Cambodia, Bangkok ... and home!

Our flight to Phnom Penh via Bangkok was nasty and hungover, but we were excited to arrive. We immediately noticed how much less developed Cambodia was than Thailand. On the way in from the airport, Alex and I especially were amazed how few cars were on the streets, and by the swarms of scooters and motorbikes. We got into town easily enough, but then had an absolute nightmare trying to find our hotel. It turns out hungover Tom had written down the address incorrectly – it was number 19, 252 Street, rather than number 252, 19 Street – but when we made it, we were pleased to have a nice meal by the pool and an early night.

We set off in better form the next day for a couple of quite harrowing stops – to visit Tuol Sleng or 'S21', which was the Khmer Rouge's Torture Centre, and then on to the Killing Fields themselves, where the victims of S21 who were still alive were dispatched. We walked around both places with churning stomachs; it was frightful how brutal yet methodical the Khmer Rouge had been. Everybody was photographed when they arrived at S21, and then when they left (dead or alive), and there were rooms and rooms of photos, of the 20,000+ who were unfortunate enough to pass through its doors.

We didn't like the Killing Fields memorial at all. The rainy weather had washed away the topsoil to expose shreds of clothing, and bones and teeth still in the dirt along and around the paths. We wished someone would build a platform to give a little dignity to the thousands of people still buried in mass graves on the site.

We ate lunch at a really good place called 'Friends' which is run by a charity giving training and employment to street children, and then tried to visit the Royal Palace. But the dress requirements got the better of us – Guy and Alex were both wearing shorts above the knee, and as they didn't lend or rent longer trousers (and because in these circumstances we refused to buy – don't they know how hot it is?), we decided to head back to the hotel pool, to make the most of the sun. That night, we headed out for dinner by the riverside.

The next morning we headed down to Kep, which is a village on the coast about twenty miles from Vietnam. It worked out cheaper for us to book a taxi rather than buy three bus tickets, but foolishly we'd expected something a little more comfortable. The windscreen was a spider-web of cracks, one small chip away from shattering into Guy's lap as he sat in the front seat. The driver didn't instil much confidence as he raced past the tuk-tuks and bicycles, weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic, and dodging the craterous potholes. But we made it in one piece, and after checking into the hotel, ate some delicious but messy salt and pepper crab in a restaurant in the crab market (for which Kep is also famous).

Turns out Guy might be allergic to crab, so he was less enthusiastic than I was. After that we headed into the ghost town that was Kep. It was a very strange place to visit. Obviously low season meant there were fewer tourists around, but we felt like the only people in town. Kep used to be a big-time seaside resort before the Khmer Rouge took over, and all along the waterfront were the shells of these amazingly large old modernist villas, now deserted and covered in vines. It was like walking through the set of one of those apocalypse movies – all crumbling buildings and emptiness – we even struggled to find a tuk-tuk home – about the only time we'd ever have that problem in Cambodia.

Thankfully that evening, we found a bar with some people in it, and then tuk-tuked to another place where we ate really well. As we jumped in the tuk-tuk to go home for the night, our driver sheepishly asked us if we'd mind stopping for a drink at his friends' house. So out of curiosity, we did, and spent an hour or so in the company of some hilariously boozed and half-naked Cambodians.

After the Kep debacle, we were keen to make sure that our next destination had at least some tourists there to keep us company. On a recommendation, we had been very keen to check out a beach off the Sihanoukville Coast, called Lazy Beach – but it was a two-hour boat ride from anywhere else and we were worried we'd be the only ones there. Nevertheless, the lady at the booking office assured us we'd have company, so we jumped (swam) onboard a rickety old boat for a very slow, and quite rough crossing.

But when we did eventually arrive, Lazy Beach was a spectacular, deserted white sand beach on a beautiful lushly jungled island.



We stayed there for a couple of nights, ate like kings, and were very lucky with the weather – the rain clouds rolled in again as we were chugging back to Sihanoukville. One slight hitch was the enormous lizards that scampered along the ceilings of the thatched huts, to Alex's dismay. Another nuisance was the long swim to the mainland beach in the now very choppy sea. The rain was teeming down by now, and we had a long bustrip to Phnom Penh still in front of us. At another beach along the way we'd picked up a local mother with her family of very young children, and Guy and I kept offering to help them all to shore, but the mother was adamant she had a plan. We didn't have time to find out what that plan was as it looked like we might miss our bus.

But we did eventually make it back to Phnom Penh, from where Guy was due to fly home the next day. Unfortunately it was still teeming down, and the streets were swollen muddy rivers but there was a good restaurant next door and we had a few farewell drinks.

Guy left for the airport pretty early in the morning, and we jumped on a bus to Siem Reap. Unlike the rest of low-season Cambodia, Siem Reap had heaps of tourists. And accordingly heaps of infuriatingly persistent touts. We had an interesting view out the window of our guesthouse: a nasty little, cramped, crocodile farm. It got pretty noisy during the daily feed.

