the city to which i went

I don't even know where to start with Istanbul. I spent one week there, which is the longest I've stayed in one place since starting. I took a night bus from Gorëme (11 hours, video entertainment was Blade dubbed into Turkish), arriving around 7:00 am, and desperately needing to bathe. Something about night travel exponentially increases the stinkyness and stickiness factor upon arrival, but apart from me being dirty, my clothes were the worst they've been. The last time any of my threads saw the inside of a washing machine was in Florence, and there's a lot of dirt between Florence and Istanbul. Plus, when I was holding onto the guide's horse in Cappadocia, it decided to use my knee to scratch its face for about five minutes. So dirty and horsey. Before you think I live in complete squalor, I have been rinsing stuff off regularly in sinks, but that only goes so far. My hostel wouldn't check me into a dorm until later in the morning (lame), so I just sat in lobby, using the wireless connection and leaving a stain on one of the couches until I had access to a shower. A clean body with feculent attire isn't ideal, but it's what I had at the time.

eating stuff

Istanbul is one of the biggest cities I've visited in a while. I think it's even bigger than Athens, at least population-wise. The hostel I was at is located in Sultanahmet, historical heart of the city and where most of the main tourists attractions are. Too brain-dead to take in any heavy doses of culture on my first day, I mostly wandered the adjacent neighborhoods, and down to the water; half of Istanbul lies in Asia, separated from the European half by the Bosphorous, and the European half is in turn divided by Golden Horn. What I first thought were plastic bags floating in the water turned out to be jellyfish. Some were the size of ping pong balls, and others topped basketball sized. The docks and bridge were constantly lined with fisherman, who didn't seem to be catching anything over five inches. And a skinny five inches at that. Seemed like a lot of time spent for not a whole lot, but maybe they were just there for the love of fishing. I'm not sure I'd be in a hurry to eat anything out of Golden Horn, even out of the wide Bosphorous. Too many ships passing through, and too close to a major city for non-toxic comfort. Much safer to eat was chicken, and perhaps the most peculiar thing I've eaten to date has been tavuk göğsü - chicken pudding. It didn't taste chickeny at all, just sort of bland and creamy, but slightly fibery. Had I not known what I was eating, no way would I have guessed that it was a bird-based dessert. Against all odds, I ate no Turkish delight in Turkey, probably because it was absolutely everywhere, including in piles at the Spice Bazaar.

I was in the Spice Bazaar for about 45 minutes, and not only could have left with bags of Turkish delight, but also could have netted at least three dates. Needless to say, I turned them all down. I'd rather have choked down a pile of raw spice.

And sort of on a dare, I tried pomegranate juice. Straight out of the fruit, no sugar added. A fellow hosteler, Natalie, didn't care for it at all, expecting something more along the lines of Pom. I thought it was tasty; slightly bitter, kinda thick in that nectar-like manner, and had some chewy seed bits at the bottom for a bonus.

I got my cup of nar suyu at one of the booths near the Blue Mosque. During Ramadan the area around the Blue Mosque is a bit a fairground, with booths lining the Hippodrome, mostly food - gözleme pancakes with savory fillings, pop corn, kebabs, fresh-fried donuts, cotton candy and lollipops made to order. The place is teeming after sunset, Ramadan observants and foreigners alike sitting on the lawns, snacking on food, enjoying the evening air, and watching life go by. On my first night, arriving back at my hostel room just in time to meet and catch Natalie going out for dinner, a handful of us got stuffed potatoes, and joined the lawn picnickers. Afterwards we made our way to the Taksim district, which lies on the other side of Golden Horn, and is full of shops and bars. Natalie has an American friend teaching English here, so we spent the evening into the wee hours with a merry band of international English teachers. There's such a demand for English here that they all work seven days a week, and cut loose in the evenings with beer, karaoke, and cigarettes. By the time we made our way back to Sultanahmet at I don't even know what time in the morning, we all smelled like ashtrays.

seeing stuff

Istanbul's skyline is dominated by the domes and minarets of mosques, the most famous of which is Blue Mosque with its six minarets, and predominantly blue tile interior. A posted sign asked women to cover their heads, but seeing that many others weren't, didn't cover mine. I wasn't carrying anything on me to use, regardless, and none of the many guards stopped me. They were ruthless when it came to shoes, practically tackling a woman who started putting her shoes back on inside. On my first day in Turkey, the first muezzin call I heard came as a bit of a surprise, maybe because I was standing within a block of a mosque when it happened, and almost all of them use loudspeakers. But it didn't take long to get used to them, and I actually quite liked listening to the singsong chant, even if I didn't understand what they were saying.

Directly across from Blue Mosque is Aya Sofya, the Temple of Divine Wisdom. The interior is an odd mishmosh of styles, not all of which harmoniously blend with one another. I think this is a result of periodic destruction and rebuilding over the centuries, combined with a restoration attempt in the mid-nineteenth century. Signs of the wear, tear, and pillaging that's taken place is evident. It's hard for the eye to settle on anything, since something new, different, and close-by is usually demanding attention. Unfortunately, one quarter of the dome was obscured by scaffolding that rose from the floor the entire way to the top. It in itself was an interesting structure, just completely in the wrong place.

Being a fan of water and cavernous spaces, my favorite structure was the Basilica Cistern, also called the Sunken Palace, or Yerebatan Sarayı. Not terribly decorative, unless you count the Corinthian and Doric capitals of the 336 columns used to support the ceiling, it's elegance is in its simplicity. In one corner there are two huge blocks of marble with Medusa heads carved in them. One is upside down, and the other is sideways. Images of Medusa were used as protection in the ancient world, but these may simply have been convenient building material. All of the pictures I took turned out to be crap, but I did catch sight of this practically prehistoric fish. He's the fish mom and dad fish tell their eggs about to scare them. I followed him around for about half and hour, snapping pictures.


The Topkapı Palace I didn't find terribly fascinating, and I arrived too late in the day to take a tour of the (in)famous harem (although I did see the thoroughly tiled Circumcision Room). The Treasury drips with gold and jewels, including one of the world's largest diamonds. I saw it surrounded by a group of middle-aged Asian ladies who were so excited and babbling so fast, I couldn't even tell what language they were speaking. Every time I thought I had it pegged, it started sounding like something else. I thought the best items were archers' rings. Fancy as fancy can be, they were meant to be worn on the thumb, presumably as some protection from the bow or bowstring, but no specifics were supplied.

The Rahmi M. Koç Industrial Museum in the Hasköy neighborhood is worth a visit for the classic car, motorcycle, and bicycle collections alone, but there's so much more. It's spread across two buildings and a parking lot, and also contains horse-drawn carriages, steam engines, boats, trains, airplanes, mock workshops showing how wood is milled and olives are turned into oil, scientific instruments, and Atatürk's cutthroat razor. Arriving sort of late in the day, I shorted myself on time to really take a good look at everything; I was there just under two hours and it wasn't nearly enough.

