Episodes from a day on the Nile

Around 11am
We're drifting down the Nile on a felucca as the last light of the sun starts to disappear into the dessert.  We had the hot western wind from the dessert earlier and we almost got up a bow wave. 

2pm-ish
The day didn't start well as a couple of the group are feeling under the weather so we our departure and hung out in the air conditioned breakfast room to give them a chance to feel better.  We ended up leaving one couple behind, but I think they are planning a nice romantic evening felucca ride by themselves.  So we left about 11am instead of 9am and boarded a sailboat that is about 4 metres wide and 12 metres long. Doesn't seem that long to me but that is what one of the Mohammeds has just told me.  The captain is Mustafah, one of the crew is also Mustafah, the other crew member is Mohammed and so is our tour guide.  You have a fitfy fifty chance of getting the name right.  Mustafah the crew member is the cook and he made us a fabulous lunch of babagnoush, mashed garlic spuds, some onion, tomato and egg thing, the ubiquitous tomato, cucumber and feta with an original touch of coriander, and some egyptian bread.  It was amazing. 

Afternoon
We stopped for at a beach for a swim while some of the locals and their livestock looked on.  The Nile was quite clear and refreshing, not a hint of a crocodile or a piranha that someone had been worried about.  It was also a toilet stop - second bush to the right with a lookout nearby.  Then we went under the bridge.  Problem is the mast is higher than the bridge so the mast in in two parts and the top half swivels down so that you drift under the bridge.

6-7pm
We are now docked against the beach and I have my 'slow' playlist on while we look up at the stars after the hard work of constructing the toilet (I held the torch; I'm exhausted....).  We are sleeping on the deck of the felucca.  About a handspan below the top of the boat, two thirds from the aft is covered with wood and then a mattress where we will be sleeping under a canvas cover.  There is a small cabin in the bow but I think that is where the crew sleep.  There are only four of us so we will have scads of room - not like the 10 people in the other group who are moored near us.  If we were nice, we'd offer to share.  We're not nice though. 

9pm - ish
Dinner was by candlelight and was a pasta soup followed by rice and a spud, tomato and other stuff dish.  It was very nice, but not as nice as lunch.  We're now sitting on the felucca by the light of one candle and are watching the cruise ships go by.  There is a steady stream of them and apparently they keep going till about midnight.  They're quite noisy so I'm glad they don't go all night.  We are waiting for the other group to finish their dinner, then we're going to have a fire and the crew are going to play some drums for us.  I've been for a visit to the tent toilet.  I'm tall enough to see over the tent side when I'm sitting down, so I'm now going to refer to it as the room with a view. 

Morning, early morning
Something is very wrong with this trip.  I've seen two sunrises and woke well before sunrise this morning.  The orange light of dawn breaking over the Nile was worth the lack of sleep.  The bright yellow of sunrise about half and hour later was even better.  Everyone was still sleeping (or pretending to at least) so I went for a quick refreshing dip and then waited for everyone else to get up and cook us some breakfast.  We cast off and then a lovely spread of pancakes with bananas and honey as we again drifted.  There s a small bit of wind now so we're semi drifting and semi sailing.

Temples, Mickey Mouse and pipes

At 3.15am when the alarm went off, I was wondering whose stupid idea this was.  But I trudged like a zombie out to meet the group and we all hopped into a van.  It is a three hour drive through the dessert to see Abu Simbel and it is done in convoy with an escort from the police.  This conjured up images in my mind of a line of vehicles moving in an orderly line through the dessert with an armoured car (perhaps a tank?) at each end and dust flying as we drove past dangers unknown.   In reality, a policeman gets in to the first and last vehicle and off everyone goes on the nicely tarsealed road, overtaking at will, driving on the wrong side of road as it takes their fancy.  There are no dangers unknown, the convoy is in case someone breaks down so that help can be provided immediately and passengers off loaded to one of the bigger buses.  With seven of us in the van, we were able to spread out a bit and I dozed for much of the trip occasionally surfacing to look at the dessert and catch the sunrise.

We arrived at Abu Simbel at 7am and it was already quite hot as we sat outside the main temple while Mohammed gave us an explanation of the temples (he's not allowed to do that inside).  The detailed carving of the four huge statues perched on thrones outside the temple is amazing and the inside is covered in carved pictures of various scenes, many of which relate to making offerings and mythological stories. 

The temple was constructed by Ramsses II and the second for his beloved wife Nefertari who died at a young age just when the temple was completed.  Old Ramsses II continued to the ripe old age of 92 and had about 50 wives and nearly 200 children.  These were up there with some of the best temples I've seen on this trip - especially as they are not in their original site.  The damming of the Nile meant that these and about 20 other archaeological sites were in danger of being drowned.  In the 1960s they were moved to protect them in a complex operation.  Abu Simbel and the Philae temple (which I will get to later) were the biggest ones that were moved.

