Reading: Or, just finished, Peter Carey’s Theft. God, that guy can write great books.

Watching: Schindler’s List. On my iPod. Lieing in a dormitory in Budapest, miserable and hungover. There was crying involved.

Currently …

In a hostel in Krakow. Miles and months away from Turkey, which I’m now going to continue writing about. My photos are back in Belgium, so there isn’t even any Ephesus or Pamukkale photos to show you. However, I’m so completely behind on my blogging I’m going to have get my arse into gear …

Selcuk and Jimmy’s Place

So after TJ’s, I was chucked onto a bus and left in Selcuk, a small town near the outskirts of Izmir (Izmir, from what I saw of it, is a shithole.)

Checked into my hostel/hotel: Jimmy’s Place. I was put into the ‘dormitory’: actually an empty twin bed room; it appears that Jimmy’s, despite other claims, doesn’t have dorms. You’d think ‘great! you got upgraded!’ but not quite: they still charged me for a private. Of course, like most of my dealings with Jimmy’s, I didn’t realise till later that I’d been ripped off. You’d think more of a place that is supposed to have links with foreigners (Jimmy’s brother has a Kiwi wife). The hotel itself was nice enough, though everything there was expensive (food, wine) and the breakfast was great (filtered coffee! Yes!) However, I think I should have been alarmed that there appeared to be only 10 guests out of a possible capacity of 50 or 60.

Similarly, I should have been on high alert when Jimmy pulled us aside and said, yes, I am not joking, ‘Want to buy a carpet?’. Turns out Jimmy has a carpet shop in a back room – no pressure! no hassle! Well, he did convince Surly Greg to buy one; I instead got hassled because I insisted I didn’t want to buy a rug because I had no house. ‘Most people who buy rugs from me,’ he told me, ‘have no house.’ He even showed us pictures of all those people who bought rugs without having houses. He keeps them in photo albums on his desk, grouped by nationality. Greg was his first Scottish customer, which I suspect had more to do with Greg buying a carpet than anything else*.

Anyway, my main disastisfaction with the place was Jimmy’s brother, who said he would ‘help’ me organise my onwards travel. In fact, he bullied me into taking their tour to Pamukkale, and staying there an extra night. I managed to stop him from bullying me into booking my Cappadocia trip with them. In the end, I overpaid by about 50lira for a tour to Pamukkale and a bus ticket to Goreme; I should have gone with my original instinct, which was to organise it all myself. To top it off, I realised later that Jimmy’s bro had charged me another night’s accommodation – and at a higher rate than I’d agreed in the first place. Wonderful. No wonder I was pretty bitter on the bus to Pamukkale, especially when I found out what everyone else’d paid. But more on that later.

My first wonder of the world …

One of the Seven Wonders of the World is in Selcuk …

The Temple of Artemis! (Photo stolen from Flickr).

Okay, so nothing expressly fantastic, a column and a lake. It’s all that’s left of the apparently massive Temple of Artemis. Woo hoo. Now it’s surrounded by dodgy old men with dirty beer bellies poking from the bottom of their tops selling plastic Artemis’s, statues with large penis’s* and 1 lira postcard booklets.

Ephesus

You go to Selcuk purely to see Ephesus (Efes), one of the largest and best preserved Graeco-Roman ruins in the world. It has – not one but two!!! - theatres***, colonnades of columns, and lots of rocks. There’s the ruins of a Mary church, and I think Mary maybe died here in popular legend? It’s a fantastic site, and I am so ecstatic I did it without a guide (one good thing about Jimmy’s place: they’re good on lending you books to explore the local area, so armed with an Ephesus book, I got to see everything – just backwards, as I came in the exit entrance).

One thing exceptional about Ephesus is the ‘Library’, a magnificent facade as beautiful and preserved as the Treasury in Petra (though not as big). It was covered – covered – in German and French tourists, and I found it difficult to get a decent photo:

The Library, at Ephesus.

