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I am back from my 14-day- trip in Turkey.
We did a lot a plan about this trip. And basically we did most of the things as planned. Well, plan is plan. There are always unexpected happenings, luckily we handled them without too much suffering. We flew 10 hours directly from Singapore to Istanbul. It was a pretty smooth flight. Turkish airline was much better than what we thought. New aircraft, personal screen to choose movies and delicious meals. The crews' service was friendly. We arrived at Istanbul early in the morning and immediately transferred to Ankara by the domestic airline. It was so exciting to arrive at this country and my friend started taking pictures on the way from Ankara airport to the bus terminal where we will have to find out the long distance bus and started a bus trip for 5 hours to Cappadocia. What a day!!. It was a mess when we got to the bus terminal, neither of us had Turkish lira. We lost some exchange rate in USD and changed the lira from the store man. It was the worst rate we got in the entire journey. Surprisingly people in the bus terminal don't speaking English at all. It took us a lot of time to communicate and finally we got the tickets and caught up with the departuring bus. I heard that on the long distance bus they serve drinks and snacks. It was Ramadan, and I wondered if there is any thing to take on the bus. Actually we did got a lot of tea and coffee and cake on the way to Cappadocia. It is interesting coz we were the only 2 non-Muslim foreigners on the bus so that nobody was eating or drinking except us. And the grammas sitting in front of us were so curious about us, one of them even peeping me from the gap of chairs.
We reached Cappadocia at around 4PM. There we were in one of the well-known world heritage. Couldn't find Osman via the phone so that we decided to go to the hotel by ourselves as the uncle in the information center told us it was only 10 minutes walk away. Then we realized that it was a tricky calculation. We had to carry our backpacks and climb up to the steep hill. We felt it was more than 10 minutes. The cave hotel is so special we got a twin bed room by using a 5 bedded room. In Cappadocia there are so many cave hotels and pensions. I believe that people in Cappadocia reply a lot of tourism. Since that we were there, we decided to join the rose valley tour before sunset after check-in. Rose valley is named after the beautiful color it presents during the sunset. Must seize the chance to have a look at it. We had a tour guide, Beck, who knows a lot of stories about the escaping Christians and Roman period stories that make the tour and the cave house quite meaningful. It is hard to imagine that people would dig a house in the rock and live there. What had inspired them to do so?! Sunset, rose valley and prayer broadcast from the mosque in the far place actually remined me that we are in TURKEY now.
We met 2 interesting friends from Taiwan , Kevin and Chelsea in Cappadocia when we joint together the green tour to track in the Ihhara Valley. Ihhara valley was a pleasant hiking - even though in some places we needed to climb into the cave with flashlight and crawl over the big rocks. The river running down in the valley is so green and beautiful. And the cliff besides the river looked gorgeous. We even had lunch at the riverside restaurant. The environment is just like in the fairy tale world. Sep and Oct in Turkey is the season of flowers that colors the trip. In the morning and evening it was a bit chill though it turned to be hot in the day time. Strange but even though it was hot, we didn't sweat a lot. It is good for the Turkish as in the Ramadan they can not even drink water before sunset. I wonder how they can make it. The local tour guide did the same exercise as we did without eating or drinking anything.
We stayed in Cappadocia for 4 days and 3 nights. We visited every points of that place and also tried the typical local food, such as pottery lamb. It was great and it seemed that pottery lamb is only available regionally. We tried a cozy restaurant with a fireplace. And after we finished the meals and started the Turkish wine, the electricity was gone. It seemed not possible for the restaurant to restore the electricity right away so that we had no choice but drinking in the dim light of candle. And then one German couple walked in as they found that restaurant has no electricity and we sat around a candle for wine. Unlike us, they thought it was quite romantic.. It is a special experience. Maybe we should learn to enjoy more.
We said goodbye to all the friends in Cappadocia and hopped on the night bus to Pammukale. The situation of road was not good enough. In Turkey they still have a lot of flagstone pavement. It was quite tumbling and difficult to sleep on the bus. The bus trip to Pummukale was the most tricky one. We read on the internet discussion forum that before arriving at Pummakle the bus company may cheat you and ask you to change to some mini bus. And it happened. Actually we have no choices as we arrived at 5AM in the morning. We were taken to a family hotel by the hotel manager. And he kept selling us his hotel, tours and his friends hotel and restaurant. We insisted to go to the one in our shortlist eventually though we finally found out the another called Mustafa in our shortlist had the best service and location. It wasted us a whole morning to deal with the hotel owner. We went for Pammukale in the afternoon. It was as beautiful as we saw in the pictures. Yet it was not exactly as we imagined. The place is consisted of limestone that make it looks like snow covering all over the mountain. And the spring water was flowing down over the limestone and creates beautiful ponds. Those ponds are shallow so that we can walk on naked feet and climb up to the top. It was not slippery at all - another surprise.