It was then back in the van by 10am for the convoy back to Aswan.  The Philae temple is just out of Aswan so we stopped there on the way back.  Entrance is 12 Egyptian pounds but the funny thing is that it is on an island  and the price of the boat is not included in the ticket.  The Philae temple was moved from another island and took 10 years.  The temple of for Isis so that she could visit her dead husband Osiris as his mother had taken his body on the back of a crocodile to a nearby island so that he could have some peace and quiet.

There was time for a swim and a greek salad by the pool at the hotel before we were back in the boat to find our camel ride.  Cathy and I had a camel ride in Morocco and it was not that pleasant (especially as Cathy's camel had a mind of it's own and kept taking off).  The ride in Giza was mostly just hot.  So goodness knows why I was doing this again.  But it was quite nice.  It was a slow walk through the dessert in the early evening to see the sunset.  The others were on camels called Ramsess, and Moon and the like.  I was on Mickey Mouse.

We then had a nice dinner at a restaurant on the Nile followed by a sheesha pipe (we tried mint - yuck, apple - nice, pmiceach - nice, and cherry - ho hum).

Sleepless in Aswan

Leaving Cairo on a midnight train.  Ok, so the train left at about 9pm and it was all fairly mild and undramatic.  But this is what I wrote at about 9am:

"The train, it seems, needed a new engine sometime in the night. Hence we are running 4 hours behind schedule.  But it does mean that we get to see quite a bit of scenery - and it's much nicer than dusty, dirty Cairo. There seem to be a lot of corn fields. And donkeys. There are cars and bikes on the road, but also a lot of donkeys pulling carts.  Despite oil being one of Egypt's major industries, there is apparently a shortage of fuel so for those farmers with donkeys, this is not a worry.  I get the feeling it is not the the fuel shortage that determines their mode of transport The scenery seems to be crops (mostly corn or something similar) or sand. It has something to do with where the flood plains begin and end."

Then I got distracted and didn't write anymore.  We had whiled away the evening playing Shithead (quite good card game despite the name) and, sadly, I ended the game with the toilet paper crown.  I had slept the night much better than I'd expected, still I was quite tired so we lazed about on the bunks until the last possible moment. 

We are staying in a quite nice hotel right next to the Nile.  It has a pool which I tried out today before the camel ride.  But I'm skipping ahead.  After we'd settled into the hotel we were picked up in a motorboat from in front of the hotel and Achmed told us some history of the Nubian people and Elphantine Island.  Some of it was quite interesting, but I didn't really take much in.  Then we went to a 'beach' on the Nile for a paddle, some Nubian coffee and a walk up some sand dunes.
me
We had dinner in JJ's home and we wandered the aromatic (i.e. smelled like farm animals) streets of his village and arrived at his house.  We were then invited to walk around his house and take pictures.  Never mind the younger sister asleep in one of the beds.  We were combined with another group for dinner, which was a very very nice lentil soup (hard to believe, I know), followed by a vegetable tagen, rice, fish, chicken and salad.  Also homemade mango juice and lemonade.  The after dinner entertainment was JJ's description of Nubian courtship and marriage.  He is a bit of a story teller so it was quite entertaining.

When we returned to the hotel, there was a wedding in progress.  Weddings include lots and lots of drums, which is not good when you have to get up at 3.30am.  Surprisingly, I slept quite well until I woke up some time in the night worried about not waking up on time. 

I still haven't told you about the camels, but I'll leave that for the next post as I'm a wee bit sleepy.

Cairo

It's been a long day - and we've yet to catch the night train to Luxor.  I met the tour group this morning - two british sisters, a couple from Seattle, and of course Anita my roommate who I'd already met and who talked me out of my pjs and into a drink on the roof last night.  Our guide is Mohammed.

I'm sure there are lots of things to see in Cairo, but I'm only here for a day so it was all about ancient Egypt.  First stop was the Pyramids and we went inside the grand pyramid.  It starts off well, then gets lower and stepper before opening up to a very high corridor and a bit of a climb.  It wouldnt't have been so bad, but it was also quite hot so I was definitely 'glowing' when we came out.  There are three big pyramids - Khufu, his son and someone's grandson.  There are 6 other much smaller pyramids for the womenfolk.   We took lots of photos, checked out the spots where the pharoah's boats were and then rode camels.  I wasn't overly fond of camels when we rode them in Morocco and my opinion remains unchanged.  Give me  a horse any day.  But we were led about, had our photos taken and they were all amazed that my legs were long enough to easily get on to the camel.  Final stop for that area was the Sphinx for a look through the temple and photos of the Sphinx.  We stopped for falafel and then onto the museum. There were lots of cool stuff there and Mohammed told us lots of information about it all.  The highlights were all the Tutankhamen stuff.

Right next to the museum is a quite big high rise building that has been burned and gutted.  This used to be the headquarters of the previous government party. 