Every time we left our guesthouse we had to run the gauntlet past tuk-tuk drivers, begging children, and massaging women. Despite that we had two incredible days looking at the nearby temples. Angkor Wat was certainly impressive...

but our favourites were Banteay Saray, with elaborately carved pink stone:

and Ta Prohm, which has been overrun by jungle - the roots of trees weave their way between rocks, overwhelming towers and giving the whole temple compound a very Indiana Jones-ish atmosphere. It was actually where parts of the Tomb Raider movie had been filmed:

We also hiked up to a fascinating river where the rocky riverbed had been carved with Hindu deities.

And so after one last day of R&R, we caught a bus back across the border to Bangkok. We had been assured by the guesthouse owner that it took only six hours, would be comfortable, and was always on time. Of course it was none of those things. We were crammed into a tiny mini-bus, with our luggage around our ears. The driver seemed to be the only Cambodian in history who drives slowly, and we had way too many enforced stops at tourist traps (one was so that the van's exterior cold be washed), where we were hardsold drinks and confectionery. We arrived into Bangkok about an hour late, only to endure three hours in the Bangkok traffic. We were pretty angry as it put an end to our plans to look more around the city. Because it was the last night of or expedition, we wanted to finish in a decent hotel.
This one overlooked the river and had a pool on the roof, but more importantly, it was ridiculously handy to shops and restaurants, where we managed to find a nice restaurant serving some 'Thai-spicy' (not 'Western-spicy') mouth-blowingly hot curries.

On our final morning we took a water taxi down the river to take a quick look around the very impressive Royal Palace, complete with Emerald Buddha.

And then finally we headed out to the airport (our idiotic taxi-driver thought he was the Thai Lewis Hamilton), where I'm typing this, sitting in a Starbucks, and waiting for our flight home...

It has been a wonderful nine months, the best way to kick off our married life together. Although I'm sure we'll quickly miss waking up in a new town, living new adventures, we're really excited about returning to New Zealand and re-establishing some order and normality into our lives.

On to Thailand

From Greece it was on to London for the wedding of our friends Zac and Catherine. We enjoyed a great, alcohol fuelled couple of weeks back in the UK catching up with my brother, friends and old workmates. The wedding was superb and Liverpool even turned on the weather which was nice as the weather in London in the lead up to it had been dismal. We won't miss the weather in summer in the UK that's for sure. We will miss London generally though and it was sad to board the plane to Bangkok as we don't know when we will next be back. We will definitely be back though at some point – especially if the clothes shopping options in NZ remain as dire as we remember them. That said we were excited to be on the road again and to be a bit closer to getting home.

We arrived in Bangkok in the afternoon and after negotiating the taxi driver gauntlet at the airport made our way into town and to our hotel. We only had one night in Bangkok and it was already fairly late in the day so after we had had showers and chilled out for a bit we took a walk down the infamous and crazy Khao San road and enjoyed a Thai curry for dinner. Feeling pretty tired after our flight though we decided to head back to the hotel. Although our aim was to try to stay up as long as possible and beat the jet lag we ended up falling asleep about 8.30pm. We woke up later thinking it must be nearly morning but when we checked our watch we discovered that it was actually only 10.30pm and we were now wide awake. Clearly the jet lag had beaten us!

Anyway after a fitful night's sleep we were up early and back out to the airport for our flight to Chiang Mai and to meet Tom's brother Guy who had flown out to spend 10 days with us around Thailand and Cambodia. It was actually great to have someone else with us to hang out with. As much as we are happily married, we have spent pretty much 24 hours a day with each other every day since February so it is nice for both of us to have someone else to talk to occasionally!

We managed to book a pretty sweet hotel in Chiang Mai and because we arrived early and our rooms weren't ready we were updgraded at no extra cost. That afternoon we set out to explore the town - in the rain! We knew it would be rainy season when we arrived but we had envisaged short heavy downpours rather than the type of rain we experienced on our first day in Chiang Mai which was pretty much non-stop all day and had us pretty worried. Luckily however this was the worst day we would have weather wise until we hit Phnom Penh toward the end of our trip.

After lunch and bit of an explore we decided that the best way to enjoy a rainy afternoon was to get a Thai massage. Our first port of call was a rather fancy looking spa but the prices were ridiculous and the herbal tea they served us tasted like stale burger rings so we bailed on that place and went back to our hotel to have one there. In half an hour the receptionist had located three Thai masseuses who came to the hotel and it wasn't long before we were being pummelled, stretched and twisted within an inch of our lives. If I am honest it was hard to relax during the massage. Not only did it hurt quite a bit but I kept lapsing into fits of giggles at Tom and Guy who seemed to be in more pain than me and were making some very strange noises (Tom more so than Guy!) Tom's masseuse seemed particularly vigorous and was also a little strange to say the least! She kept slapping him – hard, and I'm pretty sure at one point she stroked his arm and muttered King Kong under her breath. She also kept asking him if he was hot and at one point when I had my eyes closed ripped his shirt off – needless to say I was not impressed! All in all in was a pretty funny experience though and I did feel much more supple afterwards. We were all in a need of drink though so we headed out to the riverside for drinks and dinner.

