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Hello again!
Yes...i know i'm a lot more up to date with my photos...finding the time to type out my journal is a little harder. So I want to tell you all about my Turkish adventure...
After my new brilliant drug solution to long haul flights (sleeping pills), I arrived in Istanbul from New York pretty refreshed. Just as well as I was about to become acquainted with the Turkish art of traffic control...no right of way, no visible roadrules as far as i could see - getting through was simply a combination of horn blowing and hand signals!
After arriving surprisingly safe to my hostel in the old city, Sultanahmet, I realised quickly that being back in a hostel was going to take some getting used to...hot, very stinky with the bathroom shower over the toilet with no visible drainhole. So yep..the bathroom floor just fills up. Needless to say, despite not having a shower since the morning before in New York, I made a quick decision that I didn't smell bad enough yet to warrant using the filthy bathroom. Ah..the backpacking fun begins for real now.
After trying to make myself look as human as possible without the use of water, I headed up to the rooftop terrace bar to join a turkish barbecue and have a few drinks. The place was filled with London based Aussies practicing their liquor technique in preparation for the coming Anzac week. I met a couple of great girls from Sydney & watched the sun set over the Bosphorus River while getting acquainted over a couple of vodkas. We were scheduled on different tours but exchanged numbers in the hope of meeting in Anzac Cove come the end of the week.
As I discovered dark & early the next morning, 5am was to be my new wake up time in Turkey, with the Muslim call to prayer echoing from Mosques right across the city. I became quite enchanted by the different calls, and as they happened five times a day I had plenty of chances to listen. I spent the ensuing day catching up on sleep, as the last four weeks had apparently caught up with me. When I did dare to venture out for water, a turkish man insisting I must be a princess followed me to the store, all the while saying, ''Princess...Aussie princess'', until he saw me return safely to my hotel. I grew to know pretty quickly that I would need a good sense of humour to deal with Turkish men. They really are harmless and although they would test me at times I found it quite amusing - just their way of being friendly and no doubt they just dreamt of marrying anyone that wasnt turkish!
Our Anzac tour left the next day, 30 or so Aussies & a few kiwis thrown in for good measure. The jokes on the bus began, and whenever a scapegoat was needed it would be a kiwi or the Tassie chick, so I found myself defending our little island state from the get go. It made it easy to make friends & like always I made it my mission to learn everyones name by day 2. Eleven hours on a bus is enough to make the sanest person a bit nutty, so by the time we arrived at the Pamukkale calcium terraces, we were all so keen to go for a walk! It was stunning there - calcium deposits that looked like snow cascading down the slope filled with pools of blue thermal water. Cleopatra was said to have honeymooned in Pamukkale, and there is a thermal pool named after her. As I'm sure you will agree from the photos, the place is spectacular!
First up next morning was a visit to a carpet weaving showroom, which we all expected to be BORING. We were wrong though - turned out to be quite amuzing. Orders were taken for apple tea, beer, wine and raki (Turkey's answer to Ouzo..) before being shown dozens & dozens of turkish carpets. It didn't matter what your objection was, they had the colour, the answer and/or the reason why you didn't really mean that you didn't want a carpet. I thought I had it covered when I said, ''I don't have a home, so nowhere to put a carpet''. The salesman's response was, ''Well then you need something to wrap yourself up in at night to keep warm!''. I was rescued by the guy next to me that I had never spoken to, who calmly put his arm around my shoulder and said, ''She doesn't need a carpet, she has me for that''. I was so embarrassed! But grateful for the save. The salesman laughed and high fived Rob before moving on to his next sales prospect.
By the time we arrived in the seaside town of Kusadasi after a day of visiting lots of ancient ruins, I was ready to party. Three days of hot, sticky weather by day and early nights had built me up some festive energy. After some very funny karaoke, we found ourselves a pumping Irish pub with great music that took us into the early hours, a really fun night out dancing as you will make from the photos. It seems I went to bed too early though as all the next days talking points happened long after I crawled into bed just before 3am!
Everyone was pretty quiet the next day and wandering around more ancient ruins was hardly my idea of fun. Interesting, sure..but after a couple of days of ruins and on a few hours sleep I was done. I headed back to the bus with a couple of new mates and cracked a beer in the afternoon sunshine. Beer quickly turned to sleep on the bus and before we knew it we were at our last night stop before Anzac Cove. The energy and excitement in all of us was brewing, our expectations of Anzac day building the closer we got to Gallipolli. I think we were all beginning to enjoy getting to know each other better so we could spend Anzac night with our mates instead of strangers. We were due to be out of bed at 5am the next day for our journey to Gallipolli as we had to get our driving & ferry over with early so that we could sightsee and make the walk into the cove early enough to still get a grass spot. So an early night was planned to get our sleep as we knew there wouldn't be any the following night. On my way back to my room around 9, I was distracted by an offer of a nightcap on the balcony with a couple of people on my tour. It was warm out, and a drink turned into a few vodkas, some shenanigans involving a stolen australian flag & me crawling into bed at 2am with only 3 hours until wake up call. Silly girl!
Anzac Experience to come soon...
Keep the emails coming, its great to hear from you all!
Hope all is well at home, fill me in on what you've been up to.
Love Bindi x
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