We climbed up to the top and there were a lot of roman period heritage and theater relic. It was extremely dry and hot that we escaped to the park and lay on the wooden bench next to the cliff. When I lay on the bench and watched the snow white limestone cliff, I fell asleep. It was cool to sleep down under the trees.
Coming back to the town, we decided to had dinner in Mustafa as Kevin could not find his Korean Shin Ramen. To compensate, the owner gave him 2 packs Taiwanese snack instant noodles. They were given by some Taiwanese tourist. Apparently Turkish doesn't like the flavor so that he kept them without touching. The owner of Mustafa kept his promise to give us a bottle of Pammukel white wine and water pipe. The wine was cold and sweet. I should have brought a bottle back. We tried to take the pictures of smoking water pipes and found that we could n't take any elegant looking ones. We ended up with a lot of funny photos. A lot of fun.
We left Pammukale the next day after breakfast and said goodbye to Kevin and Chelsea. They headed to Selcuk. And we went south to the resort city by Agean sea, Bodrum. The bus trip is not so long and it was comfortable. When we found sea on the way we realized that we might have been reaching the destination. It looks like being in Greece. A lot of white houses by the sea side. People here look very different from those in Cappadocia. They looks more like Europeans. We checked our hotel list and started to search the one operated by a Japanese lady. It took us for more than 30 minutes carrying the backpacks and wondering on the streets to search for the pension. And finally we were told that that pension was closed already. We settled down in our second choice, Bodrum Backpacker. The staff is friendly and he seemed to be very interested in Asian travelers. He told us that he also traveled like a backpacker in south east Asia last year.
Bodrum has a beautiful harbor and a lot of nice cafes and restaurants by the sea. There are many European tourists and again we were the ONLY 2 Asian tourists. People are quite friendly here. We stopped by a Kebab restaurant for lunch and I tried my first Turkish coffee. Honestly speaking it was tasteless. I guess one cup is enough as a travel experience. We found that on the way to the beach, there are a lot of stores selling fashionable things and souvenirs. For the first time we fel like coming back to the civilization~ We had supper and local beer in one of the modern cafe. It was a good way to spend the night in Bodrum. This place is not like Turkey at all. Very hard to feel any thing about Muslim expect that they are really Muslims.
We got up early and decided to take a walk at the beach. The morning of Bodrum was wonderful too. It was quiet and we could hear the sound of waves peacefully. The castle looked fantastic in the morning sunshine. After taking breakfast, we hurried to the bus terminal and move to Selcuk. Think it back, I think we should have spent one more day and discover that city. Everything was too rush.
Selcuk was a very small town. And when we arrived at the bus terminal I felt it like a place of only 100 population. Well of course it has more than that number when we walked up to the center of town. And .. we came across with Kevin and Chelsea again in a restaurant. I ordered pide - the Turkish pizza as after staying in this country for so many days,we still didn't have a chance to try it. It was very delicious. Then we started to walk around the town. It was a small place so that me and Emily decided to see the relic nearby after visiting the museum. We came back to join in Kevins' later for tea time at a local dessert shop. The shop owner let us tried the local sweets and we order rice pudding in normal and chocolate flavors and apple pie. Quite nice. Interesting, the owner started to say that he wants to marry a Korea or Japanese girl. It sounds funny. How could someone marry a girl by her nationality. Kevin and Chelsea left for Istanbul by night bus. Since that we still had time for dinner, we went to the restaurant with roasted chicken which is assigned by Kevin who has longed for meat for days. And this was our way to celebrate mid-autumn festival :-) We tried Laki - the Turkish alcohol. It has spicy. And after drinking I started to have running stomach that made me quit eating just like Turkish people in Ramadan for a whole day. The next morning, we visited the relic of Ephesus. It was a huge world heritage. We spent 2 hours there and got back to the pension to check out.
