As I'm sure you know, you can't go back to Constantinople, because it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, and it's hard to get that song out of your head when you go there. (Been a long time gone, Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.) The name was actually changed in the fifteenth century, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, but the West continued to call it by its former name until after the First World War. Apparently we were just unable to accept that what was once the world's greatest city was no longer in Christian hands.
We stayed in Sultanahmet, which is the heart of the old city, within walking distance of the most important and beautiful monuments. It is quite a spectacular area. In one direction you can see the Sancta Sophia, an enormous church that became a mosque after the fall of Constantinople and then a museum when Ataturk created Modern Turkey. If you turn around you see the amazing Blue Mosque, one of the world's most beautiful buildings. They have a good sound and light show there every night, rotating between the four main languages of the tourists - English, French, German, and, of course, Turkish. We saw the English version early in the trip when we were still a bit jet-lagged, then went again on our last night, a fitting end to our tour. It was nice to be able to keep going back to this mosque at different times of day. One evening there were flocks of birds flying around the six minarets, which added a new dimension to it. Package tours will just have a quick look and go on to the next thing to be photographed. Our friend, Chris, went to Turkey last year, and when we asked if he'd been to certain places we'd seen, he didn't know. (Even Yoong's brother didn't know whether or not his tour had taken him to Ephesus, one of the best of Turkey's ancient cities.)
In the same area are other major sights such as the Topkapi Palace, the tombs of various sultans, the remains of the world's biggest hippodrome and a huge underground cistern. There are also a lot of very annoying men trying to make friends with you and sell you a carpet.
Our first mistake (of many) was to change money at the airport. Well. I suppose you have to change some money, otherwise how do you pay for transport to the city, but we changed US$100. The banks at the airport charge 3% commission, even on CASH! This is unheard of anywhere else, as we found. Also, it is not a good idea to change much money at one time, because its value goes down daily. By the end of the trip our dollars had gained about 5% in value. We were worried that, being the weekend, we may have difficulty changing in town, and knew that we had expensive entrance fees to pay. In fact there was no difficulty finding money-changers open on any day, and we could have paid entrances in dollars anyway.
Our accommodation was at the Orient Hostel, which is very popular with young backpackers. As they have their own web-site, I booked a couple of nights by e-mail, so we didn't have to worry about touts trying to take us to their brother's hotel, which is probably expensive, nowhere near the attractions and with a carpet shop conveniently attached. Also, we weren't sure how easy it would be to find a room as the tourist season should be starting to get under way. As it turned out, we would not have had any problem anywhere with accommodation as tourist numbers have dropped dramatically this year due to the trial of Ocalan (leader of the Kurdish rebels) and the perceived proximity to Kosovo. This was of great benefit to those of us who did make it there, as prices did not double or treble as they normally do in the summer tourist season. In one town, a hotel owner called out "one million each person" as we passed by. That's not as much as it sounds. Four Australian dollars makes you a millionaire in Turkey at the moment. Next month it will be even less.
The Orient has a variety of rooms in three different buildings, ranging from dormitories to luxury accommodation with satellite TV, etc. We didn't go to Turkey to watch television, so we ignored their e-mailed suggestions to go for the luxury and got a standard double room with bathroom, which turned out to be a large two-room suite, which would be ideal for a family. We could really spread out here. The only disadvantage was that it was directly over The Backpackers Café, also run by the Orient, and which was the most popular night-spot in the area, so we didn't have the peace and quiet at night that would be desirable for people of our advancing age. Even after the music stopped, there were loud-voiced young American guys expressing their opinions volubly at two-thirty a.m. I remember being woken up by a noisy and seemingly interminable discussion on linguistics, centering on the etymological aspects of chips versus French fries. However we managed to sleep through most of it. The noise was more noticeable when we spent another four nights there at the end of the trip as the numbers of travellers had picked up a lot. Paul, the English guy who manages the place, had promised us the suite on the third floor, which has a view over the Bosphorus and may not pick up as much of the noise, but the key to this room had disappeared. Apparently the previous occupants had not returned it, and there were no spares. They had plans to get a locksmith in, but it didn't happen in time for us to change rooms. This accommodation cost us US$15 a night including breakfast, which is very good value in Istanbul, but would be expensive anywhere else in Turkey.