I feel like I should have lots of stuff to say, but I'm mostly just hot and tired.  Perhaps I might have another go tonight on the train.

Ugh, I hate the first day in a new country

New country, new language, new alphabet.  Next holiday I'm gonna limit the number of languages I need to grapple with.  The flight out of Istanbul was delayed as we hung out on the tarmac for an hour waiting for the traffic jam to clear.  I was just thankful that I was on the plane because when I checked in they told me that I didn't have a booking.  It was only when I produced the paperwork that they found me a seat - a nice aisle seat in the exit row so I guess I can't complain.

As I was making my way towards the baggage claim, a man asked me if I needed a taxi and said he was authorised by the government to help me.  That sounded like a load of bollocks to me, but I did need a taxi and the price he quoted sounded about right.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a real taxi - just some guy with a car who took me to the wrong hotel and then spent the next half hour asking someone every 100 metres where my hotel was.  But who knows if a 'real' taxi would have been any better.

Between the late flight and the trouble getting to the hotel, I missed the welcome meeting and they've all gone out without me.  Probably just as well as I'm grumpy and sitting here sipping my wine and looking at the night view of Cairo from the top of the hotel is exactly what I feel like doing.  I'll be up for cheerfully meeting new people and making small talk tomorrow.  My roommate for this trip is someone called Anita.  She went out and took the key to the room out with her so is not doing well in the the best roommate stakes so far. 

I've seen very little of Cairo so far.  The somewhat convoluted trip from the airport and the view from the hotel.  Living in NZ, you forget that much of the world lives in apartment blocks - and not the kind with a killer view.  I found myself thinking of the wise man who built his house upon the rock in the taxi.  It's funny how you don't question the ridiculous ideas you form in childhood until fully confronted with evidence to the the contrary.  I'd always figured that any fool would know not to build his house on the beach where all the sand is and that the wise man wasn't really all that wise.  But we're a long way from the beach in Cairo and there's still a shitload of sand about.  Not many rocks thought so I'm guessing the wiseman was also quite rich.

There's been a bit of unrest here recently - something about a film - so I'm quite pleased that I arrived on a Saturday.  Apparently, Friday is the day when most protest and riots happen as this is the muslim equivalent of Sunday.  I'm getting used to seeing men with big guns just standing around.  Anyway, I think the taxis are a bigger risk.  Last time I was in a beeping country, the taxi driver had an accident.  This is worse.  In South America they beeped before running a stop sign or going round a corner.  Here, it's pretty much constant.  I take from this that no-one uses rear vision or checks their blindspot before moving.  It's a bit disconcerting, but for the most part, the traffic is going to slow for any major damage.

Dinner eaten - check (vegetable lasagne, but I couldn't see anything egyptian on the menu)
Wine drunk - check
View admired - check.
Eavesdropped on neighbouring table talking about Peter Jackson's accent -check.

Must be bedtime.  Now I just have to find someone to open my room.  Sigh.

(PS - on the plus side, I just had very nice meal and a very average glass of wine for the equivalent of NZD10 - including tip.)

"I'm sexy and I know it"

Ok, so it's an odd title for a post about Istanbul, but the taxi driver decided to play this on the way to the airport - just after he offered me a cigarette.  He didn't speak any English so I'm not sure if he understood the words of the song.  We did have an interesting conversation in which I tried to interpret what he was asking.  I ended up telling him that I was Australian, because he just looked confused when I said I was from New Zealand.  Harry Killim (or something) was his grinning response.  Thanks to my evening playing backgammon with a Turkish man the night before, I knew that ol' Harry is an Aussie who plays soccer for one of the best local teams.

I'm eating an outrageously expensive burger king sundae so that I have a place to sit while I wait for check in to open.  The nice coffee place didn't have any seats left and the restaurant looked way too posh for my backpack.  I'm quite sad to leave Turkey - there is so much that I haven't seen, especially in Istanbul. 

I should have seem more.  I had time to see more, but I just wanted to chill out and relax in my last couple of days in Istanbul.  I did go to Topkapi Palace on Thursday morning with Jennifer once the rest of the tour had arrived back from their bus trip and we'd all said our goodbyes.  Topkapi Palace is huge and there is lots to see.  It is, however, overrun with tourists to the point that I was feeling very closed in (Frances would have hated it).   We paid the extra 15 lira and saw the Harem.  The heirarchy amongst a group of women who were essentially slaves is interesting  - all determined by whether the Sultan wants to have sex with you and whether you get pregnant with a son.  Still, I think the eunuchs had it worse.

Part of the display is the holy relics including Moses' cane, David's sword, John the Baptist's arm (in gold/brass/?? casing).  All of the prophets down to Mohammed.  Then there is the treasury full of lots and lots of bling and quite a few thrones.  The mass of people was really starting to get to me by then so I did a very quick circuit peeking over people's shoulders and not really reading what anything was.  Wandering around the gardens and the tile and fresco filled rooms was nice, but I could easily have given the whole palace a miss.  There was way too many people and I have enjoyed some of the other museums and sights I've seem on my trip far more.

