Bony Pear

Pumukkale is an ancient hot spring in turkey. It is beautiful with its blinding white travertine’s and is turquoise water and stunning views. But the beauty only last so long. Your tour bus allotted 3 hours seems like an age away while you are sitting in knee high lukewarm mineral water getting prunie. I did see the odd band-aid too. It was kind of like a super beautiful public wadding pool or if you have been there, the lagoon in Airlie Beach. You know then one. Slightly warm and full of backpacker syphilis.

Anyway, luckily for Sam and I, our boredom abated when we started to spot a strange trend. Everywhere you looked there were people, tourist, posing for photos. This may not seem strange as this was a tourist spot full of tourist in varyingly different shades of tan, in there swimwear taking photos of each other.  Like tourist do.  But these tourists were posing like they were in the next issue of Picture or some other amateur nudie zine. Some giant, middle-aged, overweight, what I can only guess as Italian, tanned men were stretched out on the white clay deposit with only black DTs to hide their shame from the camera. Lets say ‘fuller figured’ girls in string bikinis leaning forward with the right angle to get the best shot of their bronzed boobies for the lens and facebook.

We took plenty of photos for you to get the picture.

habitsandhovels:

New London food zine ‘erbs is out soon.  Centrefolds, photos, recipes, and the Mexican motherfucker!

Follow them on twitter @erbszine.

Nothing looks new for long in the desert.

Skyscrapers, cleaned yesterday, emanate dereliction. Roads are lost to sand drifts. Even kittens look old. We didn’t notice the cars at first. They are everywhere that you can find a car park. Shopping centres, construction sites, the side of the road, residential complexes and restaurants. They aren’t shit-boxes, or even middle of the range family cars. They are Range Rovers, BMW’s, Mercedes and Jaguars. Eight and twelve cylinder luxury cars, top end vehicles. These are special. And they have been forgotten.

The abandoned cars of Abu Dhabi.

They were dreams once, made real in the fast money world of Arabia. This is a place where, for the right price, anything can be made possible. The people who come here don’t come out of a desire to travel, an interest in the culture of the Arabian Peninsular, or its people. They come for money. And they don’t plan on staying. Out of the eight million people in the UAE, less than twenty percent are citizens. The rest is a transient population of expatriate workers. Money can get you anything here, but that’s not to say there aren’t any rules. This isn’t a place to break rules. Fifty years ago there was no oil, and the sheikdoms were separate. The discovery of oil changed the lives of the Emiratis dramatically. The new generation remembers nothing of the camels and tents of their forefathers, nor want to. This is a generation that grew up being given what they wanted when they wanted it. They know they rule here, and their superiority is without doubt.

When things go wrong in the Emirates they go really wrong. We met an American who was jailed for using coarse language over the phone. Phone conversations are taped here. Alcohol is illegal outside of heavily regulated areas. So is immodesty. The police will seize your passport if you are suspected of breaking their rules.

And the oil is running out. The boom is over. Expats, excited at the money being thrown around five to ten years ago, bought up big. Houses and apartments they would never have been able to afford otherwise. And cars. Now they can’t rent out their properties, or make their repayments. Wages have stopped going up. Jobs are scarce. You can be jailed for debt in the Emirates.

Sometimes it’s easier to just run.

Expats here don’t plan on coming back. They were here to take what they could. So they pack up their families, and whatever they can carry, get in a cab and leave. Their once shiny dreams rot away in the sand and the sun.