Pre-trip
The adventure to Turkey begins with an adventure (attempted) adventure to Tibet. My friends and I (Lucretia, Peiyi, Cecilia, Julie- Korean, Benny and myself- auditors and ex-auditors) decided to go somewhere unconventional and exciting.. We started off with planning for a trip to Tibet, Lhasa, which is about 4,000m above sea level. After the doctor jokingly informed one of my friends that she has a 5% chance of dying in Tibet due to the high altitude (she has a weak heart) and another doc informing another person that he will probably take 3 days to acclimatise (due to low blood count) we abandoned the idea and opted for Nepal instead.
And so we approached the agent for to book tickets to Nepal, aiming to go Bungee jumping (the Korean was so excited, but we suspected we probably have to push her off cliff, while she was screaming “why on earth did I say I want to do that”), water rafting, hiking etc. But due to limited seats, 2 of us were put on the waiting list. And when we heard that Kathmandu (Capital) had riots and that there were people being burnt alive, we were like “woah. That means no one will want to go Nepal and we can go!” (A bit abnormal rite?) Unfortunately, it didn turn out that way, we were unable to get the tix up to one week b4 the trip.
And so we decided to go turkey at the last moment. 3 days before the flight, we booked the tix. And so one day before the trip, I rushed to buy winter clothings.
The trip
Right before the flight, at Changi Airport, our dearest Korean decided to take a photo with Cindy Crawford (actually its Crawford’s “cupboard poster”), but it looks like her.
1st April to 3rd April 2007 - Istanbul:
After a 10 hours flight, we arrived in Istanbul feeling refresh and ermm… hungry. So why not fill up our stomachs in the first Turkish café we see as we are searching for the Metropolis Hostel. But little did we suspect that this was going to be the start of our “Breakfast 1, Breakfast 2, Lunch 1, Lunch 2…” eating escapade for the next 10 days.
We asked a Mr Moon (Turkish name) for directions to the hostel, and he kindly escorted us to the hostel. On the way, we were gossiping that Luc and Mr Moon looked really like a couple. On our way, we passed by Istanbul’s most famous monument, Aya Sofya. It was a church built in 537 but was later converted into a mosque in 1453. From the outside, it looked amazing. The interior however, did not live up to our expectations. There were a number of mosaics and paintings, but unfortunately, most were not well preserved. Nonetheless, it was still quite an experience. A huge structure, built solely but manpower so many years ago, cannot fail to awe.
The only planning we did for this trip was to book a tour to Cappadocia and Ephesus over the internet. Well, the travel agency is called “Pride” and yes… it was a gay and lesbian travel agency. The signboard was even in signature gay rainbow colours. The girls were highly amused when we walked into the travel agency to confirm our tour and even more tickled as the gals started imagining how the boys will react when surrounded by a truck load of pretty boys. Fortunately the tour we hooked up with was as normal and straight as the tours you would go with your folks.
Our first lunch was kebabs at a restaurant around the corner (Julie’s choice). It was delicious, mouth watering and damn… extremely expensive. We paid an exorbitant 20 YTL (about S$23, expensive by Turkish standards) each and the familiar cry of Roberts started creeping back into our heads. Why? Why are we always listening to the Korean (biggest Robert)? (Btw, the hostel staff called our Korean, Julia, Julia ROBERTS!)
We then decided to take it easy for the day and get ourselves acquainted with the city by walking to Taksim Square (their version of orchard). Along the way, we stopped by at the Bosphorus river for Lunch 2 – fish sandwiches and pickles. The time difference between Lunch 1 and Lunch 2 was approximately 2 hours.) There we took our first Lomo pictures, and incidentally it was also there where the Lomo (a manual speed camera) Girls (Peiyi, Julie and Cecilia) were formed. A trademark of the Lomo Girls is flapping your hands like seagulls in public. Our walk took over 2 hours as we were lost, and we subsequently discovered that Taksim square is actually about a 15 min walk from our hostel.
We spent our second day at the Topkapi Palace followed by a shopping spree in the Grand Bazaar. The palace was not as fascinating as what the Lonely Planet has described, but being “strange people”, we still managed to entertain ourselves by frolicking in the palace gardens, i.e. Lomo Girls rolling on the grass, Peiyi and Julie having a quickie that was caught on video, and taking “college pictures”. We even tried to re-enact what an Ottoman Sultan would do in the Harem until the security guard chased us away. As usual, we had 2 lunches. Lunch 1 was kebabs at the Topkapi Palace and Lunch 2 was kebabs at a local eating place.