No, it’s not artistic blurring, it’s finger marks on the lens (I didn’t realise till later).

Anyway, it’s an awesome site, huge, though I would recommend entering through the uphill entrance. The  entrance at the bottom of the hill is more of an exit. You’ll be fighting thousands of tour groups who are coming downhill if you go to the exit-entrance – like I did.

Be warned however:

1. Don’t buy a genuine-fake watch and walk down the Ephesus main street while looking at it, therefore tripping and re-breaking your arm (hey Carla?)

2. Don’t take the bus, it’s only 4km away, and if you don’t walk, you won’t be able to see the Second Brothers tomb.

3. Don’t get a guide. Turkish guides suck. Sorry guys, but it’s pretty much universal. Every Turkish guide (excluding TJ in Gallipoli and a nice funny guy I had in Cappadocia on the Green Tour) we had was dreadful. Unfortunately, by national law, the only guides allowed to operate in Turkey are Turkish. Just take a really good guidebook, you’ll get better, more accurate and more detailed information (‘This is the Temple of Hercules. This is the drain in the Temple of Hercules. This is a column.’ Thanks for that.)

There is, a little off the way, a place calle dthe ‘Cave of Seven Sleepers’. Grotty, less presentable, and aimed at the locals (not to mention absolutely empty), the site is mildly interesting. However, there was a really homey Turkish food place at its base, with decent Gozleme, which I quite enjoyed.

The Shishas, before they were Shishas.

I did end the day in a good mood, though absolutely exhausted.  I sat down in the TV area, which was crowded with one girl wearing a cast on her arm, another with her ankle strapped, and a grumpy looking guy with glasses. They turned out to be in a tour group, and besides these injuries, there was also another tour member at hospital, recovering from a bacterial infection picked up in Burma.

It turned out they were going to Syria after Turkey as well. Really? I asked. What tour group? Tucan? No fucking way.

By complete coincedence I ran into the Turkey leg of the tour group I was going to be meeting up with in Syria (or, in particular, Brett the Vet, Bronny, and Surly (and broken armed Carla) – later we’d get the nickname the Shishas, make several Macca’s runs just before the first am call to prayer, get in trouble for knocking on doors, shop for a wife for Brett the Vet in local bazaars, and take photos of giant rock penises, but at this time we all marvelled at the coincedence of running into each other, and went to bed.

Pamukkale

Pamukkale terraces - with dog.

Pamukkale is a volcanic hot springs site, where calciumnated water flows out, creating these awesome white terraces. You can walk along and swim within some of them (in any of them if you’re a slutty Mexican in a bikini, apparently). Romans built a spa in the vicinity (Hierapolis), and it’s awesome to walk along the ruins and actually find the rift which destroyed it. There’s a swimming resort (the ‘Cleopatra’ pool), which is only interesting because the hot spring water is naturally carbonated: want to swim in soda water? It’s also the only water in Turkey you can drink without getting sick. There is a theatre, a colonnade of columns and a temple***.

I went to Pamukkale the next day, taking the Jimmy’s Hostel recommended day trip tour, the one I’d been overcharged for. The tour guide, as many would prove to be in the Middle East, was awful: a rude arrogant shit who got grumpy at some clients for asking questions about what was involved in the tour, and yelled at a girl who was walking too slowly towards the bus (‘Time is money!’ Fuck head). This was before we’d even left Selcuk; clearly, being trapped with this turd as well as overpaying for the tour made my day; I found I was praying for the end of his tour, and the few glorious hours I would be alone.

‘Lunch is included! Wonderful Turkish lunch’, Jimmy’s brother had declared when he was trying to con me into taking the tour. Hmm. The lunch was ‘buffet’, but it was clear when we arrived how the tour operators made their money: drinks weren’t included, and they expected 5lira per glass of water, 8 per glass of coke, and 10 per glass of wine or beer. This, in a near empty restaurant that clearly only served tour groups. My mood (fueled by 1) being ripped off on the cost of the tour, 2) shitty tour guide, and now 3) shitty food and overpriced drinks) didn’t improve.