We began our sightseeing with the Sancta Sophia, the Hippodrome and the Blue Mosque, and then the Yerebatan Sarici, the huge underground cistern, with hundreds of columns, the most famous of which features heads of Medusa. This cistern is used as a setting in the James Bond film - From Russia With Love. (So is the Sancta Sophia I believe.) I can't remember whether we've seen it but we'll be on the lookout for it in future.
The next day, Sunday, we visited the Dolmabahce Palace, across from the Golden Horn. This was the most expensive sight-seeing we did. It cost US$10 each, but that included a 90 minute tour of the Harem, as well as entrance to the main part of the palace. This was where the Sultan lived and received guests in the nineteenth century. It was designed as a European-style palace, though there is clearly a lot of Oriental influence as well. It is, as the Lonely Planet guide describes it, "sumptuous and heavily overdecorated."
In the afternoon, we had planned a boat tour of the Bosphorus, but we postponed this until our return to Istanbul, as we found out that we had the chance to see the Whirling Dervish ceremony, which takes place only twice a month. This was at the Mevlana museum, Mevlana being the founder of this Islamic sect which expresses itself through whirling round and round. It reminds me of the Leaping Nuns sketch of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The Dervishes were actually banned by Ataturk, but got around this by becoming a cultural group rather than a religion.
The ceremony seems authentic, even though the audience is mainly tourists (though there were a number of devotees joining in the singing.) It began with a musical performance by a group of singers and musicians. We were told that we were allowed to applaud that part, but not the whirling ceremony that was to follow. After this part of the show, the musicians went out of sight behind a gallery, where they accompanied the dervishes. Even though the ceremony was mainly just people whirling around (with tall hats on their heads) it was quite fascinating to watch. They seemed to go into a trance, and showed no signs of dizziness. Quite extraordinary.
The next day we only planned to do one thing - visit Topkapi palace, as we had heard that almost a full day is needed to see it. This was the residence of the sultans for about three centuries and is probably the most important attraction in Istanbul. We turned up before opening time and immediately booked our tickets for the tour of the Harem, as all the guide-books advise. In theory they only take thirty people through at a time. In fact, the group was much larger than that. The whole palace was over-run with tour groups, especially later in the day. I hate to think what it would be like in a normal high tourist season. The crowds around the famous jewel-encrusted Topkapi dagger rivalled those around the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. There is a well-known film about the theft of this dagger, simply called Topkapi, which we will have to see again when it next makes an appearance on television. We spent the morning examining the priceless treasures on display. In one section there were relics from saints such as John the Baptist and from Mohammet, including hairs from his beard, and one of his teeth. There were also footprints of each of his feet indented in stone. It's a pity his feet were of different shapes and sizes. When we got hungry we ate our picnic lunch in one of the palace gardens. The books had warned us that the only place to eat here was a good but overpriced museum restaurant with horrendous queues.
Apart from the mosques, churches and palaces around Sultanahmet, there are many other beautiful old buildings, most of which now house either hotels or carpet-shops - or a combination of the two. Everywhere we walked through the area, men would approach and try to start a conversation, which would eventually lead to an invitation to enjoy a glass of apple tea (a concoction that was invented especially for the tourists) and look at a collection of carpets "for information only".
Some would use a humorous opening line, for example, "Excuse me. I think you're going the wrong way," followed by "My carpet shop is the other way." More common was the opening, "Hello. Where are you from?" Being too polite to refuse an answer, we would reply "Australia."
"G'day mate! Sydney? Melbourne? Perth?"
Of course they would always have a brother or cousin in Melbourne. We met one man who claimed to have lived in Richmond for several years. His accent suggested he could be telling the truth, but then some of these people can slip very easily from Aussie English to Texan drawl to fluent Japanese. He complained that most of the carpet men were too pushy and dishonest, and implied that this made it difficult for a laid-back Aussie-type like him to do any business. How about coming in for a drink? None of this worked on us. We did not scrutinise anybody's carpet collection in Istanbul, though it would be unrealistic to think we could completely avoid carpet shops for the whole trip.
