All posts tagged: Travelling

That souvenir we collect as we travel

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A person who travels will always end up having a souvenir or more in hand. Whether it is a boarding pass, receipts, an article cut off from newspapers with language we do not understand, that cheap cowboy hat from one ‘Ahmad’ (or was his name Ali?), brochures, rocks, leaves, that ashtray you stole from a hotel room in South Korea, not forgetting that shower kits, key-chains, fridge magnets, or a piece of paper with a phone number and Skype username scribbled on it, and the list goes on.

I google-d Astana

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THE Bayterek Observation Tower came to mind as we landed at the Astana International Airport, located 16.7km southeast of the Kazakhstan capital city of Astana. Travelling to Kazakhstan, and particularly the capital for the first time, I could only picture the observation tower and skyscrapers after doing my Google image research on Astana. My presence here (in July 2013) was at the invitation of the Kazakhstan Embassy. I was with five other Malaysian media members to witness the celebration of Astana’s 15th anniversary. As we drove along the road towards the city centre, the capital slowly unfolded itself from a vast flat field to an urban ground with unique architecture buildings and skyscrapers. The first thing that stood out from a distance was a tall structure crowned by a golden, glittering globe — the Bayterek Observation Tower, a landmark of the Kazakh capital.

Crossing Israel

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The border immigration, I have to say is the worst. I guess it happens everywhere in the world when you have thousands of people crossing border to another county by road and system gets disorganised as a result of ground staff, who get tips from fellow border crossers, not following rules. I would not know about other places but I had to say border crossing from Jordan to Israel was terrible. You would not understand unless you had crossed over to Israel (or to other countries) by road.