Jennifer and Edwin were also staying an extra night so I caught up with them at the Mikla bar which has a fantastic view across the city (thanks to the recommendation from the Aussie lawyers) and very expensive drinks.  We then had dinner at a very nice restaurant right beside the Galata tower and I finally go to try the turkish ravioli.

I had planned a cruise on the Bosphorous the next day but I just couldn't find any enthusiasm so I browsed through the shops near where I'm staying and then toddled off to see the Istanbul Modern art gallery.  After spending weeks seeing old stuff, the gallery was a refreshing change.  A couple of the works stood out:
- the gallery has a library and books speared with wire form a fake ceiling - I'm gonna steal that one I think.
- as you enter, there are five tv screens showing some green variously shaped widgets moving to a repeating descending tonal beeping.  As you walk through the rest of the gallery, you can still hear the beeping
- there are a lot of video arts.  One that is most impressive is a picture of a building with while curtains blowing out the windows all the way along.  With the accompanying music it is quite peaceful and restful - until the very end when it goes dark and you hear explosions and see their flash.  The description (which I read after) tells that it was secretly filmed by the artist in 2005 when her Beirut hotel was under UN protection due to the fighting. 
- they had a temporary exhibition about urban walls in which artists have replicated/ taken inspiration from graffiti and other things that appear on the walls of city streets.  The pieces are collected from around the world and were done at different times.

I managed to squeeze in a shopping trip at the Grand Bazaar before my final evening in Istanbul, which was a dinner tour that I had been given free when I booked the Turkey tour.  I arrived at Intrepid office and discovered I was the only one doing the tour.  Salih, a 23 your old just recently graduated from his tour guide degree, was my guide for the evening and we headed off to have dinner with a family.  The family are kurdish from eastern turkey and there had just recently been some terrorism activity there.  Talking to Salih, who has just had a friend killed in an attack, it seems an impossibly complicated situation where one brother will 'go into the mountains' and join the terrorists while another brother will be in the army.  Many of the kurdish people know some of the terrorists as well as some of the people they are killing. The dinner itself and the family were very nice, but it is an odd situation when you don't speak the same language and Salih translated everything and you have very little in common to talk about.  I enjoyed the second part of the evening much more when we went to a cafe, drank tea and played backgammon.  A hookah pipe was included, but I declined and stuck with tea.

Flying with the birds and down to 42 below

I've been having way too much fun so haven't posted in a few days but the end of the tour is near and I'm relaxing under the verandah in the hotel waiting for my transfer to the airport to arrive.  The rest of the people are taking a 12 hour bus trip but I decided that was a bit of a nightmare and managed to find a cheap flight.

I think my last post was after Kas and we spend a night in Konya after that.  There's not much to say about Konya apart from the felt making demonstration we went to - way more complicated and time consuming than you would think - and the museum.  Whirling dervishes are big in Konya and there is the tomb of Mevlana who is big in dervish circles.  I have seen his tomb so this means I will have a long and happy life.  Combined with Cleopatra's pool of youth in Pamukkale, I'm pretty much set.

The highlight of Goreme has been the hot air balloon ride.  We were up before dawn yesterday morning and then sat around in a room waiting for nearly an hour (what a waste of sleeping time!) before heading out in the van.  We were with Graham, and englishman with 30 odd years ballooning experience.  We were up in the air just in time to see the sunrise and then floated for about an hour looking at the rock formations, grape vines, pumpkin fields and drying grapes below.  Some of the best photos are of the other 80 balloons that were up at the same time - about 1500 people in the air.  Graham thought that it was too congested and stayed away from the other balloons as much as possible.  On landing, four men grabbed onto the side of the basket and stopped it from turning over.  I  thought they were a bit skinny for the job.  Cherry juice and cheap bubbles finished the trip.

On the way from Konya, we stopped in an old caravan shelter on the trip to Goreme, and that was interesting for a short stop.  The shelter's were so important for trade that everything in them was provided free by the  Sultan.  This one is on the silk road.

Goreme is a nice little tourist town full of cafes (including one that makes a decent flat white!), restaurants and tourist shops.  This seems to be very much a backpacker destination rather than a British tourist enclave like some of other destinations.   We went out to dinner last night and had pottery kebap which was quite interesting.  Then we went to Fatboys bar for a few drinks and trying the hookah pipe (we had apple flavoured).  It was quite nice and I felt very chilled out but not sure if that was the wine or the hookah.