Our shitty tour guide took us through the gates to Hieropolis (‘That is the theatre’, ‘That is the west gate’, ‘That is a temple’), told us he’d buy a cup of tea to the first person to the top (he didn’t), made us sit for fifteen minutes in full sun while he talked in his bad English (‘That was the road,’ ‘That was the tombs’, ‘That was the spa’), took us in to see the Cleopatra pool (‘23 lira per swim!’). Then he mercifully left those of us going on to Goreme to our own devices.  I so wish I’d visited the place on my own.

I did meet three nice Muslim South Africans on the tour, who gave me a lot of tips about travel destinations in the Middle East, told me never to go to South Africa (so violent and dirty) and rolled their eyes the same as I did at the flirty Mexican princess who swam in the banned Pamukkale ponds in a bikini (instead of pulling her out, the security guards took photos – even grosser, so did her ‘dad’. Ummm).

I sat and watched what little of the sunset was visible behind the fog, and headed down to the bus station. I ate an overpriced Ottoman kebab (served in a stone pot – nice!) and hopped on the Dolmus (minibus) that took me to the overnight bus to Goreme …

_________________________________

*  One thing aside from my sarcasm: I might even contact Jimmy in the future to organise the purchase of a rug through mail order. When I actually have a house. Shame, shame, shame.

** A local souvenir from Selcuk, little men with big penises are modelled after the statue of fertility god Bes found in the Ephesus site, and now on display in the museum I didn’t go to visit.

*** As Brett the Vet would put it, I am now ‘ruined’ out. There’s only so many times you can see Roman ruins and be enthusiastic about it: they all have bloody theatres, bloody colonnades of columns, bloody temples, and lots of bloody rocks lying strewn around.

Doing: wasting time before the train back to Cairo and hiding from the touts by sitting in a smelly Alexandria internet cafe.

 Reading: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – Man Booker Prize winner of 2006. I stole this copy from a hostel in Cairo, and laughingly it’s a pirated version someone bought in India. The pages are photocopied, with the print rubbing off on my fingers. However, it’s a really brilliant book, cynical and chaotic.

Currently …

Sitting in a net cafe in Alexandria. Technically the tour I joined four weeks ago in Syria ended last Friday, but I’d been hanging out with Bronny, Dr. Brett and Surly till yesterday, and it’s quite a shock being on my own again.

Anyway, it appears the Middle East is not flush with internet like Europe, and besides the fast pace of Tour Group Life didn’t really allow much time to jabber on as I do on this blog. So here goes …

Last I wrote was about Gallipoli. The tour I went with, TJ’s, included a guided trip to Assos and Troy, as well as lunch at TJ’s parent’s house in a small village nearby.

Eceabat and Cannakkale

Me and the Eceabat kangaroo.

 The nearest town to the Gallipoli national park is Eceabat, a small little seaside town that has no claim to fame other than being the nearest town to the Gallipoli national park. Hence why there is a hotel called ‘Hotel Crowded House’, restaurants that serve meat pies, and roadside flower pots in the shape of kangaroos.

To head over to Troy and Assos, though, we had to go across the Dardanelles by ferry, to reach Cannakkale (Cha-nak-ka-lay), the nearest big city where most Gallipoli pilgrims end up staying (at Anzac House Hotel, mind you).

Captain Karen.

 By the way, the ferry boat captain likes foreigners and will happily let you play captain. I didn’t want to honk the horn though.

Cannakkale has a different claim to faim, though: it’s also the gateway to Troy for a lot of tourists, which is pretty obvious when you see this sitting beside the coast:

The Plastic Horse of Troy.

If you don’t recognise this fellow, try thinking of Brad Pitt:

Brad Pitt's in there somewhere.