I also took a boat tour up the Bosphorous, and visited the Asian side a couple of times. The Asian side of Istanbul was remarkable in its lack of people trying to sell me stuff; it's basically just regular neighborhoods away from the tourist center, filled with people just going about their normal days. Walking around was basically like walking around at home. Lots of nice wandering to be done, and probably most tourists never go over there. Most tourists go to the Grand Bazaar, which should be visited just because its the Grand Bazaar, but I think I expected a little more crazy stuff to be on sale than was actually there. Then again, I was moving at a pretty good clip in order get away from the chatty vendors, and no doubt overlooked a bunch of stuff. Either way, I left with as much money in my pockets as I had when I went in, although I did briefly consider some old silver pen boxes with attached inkwells.

There were two street money-making schemes going on that I was tempted to try just because they were kind of weird, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it. The first is a kid with a bathroom scale. I think the deal was that he would guess your weight within x number of kilograms. The other, far more intriguing, involved fortune-telling rabbits. I never saw any of them in action, so can only summarize what another hosteler told me about how they work. There's a bunch of pieces of paper, or other tokens, with something cryptic on them. The rabbit somehow indicates, probably just by hopping as rabbits do, one of the tokens, and the bunny minder interprets the message for you. My reluctance to try it, apart from not wanting to know my future, is that all the bunny minders were bored pre-teens. I don't want a bored pre-teen telling me what the future holds. One was so spaced out he hadn't noticed that one of his rabbits had fallen to the ground (they're usually kept up on little boxy tables). Cute to look at, but I remain unconvinced about the ability of seer bunnies.

Have I mentioned Turkish flags? The Turkish flag flies everywhere. Turkey on a Tuesday is like America on Independence Day. But you know, they do have one of the coolest flags.

the divan of the hostel

When I walked into the Big Apple Hostel the day I arrived, two shadowy figures parked in front of the computers at the back of the lobby turned out to be Mauricio and Paula, two Brazilian journalism students I had met in Selçuk. They had spent some hours convincing us that we should never, ever visit São Paulo, since the city itself has no redeeming qualities, being full of traffic, ugly buildings, and under-aged criminals. Their advice - when walking around São Paulo, keep five dollars in each pocket to hand over to the thief that will inevitably rob you. You keep separate stashes of cash because you'll most likely be robbed at least twice during a day out. And under no circumstances wear any fancy jewelry. Despite the dire report, they both love their hometown. It just doesn't sound like a place that a tourist should go visit without knowing someone there to show them around. They were at the end of three months of travel through China, India, and the Middle East, and were spending their last days abroad in Istanbul. Meeting up with them and Natalie during breakfast on my second day, we spent the entire day lazing around the rooftop terrace at the hostel, taking breaks to go get food when we were hungry. It was the anti-sightseeing day for me, and I really needed one. Our group also absorbed a Finn, Ilmari, who wandered up the roof sometime mid-morning. A history PhD student who works as a gun expert for the Helsinki Police, he wanted to visit Belarus for holiday, but wasn't able to cross the border because no visa application forms were available. This was slightly mystifying to him, since immediately before he was told this, they made a photocopy of his passport. So Belarus can photocopy passports, but not visa applications. Also present was a German of indomitable spirit, Joerg, who had all his stuff stolen in Odessa, and spent an absurd 31 hours in and out of the police station in a successful bid to get it back (including his new ipod), since he somehow (I missed the details on this) figured out who had committed the theft. His ordeal included having to spend a night in custody, for his own safety, but he was compelled to hand over ten euros to his ward in order to purchase alcohol and sausage. The upside is that he was fed and got drunk. Biding his time in Istanbul before heading to Iran, he decided to observe Ramadan, just because, and rather seemed to be enjoying himself. He and I were the only ones at night not drinking huge bottles of Efes Pilsen beer. He was having coffee, and I was indulging in my new favorite drink, Cola Turka.

Both Ilmari and Joerg had at one point ended up in Transniestria, a scary-sounding, unofficial country in the Balkans. Evidently visas for Transniestria are easy to come by, costing only 50¢, but they're also only good for a few hours. Not that you want to stay there for any longer than a few hours. The rest of us had to make sure we heard that correctly. Don't let the cheap visa fool you into thinking that it's a good country to visit, because you'll most likely be bribed for bogus reasons by corrupt officials. Can't pay? You may be tossed off a train in the middle of nowhere, as happened to a fellow on the train with Ilmari. After listening to various exploits of my fellow hostelers, my own travels seem a little dull.

So far the most interesting travelers I've met have been in Turkey. I don't know if it's because it's post-season, and most of the the young ones are back in school, leaving more lifestyle travelers abroad. Or maybe because Turkey is still considered somewhat fringe (it really isn't), and doesn't attract the casual tourist. Or, it does, but they all leave the city in tour buses and go back to their cruise ships at night. In a city chock full of things to do, the most enjoyable time I had was spent chatting with people from all over the globe. One night I shared a dorm room with two Japanese girls. I noticed that Japanese girls, even though they may be living out of a backpack, are always fastidious when it comes to personal grooming. At the Gorëme otogar before the night bus, I walked into the restroom only to find a gaggle of Japanese girls clustered around the one sink, all brushing their teeth and applying facial creams. Since it was getting sort of crowded in there, they walked outside to continue brushing their teeth, rather than be rushed about it. Me? I didn't even bother brushing my teeth, merely resorting to chewing gum the next morning. Yes, I know it's gross.

In the middle of the week I moved to another hostel a block and a half away. Nothing was wrong with Big Apple, I actually really liked their common areas. Two others in Bodrum had recommended the Sultan, so I decided to give it a try. Telling the manager, Volcan, that I wanted his cheapest dorm option, I was told to take any bunk in the 26 bed dorm, dubbed The Harem. Don't worry, there weren't even close to 26 people in there. And the bathrooms pretty much lived up the their promise that they would be Shockingly Clean.

On my final day in town I was thinking of visiting another hamam, but by chance bumped into Mauricio and Erik at a tram station. Erik, from Madrid, is also a journalist. We spent the remainder of the day together, wandering nowhere in particular, and eating a lot. During a stop back at the Sultan for me to book an airport shuttle we picked up Durochel, a Haitian girl who has the longest hands I've ever seen on a human. Slender to begin with, everything about her seemed a little longer than normal, giving her a unique refinement. Having won a scholarship in Haiti a couple of years ago, and given the choice of studying in Canada or Israel, she chose Israel. At the time, she knew no Hebrew, and no English. Fairly fluent in English by the time we met her, she tried to teach us some Creole. I can't say I picked up any of it.

Spending the day with new friends was the best way to finish out my time in Turkey. I had been there almost twenty days, and before I knew it, it was time to move on. I didn't feel ready to go, but I've felt that way in each country I've visited. It's sad to move on, but looking forward to being somewhere new is exciting. I had to catch an airport shuttle at 3:00 am; whoever at Adria Airways scheduled a two-hour flight at 5:30 am deserves the business end of the executioner's sword in the Topkapı Palace Arms Treasury. I spent my final hours asleep on the couch in the Sultan lobby. I was trying to stay away until the shuttle picked me up, but it wasn't happening. Catching me dozing off, Volcan gave me a blanket, told me to go to sleep on the couch, and assured me they'd wake me up when the shuttle arrived. The last thing I heard him say was "Safe journeys" before I blinkered out again. And then it was time to leave.

fairy chimneys full of pigeon poo

You can look at all the pictures you want of Cappadocia, but you really have to go there to truly see how magnificently weird the landscape is.