I like this comment by an American traveller, Mark Leeper, in his Internet journal: "Turkey has more carpet salesmen than the US has lawyers but otherwise the two professions have the same standard of ethics. In the US lawyers actually have to chase ambulances while in Turkey carpet salesmen just lay in wait under the nearest rock for a tourist to come by."
We decided that the beginning and end of our loop around Western Turkey would be done as guided tours. We wanted to start with Cappadocia, getting the only overnight ride out of the way early in the trip. The Orient had a package which included the bus to Cappadocia (by-passing Ankara, the capital, which we thought we would leave until our next visit to Turkey), two nights accommodation, two full-day tours of the area and a number of meals (three breakfasts and two lunches). The cost was US$94 per person, four dollars less than was quoted on their internet site. Evran, the travel agent tried to talk us into taking a more expensive package which would include dinner as well, accommodation in a cave (that's a plus point, not a minus!) and tours which would not include any shopping stops. As their publicity had cited "no shopping stops" as an advantage of booking through the Oriental rather than booking a local tour when we got there, we pointed this out. Evran said there would not be too much shopping, but the cheaper tours had to include some of it to survive, so why not upgrade and avoid it altogether?
As we had suspected, all the tours were exactly the same, including the locally-booked ones. No matter which company you book with, they are all combined anyway when there are not enough tourists to go around. And guess what? Our accommodation was in a cave-house. So the only difference between us and those who booked the higher-priced tour was that they got dinner-vouchers for the Sedef restaurant, where we ate anyway at a much lower price than the difference between the tours. This is a common trick of travel agents everywhere. Whether it is Thailand or Turkey, the ordinary bus and the luxury super-VIP bus is likely to tuirn out to be the very same vehicle, the only difference being how much you have paid for it.
The attraction of Cappadocia is in its amazing landscape, which is indicated by the kitsch names given to certain areas, such as "the valley of the fairy chimneys." We have seen equally unusual natural formations, such as in the stone forest in Kunming, China, but there was certainly a lot here of interest. There were vast underground cities, which were used as hiding-places by the early Christians, and thousands of caves which had been used as homes and churches. Much of the landscape looks like something from another planet, and in fact certain parts were featured in the Star Wars films.
The reason for doing a guided tour of Cappadocia was that it is a large area and the attractions are spaced far apart. Some people do manage to explore it on their own, but it is a lot easier on a tour. Our guide on both days was a young Turkish girl, who did a good job of getting across all the background historical information. There was only one other couple with us on our first day, but the second day we had a full mini-bus. The obligatory "shopping" stops were a carpet factory on one day and a ceramics factory and a wine-tasting the next. We did buy a good bottle of Cappadocia wine, which the restaurant allowed us to bring to accompany our evening meal, but we managed to avoid the carpets and ceramics, the price of which would, of course, include a large commission to the tour company. As is normal practice, to disguise the fact that these are shopping stops, there were interesting demonstrations of how the products were made.
The underground city we visited went down about eight levels. We had to bend double going through the narrow passages, but it was an interesting experience. There were big kitchens and living rooms for thousands of families and even areas for keeping their animals - and of course churches. Not recommended for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia.
The only disappointment about this trip was that, when we arrived back in Istanbul three weeks later, we found the price of the tour had gone down to US$79, a considerable drop. Paul told us that it had just been negotiated a couple of days earlier, and that it was not really the same trip we did as the accommodation was now in Urgup, rather than Goreme (which is a nicer place to stay). He said we were lucky to stay in a cave-house for the price we paid. I'm not sure whether there is really much difference. More likely, the lower price reflects the high level of competition for a greatly reduced tourist market. Prices here are very rubbery and generally reflect what the market will bear. I thought what we paid was reasonable, but Yoong always wants the best deal possible. In any case, the cheaper tour was simply not available at the time we wanted to do it.
