KIM’S VIEW 2023: LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

“After visiting my ‘Axis of Anxiety’ – Syria, Iran, Libya – we’ve reached the Kim’s View summit, Sis, completing our mission is all downhill.”

I struck out three times trying to get “security clearance” for a Syrian visa since June of 2022. Finally, the stars aligned – actually, the local travel agency greased an immigration officer’s palm with $200 so Kim’s little brother could enter Syria – and voilà, we scored a killer Kim’s View at Palmyra in arguably the world’s most difficult country to visit.

What idiot would pay $866 for a tourist visa?

The good news is both of Libya’s competing governments stopped fighting and started issuing tourist visas to Americans again in 2023 (Yanks were on their shit list for a few years).

The bad news is the Libyan government’s visa approval letter, arranged by a tour agency, costs $500 for Americans. And visa applicants at Libya’s embassy in Istanbul must be Turkish residents, which I’m not, so I express mailed my passport to the Libyan embassy in Washington DC.

Total cost for my Libya tourist visa – $866. Ouch. But it was worth every penny, Libya is awesome. And Kim’s View at the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna is a hall-of-famer.

United States Den of Espionage

Iran was the scariest country in my Axis of Anxiety. I’d rather be kidnapped for ransom than “arbitrarily detained” by mullahs that hate my country’s debauchery, freedom of speech, and women in bikinis. But after the cavity-search visa application, visiting Iran was unexpectedly chill.

Unfortunately, the day I flew into Tehran, Iran’s triple-A farm team, Hamas, slaughtered thousands of Israeli civilians and started the latest Muslim–Jew shitshow. As a red-blooded Yank, I caught some shit.

The former US embassy in Tehran is now the “US Den of Espionage Museum,” and it’s, umm, embarrassing, humbling, fascinating, and eye-opening.

Queen of the African Forest

Africa’s funky forest queen, reniala, lured me to Madagascar. Locals believe these giant baobab trees are planted upside down by God. My plan was to score Kim’s View at the iconic Baobab Alley near Morondava.

But my poor travel planning meant taking a nineteen-hour van ride instead of a sold-out, one-hour flight for the seven-hundred-kilometer trip from Tana to Morondava, driving mostly in first and second gear, zigzagging through deep potholes. Oops.

Kim’s View at the exotic Allee des Baobab didn’t disappoint.

Micro Philanthropy

Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest countries, and quite a melting pot. After scoring Kim’s View at Baobab Alley, I suggested to my guide-wingman, Marou, that we skip the tourist trap and get drinks at a local place.

Just a few feet down the dirt road we moseyed up to a hut with young girls frying fish. Our taxi driver joined us for a World Cola while Marou and I celebrated Kim’s View # 164 with Three Horses Beer.

One girl pointed to the fish and then to her mouth. I offered to treat the growing gaggle of girls to a piece of fish, which were piled according to price in local ariary, the equivalent of $0.25, $0.38, and $0.50 for the biggest pieces. About ten girls grabbed a piece of fish while Marou defended my wallet, “Take pieces from this ($0.25) pile.” The total cost of my impromptu quantitative easing was less than $7, but I felt like a million bucks.

Miracle beers on the Jesus Trail

Brother Doug joined me in Israel to hike the “Jesus Trail” from Nazareth to Capernaum. The first day of our 65 kilometer, four-day hike fell on my birthday. After hiking seven hours we arrived at well past beer-thirty in Kanna, where Christians believe Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine.

Kanna is a small Muslim village now, so Vino de Jesus is no longer halal. I searched in vain for booze. The closest liquor store on Google maps was ten kilometers away. Would I need an act of God to get a birthday beer?

Miraculously, I heard Farah, owner of New York Pizza, hawking his munchies to two busloads of Brazilian and Filipino pilgrims.

“Pizza, ice cream, cerveza.”

Hallelujah! Most of Farah’s customers were faithful Muslims, so his alcohol sales were on the down low. Beer was not on the chalkboard menu nor in the refrigerators. Farah scored me a couple Heinekens from his secret stash. My beer mug was a takeaway coffee cup. Good enough.

If not for divine intervention, my 2023 birthday would’ve been buzzless. Yikes!

Partying with Syrian Christians still speaking Jesus’ language

The locals in Maaloula, Syria still speak a dialect of Aramaic – the language of Jesus. Syria’s Festival of the Cross is a fusion of Christmas, 4^th of July, and a tailgate party with automatic rifles. The festival celebrates the discovery of the “actual cross” on which Jesus was crucified.

The image of tracer bullets flying directly over Christian crosses, fireworks exploding all around me, burning tires rolling off cliffs, and booze flowing freely is my favorite memory of Syria.

Dog Day Afternoon in Somaliland

Somaliland was my most boring country of 2023. After we scored Kim’s View at the Laas Geel cave painting site, there was nothing to do in Hargeisa, the dry capital.

A pack of dogs outside my hotel kept walking back and forth across the street. One guy threw rocks at them to shoo them away from his shop, and then another shop owner on the other side of the street chased them back.

Hargeisa’s doggie gangs spend their days in a continuous cycle of sleep and flee, sleep and flee. But the dogs are in pretty good shape, skinny, but not too much mange. They’re getting food from somewhere.

When you’re killing time in a boring place, you notice weird things.

16 New Kim’s Views in 2023

More Kim’s View 2023 highlights include the stone-carved churches in Ethiopia, gorilla trekking in DRC, the warrior-drummers of Burundi, hiking Le Morne in Mauritius, salt flats in Djibouti, a quick trip to Europe to visit Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary, just chillin’ in the Seychelles, and ringing in 2024 at the “Gates of Hell” in Turkmenistan.