The geological oddities of Cappadocia occur nowhere else, and driving through it I kind of felt like some character on an old sci-fi flick landing in some distant planet for the first time, and marveling through the atmosphere-proof windows at an alien landscape. And the fairy chimneys are just the beginning. At some point a long time ago, humans with some degree of intelligence decided that they would be good places to live, and civilizations proceeded to create dwellings in the fairy chimneys and cliffs.



I'm not sure if this was before or after other people, with a firm grasp on chisels, hammers, and at least one shovel, excavated extensive, multi-level cities underground. Panic-room style, they were complete with rolling doors to allow the inhabitants to seal off levels from invaders from above. Tunnels twisted and turned every which way, including up and down, and possibly extended kilometers, from one complex to another.


At some point in there, someone figured out that pigeon guano made good fertilizer. Since the cliff caves were good enough for humans, no reason the pigeons couldn't be there as well.


Then Christianity came along, and maybe it was before the pigeon poop revelation, but either way, people needed some place to worship. Caves were home, so they may as well be churches, too.


Especially if someone decorates them with really beautiful frescoes.


Then several hundred years pass before the hospitality industry in the area really takes off, and savvy hotel owners turned many of the original cave dwellings into hotel rooms.

After which a traveler from the west coast of America arrived, took a horse trek, and came within inches of falling off a galloping horse. No pictures, I was holding on for dear life. I think my guide was somewhat impressed that I managed to not take a complete dive. "Bravo." A Turk, he spoke no English, but French, so we could have basic communication, but I guess I missed the explanation of how to stop the galloping horse. The only thing hurt was my pride, which is still hiding under a rock somewhere in central Turkey, refusing to come out.

There's plenty to do in Cappadocia on two feet alone, since most of the little towns in the area are within hiking distance of one another through gorgeous and bizarre scenery. However, if I knew how to rock climb, that would have opened up endless exploring possibilities. The valleys are full of cave and cliff complexes, but some degree of climbing chops is necessary to navigate them safely. Or, some degree of fearlessness combined with stupidity to navigate them dangerously. I didn't have any of the above in the right combination, but I may have mustered enough fearlessness had one of you guys been with me. Breaking ankles with a friend always deadens the pain. I made a cursory attempt at one fairy chimney, but decided pretty quickly that I preferred my spine in one piece, so abandoned the effort.


A local told me that the ground is receding each year, so I don't think the entrances started out quite so high above the ground. Hand and footholds carved into the rock facilitate the climb, but I think you really need gecko toes for some. Also, my arms are pretty worthless when it comes to holding my weight. In elementary school, I dreaded physical fitness tests that involved pull-ups (I can't do any) or the flexed arm hang (I always dropped after about 3.5 seconds). I did go into one complex that required a flashlight, since the interior rooms were completely closed off from the outside and pitch black. The warden showed me around, explaining (in German) that innocuous holes in the ceilings and walls were for air as well as communicating between rooms. Shining a flashlight into an air vent, we saw a little bat tucked up inside. I resisted the urge to reach in and poke its nose; I've been tempting rabies fate enough for weeks, stopping to scratch the ears of hundreds of stray cats and dogs. The cave had several rooms with multiple levels, and proceeding from one room to another required ducking through tunnels at a crouch, and descending through one vertical tunnel. The vertical tunnel was just big enough to allow me and my daybag through, and had footholds cut out of opposing walls. It was as if you had to walk down a pair of ladders, one on the right side and the other on the left.

Cappadocia is a pretty big area, so I decided to cover part of it on horseback. And I really almost did fall off at high speed. Riding a galloping horse is damn difficult, you have no idea unless you've done it. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have told Hassan (my guide) that we could gallop, but I'm all about seizing the opportunity when it presents itself. I'm not sure I had the best horse the stable had to offer (I heard her name as Despina). While I was wrapped around one side of her neck, I did get a few microseconds to wonder if she realized that her rider had been displaced, and if it bothered her at all. Evidently it didn't. She was also skittish of dogs, which I found out within 20 minutes of starting the ride. A bunch of unleashed curs from the surrounding farms had a field day barking their doggy heads off, snapping at heels, and chasing us down the path. Clearly ruffled, Despina stuck with the guide horse for a few moments before taking off down the path. My nonexistent horsewomanship probably didn't help matters. I couldn't keep her at a steady pace. She was either really pokey and falling behind, or on the trot to catch up. Thirty-four kilometers later we were back at the farm a couple hours ahead of schedule, but I was ready to get off. Whole muscle groups I didn't know existed were getting a workout, and my lower back felt like it had been gently pummeled for hours. I was exhausted; a good exhausted, but exhausted nevertheless. It was a totally worthwhile trek, going off the beaten path, crossing freeways, wandering through residential neighborhoods, and seeing neat things. One of the best was The Church of Three Crosses, which I would have never seen had Hassan not pointed it out. Picking our way down a narrow path in a valley, he told me to look up, and through an archway in the rock about 20 feet up I could see big crosses carved into the ceiling of a cave. Three of them are there, each different, and each quite intricate. Access wasn't absolutely vertical, so I was able to scramble up for a closer look and to poke around the separate rooms. I was too tired to dig my camera out and take a picture, but Hassan and I agreed about the church; "Trés jolie."

Still saddlesore the next day, I rode the much more comfortable buses to a couple of the underground cities. Getting to them from Gorëme, the town I stayed in, entails going the modern day city of Nevşehir, the main gateway to Cappadocia. Nevşehir has the bleakest otogar to date. I barely ever saw any passengers there, the entire interior appeared lit by two low-wattage light bulbs, there's no information booth to be found, and indifferent bus agents just stand around ignoring everything. Unless they are trying to sell you something. Pulled off the bus from Pamukkale sometime around 07:00 when first arriving, in order to transfer to another, an agent from the Metro bus company told me he'd make sure I got on the connecting bus, and then proceeded to try and sell me a tour. He seemed rather put out when I turned down the offer. Even the promise of a Jessica Alba look-alike tour guide wouldn't sway me. There's a number of people I wouldn't mind being stuck in a cave with, but Jessica Alba isn't one of them. The agent seemed mystified. Then told me to wait in the lobby. I was only too glad to be relieved of his attentions. Anyway, two of the underground cities can be visited quite quickly, since they are a short dolmuş ride away from one another, Kaymakı and Derinkuyu. Kaymakı is the superior of the two; Derinkuyu has the air of tourist-industry sanitation, cleaned up and tidy. At Kaymakı I had the chance to sneak down some unlit tunnels with the aid of a flashlight; not sure if I was supposed to go there, but no one was around to tell me not to. There wasn't much to see other than dirt, tunnel walls gradually closing in, and an occasional empty room, but then again, there I was in a milennias-old troglodyte cave system. Sometimes it's not What's There that matters, it's just the There that matters. Only the top levels are accessible to tourists, and in some cases the complexes haven't even been completely excavated. They just keep going down and down for levels, and spread outwards. Even livestock was kept underground - on the first level only, so lower tunnels would only have to be made big enough to allow human passage. I tried to take some pictures inside, but it was sort of a futile effort - it was either too dark and I got a blurry shot, or the ultrabright flash took out all the mystery of the place.