When we got to Izmir, it was totally a mess. As we didn't have any plan in Izmir. Now we don't know where to go. We try to find a hotel to stay and found that people there always gave us a wrong direction. After struggling for nearly one hour figuring out the way to the information center, we gave up. It was so tiring to carry the 7 KG backpack and keep walking for one hour. And we walked to Turkish Airline office. We decided to take a chance to change our domestic flight one day earlier to Istanbul. We found that Havas, the airport connecting bus of Turkish airline was just right in front of the office. Very helpful! So once the tickets are done, we looked for food. We tried the Turkish sandwich. It tasted good. The toast was crunchy and the kebab was juicy. Maybe we were too tired and hungry that any food was great ... haha
We reached Istanbul one day earlier and that was a surprise to Chelsea and Kevin. And we were really glad that we did negotiated with the hotel side when we were in Cappadocia so that we got airport pick-up service that saved us from the tiredness in Izmir. The hotel is compact and nice. Facilities were new and the location was just good. And we had buffet breakfast on the rooftop where we can see the sea and blue mosque very clearly. And free internet --- key point, especially after leaving our work behind for more than a week. After Selcuk, all of us want to see something modern and Istanbul is our target shopping paradise. So our first visit is the most popular area, Taksim. People really buy a lot when they have a clear target. We even came across with a demonstration on the street. A lot of armed policemen and journalists. Though comparing to those in Taiwan, it was a minor one. We had coffee at the rive side cafe in front of the palace. In Turkey, sitting by the river or sea for coffee is really something pleasant.
We also went to watch the distinguished worship dance -- Whirling Dervishes at the train station mall - Sirkeci. There are regular performance on every Tuesday - Wednesday - Friday - Saturday and Sunday starting at 19:30. This place has a very good atmosphere with dance & music.
Before Chelsea left for Taiwan, we went for Turkish bath in the famous one Cemberlitas Hamami , one with more than 420 year history and is famous for the 12-person-space big marble stone bed. Unfortunately a big group of European high school students came in after us, that made the bathing experience pretty bad. Their service was quite rude and the massage was nothing but 10 second rub on the shoulder. Me and Emily went the other local one called' Sultanahmet Turkish Hammai'' before we flew back to Singapore. Sultanahmet Turkish Hammai is closer to tourist center is smaller but offers super great service. They give 20 minutes soap massage that the previous one didn't. They offer a personal bath room and dressing room and after bath they serve you coffee and apple tea. That was a nice experience that made up my previous one.
The next day, go on shopping. We went to the Grand Bazzar and Spice market. We also walking down to the streets of wholsale market. I have to say my partners really had a good sense of direction. I didn't know how to come back if they weren't there. Grand Bazzar is too famous and the price turns to be unthinkably high. We didn't buy anything there. We did some in the spice market and also the wholesale stores. EVentully I brought back a lot of evil eyes and apple tea set and an iron coffe maker.... just like a typical tourist.
I had one bad impression on the men in Istanbul. Somehow we became the target of Turkish men in Istanbul since that we are Asians. And sometimes the only 2 Asians on the street. Every 2 minutes, there was someone who asked us if we were Korean or Japanese? I wonder what happened to Korean or Japanese girls that makes the Turkish men so in for it. It is quite confusing anyway.
To escape from the old town and troublesome Turkish guys, we started to explore somewhere out of town. We took the ferry to the remote side near the black sea and enjoyed a nice fish meal. Actually we also went to the Asia side, Bagdat street. This is a very cozy place with wide pedestrian walking paths and boutique shops, malls and nice spacious cafes. And we found a lot of starbucks there. Somehow this is like a place for foreign residents and wealthy local people. And finally no one asked us if we were Japanese again -- one day break.
Istanbul is a historical city. Put asides those boring men , there are so many things to see. The Ayasofya Museum and blue mosque were breath-taking. It is admiring that they change the Ayasofya as a museum and start to recover the hidden wall paintings of the church. Reading the history is fun. And when we visited the Topkapi Palace. I was amazed by the gorgeous golden stuffs and the 86 karat diamond. The dynasty was once quite wealthy definitely. We spent 7 days in Istanbul. And there are still a lot to see. Even now I am back to Singapore, those turkey things are still so clear in me. I hope I will have a chance to drop by this country again. And take the Turkish bath again ~~
I open some of the photos on Flickr
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