The next day we had booked a half day trip out to an elephant park outside of Chiang Mai. The park was about an hour and half's drive into the countryside and given the season its surroundings were very green and picturesque. En route to the park we stopped at a local market to buy fruit for the elephants but spent most of our time there looking at all the other weird things for sale particularly the fried insects and spiders. The park itself had about 15 elephants. Several of the older elephants had previously had lives of fairly hard labour and had been retired to the park. We weren't sure how some of the younger ones came to be there but given that there are no longer any wild elephants in Thailand figure they must have either come from other parks or from outside of Thailand. We had been a little sceptical about the park and its motives at first and were worried it would be a bit of a tourist trap. However when we got there we found it to be a pretty authentic place and from what we saw the elephants were well treated. We can only hope that this was always the case, even when there weren't any tourists around.

We had a great morning's training with the elephants and learnt the basics of becoming a Mahout (elephant driver), including mounting and dismounting (from the side and also, more alarmingly, the front) and basic commands such as left, right, forward, back etc. Here are some photos of the training.

Afterwards we took a short trek through the jungle and then finished off upstream in a pool where we got into the water with the elephants and washed and brushed them. It was a pretty cool experience.

After a nap in the afternoon we ventured out in the evening for a burger (which was awesome apart from the enormous cockroach that plagued our table) and then had a look around the night markets. After that Tom and I (being old marrieds) hit the sack whereas the young and sprightly Guy was out until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day we had a leisurely start and Tom and I took in a few of the temples in the area. In the afternoon/evening we attended a Thai cooking school for a few hours.

The cooking school was good fun and we learned to make spring rolls, Pad Thai and a curry and soup of our choice. Both Guy and I made a traditional Green Curry and a clear spicy soup called Tom Sab (also known as “sexy soup”). Tom made a Mussaman curry and Tom Yum soup. The food was delicious and surprisingly easy to make – we'll have to put our hot skills to the test when we get home. The cooking teacher was clearly mad but highly entertaining particularly during her tour of the cooking school's organic garden and the local market where we encountered “Horse Pee Eggs”! Yes you read right! Here is a picture.

After the cooking class we high tailed it back to the hotel as we had plans to take in some Thai kick boxing that evening. Tom and Guy were super excited about it – I was a bit more sceptical. That said we all had a really great time. Probably the worst part of the whole thing had nothing to do with the boxing at all. It was actually walking up the dodgy alleyway to the boxing ring which was packed with seedy bars serving 50+ year old men and their teenage Thai girlfriends.

The boxing itself was well organised and whilst brutal, several of the fights particularly the one between two girls (one big bully and her wily unrelenting opponent) were, dare I say it, great to watch. There was also a comedy blind fight where four boxers were blindfolded and attempted to fight each other. In reality they probably hit the ref more times accidentally than they did each other but it was funny to watch.

After the boxing Tom and I decided we had to prove to Guy that we weren't as old and married as he thought and so we hit the town (along with the Lady Boys) for a big night out. Tom and I made it out until a respectable 3am. Guy however was still going at 8am the next morning. Needless to say it made for a less than comfortable travel day the next day to Phnom Penh.

Greece

The train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki was pretty wretched. It had been a hot day and we were pretty tired and hot by the time we lugged our heavy bags on board and into our cabin. As soon as we pulled out of the station, I walked from carriage to carriage looking for the dining car that we'd naively expected a fourteen hour train to have – almost walking out the unlocked back-door and onto the tracks in the process. But of course this was a Turkish train, and so we were left without any water at all, until we managed to convince one of the surly guards to sell us a couple of bottles from his personal supply.

Our cabin was OK though...

...but we didn't get much chance to sleep. We didn't roll into the border until after midnight and were woken by the guard stomping up and down the corridor demanding passports. Then they passed out a ludicrous four page survey from the Turkish Department of Tourism - which wanted to know how we rated every hotel we stayed at (for all twenty nine nights), and what we spent each day on food, accommodation, tours (down to the nearest lira). We spent the next thirty minutes filling the bloody thing in (although of course they never collected it) and then thirty minutes later we rolled into Greece and the immigration/shouting process was repeated... When we did finally got the chance to sleep the racket was ridiculous – the trains and the tracks were pretty old and in desperate need of repair.

We had a nice hotel in Thessaloniki though, which is just as well as there was a heatwave – it was again in the late-thirties or forties – and way too hot to venture out too far.