Cappodocia is full of interesting rock formations - those of you who have seen my facebook pictures will know that some of these formations are a wee bit phallic.  People made their homes in these and you can stay in cave hotels still today.  The open air museum we visited is full of churches some of which have fantastic frescos on their walls.  Apparently they had to keep the churches secret because of the frescoes as icons - even in paintings - were considered to be sinful.  The churches were quite small and there were lots of people so we started taking turns peeking inside to see if it was worth the others making the effort.  They are quite interesting but they start to look a bit same-ish after a while.  We did a bit of a hike to one of the valleys with rock formations yesterday and went quad biking to a few other locations today, including one which dominates the skyline at Cavisun (or something like that).  I accidently went off-roading on the bike for a wee bit, but it was a quite fun, if dusty, way to spend the morning.

Yesterday we also went on a trip to Derinkuyu which is this big underground city.  It is from a something or a rather century BC and was build by the Hittites who were clearly quite short.  It was only used for protection during times of war but it is quite a large city. They have excavated 8 floors and there are apparently 13 into total (or was it 14?).  It was really interesting but very low ceilings in places.  Ozan told us that if went round this one semi-circular tunnel three times we'd be lucky in love and then once we'd all done it told us he'd made the whole thing up!  We went down to the 7th floor which is about 42 metres down.  If I'd planned ahead we could have drunk some 42 below vodka.

Pink couches and logic puzzles

I think I finished my last post while sipping coffee and sitting in the sunshine on the back of the boat.  Things only got better from there.  Breakfast was delicious especially this nice poached eggs and yoghurt thing (much better than it sounds).  The rest of the day was much of the same.  Lots of swimming and eating and lying in the sun.  We saw the sunken city but the water wasn't really smooth so you couldn't see very much.  You aren't allowed to swim or dive in the city because they want to preserve it.  But it seems that a steady stream of boats motoring past a hair's breath from the ruins is perfectly ok.

The area is all part of the old Lycian area and there was an old cemetery and castle thing so we wondered around there for a while.  I climbed a rock and made the mistake of putting my hand on a plant and then spent the next half hour pulling out prickles from my palms.  The cemetery is quite impressive.  It's a couple of thousand years old and a number of the graves are still mostly in tact.  They have upside down boat hulls on them to signify the person inside was a sailor.  The only disappointment was that we didn't really sail.  The skipper did put up the main sail and the gib on the trip home but he still had the motor going and he was really a bit crap at the whole sailing business.  The gib was flapping around all of the place and would occasionally collapse all together.

We spent our evening in Kas and just had dinner, a wander through the town and then a few of us had cocktails on a big pink couch.  I still felt like I was rocking slightly when we went to bed - and not just from the rather strong cocktail I had consumed.

Yesterday (Sunday) it was nightmare travel day.  We were picked up from the hotel in a largest van and spent nearly 4 hours in it to Antalya.  It was quite a nice drive along the coast where you would come across little beaches and inlets along the way.  I really wanted to stop and go for a swim.  The bus from Antalya to Konya was  a bigger bus and more comfortable but it was more than 5 hours which was  a bit hideous.  The scenery was quite nice - but not really enough to keep you occupied for 5 hours. 

Our achievements for the day were solving several logic puzzles that Charlie set for us, naming all 50 states of America and most of the African countries, and teaching several of the group to play yuka.  We could have done NZ provinces, but I don't think even I could name all of them so that seemed a bit too challenging.

One of Charlie's logic puzzles to keep you thinking:

A prison guard decides to give his inmates an opportunity to be set free.  He has a room with a switch that has two settings: on and off.  He will randomly select the prisoners to visit the room and it is possible that one prisoner could visit the room more than once before some prisoners have visited at all.  He will set the prisoners free when one person comes and tells him that all the prisoners have visited the room but if they are wrong, the game ends and they must all stay in prison.  The only communication the prisoners have is the on/off switch and they have no other way of finding out information.  All the prisoners are allowed to meet beforehand to discuss their strategy.  What should their strategy be to ensure that they go free?

Livin' it up on the Med

The start to the day was not particularly exciting - a van to the bus station and then a two hour public ride to Kas.  The countryside we  drove through looked quite like home with pine forests, poplar and gum trees, and the odd cow scattered about.  There was also a large number of glass (plastic) houses and when you looked out across the plains from the hill, the glass houses covered most of the available area.  But we left the plains behind, crested a hill and there was the sea looking lovely and blue and inviting. 

After lunch and a brief wander through the shops in Kas, it was all aboard and off to sea we went. The Selin-3, from the aft of which I am writing at the moment, is a cross between a yacht and a launch.  There are two short masts and they have sails on them all ready to go, but I have yet to see them up.  It's very wide practically from the bow to the stern.  We motored for about an hour or so and then stopped for a swim and a snorkel.  The water is so warm and quite salty so I just float with very little effort.  There weren't many interesting fish, but it was still nice.  We then motored for another couple of hours into a nice sheltered inlet. 
Along the way, Jennifer caught four fish, I caught one tiny wee one, and one of the crew caught one. 

