a pair of Americans when I arrived. They were being offered dishes comprised of only one word. “You will have beef?” “And beans?” The American woman was not thrilled at the idea of “beans,” so said the only word she believed would make all the Chinese go away—“Beef.” And then she nodded. The Chinese rallied. “No beans? You not have beans?” More blank looks. “How big is the beef?” the American asked. Approximations are made. Five minutes later, both beef and beans come out. This, I expected.
Earlier, the first dish to come my way was watermelon, a food I cannot stand. (I hate the stuff. I had a bad one when I was 10 or so and now cannot even stand the smell. It must be the cheapest fruit, too, as always when you get a fruit bowl, melon forms the greatest part, much to my continued disgust.) I declined politely, only to be met with stares, confusion and panic. I saw my waitress several times in the next 30 minutes holding my plate of watermelon, far away to my sides, and on the first opportunity, she surreptitiously placed it on an extreme corner of my table during the only time my attention was focused on looking for something in my backpack. The next day I was outside the Lu Jin restaurant, famous for its Peking duck and catering to a long line of foreigners (reservations are needed; I did not have one and was told I had an hour to eat up and get out.).
An old man was playing music on an instrument he had taken out of a wooden case. It appeared to be a cross between an accordion and a zither. He laughed between each song. A very young girl—probably his granddaughter—accompanied him by terrorising a barely born, white kitten. She chopped it on its head with the side of a flattened hand; she stuck it down a hole in a grinding stone; she tried to stuff it down a smaller hole in the same stone; she made it cling to her t-shirt, from which it duly fell and landed in the middle of the road—all of which are very busy in Beijing, even the less busy ones—and picked it up by any of its extremities that happened to be closest. I honestly thought the cat would not live, and perhaps it no longer is alive. Probably the pollution got it.

(Macau)....Macau, or Macao, depending on your choice of spelling, is a curious place. I was traveling in China, in the small city of Zhaoqing in Guangdong province. I cannot speak any of the Chinese languages, so for most of the time I was ignorant of what I was seeing written around me. One thing I could make sense of, though, was the writing on a coach that every morning was parked beneath my hotel, as the name of the bus company was written in Portuguese. I knew that it could only be going to Macau, and it did, reaching this special administrative region (SAR) in about three hours, or the time it takes for two violent Hong Kong movies to air. Portuguese still is one of the official languages of Macau, but I did not hear anyone speaking it. 
There is some pride here of Portuguese involvement, dating as it does from 1553. Hong Kong also has much Portuguese history; the Brits only took over in the mid-19th century. Macau street addresses and tourist information is in Portuguese, so getting around is not a problem. It consists of three main islands. The first also is called Macau. It is the original settlement and is completely built over.
At its southern tip there are transportation hubs, hotels and restaurants and government offices; in the middle is the colonial area, including the famous façade of its ruined cathedral; while its north is more of a residential area, with a couple of quiet, off-the-beaten-path parks. It was in one of these during a rainstorm that I watched a game of mah-jong that I was none the wiser as how it was played when I left ninety minutes later. 
I also discovered an indoor ice rink and a former residence of Sun Yat Sen, the revolutionary Chinese leader who fled to Taiwan. The second island is Taipa, which is sinking beneath the weight of gaming. I took a bus through there on the way to the most southerly of the three islands, Coloane, and I could see huge fences wrapped around sites earmarked for casino development. Most of Taipa will be destroyed, it looks like; the other parts of this central island have been “reclaimed” from the sea. For example, the international airport here sits on what used to be water 20 years ago.
It depends what one is looking for in Macau as to what will be your favourite of the three islands (mine is Coloane). Macau, like most Chinese settlements, has a wealth of interesting alleys, markets, shrines, nooks and crannies to keep anyone interested for days; Taipa has a small colonial section ending at an old spa bordering a marsh (in danger of disappearing to construction crews) in which I saw herons and ibises, while Coloane is the closest to what one might imagine the entire peninsula to have, perhaps not too long ago, looked like. Coloane village was quiet, peaceful and relaxed. A small market did not create any of the noise usually associated with Chinese shopping; and it was in this village that I discovered the best coffee of that trip, at a bakery called Lord Stow’s (www.lordstow.com). 
It is on Rua da Tassara, and while there one must have several of its egg tarts, which are slightly burnt on their skin and absolutely delicious. Munching away, I watched three men build scaffolding using bamboo (this practice is used on two-storey houses as it is for 200-storey skyscrapers. No safety equipment is used, and death from falling is not unusual). I wandered around to the bottom tip of Coloane. Serenity quickly takes over. Little trails go through woods, and at the bottom is a now-seldom-visited spa and sports complex previously frequented by colonials. A plaque stating that this was the home of the Macao Swimming Association almost has faded away to nothing (see photo).
In an oceanfront bar were two men smoking cigarettes and speaking French. After dropping down past an understated Westin hotel and a small cemetery, woods begin again that soon rise very steeply on a trail of wooden steps to an electrical substation. The path falls away to the A-Ma Monastery, which is the largest and oldest in Macau. A large statue of A-Ma rising above the trees is to be seeked out if you lose direction. The monastery is impressive and colourful, and there I bought its sect’s flag, a triangular yellow affair with a pink border and red and pink stitching. On one side is a god being fanned by two priests; on the other, a dragon trying to paw a sun. There is a little silver bell at the top. The man who sold it to me took 15 minutes to package it for me, so as it stood no chance of getting damaged.