We spent the next few days cruising through the Greek countryside in our rental car.. Well, technically there wasn't that much cruising – firstly it was a Skoda, and then I wasn't too flash at driving on the right hand-side of the road either. Also the GPS was rubbish – when the batteries worked, it took us all over the place. Here's our first “destination”:

We were left on a corner, half-way along an un-sealed road to nowhere. It wouldn't even take us all the way to nowhere!

What we had intended to visit was Vergina, the ancient home of the Macedonian kings – it was where Alexander the Great was crowned before he took off conquering the world. We visited his father's tomb, and then had an excellent Greek salad.

We then drove on to Kalambaka, from where we visited Meteora. It was a centre for monasticism, with monasteries and chapels built across a series of clifftops and rocky outcrops – easily defended during the time the Ottomans ruled the surrounding areas, and of course a very quiet and serene place. We visited two of the six that are still open – St Stephens which still now operates as a nunnery, and Grand Meteora, the oldest and largest, which is open only as a museum these days. It was crazy to think of how they were built without helicopters to drop in the building material – but apparently they may have used hot air balloons. As you looked out over the surrounding valleys, you could see other spots where hermits had built their own little shelters to live and pray in.


We stayed in Kalambaka for a couple of nights, then drove back to Thessaloniki, via Eddessa, which had some reasonably impressive waterfalls.

We dropped the car (and got a refund on the GPS), and caught a train to Athens the next day. From Athens, we caught a ferry to Santorini!

In Santorini we stayed in Fira which is the island's main town, on the lip of a cliff overlooking the caldera – the crater of an ancient volcano. The town was pretty ritzy, with a lot of art galleries and shops selling golden jewellery and stuff like that, but the setting was stunning. We hired a quad bike for a day, which Alex christened Matilda (I'd wanted to give it a more Greek name like Aphrodite, but she was definitely more of a Matilda than a goddess of love!), we and spent the next day exploring the island from top to bottom.

We watched the sunset from the top of the cliff one night, and the other night ate the best pita gyro in Greece – at Lucky's Souvlaki.

Finally we caught an afternoon ferry to Paros, where we've been for the last week and a bit. Alex's family friends Terry and Pano have been really kind and have let us borrow their house for a fortnight. It has been a wonderful chance for us to settle down and stay in one place for a while, and we've enjoyed cooking for ourselves and relaxing on the beach. It's been tough...

Turkey - Part Two

I was a bit relieved to arrive in Fethiye after our four day cruise. It wasn't that I hadn't enjoyed it but the last day in particular was pretty choppy and I wasn't the only one who was feeling a tad seasick! After making it back to shore however we spent one night in Fethiye (which was a pretty port town) before we caught a bus to Selcuk. Earlier on in our travels around Turkey we had picked up a brochure for “Atilla's Getaway” a backpackers just outside of Selcuk which had a meal plan, pool and pretty decent looking accommodation. So we decided to book four nights there to give us a bit of downtime. When we rang to confirm our booking and said we waned to stay for four nights, Atilla's response (in a heavy Aussie accent) was “Why don't you just bloody move in then!”- this set the tone for what turned out to be a pretty relaxed and friendly place to stay.

On our first day in Selcuk we went to visit the ancient Roman ruins of Ephesus (yes more ruins I know!) but at least these ones had an impressive old library and theatre.



The only downside was that it was crushingly hot and so we spent the rest of the day recovering, first in a little Turkish restaurant in town and then back at the backpackers by the pool. There were some cool people staying at Atilla's and we enjoyed a good evening having a few drinks and Atillas's famous chicken barbecue.

On our other days in Selcuk we visited a little village in the mountains renowned for its wine making. We didn't actually sample any of the wine – we were slightly put off by the lunch we had at one of the wineries (ridiculously expensive, terrible food and service) but as it was market day in the village we did indulge in a little shopping. The Turkish grannies in the village were pretty skilled in their handicrafts and I couldn't resist getting this hand knitted doll for my new baby niece, Abigail.




Whilst in Selcuk we also took a day trip east to Pammukale. This was a long day (3hours each way) but was worth it. Pammukale (which means “Cotton City”) is an ancient Roman city on a hill surrounded by these amazing white terraces which have been created by calcium deposits left behind when water, which runs down over the surrounding rocks, evaporates in the heat. The result is that the rocks look like they are covered in snow and it is really quite beautiful. En route to Pammukale we stopped at a nearby restaurant for a buffet lunch. I was rather put off my lunch by the inordinate number of Eastern European women customers at the restaurant who were wearing skimpy crochet string bikinis with their bums on full display. It didn't seem to bother others but I really had a problem with bum cheeks brushing past the salad bar!