Apart from that we just lazed about and saved our energy for another swim when we arrived.  Lisa dived in and forgot that she had her sunglasses on so the skipper, Osmon, donned flippers and mask and after several attempts surfaced with them on his face (to much applause).  After a very long swim, it was a busy evening of playing cards, learning backgammon (or relearning, I think Grandpa taught us when we were kids), eating a fabulous meal including the fish we had caught, and generally chilling out.  The highlight was a trip in the dingy (inflatable) to a big cave where the phosphorescence was fantastic.

Our sleeping quarters were on deck and four of us were on top of the cabin on little mattresses.  I was a little worried that I was going to roll off on to the deck and into the water and wake up with the fishes in the morning but someone swapped with me so I wasn't on the edge.  We looked up at the stars (the rest had a cover over them) and I saw about 6 or 7 falling stars before I went to sleep.  And then woke and turned.  And then woke and turned....  At about 6.30am Justin suggested a swim and we slipped into the mirror flat water.  It was still warm (with the occasional cold spot to keep you awake).

I'm now sipping coffee (instant but beggars can't be choosers), sitting in the sun and listening to the sounds of breakfast being prepared.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Ghost towns and falling skies

We left Pamukkale yesterday on an early bus.  Luckily we were first on as we all got seats on this public bus that took 5 hours.  An older woman got on later and decided that she wanted my seat so she sat on me and poked her stick into me.  I was about to slightly ungraciously offer her my seat but the tour guide offered her his.  It wasn't the most pleasant bus journey I've ever taken but it was bearable - especially as I had my trusty tablet and watched a movie after whiling away an hour or so playing cards with Mary.

We are staying in Kayakoy and we could have grabbed a taxi to the beach, but decided to chill out a bit at the hotel and then spend an hour floating in a nearby pool instead.  Dinner was a whole sea bass (or sea bream, I'm not quite sure) grilled on the barbeque followed by baklava and ice-cream.

This morning we set out at 8am to walk 6km of the 500km Lycian Way.  The first part of the walk was through a ghost town.  After the war of independence in 1922, there was a population exchange where Greek Muslims moved to Turkey and Christian Greeks living in Turkey moved back to Greece.  Many had lived here for generations and didn't really speak the same language as mainland Greeks so it all sounds a bit horrible.  The town of Kayakoy used to be a Greek village and when the Greek muslims came here they didn't like it and so built their houses on the below.  The village has been left to slowly decay.  The village was located on a hillside and not one house obscured the view of the other.  We then had a nice walk through pine forest and ended at the blue lagoon and at small village that is kind of part of Oludeniz where we spent the rest of the day.

The beach is one of those ones where you pay for a lounge chair and an umbrella, so we sat on the beach for our first swim.  The water was lovely but the stoney beach was a bit sore on the feet - especially as it was also hot.  After a walk through the town we decided to check out the blue lagoon.  It cost to get in but I really wanted to go for a swim there.  Sadly, when we got there, it looked awful.  Very crowded, full of and a bit dirty.  We swam on the ocean side instead and that was great.  I swam out to a small island and sat on the rocks for a bit looking at the yachts moored on the other side.  Then it was a beer on the beach as we watched the paragliders falling one after the other - the sky is full of them and they land right in the town so you have to keep your eye out when you're walking along the boulevard.  If we'd had longer, I would have been tempted to give the paraglider a go.  Ellie has just told me it's the second best place in the world to go paragliding after Rio.

On our way back to our hotel, we came across a small procession with a little boy all dressed up in white finery and riding a horse.  Boys in these outfits are quite common - they are on their way to get circumcised so their fathers look happy and proud and the poor kids look terrified.

White terraces

We've just arrived in Kayakoy and we have a lovely lightfilled (but fairly basic) room in one of the small family run hotels in this ghost town.  It's been a long morning travelling on a public bus - at one point another passenger was practically sitting on my lap. 

I had expected to see amazing sights on this tour; I hadn't expected Pamukkale to be one of them.  It looks like a couple of pools and a great big tourist trap in the pictures.  It is full of tourists, even at 4pm when we headed out.  It is basically a huge mountain of limestone in which pools have formed at various intervals.  Ozan says that they have formed naturally, but they look very man made to me.  You have to take off your shoes and then it's a gentle walk up the hill with a stream of water flowing down the rocks.  People in their swimming costumes are littered about the place as they let the water run over them or wade through the pools.  I set off to explore and was promptly told off by the guard for going off the path.  Back to the straight and narrow for me.  We spent quite a bit of time taking pictures and taking in the scenery.  It's like nothing I've seen before.

