In The Midst of the Middle East

The Boyle Family at the Pyramids in Egypt and
Overlooking Jerusalem's Old City from Mt. Olive

We have safely sailed past the Somalia pirates and through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. The past couple of weeks have found us exploring the sands and scents of Oman, scaling the incredible heights of ancient Egyptian temples, burrowing hunchback through one meter tall tunnels and tombs buried hundreds of feet below the Giza pyramids, and following the footsteps of Christ through the Jerusalem streets to the Holy Sepulcher church. Just the normal stuff we’ve been doing for the past three months. Okay, not exactly normal! It is hard to call anything about the Middle East “normal”, even things that seem to occur every day. To fully understand the Middle East would likely take many life times (perhaps that is why the ancient Egyptians believed in resurrection!), and our brief exposure has shown us just how little we know and how much we have to appreciate at home.

One of the surprising things for us in the Middle East is how close all of the cities are that we see so often in the news. We think of vast countries and territories when in fact they are only a few hundred kilometers apart. In about the same distance from it takes to go from Calgary to Edmonton, it is possible to draw a path that would touch parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Jordan! Not that anyone would want to leave Calgary for Edmonton during the Stanley Cup playoffs unless you would like to golf with the Oiler players in Edmonton, but hopefully you get the picture!

Royal Princess Gets New Captain!

The Royal Princess welcomed a new captain on board this week - Adam! Adam safely sailed us past the Somalia pirates!!

Quiz Question and “How Far Are We Going” Contest Update

We have another tricky quiz question for you today and a brief update on our travel distance contest. Our quiz question today is this: What is the most commonly used language in the world? A few hints: (1) The answer is easier than you might think. (2) The answer does not depend on the number of dialects you include under each language. (3) Think outside of the box a little bit. You can find the answer to this question camouflaged later in this article and we will warn you before you get to it.

As an update to our “How Far Are We Going” contest, with just two weeks to go we have a runaway leader – Ralph “Pop Pops” Hughes. Ralph predicted that with all the taxi and bus rides included we would easily travel well over 70,000 km on our 112-day adventure. Well, with two weeks and about 1/3 of the circumference of the world to go, we are over 60,000 km just in plane travel and on board the Royal Princess! The contest did not include all the taxi and bus tour travels on top of this, but what a fabulous trip it has been. Our best guess is that we will end up a touch shy of 75,000 km before accounting for tours. Adding in all of the taxi and bus tours over the past four months would probably put us a bit over 80,000 km! Comfortably in second place in this contest are Pleun and Marjolyn Van der Wel with a guess of 58,524 km. Well done contestants, and we will provide a final (unaudited) accounting around May 10 when we are back in Calgary.

WARNING: TRIVIA ANSWER IS IN THIS NEXT SECTION!

To get the answer to our trivia question, read the last letter of each letter grouping:



CALGAB
ITALIANO
ABCDCD
YYZYZY
HIJKLKL
ABCDBA
CHINHIN
GERMAG
RUSSIRU
ABCCBA
GERMAG
TIMTIME

Fortunately Few Friends Found Falling for Funny Family’s Foolish Falling Fable

Say, what? Well, what we are trying to say is “We got a few of you on our April Fools article on the family bungee jump, but most of you figured it out!” We left a few clues for the detectives out there, but a few of you must believe in us just a bit too much (although we do really appreciate the trust!!). Some of the comments we received included “Great job on the bungee jump! I’ll need to add it to my bucket list.” and “The bungee jump sounds great!” Most of you seemed to be sold, admitting that we “gotcha” until the end with the “foolish” comment and constant date fixation (the picture date and doing the math from the article date to figure out the date we “jumped”). However, a couple sharpies either knew there was no bungee jump at the Petronas Towers or got suspicious with Maggie actually jumping (not in a million years?) or the feasibility of a family of four jumping together and no action pictures. Well done all!

By the way, did you like our title tongue twister? Can you come up with another headline using a different letter?

Easter and the Bell Lap by Brad Boyle

We are far from home in Dubai as we celebrate Easter 2009 on our adventure of a lifetime. This Easter weekend find us exactly 75% through our trip on the basis of time (84 days or 12 weeks done, 28 days or 4 weeks to go) and having traveled over 50,000 km so far, we are going to surpass our original distance traveled guess by a significant amount. Later this week (April 15-16) we will be traveling through the notorious Somalia pirate zone in the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. We will have support from NATO military ships so the risks of any incident should be very low.

It is hard to describe in words all the people we are meeting and the sites we are seeing. Some of the pictures we have posted provide some context, but the memories that we are creating can only be understood with the actual experience. We had described this trip as a “capital investment” rather than a regular expense item like annual holidays and it truly has been a major investment that will produce substantial returns for many years to come.

We look forward to the last leg of our adventure as well as our return home where we can share all of our experiences with our family and friends that have supported us through the years and have helped us with our trip.