Oddly though it wasn't just at the restaurant that people were scantily clad. At Pammukale itself, everyone wandered around in their togs as if it was a beach. There were pools on the terraces that you could paddle in and also a hugely overpriced mineral pool in which you could swim but I still thought it a little strange that people were exploring Roman ruins including several old churches with so much flesh on display. Maybe I have been in the Middle East too long!





From Selcuk we took another bus and then a ferry across the Dardenelles to reach Eceabat. Eceabat is a small town on the Gallipoli peninsula from which we planned to visit the Gallipoli battlefields. We had thought that Eceabat might be teeming with Antipodeans like us and maybe this is true around ANZAC day. When we visited, however, Eceabat was dead and our hotel aptly named “Hotel Crowded House” was actually full of Turkish families on holiday!

We had booked our tour of the battlefields through the hotel. Our guide Anil was a local from Eceabat who picked us and two other Australian girls up from the hotel in his taxi. We then proceeded on a six hour tour of the peninsula covering all the key sights including Brighton Beach (where the ANZACS were originally supposed to land), ANZAC Cove where they did land, Lone Pine (the Australian memorial), Chunnuk Bair (the New Zealand Memorial) as well as some of the New Zealand, Australian and Turkish cemeteries.





There are over 40 cemeteries on the peninsula. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and allowed us as much time as we wanted at each place to take photos and just take it all in. Our tour seemed a far cry from the coach loads of tourists who whizzed past not even stopping at many of the key places. Most of them were on day trips from Istanbul and once we saw how much they were missing we were really pleased that we had decided to stay in Eceabat.

Tom and I being history geeks really enjoyed the tour. It was hugely sad visiting the cemeteries and we spent quite long time reading the many tombstones particularly of the New Zealand soldiers. Many of them were only 18 years old and one Australian soldier was only 16 when he died. Our tour guide had packed us a picnic which we ate in the trenches. These are really fascinating as in places the New Zealand and Turkish trenches are only 6 to 8 metres apart. The new “tourist” road was been built between the space that was previously “No Man's Land” in between . You can also still find bits of shrapnel and the occasional bullet in and around the shrubbery and with our guides help I managed to find a couple of pieces of shrapnel to take home.



I was also pleased that we got to visit the Turkish memorials as well as those of the ANZACs. Ataturk was the general in charge of the Turkish troops, who later became the first president of modern Turkey. Ataturk (which means “Father of the Turks” - a name he gave himself) is clearly greatly loved and revered by the Turks as he is seen as transforming Turkey in to the modern country it is today. Many Turks actually sport tattoos of Ataturk and one of the Turkish guys on our cruise had a particularly large one.

After our stay in Eceabat we took yet another bus to Istanbul. We planned to stay 6 nights in Istanbul as there was so much we wanted to see and do there. Top of the list was to buy a Turkish carpet! We were somewhat daunted by the whole prospect of carpet shopping particularly as we were spending money that we had been given as a wedding gift and were therefore desperate not to be ripped off. We had done our research and had a vague idea of what we should be looking for (natural and high quality wools, natural dyes and a high knot count etc) but were still pretty unsure about the whole thing) We decided that the only way to start the process however was jump in head first and so we did – in the Grand Bazaar – the biggest and craziest warren of a markets in all of Turkey. Without too much trouble we located the carpet section of the market (the touts are everywhere!) and went inside one shop where we were offered the complimentary apple tea and sat down to listen and watch as the shop owner's sidekick unfurled dozens of carpets in front of us (with great flourish I might add!). There were some nice ones – and some hideous ones. One particular carpet which Tom said he liked had a whole series of open flower buds which looked more to me like row upon row of the key part of a female's anatomy. Not something I want on my living room floor. The shopkeeper did produce two or three carpets which he claimed were antiques (over 60-80 years old) and of very high quality. We did like one of them in particular but when we got around to discussing price with the guy he really heaped on the pressure. He seemed desperate for us to buy that day even though we explained that this was the first place we had been. He clearly didn't want us looking around and comparing the carpet and his price with others we might see. The final straw was when he informed us that he would offer us a certain price to buy the carpet now but that if we didn't buy the carpet then and came back later he would not offer us the same price again! That was a clear signal to us that this guy was dodgy and so we gulped down the remainder of our apple tea, thanked him and left.

After traipsing around many other carpet shops we came across one called Noah's Ark (which incidentally was recommended in an article in National Geographic which I had read). The guy in this shop was completely different. He wasn't pushy, applied no pressure and spent four hours with us including taking us to his nearby warehouse full of even more carpets to help us find exactly what we were looking for. In the end we purchased one which he has already shipped to NZ for us. It was a gorgeous, quite classic cashmere and wool blend, and it felt really nice and soft under bare feet. All in all we were pretty stoked with our purchase and the price we got and I even managed to get him to throw in a free pair of turquoise earrings that he also had for sale to boot!