At the top of the hill, a sprawling Roman city once looked out over the pools and plains.  Bits of it still remain - the largest theatre in Asia Minor (very impressive), a graveyard (I didn't venture there) and the tomb of Philip the Apostle has recently been found there.  I instead decided to take the waters in a pool.  It is rumoured that Cleopatra bathed here and the wrinkles on her face just disappeared.  I can confirm that the story is true as I look at least 10 years younger ;)

Unfortunately, I took too long in the pool and missed the sunset, but it was a nice walk down in the light of dusk and then dinner by the pool at the hotel.

John's (the apostle's) tomb and more piles of old rocks (Ephesus)

I'm mid train ride to Pamukkale (the first half of which I spend reading a gossip mag that someone lent me - sad to say but the rumours that Dannii and Kris are getting back together are unfounded) where we will stay in a crappy hotel, but it has a pool.

Selcuk was a nice town but we only had time for a wander including a nice mosque with a garden courtyard, dinner and a drink after the long bus ride and all the exploring was for the next day.  St John's Basilica, or what's left of it, is in the town itself.  When Jesus was crucified, he committed his mother Mary into John's care and apparently they ran away to Ephesus.  John's tomb is there and some nice ruins including a baptismal and the ever present columns with a great view out across the valley.  Mary's house, the location of which was revealed by some Nun in Belgium (well, one of those European countries anyway.   Bulgaria maybe?), is a 7 km walk so we skipped that.  The museum is small and full of statues.  I might have been more impressed if I hadn't just been to Greece.  It does however have a couple of statues of Artemis covered in either breasts, eggs or fruit.  They symbolise fertility and that depiction of her is unique to this area.  Artemis is a key deity of this region and the Temple of Artemis in the town is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  All that is left is one column (and that's been rebuilt).  According to Lisa (our resident classicist) some guy wanted  to be famous, so he burnt the temple down to gain infamy.

We had lunch at a pancake house and watched them being made - a couple of the group had a go at making them as well.  I was just doing my best to avoid looking at all the flies.  It was one of those sit on the floor on cushions kind of table which is quite comfortable but hopeless for eating.  The pancake is slightly out of town and is right next to the site of the seven sleepers - seven guys running from people persecuting Christians slept there for three hundred years (lazy bastards).

Next was the highlight of Selcuk, Ephesus.  The ruins are quite large and are from Roman times.  The usual suspects are there: baths, agoras, temples, fountains, theatres.  It was quite a hot day and I was glad that we had waited till late afternoon to visit.  The highlights for me were:
- the latrines.  Yes, you can giggle.  I laughed and gave some fake enthusiasm when Ozan told us our next site.  I was very sternly informed that they were a vital part of the Roman life and pooing together was an important ritual - this sent me into gales of laughter (and earned me more stern looks).
- the road (Ceretes St I think) which is nothing special but looks very cool - as does the road to the harbour (unfortunately the ocean is now 3 km away so it is a road to nowhere at the moment)
- the frescos and tiles in the terrace houses.  You have to pay extra to see these, but it was well worth it.  Houses with delicate frescos in place of wallpaper and tiles mosaics in place of carpets.  This is also the site of the world's largest jigsaw puzzle and I was itching to have a go but I think you have to be an archaeologist to participate.  One of the other kiwis suggested scanning all the pieces and getting a computer to do it might be quicker (but less fun)
- the library - the facade is about all you can see and it has been reconstructed, but it looked like an ideal location to kick back and read a book (well, a scroll back then)
- the theatre was the biggest I have seen yet, but it has largely been reconstructed with concrete and much of it is inaccessible due to further work.

Dinner was in a small,very tourist but very pretty, village near Selcuk.  We stopped to taste some fruit wine first - I thought that the apple wine was very nice and sampled a full glass.  Dinner was unremarkable except for its very nice location and the moon rise over the hill.  We did learn from Charlie that a moon rise soon after sunset is always going to be a full moon (or near to it).

The train is quite comfortable with plenty of leg room and reclining seats (if I could just figure out how to make my seat go back).  The scenery is very agricultural - olive trees is all I can identify but there are paddocks full of other trees and crops. 

Food, hamam and dancing

I'm sitting on a bus on the way to Selcuk.  We've been on it already for five hours already with a half hour stop for lunch - a 'famous' cheese toastie which was ok but as much of a let down as welsh rarebit, and this funny foamy yoghurt drink which was quite sour but strangely good. We still have about two more hours to go in the bus.  Next time, I'm gonna travel in a really small country that doesn't take all day to get anywhere.

Friday night in Istanbul, we headed out to a nice fish restaurant and I have no idea where we were.  We were picked up by a van and he drove us on a zig zag through the back streets (from what I've seen so far, they are all back streets in Istanbul).  At the restaurant, there were people playing and singing and occasionally dancing.  A couple of them were across the street in another restaurant but I think they were playing the same tune.  It was  a very enjoyable meal and the waiter refused to let us leave until we had drunken our tea.