Carpet shops are endemic in Turkey, and carpet merchants are constantly trying to get the attention of tourists. Having no interest in purchasing a carpet, I usually ignored them (say hi, keep moving), but in Cappadocia noticed that lots of people were using old woven saddlebags on their motorbikes. Thinking a set would make a nifty souvenir, I made almost every merchant in Gorëme lay out their wares for me. This involved pulling out all the saddlebags they had, laying them on the floor, and then holding them up one by one. If I didn't like one, it would go back in the pile. If I was interested, they kept it out. I didn't find a set I liked well enough to purchase, but did get lots of cups of tea. Walk into a carpet shop, and tea appears. Tourists are usually served apple tea, elma çay, which it so apply it's basically like drinking apple juice. Evidently Turks never drink apple tea themselves. I preferred getting the black tea with sugar cubes. So no saddlebags, but I did make friends with a jocular rug doctor named Fati. He invited me into a shop for tea, and to have some iftar snacks some of the local shopkeeps. It's still Ramadan, and by sunset everyone is ready to eat. Observants do well to make sure they eat something before dawn in order to last until sunset, and to make sure no one sleeps through past sunrise, people walk around town in the middle of the night playing drums, banging gates, and otherwise making noise. I don't think it happens everywhere; I overheard a hosteler saying it's limited to small towns. Gorëme counts as small if nothing else, and through a half-sleep one night I heard the drums. On another night I was awake late enough to hear them start, which was around 02:30. Kind of early, I thought. Hours until sunrise. A Muslim who ran a café I ate at explained that some people get up to eat something, just to go back to sleep again. I know I could do without eating all day, but there's no way I could do the sightseeing I have been without drinking. Informed that Ramadan occurs ten days earlier each successive year, I'm not sure what happens during the hot summer months, especially for those who do manual labor.

During the days I spend in Cappadocia, I spent some hours hiking between the towns scattered around the area. Çavuşin has an entire cliff village, now deserted, looming over the town that's the perfect place to be to see the sun set. Uchisar has a castle, and is otherwise devoted solely to tourists; since it's past high season, the town was utterly deserted the day I visited. Most of the tourists have gone by now, leaving empty streets populated only by the ubiquitous stray cats and dogs, and shopkeeps looking lonely. One of the weirdest museums I've been in to date was in the town of Avanos. Owned by a famous local potter, it has nothing to do with ceramics. It's a hair museum, and displayed in several cave rooms and hallways are snippets of hair from thousands of people, taped to cards with the name of the donor, maybe a photo, phone number, date, and other personal information. Paper, scissors, and tape was provided for anyone wanting to donate. I didn't. There was an air of fetish collecting about it, which may be an unfair assessment, since I didn't actually ask anyone about the motivation behind it. Or maybe just all that hair creeped me out. I used to live in a flat in San Francisco with five other girls, and our shower drain would always get clogged, and I could never deal with clearing it out. I made a deal with a flatmate - she would deal with the drain, I would deal with the occasional cat poo that appeared outside the confines of the litter box. But I could deal with the cat hairballs. They were a lot smaller than the girl hairballs.

Being a foreigner in Turkey can be mentally exhausting. Renowned for their hospitality, many Turks just want to chat with anyone new walking by, and invite you in for at least two cups of tea. There were a few nights where I got back to my room hours after deciding to go there. Tea and conversation. More tea and more conversation. And lots of people want to talk to anyone walking by who looks like they have money to spend, fully intending on separating them from as much lira as possible. Not wanting to be impolite without reason, and because it's not always easy to read intent, I usually stopped to chat for a bit, but after a couple of weeks no longer cared if I committed the cardinal sin of rudeness. I was just too tired of having the same conversations over and over again. And as a lone female I know I attracted way more attention than others from carpet merchants, restaurant touts, and guys on the street wanting to know if I needed any help. No one was dangerous, some were just annoyingly persistent. Checking with some other single women travelers, I confirmed they had similar experiences, and also found that I wasn't quite as pestered when walking around with a guy. If anything, it's the one aspect of Turkey that I found unpleasant; when out and about by myself, I could never quite relax. Some degree of guard always had to be up.

By the way, pointy-toed shoes are in with the Turkish boys. John Fluevog should open a shop here.

hard water

One the morning after my hamam visit, I packed my rucksack, gave the kitten one more squeeze, said goodbye to the gang eating breakfast on the cushions of the ANZ Guesthouse, and took a bus to Pamukkale. The translation of Pamukkale is "Cotton Castle," and seen from far away it is startling in its stark whiteness. It's like blobs of lard or wedding cake frosting piled up. A plateau looming over a small town, it's essentially a frozen waterfall, formed by millennia of mineral-rich water from hot springs falling over the plateau. Along the way, pools have formed in crazy shapes, creating therapeutic baths. Unfortunately, most of these can no longer be accessed; since so many tourists and health-seekers visit, walking on the terraces is no longer allowed. To compensate, man-made pools have been fabricated. There must be ways to direct the water as needed, because on the day I was there, the man-made pools were all full, but the natural ones were sadly dry. It's possible to charge up to the top of the terraces in less than a half-hour, but since I had several hours to kill, I took my time.

In an attempt to preserve the terraces, anyone walking on the path needs to remove their shoes, and the surface is the furthest thing from cottony. Not only is it rock hard, it's covered in ridges, so it can be slow going. The roughness is somewhat alleviated by the warm water running down the terraces, but it was a little too warm for a hot day. Cooler would have been nicer. However, it did have the bonus of exfoliating the bottom of my feet, part of the 7% of my body the masseuse did not get at the hamam. The bottom of my feet are kind of a perpetual mess. Despite decent walking shoes, I've developed blisters over blisters that have broken and...hello? Are you still there? Let's just say that at the end of the day, my feet were all cleaned up.


I spent a lot of time at the first pool, sitting on the edge and dandling my feet in. The bottom is a layer of pale mud, which is presumably rich in the same minerals the water is. Bathers were slathering it all over their bodies. I don't think that doing it just once, or even for a whole afternoon is really going to cure any epidermal maladies, but it's very fine mud (as in, not chunky), and felt nice. I dug up clods with my toes and smeared it on my legs. An older British couple sat down next to me, and we spent some time talking and watching the guard chase a tour group off the terraces, which included blowing a whistle a lot and waving his hands. They were the third older British traveling couple I met in the same number of days, and each has been well-traveled, talking of Zanzibar, Egypt, and other exotic locales. They were driving around in a rented car, and told me driving in Turkey is easy because the streets are empty. Which is true — most of the traffic on the roads between towns are buses and dolmuşes with plenty of wide open road in-between. There aren't a whole lot of car commuters.

After I had my fill of dabbling my toes in the mud and cringing at overweight guys in skimpy bathing suits (why? why?) I finished walking to the top. At the top you can pay to bathe in the mineral hot springs, or...look at the ancient ruins of Hierapolis which are scattered about the plateau. I wasn't interested in wallowing in warm water, but I did try a taste of the mineral water, which was really, really horrible. It may have been drinkable over ice cubes, but after choking down a mouthful I promptly dumped my water bottle into the bushes. Even with my previously mentioned ancient ruin saturation, the old city of Hierapolis was more palatable. I sort of got more out of wandering around than really looking at anything. There's a necropolis which is sort of neat, looking like a giant walked in, kicked everything around, and left.