Our next stop was Konya, a very conservative city which is the home of the Dervish sect. It is a bit off the usual tourist route, at least the package tourists, and we got a good impression of real everyday Turkish life. The only actual attraction we went to see was the Mevlana museum, where we got more information about the dervishes. Of course, the appropriate place to stay was Otel Dervish.
It was nice just to walk around the town. The women here were all well-covered, some totally in black except for eye-holes, and Yoong even bought a couple of scarves to cover her head.
The specialty of Konya is firin kebab, a very greasy lamb stew. It tasted very nice, but we didn't dare eat it more than once.
After two nights in Konya we headed for another area the big tour groups have not yet discovered. Hopefully it will stay that way, as Lake Egirdir is a beautiful unspoilt spot which could easily be ruined by being overrun with tourists. The best place to stay is a little island on the lake joined to Egirdir town by a causeway. Almost every building on the island is a pension, but this year, because of the tourism downturn, most were deserted. A young man met us at the bus station and begged us to give his family's pension a chance first. We agreed to look at it, but warned him that we would also look at two other pensions. He arranged for a cousin to drive us there, where we would be met by his brother, or maybe it was another cousin. It turned out that there was no ensuite in the room, and this was sufficient reason to reject the accommodation. Admittedly the bathroom was a few steps from the bedroom door, and it looked like a decent enough place, but the young man had assured us there were bathrooms in the rooms, and that there was a view of the lake. As he was wrong on both points, we did not feel too guilty when we walked out to check out some places a little closer to the waterside.
We only needed to see one more. We were immediately impressed by Ali's Pension, and the friendly owner, Birsan, who spoke excellent English, and probably a few other languages as well. It was very clean and cosy, and several writers in the guest book suggested that the home-cooked meals available were worth trying. They were, but the best meal we had at Egirdir was a lunch at Melody restaurant at the far end of the island. They were particularly generous with the mezes (salads and other cold starters), giving us a large plate with samples of everything on display for a million lira (four Australian dollars). More importantly they were all delicious, and included various items stuffed with rice or cheese.
The island itself was small enough to walk around in about twenty minutes so we tended to cross the causeway into town and beyond fairly often. Twice we got picked up by the local carpet-seller, and actually agreed to go to his shop for a drink the second time. He was very pleasant - not at all pushy like his counterparts in Istanbul, and seemed to be genuinely interested in talking, without pushing his carpets at us.
After Egirdir we headed for the coast. We knew what to expect. All the towns along the Mediterranean are crowded with British and German Tourists on cheap package holidays. Prices are quoted in Pounds or Deutchmarks. The British who used to holiday on the Spanish Costa del Sol now go to Turkey, where they can get the same seaside holiday experience for a fraction of the cost. Most of these tourists never leave the vicinity of their hotel and the closest beach, and their only experience of Turkish culture is people trying to sell them carpets, or a belly-dance performance at their hotel.
We went first to Antalya, which, being a fairly large city, has an attractive old town and does not exist only for the tourists. As usual we got a dolmus (share-taxi, not stuffed vine-leaves, though it may well have the same etymology) from the bus-station. We got off at Hadrian's Gate, and walked through into Kaleici, the old town, where we quickly found the Erkal Pansiyon, recommended in Lonely Planet.
Apart from being a pleasant (though touristy) environment, Antalya was a base for exploring the ruins of Perge and Aspendos. Getting to these places was not quite as easy as it sounded in the guide-book, and involved one of the few rip-off attempts where we did not manage to come out on top.
One problem with the very touristy places is that the local businessmen, who comprise most of the Turkish population of these towns, see the tourist as something from which to extract as much money as possible, by fair means or foul. Short-changing and bill-padding are not seen as cheating but as legitimate business opportunities. Our first experience of this was when we went out to find some lunch on the day we arrived. There is a whole pedestrian street of restaurants (with tables on the pavement) where the owners/waiters stand in the doorway and try to drag in any tourist who passes by. The guide-book recommends these places, provided you establish the price of everything you order beforehand. We had already had some experience of what happens when a price is not established first. An innocent item such as bread, water or coffee can appear as an exorbitant item on the bill. Coffee is generally offered free at the end of a meal, but if you don't ask "Is it a gift?" is could end up costing five dollars. Occasionally we have even been charged for bread, especially if it is a restaurant that bakes its own, often of more than one type. In such cases we were charged for one kind of bread but not the other, and remained ignorant of which was the free one.