We spent the next morning travelling on a ferry to Mudanya and then a bus to Bursa.  I was a bit disappointed that we weren't allowed out on deck while the ferry was underway but we did get a nice view of Tokapi Palace.  Bursa was the capital at one time and is the centre of silk so we say window displays full of wedding dresses on our way in.  It also has sugared chestnuts (we tried some chocolate covered ones) and a hamam that used to be frequented by emperors.  Most of the group decided this was an experience not to be missed.  For 55 TL (about NZD 40), you get entry to the hamam, a scrub and a massage. 

I think hamams are all different but I will describe the one that we went to.  There are separate hamams for men and women.  You are given a room to change into your swimsuit (or not if you wish to, go au natural) and something the size of a tea towel to wrap yourself in.  You then enter a marble clad room about 6 x 4 metres with a low bench with sinks at regular intervals. You bath by using a small bowl to scoop water over yourself from one of the sinks, before entering the large very hot pool in the centre - there is an even hotter pool at one end of the room but I didn't venture here.  At one end, there are two low marble coffee tables.  Well, that's what they look like.  You climb onto one of these (in full view of everyone else) and the attendant (also clad in her bikini) removes your bikini top and then scrubs you down with an abrasive oven mitt - back and front - I was a little worried she was going to scrub my nipples off.  You're allowed to keep your bikini bottom on but she exposes your bum to everyone and then gives you a wedgie when she is doing your legs.  You then sit up on the side of the coffee table and she does your arms.  It's then back down again and she covers you in soap and give you a massage - front and back again before sitting you up and using bowl fulls of water to wash you off.  It was very nice but I had a challenge to not giggle in parts (I'm sure you can guess which).  Apparently the men's hamam was quite different - and they had male attendants.

We were picked up in the evening by a local gentleman who took us to his regular tea shop where he and his friends were having  a bit of a jam session in  a back room (it seems that this is a regular pastime after work for the men) and then back to his place where his wife had cooked a very nice meal.  It was great to have a vegetarian meal for a change.  Next we walked down to the dervish house and sat around in a room full of genie lamps listening to a sermon projected on the screen outside.  It was in Turkish of course.  Then it was time for the show.  The men sit downstairs and the women upstairs and then men in long dresses (I'm sure they're called something else) whirl - for ages.  They just keep going round and round and round without getting dizzy.  Each time they turn they are saying the name of Allah and it is apparently a form of prayer.  It also looks really cool with their skirts whirling round.  It finished with a prayer - again I have no idea what the prayer said, but it was very reminiscent of being in a Christian church.  There were very few tourists there other than ourselves and the women who we were crammed into the upstairs with were all very welcoming and nice despite that language barrier.  It was an enjoyable evening.

Let lose in Istanbul

The tour has begun and they look like  a good crowd.  Three lawyers from Perth, a British journalist (who I'm sharing  a room with), an older couple from Canberra (occupation unknown), an academic from Canada, a Pharmacist from Chicago, a student from Holland, and a couple of vets from New Zealand who are currently living in the UK.  Most of us went out to dinner last night at a restaurant looking over the Hagia Sophia and then for a drink at a place looking over the Hagia Sophia (it's a popular selling point).  Oh and Ozan, our guide, who studied for 5 years to become a guide - I'm hoping that this means he really knows his stuff.

Today we spend the morning with a walking tour of the highlights, including, some 18th century Ottoman houses, an alley way full of second hand book shops (mostly in Turkish), the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, a visit into a couple of mosques including the Suleyman which was built to 'last forever' sometime in the 6th century I think and it has survived over a hundred earthquakes since with nary a crack,  and some history and then a few of us had freshly caught fish grilled and put in a sandwich (with too much onion).  It was delicious and only 5 TL (about NZD 3.50).  Then it was time for some serious sightseeing.  The Aya Sofya was originally a cathedral built under Constantine (360 AD).  The structure that is there today was constructed 200 years later and was then converted to a mosque in 1453 by Mehmet the Conqueror.  Ozan tells us that Islam is a very tolerant religion and christians are allowed to prayer in the mosques.  The Aya Sofya is now a museum.  The Blue Mosque, our next stop, is free entry and was therefore every full.  Before entering a mosque, you must remove your shoes and women must have their head covered.  The architecture and history of the mosque is interesting; the second class treatment of women inherent in the religion is not.

Lisa, the dutch student, is studying classics and on her urging we navigated out way to the "most important artefact in Western history".  It was a fairly short column on two entwined snakes that was constructed at Delphi to celebrate the Athenian and Spartan defeat of the Persians.  According to Lisa, if the Persians had won, all of Europe would look very different today.  The sculpture was later looted from Delphi and taken to Istanbul.

We stopped for a drink in a nice little courtyard place and rested our feet before tackling the archaeological museum.  It's quite a big place with exhibits in three different buildings.  The highlights are the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great and a collection of 'interested documents' that were c.2000 BC including the oldest love poem, a page from Proverbs, and some law code thing.