There's also a Plutonium, a sacred site of the god of the underworld, which I wasn't able to find, despite it being clearly indicated in my guidebook. Or maybe I did find it and didn't realize I was looking at it. I think it's just a cavity in the ground which is fenced off because, and here's the interesting part, poisonous gases are present inside. Eunuch priests were said to have been able to enter with no ill effects, but they are deadly to any other living creature. The two Germans who tried to get in and died clearly still had all their parts (my guidebook doesn't tell me when this happened). I may have looked right past it because I was there late afternoon, and was feeling a little run down. Picking my way down the terraces was harder on my feet than going up, but at least the throng of people had thinned out.

I had left my rucksack at a hotel for the day, and got dinner at their restaurant, both to thank them for the favor, and also because I needed dinner. Kebabs are a staple food here, and saç kebab is a way to prepare it with onions and peppers. I like this way better, because it's saucy. Nummy.


Pamukkale is easily seen in one day, unless you want to stick around until night falls to try a nighttime break-in into the Plutonium with a gas mask. The hotel owner gave me and my rucksack a ride to the town bus station on his scooter, I caught a dolmuş to the bigger town of Denizli a few kilometers away, and with only minutes to spare, hopped on my night bus to Cappadocia.

rub-a-dub

On September 21st I was the the squeakiest clean that I've been since leaving home. Possibly the cleanest I've been since the last time my mom washed me.

One of the scary things about traveling is putting yourself into situations where you have no idea what to do or how to behave. It's also one of the exciting things, and frequently pays off with a unique experience. When I was in Budapest I blew the chance to go to one of the baths because I was too shy, so I wasn't going to let the chance to go to a Turkish hamam go by. Buoyed by the reports of fellow hostelers in Selçuk, I strode up to the door of the hamam during the ladies only block of time on Friday afternoon and was promptly asked, "Fräulein?" Yeah, fräulein. Geez, my boobs are fairly midsized, and I was wearing a baby doll t-shirt. Maybe it was because I had the smallest boobs in current company, by far. Anyway, my gender firmly established, we next established that I did not speak German, that none of the other ladies there spoke any English, and that I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I mean, I sort of knew what was going on from a combination of my guidebook and what others told me about their various hamam visits, but still, actually being in one for the first time and being the odd fräulein out in a room of middle-aged Turkish ladies clad in towels and plastic sandals, clearly in their element, is a little daunting. Fortunately, they were all really friendly, and with a combination of Turkish, pointing, gestures, and smiles, got me through the whole thing. They may have rolled their eyes behind my back, I don't know. If they did, I probably deserved it.

All the Turks were just enjoying the basic services as well as having a social hour, but I was there for the full treatment.

first: lock up valuables. Since I wouldn't have any pockets on me during this, I locked my money into a little drawer and kept the key around my wrist.

second: lose clothing. But, how much? No one there was completely naked, but some were wearing more underwear items than others. I erred on the side of caution, and left on more than less.

Having mastered the art of undressing myself, I managed through step two well enough, but after that I was lost again. Emerging from the dressing room wrapped in a woven towel, I did my best lost puppy impression until I was pointed to the

third: hot room. Being evolved beyond cavewoman, I got through the door okay and was immediately at a loss of what to do again. Directed to one of the numerous taps and low marble basins lining the walls, I was told to "douche." I didn't know how long I was supposed to douche, so I just splashed water around until I was yanked out and directed to the hot block, losing one item of underwear in the process. The hot block is a heated slab of marble in the middle of the room, and you just lounge around on it, lizard-like, baking whichever body part you like. Nothing sizzled when I sat down, but it was pretty piping hot, and I wasn't able to lie on my stomach for too long. I could feel trickling all over my body, and didn't know if it was residual water, or if I was just sweating buckets. I spent a lot of time contemplating the dome of the hamam, sprinkled with small round holes, that usually have domes windows in them.After maybe fifteen minutes, I

fourth: cool down. Standing up off the hot block too quickly, I almost pitched over from lightheadedness. Wrapped back up in my towel, I sat in the room temperature lobby sipping a bottle of water that a masseuse handed me. After another fifteen minutes or so, it was time to

fifth: go back into the hot room. I got wet again, and then one of the masseuses, armed with a scrubby glove, proceeded to removed five weeks of dead skin. I tried to not look at what was coming off of me.

sixth: rinse off again.

seventh: bubble time! No rubber duckies were in attendance. The masseuse shined up my newly exfoliated hide with lots of bubbles, washed my hair, and gave me a soap massage. The bath was conducted on another marble slab in the steam room, but I can't recall if it was heated or not. I do recall the masseuse slapping my ass to get me to turn over. She had complete mastery over one English word; "Turn."

Let's note that at that point that I was still wearing my underwear (knickers for any British readers). Two others girls at the hostel had gone to a hamam in Istanbul, where they were instructed to take it "All off!". Shortly after taking it all off, their towels were snatched away by the masseuse. With a curious look in her eye, Carolyn asked me how much of my body was washed, and I said about 93% was covered. Her? 100%. "She washed everything."

eighth: rinse off again, and thus concludes an assisted bath in a hamam. Oil massages are common, but cost extra. I normally don't care to receive massages from strangers, but since I'm here...

ninth: I thought I had tough legs, but almost had to ask the masseuse to ease up. If I spoke Turkish I might have, but as it was, I just gritted my teeth. Yelping would have been too undignified. And then I'm done. Covered in oil. After all that, it was a damn shame to put on my dirty clothes again, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to sit around until my skin absorbed some of the oil. I ended up just getting dressed. Next time I go to a haman, I will make sure to take a clean change of clothes for afterwards. Not that any of my clothes were clean, but a few items were less dirty than others.

tenth: tip your masseuse. The whole thing, including her tip, cost me 40 YTL. Not cheap, but definitely worth it for the cultural experience, and a treat after living on the cheap for a few weeks. Plus, I really did need to be scrubbed clean.

The weirdest thing at the bath – they kept calling me "Madame." The French pronunciation, not American, stress on the first syllable; "MAH-dahm." The first time they said it I didn't realize they were talking to me. And then later that day I bought postcards, and the vendor called me the same. I think I'm more a broad than a madame.