Turns out Warner Bros donated this proud piece of plastic wood to the oh so proud Turkish, who are building a special hill top monument for it, so anyone sailing down the Dardanelles can see it. The Locals refer to the Trojan horse sitting at the Troy site (see below) as the Wooden Horse of Troy; this one is referred to as the Plastic Horse of Troy, as it’s more wood like than actual wood.

Anyway, there was some interesting bits of graffiti at the ferry side, and a smelly polluted ride across the Dardanelles.

Graffiti.

Troy

Said Wooden Horse of Troy:

The Japanese Wooden Horse Trap at Troy.

Personally I thought the Trojan Horse at Troy was only slightly less tacky than the Big Lobster or the Big Rocking Horse back home, and that the Plastic Horse of Troy at Cannakkale looked more interesting, but I suppose they decided to keep this 70’s monstrosity because you can climb inside it:

Me on the left, Leanne (Gallipoli buddy) on the right.

and other Gallipoli buddy Norm.

So, this site – known as Truva by the locals, but is also the ruin of the city of Illium - not far from Cannakkale is likely to be Homer’s Troy - or at least, more likely to be Homer’s Troy than the other sites scattered throughout the Aegean. The site has something like 7-9 layers of seperate cities and epochs, labeled by archeologists and historians as Troy I to Troy IX. Some fella back in the 1870s, Schliemann, went gangbusters excavating through  the several centuries of layers of archeological ruins to reach those of the legendary city – which he believed was Troy II – only to find out later he’d gone too far, and actually destroyed most of the Troy VII level, thought to be Homeric Troy. Ouch.

Anyway, theres not much to see except random excavations and rubble; more interesting is the story of the archeologists and their mishaps (like Schliemann’s), and how they came to prove this is The Troy. There’s a Roman ampitheatre (of course: it’s not a Roman ruin without a Theatre), and a trench, some mud brick buildings with wasp and bee hives in them, and that’s pretty much it.

No Smoking!

Ruins.

Schliemann's Stupid Man Trench

Altars from one of the later (Roman) settlements on the Truva site.

More amusing was our guide, who, truth be told, did a good job of providing a narrative to our visit. ‘I will tell you about Troy, the reality’ (grand gesture to the left), ‘and Troy, the dreeeaamm’ (grand gesture to the right). In his whispy, dramatic Turkish-accented voice, he told us plenty about the Illiad (the ‘dream’), and lots of fiddles about the ‘reality’. The Pyramid-shaped mountains in the distance? One’s the tomb of Achilles, the others of Paris and Petrocles. Alexander the Great apparently danced naked around the tomb of Achilles. As you do. And did you know the Trojans were such wonderfully civilised and advanced people?

‘I bet,’ said a unusually sarcastic Indian-American who’d joined our tour late, ‘he’ll tell us that all modern civilisation came from Turkey.’

Sure enough, next moment our guide was pointing out that London was once ‘New Troy’. ‘Next,’ the Indian guy muttered, ‘he’ll tell us the Turkish were the first to the moon.’

But hey, the day’s best treat was to come; lunch at TJ’s smiley parents house:

TJ’s village and insistent grannies

TJ and parents.

TJ apparently grew up in a small nomadic village not far from Eceabat, where he ended up living with an aunt in his early teens. Apparently nomadic Turks are settling down these days, but most of the villages don’t have running water, relying on traditional wells like these:

Traditional wells in TJ's home village.

His village proudly has it’s own water and waste water plant, so these wells are now only used for livestock or other nomads travelling down the roads.

Dinner was great – my first gozleme (pancake/crepe with cheese and spinach, sometimes mince meat or tomato, an addiction that was long to be sated in other spots in Turkey). His parents were smiley happy people, who made fresh yoghurt for us, and served Coca-cola in bottles.

Gozleme, roast potato, rice, spring onion, yoghurt, and Coke. Traditional Turkish meal.