Despite how it may sound, we didn't spend our entire time in Istanbul shopping for carpets. We of course made our obligatory visit to the Blue Mosque which was very impressive with intricate blue tiles inside (which give it its name). It was built by Sultanhamet whose aim was to build something truly spectacular. When it was built the Blue Mosque was the only Mosque in the world (apart from the one in Mecca)to have six minarets. Perhaps understandably the Mosque in Mecca added a seventh shortly afterwards.



We also visited Aya Sofia, which was originally a Byzantine church built in the 500s but was later converted into a very Grand Mosque and is now a museum. This was also very impressive with vaulted ceilings, amazing tile work and intricate panelling.

My favourite sight however was the Topkapi Palace which was the Sultan's Palace and given that the Sultan ruled over the vast Ottoman Empire was understandably a grand place. It took us several hours to get around the whole thing as there was so much to see. The highlights being the Harem (where all the wives and mistresses lived) and the “jewellery room” which had exquisite diamond, emerald and ruby encrusted jewellery and other artefacts, as well as other treasured relics such as a tooth and beard clipping (allegedly) belonging to Mohammed (the Prophet) and a staff (allegedly) belonging to John the Baptist. Th only downside to the Palace was the restaurant/cafe. Fair enough it was in a nice spot overlooking the Bosphorous and a much needed rest spot but was it really necessary to charge 9 Euros for a can of coke!



We also made trips to the Cistern (a great big underground chamber where the town's water supply used to be held), the Gallery of Modern Art (which had a great restaurant and view) and went for a leisurely, although hot two hour cruise on the Bosphorous (where we encountered a guy with the worst monobrow ever!!.



All in all we absolutely loved Istanbul and would recommend it to anyone as a great place to take a break. Our hotel was based in Sirkeci which was a great location for visiting the sights but our favourite neighbourhood in Istanbul was by far Beyoglu on top of the hill across the Golden Horn from. Beyoglu has loads of great little restaurants and shops (even a Top Shop!) and we spent lots of time there wandering around the winding streets and drinking beer and nice Turkish wine (finally!) at the little bars and cafes.

Turkey Part One

The border crossing out of Syria was much less challenging than the one into Syria – we were able to book a driver who'd take us across the border and right into Gaziantep – a city not far from the border where we'd planned to spend a couple of nights. Despite having enjoyed all of Syria's charms, we were really excited by now about getting back to some more 'Western' standards of accommodation. We'd managed to book into one of the Mercure chain of hotels, and I was especially excited about leaving behind the Syrian breakfasts – flat pita with cheese segments, a boiled egg and olives – nice enough once, but not nice enough to sustain you for a couple of weeks.

But otherwise, we didn't know what to expect from Gaziantep or indeed this first part of Turkey. We knew that things got far more European the further west, and the further towards the coast you headed, but the eastern provinces were reputedly much more conservative and Islamic, and of course Turkey has issues with Kurdish separatists right over on its border with Iraq. Gaziantep, and Malatya (the next town we visited) were conservative. I'd say the majority of the women wore headscarves (but not full face veils like we'd frequently seen in the Middle East) and there were a good number of elderley men in those ballon-ey turkish pants and flat caps. And the moustache was king – from neat toothbrush style to massive billowy things. The other immediately noticeable thing was the signs were no longer in Arabic, but with recognisable Latin script (even if the words themselves looked like alphabet soup, with umlauts and cedillas tossed in all over the place).

We didn't get up to much in Gaziantep – we lazed by the pool and enjoyed the first English language television we'd seen in a while – but that was our aim.

We did however get out and sample some of the baklava for which Gaziantep is renowned and also our first of many (too many?) Turkish kebabs, a delicious concoction of lamb, eggplant and yoghurt baked in a clay pot and called the Ali Nazik.

Later we caught the bus to Malatya, which we intended to use as a base for visiting neaby Mount Nemrut. After we dropped our bags at the hotel, we walked across the town square to the tourist information office. There we met Kemal, the local English-speaking tourist co-ordinator who had decamped to a cafe in a park around the corner. Kemal was nuts. With his handlebar moustache, his hair-metal band mane he looked a bit like the lion from the Wizard of Oz (apart from his baldspot), and with his be-jewelled wrists and fingers he was quite a sight. He told us that the Korean Lonely Planet refers to him and describes him as wearing a white shirt and so ever since it was published that's all he's been able to wear to work. But he was full of banter and jokes, and was extremely helpful. After telling us about Malatya's attractions (all apricot-based – Malatya is apparently Turkey's apricot capital) booking our onward bus, and sorting us out on a tour to leave the next morning, Kemal insisted we come back to join him for tea later in the evening.