The Grand Bazaar is a massive labyrinth with alleys and alleys of shops selling everything a Robert would want to buy. I bought only one T-shirt (it shrunk after washing and I cant wear it anymore!) the rest bought bowls, teacups, apple tea, Turkish eyes, shawls etc…. We ended our second day with drinks (Local beer is called Efes and alcohol is called Raki) at a pub (Cheers) near our hostel and befriended an extremely irritating Turk. He will be mentioned again later.
Summary of our third day – Julie realizes she is in love with Borat (owner of the Metropolis Hostel), a 15 seconds prayer for DBS AGM at the Blue Mosque, the largest and grandest mosque in Istanbul. (For your information, all the mosques in the Istanbul are very grand. On our first day, every mosque looked like either the Aya Sofia or the blue mosque to us) We revisited Taksim Square (up a very steep slope), ate more Kebabs, and took a 14 hours overnight coach ride to Cappadocia.
4th April to 5th April 2007 – Cappadocia:
Ah… Cappadocia… a land full of huge stone mushrooms and fairy chimneys riddled with ancient churches rustic cave hotels, excellent restaurants serving authentic delights such as Testis Kebabs…Cappadocia… good weather… mountainous rocks… valleys of stone formations resembling a penis…. perfect for CLIMBING! Yes… perfect for climbing. Aside from climbing, we did a 4km trek that lasted 1½ hours. The trek wasn’t really strenuous or challenging so Luc came up with the idea of filming our version of the Blair Witch Project. The only problem was that Luc didn’t bother informing the rest of the party of my plan. Luc wanted it to be spontaneous and she pressed the record button and simply shouted “Hey! I’m recording. Run! Scream!” Strangely enough, We did exactly as told without a moments thought. ANYWAY, the video was fantastic except that you could hear Luc laughing the whole way. Man… I’m really loving this trip now!
Question… What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words “Turkish Bath”? I think of fat Turks torturing you by slapping your backs with wet towels and scrubbing your whole body roughly with a rock. Well, it didn’t turn out to be the case. In fact, it was hilarious and for some… extremely ticklish. I learnt a baby lingo in Turkey that was put into good use when we had our Turkish Bath. It’s “Bom-Bom” and it means to take a bath. Well, guess what… the 6 of us Bom-Bom together with about 10 other individuals (men and women), and all we had was a towel to cover our modesty. Imagine the girls’ shocked faces when they stepped into the bathing area and saw the boys lounging by the taps. The gals are going to Bom-Bom with the boys! Lost and confused, we just sat by the taps laughing and splashing water at each other. Then we were ushered to a room where we were scrubbed and massaged by 2 Turkish men. Benny was tickled by this big Turkish man, and when he asked the man to stop, the turk simply ignored him, and continued. Haha. Later, Benny and I could later hear the laughter (tickled) of Cecilia. Haha.
Cappadocia is also the birth place of the “Body Tsunami” and “Boon See-rella”. Both were founded by our dear Korean and both are associated with our multi-named ex-auditor, Cecilia a.k.a. Boon See a.k.a. CBS a.k.a. Auntie. It all started when CBS tried to teach one her erotic dance moves to Julie and Peiyi, which is called a “Body Wave”. The wave never surfaced. It just simply erupted into a tsunami. In other words, the 2 girls were doing the most un-sexy, un-glamorous, un-graceful contortion of their bodies. Next is the origin of Boon See-rella. As you can tell, Boon See-rella is actually a result of the combination of Boon See and Cinderella. Before the start of the trip, Julie found out that Cecilia’s name is Boon See and her fascination with the name grew at an accelerated pace. She has since replaced the words “Don’t Cha” with “Boon See” from a song by the Pussycat Dolls, came up with a Chinese New Year jingle with the words “Boon See”, and fabricated a fairytale of Princess Boon See-rella. I think we have to give the Korean credit for creativity at least.
6th April to 7th April 2007 – Ephesus / Kusadasi / Pamukkale:
After enduring 12 hours of being slowly roasted by the heater (actually it was Benny who was roasted. He sat next to the heater, complaining it was damn hot. I though it was just him till the other gals complained) in the overnight coach, we finally arrived in Ephesus
Ephesus is known to be the best-preserved Roman city in the eastern Mediterranean and was the site for one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis (Goddess of fertility, animals). As it was close to the Mediterranean, the weather was much warmer than Istanbul or Cappadocia, and we were actually sun burnt after only walking / climbing for 4 hours. we had a slight disagreement with our tour guide who actually told Julie to hold her silence, which subsequently resulted in us making the decision to break away from the tour group. The scale of Ephesus is indeed staggering and was connected throughout by wide stone roads. It had an ancient 2 story high library (partially preserved), a large amphitheatre. We tested the acoustics of the amphitheatre and found that a person speaking at the stage could be audiblely heard even at the top of the amphitheatre, about 5 stories high I think. Likewise, a person speaking in a normal voice high up at the amphitheatre can be heard at the stage!