TJ took us out to a neighbouring nomadic Turk village, without running water (he pointed out the rubble latrines), rusty utes and farm animals in rubble wall enclosures. Out came running one seriously cute pre-teen girl, selling handwoven bags and wooden charms (“1 Lira!”), smiling sweetly and modestly hiding behind TJ. Five minutes later, the square was a marketplace, full of unfurled rugs, bags, crocheted scarfs and colourful village grannies grabbing at our arms and gleefully shoving their products in our faces:

Carpet, laid out.

Quick! Foreigners to sell stuff to!

The prices were awesome: hand made, natural wool and dyed carpets, large sizes around 200 lira (about 150-180 Australian). Small around 50 lira. I ended up buying a couple of wood charms from the cutie girl, and a crocheted scarf from one of the old ladies.

Another story: there was a white scarf, with wonderful embroidery on it, which I expressed interest in – 20 lira, fair price. It was a little dirty, though, and I was contemplating whether I wanted to get something that would need serious dry cleaning; with TJ translating, the lady explained it was old, ‘antique’ even, explaining why it was marked; it was a wedding scarf, designed for a hope chest or a dowry. Interesting I thought. Then it was said, ‘Oh it’s from her wedding’, TJ said of the old woman who was trying to sell me the scarf. Knowing full well that the lady would really prefer to have 20 lira than to holding onto a sentimental piece (and, who knows, she probably hated her husband and would be glad to get rid of the rag), I just couldn’t bring myself to buy something that had such significance, for such a price that seemed so insignificant. It did occur to me later that the ‘It’s from my wedding’ statement may have been a ruse to get me to buy it that backfired. Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the scarf I got, and later down the track I bought a lot of things from wizened old nomadic Turkish grannies, who insistantly, tapped, shouted, grinned, and hugged me to make me buy their stuff. I bought some Turkish granny dolls to give to friend’s daughters as a souvenir of their extreme nuttiness – they look just like their living counterparts.

Mind, poverty is relative.

Of course, just when you think you’re in a place as impoverished as it can get, never forget that they have satellite tv, and you don’t

I doubt they’re paying Foxtel’s exhorbitant fees, anyway.

Assos

Stalls outside Assos.

After the nomadic village, we went to Assos, an ancient greek ruin, with views across the Aegean to Lesvos Island (yes, that’s also known as Lesbos). It’s a tourist site that the foreign tourists rarely see – apparently the Turks swarm here at certain times of the year (we were outside the season, in April anyway). The Tout Gauntlet, a phenomenon which follows us everywhere throughout the middle east (where touts and shop merchants harrass you into buying their cheap trinkets), was relatively calm – especially since most of the stalls were closed. I did buy some socks from some more nomadic old ladies, considered the jewellery and contemplated more scarves (I was still undecided about whether it was the right choice to leave the white wedding scarf behind).

Assos is up really high, and there were some seriously magnificent views from up there. Otherwise, there’s not much of a reason to go there (as opposed to massive Graeco-Roman ruin sites like Efes and Palmyra), although the beautiful grey rock and the traditional village are interesting.

Panorama of the Assos site.

TJ demonstrates the best view.

View from Assos.

Cute lady at Assos.

 Turkish ‘Culture’ Night

Okay, these nights are usually pretty lame, and avoided like the tourist plague, but this one was funny from several levels. There’s the belly dancer who was, admittedly, better than the other pitiful excuse we saw at the Orient Hostel in Istanbul, but a bit beyond her time (and clad in some serious sequins that would make Britney proud); paired with the hotel manager, Ramazan, who was getting into it a little too much. There were a series of teens from either a local dance troupe or a high school group, doing traditional performances; while the girls and most of the guys were more shy than outstanding, one of the boys was quite talented. However, the highlight was the food (some may complain about the over abundance of carbohydrates, but me being the carb-addict I am, loved every sticky-rice-potato-bread part of it); and a dear old man who played Waltzing Matilda on the accordion.

Mezze (appetizer plate).

Teenage dancers.

Nasty local liqueur.

Nasty liqueur ahoy!

Can’t remember the name of the local Turkish liqueur: raki? It’s NASTY. Aniseed flavoured tequila, it may as well have been.