While the whole process would have been a little smoother had I been able to speak Turkish, or anyone there English, I'm kind of glad there was the wall of the language barrier that forced me to resolve to other measures. It made the whole experience more authentic. Turkey is the first country I've visited where the language barrier started posing a challenge. I know enough French to get around Romance language countries, almost everything in Greece was also labeled in English, but in Turkey I had my first moments of truly not be able to comprehend. There's nothing familiar in the language to help nudge you along, so learning words and phrases comes down to memorization. It took me two days to learn how to say, "I don't understand Turkish," and the only way I was able to do it was constantly looking it up and repeating it to myself. English isn't as common here as in Western Europe. I have a suspicion that lots of people don't travel because they are afraid of the language barrier, but unless you're heading to an undeveloped, foreign frontier, it's an unreasonable fear. It may be stressful at times, but there's always a way to communicate without words. Traveling is also a good way to get a dose of humility about foreign languages in general. Smattering of French aside, I really only speak one language, and every day I meet polyglots who have mastered at least two, frequently several. I have to loll my single-language tongue out in shame, but it only makes me more determined to learn. So when you see me back home, remind me to practice my French.

could be bulls, could be eunuchs

It takes one taxi ride (with another pause for cow roadblock) and three dolmuşes to get from Lake Bafa to Selçuk. There's lots of budget accommodation in this town, and I choose to stay at the Australia New Zealand Guesthouse. After the solitude of Selene's, I'm pretty sure I won't be the only guest in a hostel. Directed to the massive basement dorm, I'm told "take any bed you want, they're all free." Indeed they are. Goldilocks-style, I tried out a couple before settling. The common areas are covered in pillows, carpets, and one bouncy kitten. The hostel owner also has a carpet shop, and one of the brothers who runs it offers to give me a tour of the town. We stop for a Turkish ice cream, which is called dondurma. It's heavy and dense, and the ice cream man scoops it out with a flat metal spoon that has a handle at least two and a half feet long. I get chocolate and vanilla, and he puts the flavors into four layers, then dips the top in chocolate. Munching our cones, Mehmet asks me to not mention it to anyone at the hostel, since he's supposed to be observing Ramadan. Aha, I'm just an excuse to get away from the hostel. But more than having the munchies, he really wants a cigarette.

Selçuk is a small and tidy. In Bodrum, everything felt crammed together and piled up, but here the city feels more open and spread out. There's an ancient aqueduct strung along the marketplace, abandoned storks' nests on top. The storks are all gone now, except for one recovering from a broken wing, who now hangs out in a vacant lot. No one is sure if it'll be able to fly again. It has a little cardboard house next to a nearby café, so I think it leads an okay life. The aqueduct runs toward the Basilica of Saint John, final resting place of Saint John the Evangelist. There are ruins of old Turkish baths, and the fourteenth century Isa Bey Mosque, displaying a number of Arabic tombstones in the courtyard. Mehmet points out a reappropriated stone in a stairway with some Greek letters in it.


In the marketplace we get some chicken doner for dinner (the sun still hasn't set). The cook dumps in two spoonfuls of chili to pep them up. My nose runneth over. Doner in Turkey is served on bread, not pitas. Fresh bread is everywhere here and a basket of bread is served at every meal. Stand on the street and look around, and someone will be toting a bread loaf.

A zippy chicken doner for 1.25 YTL is a good attraction for any town, but Selçuk's main draw is Ephesus. I pretty much reached peak saturation on ancient ruins sometime back in Greece, but made room in my brain for this. I really should have gone in the evening to escape the tour bus groups, but maybe the doner chili fried my brain a bit and I went mid-morning. Small tour groups are okay, but the big ones with full busloads of people wearing identical bright hats stir some blood lust in me. I don't object to having an educated guide, but rather to their manner. So often at these places a tour consists of over 40 people being led around by a guide who has no compunction about stepping into the way of everyone else, and parking it there while giving their extended spiels about ancient toilets and whatnot. I want to seize one of those long dondurma spoons and smack them all around. Ephesus is heaving with people, but my two favorites are a couple of older Indian ladies who are making gentle yet sardonic comments about the tourists and stray cats, and trying to make sense of what is what from their Lonely Planet guidebook (Ephesus is quite extensive). I kept bumping into them as I worked my way through, our last moment shared sitting across the the Temple of Hadrian, admiring the pediments. And waiting for a tour group to get out of the way.

The pièce de resistence is the facade of the Library of Celsus. You'd have to be the village idiot to not want to study here. The Library and the Temple of Hadrian are both on the back of the 20 lira note. Words can't do it justice, you'll just have to look at the pictures. Not mine, they aren't that great, and I didn't take too many of the Library. It came at the end of the three hours I spent there, and I decided to just sit in the shade and spend my time looking at it. Taking pictures of buildings is difficult in general, and taking pictures of ruined buildings is even harder. I've stopped trying so hard to get a good shot, since most of the monuments I'm seeing everywhere have already been photographed with cameras fancier than my digital point-n-shoot. Photo fatigue is also starting to set in. Anyway, more optical trickery is afoot here, the center columns being higher and wider than the ones on the side. Those wily ancients; I'm always fascinated by humanity's ability to solve perplexing problems, whether it's a matter of perspective or a matter of navigation in the middle of the ocean.


Walking the three kilometers back to town I meet an old codger who tries to sell me "Roman" coins that he's dug up from his tomato patch. He's holding an unlit cigarette and hacking up his one remaining lung that's able to draw air. First I humor his sales pitch, and then I tell him to quit smoking. A couple of kilometers later another guy is sitting on the side of the path with a cart full of fruit that he's handing out to passers-by, which is only me at the moment. He has a garden full of figs and melons, and just gives them away. I eat some fruit, listen to Turkish pop music, admire his garden, and decline his marriage proposal. At least, I think it was a marriage proposal. Whatever it was, I said no. Hayir. He doesn't seem terribly disappointed, and gives me a bag of fruit to take back to the guesthouse. When I get there, both the owner and kitten are fast asleep on separate couches. Siesta time. The days are still hot and sunny, but the nights are mercifully starting to be cool. Since I walk everywhere I'm still doing my fair share of sweating and feeling sticky, but at least it's no longer on a 24 hour basis.

I need food to prepare for the Ephesus Museum. Pide is Turkish pizza, elongated instead of round. I get a veggie pide and take it back to the guesthouse to eat in the comfort of the cushions. It's made to order, and is still warm and melty. I commit a complete faux pas asking the owner (now awake) if he wants any (he's Muslim). I didn't actually realize until the next day what I had done, and Harry hadn't seemed offended at all, but I still mentally banged my head on the table. As another hosteler put it, she was pretty sure she offended at least one person every day.

Speaking of food...Turkey has all sorts of sweets drenched in sticky syrup. I bought a tray of these little donuts fresh after being fried up. Straight from boiling oil to a a pot of syrup to my gullet.

And I took this surreptitiously at Ephesus. I've been looking high and low through Turkey to find another carton of this, but so far have had no luck. Must be a special brand:


The Ephesus Museum is quite small, the main draw being the two statues of Artemis. Ephesian Artemis isn't the same as Greek Artemis, and she has many of the same attributes as Cybele. I've only found a very basic explanation of why she is called Artemis; more of the proverbial research is needed. And all those bulges? Not breasts, as originally thought. No, current theory has them as testicles, either of the bulls sacrificed to her, or of her eunuch priests. Maybe she can be the new poster child for having your pet neutered, but obviously the eunuch theory is way more interesting. Either way, they weird me out a bit.


The Temple of Artemis is called the Artemision, and is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Massive. It has a bigger footprint than the Parthenon. Not much is left today except a foundation in need of a weedwacker, a flock of geese, and a couple of re-erected columns. The tall column is shorter than the original height, and the short one is barely there. The overall impression is kind of underwhelming. Given its Seven Wonders street cred, and proximity to the the major tourist draw of Ephesus, I would think that its presentation would warrant more attention. If you missed the rusty sign at the gate, you'd know you were walking through something from the days of yore, but probably never realize you were walking through major ancient history.


