Saturday 23 August 2014

Limpeh is off to Africa in September!

Hello everyone. I am pleased to announce that I'm off to Africa in September - Tunisia in North Africa to be precise. I've never been to Tunisia before and am very excited about visiting; this marks the 46th country I am visiting and I am well on my way to 50! I did want to take a second summer holiday and I wanted to get out of Europe, having already done Austria, Sweden, Greece and Albania so far this year. I did a really long trip in Asia last year and so I ruled Asia out for 2014 - I did look very hard for good deals to North America and only found half-decent deals to Florida (and that's not a part of America I am that keen to visit). I'd love to do the North East or California again, but not Florida.

So yes, it was either Tunisia or Egypt and it was the temperature that eventually swung it in favour of Tunisia for me. The weather in Tunisia now is similar to Singapore (25 to 33 degrees) whereas it can easily exceed 40 degrees in Egypt at the moment and it can even reach 45 in places like Luxor in the interior. That's just too hot. So whilst there are better deals for Egypt, I guess not many people want to go because they are afraid of the super high temperatures in the summer months there. I will do the whole pyramids adventure in Egypt one day - just not in summer.
I find North Africa utterly fascinating.

Tunisia is very French speaking as it is a former French colony - it's like you look at the map of the city and many of the street names are in French rather than Arabic. I am currently learning both standard Arabic and Tunisian Arabic (gosh, they are so different) for this trip. I know I can probably get by with just French (as I did in Morocco - which like Tunisia is very French speaking even if the locals are Arabic speaking as well) but hey, what's the fun in speaking my second language when I can throw myself into learning Arabic again! I have studied Arabic a number of times and I made a valiant effort when I worked in Dubai, but I rarely ever use it in London so I always forget almost everything I have learnt once I return to London. I last studied it for my trip to Oman last year where it proved to be very useful indeed.

I have yet to tell my father I am going to Tunisia - I will never forget the first time I told I was traveling to Africa years ago. Oh the amount of ignorant anti-African racist crap he came up with - like he didn't even know where in Africa I was going, he was just going to spout racist crap about black people and discourage me from going to Africa. I swear, older Chinese people can be frightfully racist. In fact, if my dad doesn't even say anything racist this time and just says, "be careful" or "have a good trip", I am going to be disappointed because I want to tell him that Africans are far more civilized than PRCs who shit in public. I've learnt to laugh at my dad's ignorance and racism - he's never going to change, not at his age and I have learnt to pick my battles in life. Such is my dad for you lah.

As usual, look out for photos and vlogs upon my return, akan datang! I depart on the 3rd September for a week. Below is a photo I took on my last trip to Morocco which was incidentally the finish point for the American reality TV show Expedition Impossible. Oh it's wonderful to actually go to these places rather than just see them on TV!

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