We spent a bit of the afternoon at the Apricot Bazaar – which sold jams, and chutneys and dried apricots of every stage of dryness, and after dinner we headed back to the park for our tea date. We found Kemal sitting on a stool on the side of the road (along with apparently the rest of Malatya's male population – nobody seemed to work, all the shopkeepers who were 'working' seemed only to sit outside watching the world go by or playing backgammon with their mates), a couple more stools were rustled up from somewhere, and together we drank tea and told stories for a couple of hours. Later one of Kemal's mates turned up and joined us. His name was Levant, and although his English was shaky, he was very keen to test it out on us, and to extend his hospitality to us. He was almost comically intent on inviting us back to his house for dinner, or even to stay, or to take us out for breakfast the next morning, and although he was genuine and well-intentioned, we were I think understandably wary. But he'd persist in trying to find a way around the flimsy excuses we gave him. Levant couldn't understand our wariness (despite Kemal's explanation that non-Turkish people might find such offers a bit much), so later to appease him we went in his car on a tour of Malatya's tourist sites – namely his house, his workplace and his wife's workplace!


The next day,we set out for Mount Nemrut, which is one of the highest peaks in the area, capped by a massive, man-made cone of rocks. At the base of the cone the king who's had the whole thing built in his own honour had erected shrines with massive statues of Greek and Persian Gods, and himself. Not a lot is known about either the king, or his monument, but it was a spectacular point to watch the sunset, and then rise again, early the next morning.





We had stayed the night in a shoddy hotel not far from the top of the mountain, and after breakfast, continued back to Malatya (where of course Levant was waiting, offering again to take us out for breakfast!).

But we didn't have much downtime before our bus to Goreme, in Cappadocia. The whole thing was a bit of a shambles – we were sent to wait at the wrong departure gate, meaning we only just caught our bus in the nick of time, and then subsequently were told to get off (which we did) at the wrong town. We only just managed to wave down the bus as it took off down the road, and so were were pretty exhausted and frustrated when we eventually arrived in Goreme.

But Goreme is a great wee town. It's surrounded by a fantastic volcanic landscape, with mushroom shaped 'fairy chimneys', arches and pillars jutting out of the rose- and white-coloured valleys. A lot of the rock is soft and suitable for carving, and the valleys are pocked with houses and churches cut into the cliffs. Our hotel room was a cave – it was dark and cool, and the first time in ages we could even countenance not having air-conditioning. Mehmet who ran the hotel was really helpful and was able to recommend a couple of afternoon hikes, and he organised a tour for us to one of the underground cities. It's thought there might be as many as 200 separate underground cities in Cappadocia, but Derinkuyu, the one we visited is one of the largest. It was built as a refuge for the locals during times of war or invasion, and had been added to over the years until it reached the depth of 85 metres. It had the usual living quarters (for as many as 2000 people), storage rooms and kitchens, as well as stables, chapels and a missionary school. And it was all very well defended – with large stones for rolling across doorways and carved holes through which to poke spears or tip boiling oil. Most of the city complexes were connected to the surface by hidden tunnels into basements of the houses above, so that they could quickly be accessed in emergencies.

It was stinking hot in Goreme, even the locals were complaining, and we should have kept inactive during the heat of the day, but of course we wandered around exploring the valleys, and we also visited the Goreme Open-Air Museum, which is a complex of cave churches. Goreme was one of the earliest centres for Christian worship, and despite the fact these churches were carved out of solid rock, they were pretty intricate, and all decorated with mosaics and frescoes.

The absolute highlight of our trip to Cappadocia was the hot-air balloon ride we did very early one morning, with Kappadokya Balloons, the oldest operator in the area and a very professional outfit. Each morning, the sky above Goreme fills up with thirty or forty hot-air balloons – the landscape below is stunning, and the winds are apparently suitably light. The baskets are divided into quarters, and we had about twenty people altogether in ours. Thankfully we managed to avoid sharing our quarter with the group of stereotypically massive Americans – although the guy who did have to came comically close to starting a fight when he complained loudly how little space was left for him. But despite one corner of the balloon being slightly weighted down, the balloon took flight easily, and it was a strange sensation gliding so noiselessly through the air. Of course, the pilot can't direct the balloon where he wants to go – we were at the whim of the wind – all he can do is regulate how high and how low we went. Hussein was great at taking us right up to the walls of the valleys, and at skimming us across the top of fairy chimneys. I was frantically clicking away on our camera, it was so beautiful seeing so many brightly coloured balloons all around, as well as above and below us.



We flew over Rose Valley (with its pinky rock) and Pigeon Valley (full of pigeon houses carved into the side – locals would harvest all the pigeon shit for making paints), and off in the distance we saw Love Valley. Alex disgusted some of the ignorant Americans onboard when she explained its name: it's actually named in honour of the phallic shaped rock pillars. They just thought she was being crude.