I spent my first night in the hostel dorm alone with one other person whose identity I never established. Something was breathing behind a sheet of fabric draped over the bunk bed. The third night has the place at least half full with travelers from all over the place and full of fun stories. Harry offers a nightly barbecue on the rooftop terrace, and most of us spend the evening sitting in the fresh air, eating good food, and talking until the nighttime chill drives us inside. It's a fairly international group, and topics range from cultural perceptions to how to dispose of a body (hypothetically). And travel. If someone is staying at a hostel, chances are likely that they love to travel. It's not everyone who can put up with funky bathroom doors that don't lock properly, deal with alarm clocks going off at all hours, wear the same pair of socks three days in a row, and still retain good humor. We may wish our laundry was clean, but we're not going to let it ruin our day or get in the way of exploring. Give me a band of whiffy happy hostelers over freshly bathed group tour group lemmings any day.

My original plan was to continue up the Aegean coast from Selçuk to Bergama/Pergamon and Assos, but my brain has now reached critical mass on ancient ruins. It won't absorb any more information involving anything with marble columns and pediments, so I decide to no longer chase Greek and Roman antiquities. Instead, I'm going to head east in favor of something even older, and way weirder.

awkward eating

What did you eat for breakfast on the morning of September 19th? I bet what I ate was better.


I was the sole guest at Selene's Pension at Lake Bafa. I was hoping that didn't mean I would be the sole diner at their restaurant, but no such luck. It's starting to be low season. It's also Ramadan, and perhaps not as many Turks are traveling as would be otherwise. And Lake Bafa is a bit off the beaten path.

At the advice of Tariq, the manager of the Bodrum hostel, I phoned ahead for accommodation. I was thinking of finding something when I arrived, but Tariq wasn't sure a telephone would be easy to locate on arrival, which turned out to be a good call (no pun intended). Turkey has these little telecomm centers in addition to pay phones, which have regular home telephones hooked up to a meter. You make your calls, the attendant reads the meter and tells you what to pay. Handy dandy. No phone card needed, no scrounging for change to feed into a machine. I had inquired at the bus station earlier about the schedule, so returned to the same agent to get my ticket. "Bafa Lake or Bafa Town?" Umm... I found another call center and called the pension again. My call was only 50 kuruş, but I was trying to save the few coins I had for the dolmuş bus at the other end. Handing the call center attendant a ten lira note, he told me, "For you, no problem," and I got a free phone call.

Most travel in Turkey is done by bus, whether it's a couple of kilometers, or several hundred. Big buses, mid-sized buses, small buses, mini buses, and some scary buses are everywhere, all the time, and usually seem to outnumber cars. Dozens of different agents are competing for the traveler lira, and anyone approaching the rank of offices at an otogar (bus station) will be asked from all sides where they are going in an attempt to lure them in for a sale. Or big city names are called out. Izmir is a major destination on the Aegean coast, and invariably there was a tout at each bus station going, "Izmir, Izmir, Izmir. Izmir, Izmir, Izmir." The Bodrum bus station has a posted sign advising travelers to not let themselves be bullied into a ticket purchase.


Here's a pic I took of the agent offices at the Marmaris otogar.


And then there's the dolmuş. There's no equivalent in America. Dolmuşes are buses, sometimes just a big passenger van, that run along a route, usually from point A to point B, which is posted somewhere on the front. You can hail it anywhere along the way, and when you want to get off, you let the driver know. You pay your fee when exiting, ask another passenger to pass it up to the front for you, or an attendant will collect it on larger buses. It's a very efficient system for getting around, although a little challenging when you're a foreigner and not familiar with the routes and companies. When in doubt, just hail and ask the driver if he stops where you want to go. But like San Francisco's MUNI, if a dolmuş is full, the driver will just pass you by.

Long distance Turkish buses are always staffed with an attendant in addition to the driver. My guidebook tells me they are called muavin. The muavin will collect fares and inspect tickets, but more importantly hands out water, tea, soda, snacks, and will drizzle scented water on your hands so you can freshen up. All treats on a Turkish bus are free. The muavins are invariably wearing white shirts and ties, both standard neckties and bow ties. Well, at least they do if they are over eight years old. The eight year old was wearing a t-shirt, and was only slightly bigger than his two liter bottle of orange soda. Lots of orange Fanta in Turkey.

For all the beverages they hand out, Turkish buses mysteriously do not have toilets. To compensate, frequent stops are made. I don't know what you do in an emergency. I routinely refused drinks to avoid having to find out.

On the bus from Marmaris, right outside Bodrum, the driver pulled over to a jandarma post (a branch of the police; think gendarme). One boarded the bus, collected everyone's ID, including my passport, and took them outside for inspection. A few minutes later they were all returned and we were on our way. It seemed a routine thing, but I couldn't figure out why it was where it was. Seemed a random place, but maybe it's there because Bodrum is a port town, receiving both international and domestic ferries. The same thing happened on the way out, except my passport was handed back immediately after a cursory glance.

En route to Bafa, I had just accepted a cup of tea when we passed the city limit sign. We pulled over, and I was the only person who got out. Kind of in the middle of nowhere.


The muavin pointed me back in the direction from which we came, so I grabbed my gear and headed over. The pension is located 10 kilometers away along a different road, and the owner told me to catch either a dolmuş, or to call him again for help with a taxi. Evidently there's a taxi driver in town who will take me there for 10 YTL, And sure enough, there's was a guy waiting at the crossroads.

him: "Taxi?"
me: "Dolmuş?" (a dolmuş would be cheaper)
him: "No dolmuş."

Okay. WIth the aid of pen and paper he told me he'd take me to the lake for 10 YTL. He must be the guy, even though his taxi is a completely unmarked Murat 131 from the era of the cassette deck. There's even a cassette poking out of it, and who knows when it was last played. I completely missed a photo opportunity on the way in, when he had to stop for a cow who was wandering down the middle of the street.

My room at the pension was a cheery little bungalow with ridiculous sheets and a shower that didn't like to work in the mornings. The landscape is rugged and rocky, massive boulders piled up to form Mount Latmos. A really good hike would be completely around the lake, but that would be over 60 kilometers and take at least two days. The lake itself is ringed with coves, and in some of them the water has ceased to move, creating rather odoriferous areas where the ground feels like your walking on a sponge. In some other areas, the water is moving, and the ground is like a gigantic litter box, covered in small, dry, lightweight pebbles. I didn't spot any gigantic cats, but flamingos were in the water. Moving in for a closer look into one the stinky areas, both of my feet broke the spongy surface, right into sticky, black mud. Getting out involved splattering mud everywhere, and almost destroying one of my sandals. I cut my walk short just to go back to the pension and clean my feet.