The Taj Mahal by Adam Boyle

My experience at the Taj Mahal was PHENOMENAL! It just took my breath away. My mouth literally dropped when I only saw half of it. The size of it really surprised me because once you see it; you take into account, the labour and craftsmanship used in making it. The inside of the Taj Mahal contains just a bunch of circular rooms, with the center room being a burial place. These rooms are filled with gems carved into the white marble walls. The craftsmen used jade, onyx, and fire stone which is the most spectacular gem used. Fire stone is light red in colour and when you shine a light on the stone it looks it looks like it is on fire. When the moonlight shines in, the room is supposed to be so exquisite.



The Taj Mahal is in Agra, India (about 1,200 km from Mombai) and is one of the most symmetrical buildings ever built. The building is so symmetrical that when the coffin of the dead emperor was placed to the left of the Empress’, the whole entire symmetry of the building was thrown off. The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to commemorate his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child. In 1631, the construction of the Taj began and 20,000 artisans were recruited to build the project, which was finished in 1648. Around 8 years before the emperor died, he was imprisoned by one of his sons. He died in jail, called the Red Fort, as an old man in 1666.

Boyles' Big Bungee Bounces Back by The Boyles

Petronas Towers (04/01/09)

(Saturday, April 4, 2009) As we embarked upon our adventure around the world, we realized that we would encounter challenges and opportunities that we never expected. Some of these would be “bucket list” events that you only need or get a chance to do once in your life. This past Wednesday was one of those opportunities – we had a chance to bungee jump about 1,000 feet off of the Petronas towers, the tallest twin tower buildings in the world. Should we do this? Could we do this? While it took a little bit of coaxing (ok, a lot of coaxing for Maggie!), we decided to go for it!

For those of you that are not familiar with the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, they are the tallest twin towers in the world with a total height of over 450 meters. About 2/3 of the way up about 1,000 feet above the ground, the towers are joined by a walkway and observation platform that also offers a bungee jump. We had a choice of jumping individually, in pairs, or as a family of four. We decided to go as a family of four so that we could enjoy the same experience (and also to avoid any feelings of guilt if anything unexpected happened!). Finally, with a little bit of trepidation (ok, a lot of trepidation!), we took the plunge.

WHAT A BLAST! Sure, it was a bit terrifying as the earth rushes toward you and you have no control. But then you begin to slow down as the giant rubber band grips your feet and slings you back up to the sky like trampoline. Now we know why you are not allowed to do this jump if you are pregnant or have a heart condition! We would also offer a couple pieces of advice to anyone who would like to do this jump. Rule 1: We suggest that you do not eat a large meal just before you take the plunge. Rule 2: We do not advise that you to stand beneath the area where the bungee jumps are taking place as you never know what or when some unexpected things (see, for example, Rule 1) might fall from above!

I’m sure many of you have wondered if we were "foolish", or just brave/stupid to do this jump. Unfortunately we do not have any pictures of our jump. We do however have a picture of the Petronas towers attached to this article and if you look closely at the date above the picture you may discover why. Did we get you?

Southeast Asia by Brad Boyle

When we first looked at the itinerary for our world cruise, one area we knew very little about was Southeast Asia. Countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia were names that we recognized but would not be able to label on a map of the world. The little that we did know was usually associated with conflicts – the Korean War and the DMZ (the “demilitarized zone”), the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields in Cambodia. As these events were not pleasant thoughts, we try to avoid them. While these countries cannot change their past, what we observed first hand was that the people of these countries are working very hard to establish a much more stable and progressive future.

The most surprising aspect of our visit to Southeast Asia for me was how similar the major cities are to major cities in North America. This was more than the proliferation of Starbucks, McDonalds and KFC. It was things like a brand new opera house in Saigon, modern subway systems, the Internet cafes, and the teenagers with cell phones and iPods. While each of the countries still had a large gap between the “haves” and “have-nots”, the proportion of the population that had achieved economic prosperity was much greater than I had expected. Thailand and Malaysia in particular had much larger segments of middle and upper classes than I expected. South Korea has clearly come a long way to overcome its history of conflict, and while it still has some political issues, South Korea has become a leading nation in this region. Cambodia, however, is still suffering from its recent tragedy with the Khmer Rouge which has almost eliminated a generation of it people.

It was my impression that the increased prosperity evident in these counties is providing a more visible objective for the youths in the cities and leads to them raising their goals. As many predict, this could lead to increased economic growth and more prominent roles for these nations in the near future. In many ways, these countries seem to be following the path established by China over the past 20-30 years although at different speeds. What impact all of these changes might have on the world economic and political maps will likely provide great fodder for university debating teams and economic theorists for many years.

We have posted some pictures on our blog from some of these countries and if you would like more information on our impressions of any of the places we visited, just let us know.