As we (and all of the other balloons) drifted off towards Uchisar, below we watched the various chase vehicles race along the country roads, trying to find a suitable patch of ground where the balloons could land. Eventually we dropped down into a field of crops, and the support crew ran around clearing it of broken glass before they deflated the balloon and packed it onto a trailer. Meanwhile we had a celebratory glass of champagne, and a breakfast of cake. While we were waiting, and everyone was busy snapping photos, a group of Japanese people came up to us and started asking “Turkey person? Turkey person?”. It took us a while to work out that they thought we were Turkish, which was one for the books. I certainly don't have a moustache worthy of a Turk (despite my occasional efforts), and I would have thought our blonde hair was a bit of a giveaway. Alex's pounamu would often tip people off that we were NZers, but otherwise we'd get asked a lot if we were Dutch, or American. And one waiter in Egypt persisted with talking to me in German despite the fact I'd look at him all bamboozled.

Because of all the tourists, Goreme had some great restaurants to – our favourite “Fat Boys” was run by a local and his Australian wife, and even had vegemite toast on the menu. It was there that we watched the World Cup final. There were a few Dutch fans all looking very orange, but the majority of the crowd seemed to want Spain to win, and so were delighted when they sealed it in extra time. On another occasion we were eating in town when a raucous procession of cars cruised through the centre of town honking, and shouting. We were looking out for the bride and groom – we thought it must have been a wedding – but the front car only carried this twelve year-old boy dressed in his finest (complete with a crown!), sitting in the passenger seat and looking all very anxious. The waiter explained to us that it was the poor bugger's circumcision party, and he was off for the chop.

On the last day before we left, Mehmet booked us onto a Blue Cruise, leaving from Olympos laater in the week. We got a sweet deal – about GBP100 each for four nights and three days, including meals - we'd looked at doing one when we were living in London, and if we'd booked it from there it would have been at least GBP300 each!

But before that we needed to get down to the coast. We caught an overnight bus to Antalya, which was much nicer than we'd expected, with a very quaint old city and a very Mediterranean vibe. And from there we'd headed further up the coast to Cirali. Cirali is just along the coast from Olympos which is a famous backpacker haunt – everyone there stays in what they call treehouses (although disappointingly they're really just houses among trees). In Cirali we had a more standard hotel room, but most importantly we were on a gorgeous 4km stretch of beach (with free loungers and umbrelllas!), where we spent a lot of time.


Those who stayed in Olympos had to walk though some Roman ruins to get to the beach – paying the ruins' entrance fee each time. We did take a look through the ruins one afternoon, but after everything we'd seen in Syria (and Rome) they were a bit underwhelming. Much better was the Chimaera, which I can't think how to explain. The chimaera is this crazy eternal flame. Halfway up a hill at the other end of the beach is a series of flames coming from the ground. Obviously there must be some gas leeching from the rocks somewhere, but for some reason the gas ignites and dotted around the rocks are ten or twenty flickering flames. Sometimes they might extinguish, only to ignite again further along, and nobody really knows how this happens.


Our hotel in Cirali had a meal plan, and we ate like kings for those few days with delicious four course meals, but it was a little too family friendly for us – there were way too many screaming kids, and we saw (not for the last time) that Turkish parents never seem to discipline their children – or even do anything to get them to stop. I swear that one particularly vicious set of twins has probably ruined my hearing forever.

And so finally from Cirali, we were picked up and taken to our boat the AlaTurka, where we began our Blue Cruise – along the coast to Fethiye. Our boat had fourteen other passengers, Turkish, Italian, Brazilian, Spanish, and Australian, and it was a nice group. One of the Turkish girls spent the first day slapping on tanning oil until she turned poo-brown and spent the rest of the trip below decks with sunstroke, but the rest of us spent a lot of time in the shade and in the cool blue water. We'd cruise for a couple of hours in the morning, before stopping in a nice bay for lunch and a swim, and then moving along to another spot for the evening: dinner, more swims, a few drinks, and then we'd sometimes sleep on the deck under the stars.


Along the way we had a couple of hours in Kas, which was a lovely town, and visited Butterfly Valley and Oludeniz – two of the more famous beaches along that stretch. There were plenty of other boats out – including some very lux superyachts – and some enterprising locals would dart between them all selling ice creams or (our favourite) gozlemes, which are kind of like stuffed crepes.
It was funny to watch them, they were all the same: the moustachioed husband rowing around as his headscarf-ed wife furiously rolled out balls of dough and lathered them with cheese and herbs, or nutella and banana. They were seriously delicious.

At Oludeniz, we started to swim across to its famous blue lagoon (the captain's hot tip for avoiding having to pay the entrance fee) when Alex got viciously stung by a jellyfish which wrapped its stings around both of her forearms, and took an age to remove. For weeks afterward she bore some very sore-looking red marks – nobody could believe that a jellyfish had caused them – even the captain didn't know what to do. But other than that incident, the cruise was a lovely way of breaking up our time on the road.