The remains of a ancient town, Heracleia ad Latmos are scattered all around, even on islands in the middle of the lake. The modern town in its midst is Kapikirı. I say modern only because it is significantly younger than Heracleia. Most income seems be be derived from farming and handicrafts that the village women try to foist onto tourists (I resisted the temptation to pay them just to go away). Livestock hangs out on the street – horses, cows, donkeys, chickens. A young boy playing soccer on the street said hello to me, and before I knew it, he was off and leading me on a tour of the town. He brought his younger brother along, and they spent the entire time holding hands, except for when we had to hop over the rock walls. He always made sure his brother got over okay. I was left to fall on my face (but I didn't). He only spoke a few English words, and even though he got that I didn't speak Turkish, still bothered to offer explanations of what was what. He even drew something on the ground for me, but I didn't get what he was trying to say:


Practically at a running clip, we made our way through the back fields where there are the remains of a roman bath, a theater, and the city walls. He also pointed in the direction of the Temple of Athena and Agora on the other side of town. He showed me a stone fashioned into a pestle, and mimed crushing olives with another large rock. He dropped a small rock down a ground well to show me how deep it is. Popping back out onto the main street from the fields, they waved goodbye. I gave them each a lira.

There's also some stone tombs carved into rocks on the shore. The number of them visible at any time varies depending on the water level of the lake, which right now is low.


Selene's Pension is run by two sophisticated brothers, and I had an interesting conversation with the girlfriend of one, and German girl who works with primates. She used to work at an orangutan sanctuary in Indonesia, and had lots of interesting (and sad) stories from there and elsewhere in her studies. One good, and not sad, story involved an orangutan who couldn't figure out how to open up a grapefruit, went up to her, shoved the grapefruit in her lap, and made some grunting noises. She showed him how to break the skin with a stick, and a couple of days later he was self-sufficient in grapefruit consumption. To lead a happy life, everyone should be able to open grapefruit.

Other than dogs barking at me, and consuming elaborate Turkish breakfasts, it's pretty sleepy in Lake Bafa. A nice kind of sleepy, since the scenery is beautiful. But there are huge humming clouds of bugs, mostly non-biting, but that doesn't stop them from landing in any food served at the outside restaurant. I've been consistently mosquito-bitten throughout the Mediterranean, and I think a couple of other insects contributed as well to the assorted bumps. Thankfully they are mostly confined to below the knees and on my arms. I probably could have been more liberal with the bug repellent, but sometimes after I had a nice shower to clean up after a hot day, slathering repellent all over my clean body seemed wrong. I learned too late to just put on the chemicals. Despite the swarms, I almost stayed another day to enjoy wandering around the landscape some more, but part of my mind had already made the decision to leave. Also, being the only guest in a hotel and having the owner hang around to cook dinner just for you is a little awkward, no matter how good the food is. A call to the Murat 131-driving taxi driver, and I'm on my way out.

bodrum doldrums

The immigration officer at the port of Rhodes was not happy, not happy at all about the lack of entry stamps in my passport. Maybe he was having a bad day, but it was only 8:00 in the morning. "Where were you before Greece?" "Italy." "No stamps." That's right, no stamps. I try to explain my border experiences so far, but we're not having the greatest communication. I arrange my eyebrows into the universal Innocent Stupidity configuration. He glares at me, give me an exit stamp, and hands my passport back. He wasn't quite as bad as the US immigration agent I got earlier this year returning from Canada. First he heaved a sigh when I told him I was carrying some herbal flu remedies, and at the time was really about to fall over from a combination of a killer flu, the excessive weight of my rucksack, and the fact that I'd been standing in the customs line for close to an hour. Letting that transgression slide, he proceeded to give me grief about the picture quality in my passport. It really was terrible quality, so dark as to be almost unrecognizable, but I figured since the Passport Agency sent it to me, it was okay. I got a new passport before I left.

Two hours later the immigration agent at the port of Marmaris has no problems with my passport. I'm at the ready and holding a $20 bill for my Turkish visa (Canadians need to pay USD $60. Maybe as penance for not selling Airborne in their country). I give my two Turkish vocabulary words a test run, and seem to pass the pronunciation test. I'm greeted and welcomed in Turkish.

When I was a kid I always wanted foreign money. So much more neato than boring American greenbacks. The euro is a convenient thing when you are skipping through countries, but I'm going to miss all the different currencies that have now been burned, melted down, or otherwise gone the one-way road of old money. Turkey still has its own currency, and there's a moment of that childhood glee when the ATM feeds me a wad of YTL.

Marmaris is a resort town, and on a daily basis is full of at least one hydrofoil full of day-trippers from Rhodes. From what I've read and heard, there isn't anything here that makes me want to stay, so I catch a bus to Bodrum, 3.5 hours northwest on the Aegean coast. From what I've read and heard, there isn't anything that makes me want to stay in Bodrum, either. It's a disco resort town packed with party people and restaurants advertising British fare. There's a medieval castle (more Knights of Saint John), which now houses an underwater museum. Herodotus was born here. The remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus are here (I didn't go. More on ancient ruin fatigue later). No, my main interest in Bodrum is the Bodrum Backpackers hostel, which costs only 15 YTL a night for a dorm bed. My plan until now has been "get to Turkey," and now that I'm here, I need to spend a couple of days somewhere cheap to read through my guidebook and figure out a plan for the next couple of weeks.

Before leaving home I was convinced that I was through with hostels, but found out this isn't true. I'm still able to deal with dorm accommodation that offers minimal privacy, if no privacy at all. Shared bathrooms are fine if you don't look too close and have a pair of cheap plastic sandals. To date, I've found more wireless connections in hostels than the budget hotels I stay at. True, they can be full of the (usually) younger travelers who haven't yet got a grasp on how to behave responsibly in shared accommodation, but these are easily quieted with a pillow gently pressed over the nose and mouth while they are sleeping off their 40 ouncer. But more often than not there are also more mature, budget-minded globetrotters present, and they are usually willing to share their adventures and knowledge, frequently passing on good information not found in guidebooks. Anyone who plans out a vacation simply by doing what a book tells them is missing an awful lot.

Getting sleep at Bodrum Backpackers isn't guaranteed, since most of the rooms are directly above the attached British pub. Pop and rock music are blared alternately with football matches. We're served toasty cheese sandwiches with cucumber slices for breakfast, and as an example of how much of a party town this is, breakfast isn't served until 9:00 am. When I walk down to the pub on my first morning, the only person there is a Brit sporting a stripey mohawk and otherwise resembling an unrefrigerated bratwurst . I'm pretty sure he's the one I heard talking all night after the Pink Floyd died off. "So, where does one get coffee around here?" He gestures to the bar. "But don't ask me to make it."

So, not a lot to report from Bodrum. I took a break from reading to go to the castle. Learned that the seemingly nonsensical shape of amphorae (pointy bottom) allows them to be packed tightly in the hold of a ship, and is also a nifty third handle when pouring your newly imported wine or olive oil.


There was also some graffiti, supposedly left behind by knights with a lot of time on their hands. They must really have had nothing to do, since they had to chisel it into rock.


I was originally planning on spending three nights in Bodrum, but on the morning of my third day realize I've accomplished what I set out to do, and there isn't any reason to stay. Everyone is in my dorm room is leaving, and swept up by their momentum, I pack my bag, head to the bus station, and get a ticket to Lake Bafa.


posted from Gorëme, Cappadocia. I'm sitting on a little stool, across the street from a carpet shop, and drinking tea with a guy who is repairing carpets by hand.