After countless nights spent in a room with 5 people and on coaches that treated us like turkeys ready for roasting, we were in for a treat at Kusadasi. Our lodging for the night was in a 5 stars hotel that overlooked the Agean Sea. It was 2 to a room with our own beds, en-suite bathroom, a big balcony with a mesmerizing view, and cable TV.
We had to leave for Pamukkale, also referred to as “Cotton Castle”, the very next day. The bus ride there was torturous because firstly, I had to wake up at 7am. However, we were compensated by a free buffet lunch at another 5 stars hotel. Apparently, Luc was very amused by the apparent sparkle in my eyes when I saw the food. I quote from her blog “ I must say that this guy is really easily satisfied. Just throw him a few loaves of bread and he’ll resemble the laughing Buddha.” Anyway, Pamukkale is famous for its gleaming white calcium travertine filled with warm mineral water. There is a legend surrounding the water. Supposedly a lady attempted to end her miserable life by jumping off the cliff because she was so upset about her appearance. She didn’t succeed and landed in the water whereby she lay unconscious for 3 days. Coincidentally, a prince found her and he fell deeply in love with her because she suddenly became beautiful. Hence, the Romans built the city, Hierapolis, above the pools to take advantage of the water’s curative powers. The story is pretty disbelieving but I changed my mind when everyone wanted to take a picture with Boon See-rella and Julie. They were hot stuff in Pamukkale! And all we did was soak our feet in the water for 10 minutes! Btw, Julie attempted to drink some of the water downstream while we had a break before ascending to the city. When we got up, we saw hordes of people immersing their feet in the water upstream! (She said she didn put the water but I though she did. Haha.)
Hierapolis is built above the pools. In ancient times, it was a place where the sick came for a miracle cure, but the size of the necropolis (cemetery) suggests that the success rate was pretty low. Anyway, the necropolis was massive, with many different types of tombs. A rather educational trip but the walk there stole our time for the visit to the Roman theatre, although we tried our best to run up the slope in the bloody heat towards the theatre.
8th April 2007 – Istanbul:
We took a flight back to Istanbul after our Pamukkale excursion, and arrived around midnight. The plan was to put our stuff down in our new hostel and head straight for the club called Crystal. After all, it is widely acclaimed that Istanbul is one of the top European clubbing city, and we had to see it to believe it. However, everyone was completely shacked out and initially we were not keen to go clubbing in such a state BUT we had to share the hostel room with 2 other strangers and the place didn’t look the least bit inviting. It was so different from our previous hostel. Julie kept on shouting Borat Borat hoping that he will appear and give us our comfortable room in the Metropolis Hostel. What a shame for it didn’t work. Anyway, we figured that sleep won’t come so easily that night, and decided to visit the pub across the street. We were lured into it because it was playing the type of music that the Lomo Girls liked.
I hope you still remember that I mentioned an irritating Turk. He came into our lives again that night. Basically, he was in love with Luc’s 10 years old torn and tattered jeans. He couldn’t let go of her and kept on trying to persuade me to swap jeans with him. He was so persistent and downright annoying that the girls had to pretend to be lesbians in a bid to shake him off. Big mistake because the word lesbian got him even more interested, and I had to endure another hour explaining to him that I have no intentions of making out with a girl in front of him for his pleasure. It was a real test of my patience and I had to hide in a corner behind the Lomo Girls in the end. Now… the real reason why we only left at 5.30am was because of the Lomo Girls. They were doing their erotic dance moves again. We spent most of the night watching waves and waves of Body Tsunamis, and episodes of lap dancing. It was hilarious but Benny and I were so tired that it didn hold our interest for long.
time really FILES man!! just a wink of an eye and year 2007 is over soon... OMG!!
haha. Hua, Bk and myself got them slightly less than a year ago at my PUB Family Day. They were won in some game stalls. Peanut belongs to Hua, Jelly to BK and Butter to myself. Peanut was the name on its tag so it started from there. PBJ. hmm, can form group already. 