We found a restaurant that looked good. The man that persuaded us to come in and see what they offered told us that a salad buffet was included with the main course. We asked whether this meant we could eat as much as we wished, and he confirmed that this was the case. However when we went to help ourselves to the delicious salads, the waiter indicated to us to sit down and he would serve us. He brought a dish of salad to the table but it did not include the most interesting items. Later in the meal we asked for more salad and specified the items we wanted. When the bill came it seemed far too high. The system in Turkey is for the bill to be folded over and the total written on the outside. Many people would not bother to open it up and check, and we didn't either when it seemed reasonable. There are probably a lot of tourists who don't even realise it is possible to do so. When you open it, the individual prices are given, often without naming the items to which they refer. Sure enough, when we opened this bill we found the second salad listed at a cost of a million lira (about A$4), as much as the main courses. We called the waiter over and asked for an explanation. He insisted that only the first serve of salad was included. As we had both checked this carefully before agreeing to eat there, we refused to pay the extra, and the waiter, perhaps realising that a dispute in front of the passing tourists they were targetting was not good for business, quickly cancelled the item. It's a pity that this kind of problem is so common in Turkey as it tends to spoil an enjoyable meal a bit, whether or not they succeed in their attempt to extract their extra million lira, which we found was the standard amount by which people tried to cheat us.
The trip to Perge was not too bad. We got a dolmus going in the right direction, got off at the crossroads and did a twenty-five minute walk as the guide-book directed. After enjoying the ancient ruins we walked back to the main road and waited for another dolmus going in the same direction. Somebody helped us hail a vehicle which actually had the name, Aspendos, posted on the front, with the main town before it in larger letters. The book said we would need to walk in 45 minutes from the main road, so we thought this was a stroke of luck. When we got to the dolmus station at the main town, we checked with the driver and he assured us he was going to Aspendos. We should have been suspicious when he did not pick up any other passengers, and when he took quite a lot of time stopping to do personal shopping. When we arrived, we gave him a million lira note, calculating the fare to be about 400 each as this was the fare from Antalya to the town where everyone got off, and we had already covered the distance from there to Perge, more than the extra distance to Aspendos. He insisted on another million, claiming that was the fare for the extra distance. We had no way of knowing whether this was true, but it seemed highly unlikely. Dolmuses (dolmi?) are public vehicles, with prices clearly posted, but the price as far as Aspendos was not included. Unfortunately our public transport had turned into a taxi without the driver having the courtesy of letting us know that it had done so.
I suppose we could have refused to pay or written down his registration number, but we were caught a bit off guard as he had seemed a friendly person up until the time he made his demand. We had even helped look after his infant son who was travelling the route with him. And there was a possibility that he could be right. There may indeed be a special charge for dropping people off at the gate of the Aspendos ruins, famous for its beautifully renovated Greek theatre, which is still being used (or rather being used again) for performances such as Aida. However, our doubts were confirmed when we picked up another dolmus from Aspendos back to the town and sure enough it was the usual small amount. Well, you win some; you lose some.
We had intended to go as far as Side if we had time, but it was a very hot day and we decided we'd had enough of trying to negotiate the transport system. Also we expected Side would be just another touristry beach place. We returned to Antalya in time to visit the museum which contained many of the treasures, such as wonderful statues of the ancient gods, which had been unearthed at the nearby excavations, particularly at Perge. It was very interesting to see this collection after having visited the areas where they were found.
Unwilling to risk the tourist restaurants again that night we bought a rotisserie-grilled whole chicken from a friendly restaurateur who had called us in to show us his wares the night before. It even came with rice and freshly-baked Turkish bread - excellent value. We ate it at our pension with tomatoes, olives and a bottle of wine. It is always possible to borrow plates and eating utensils in the sort of cheap accommodation we like to stay in.
The next day we were off to Fethiye, by the shorter inland route. The coastal route would be more interesting, but would take a couple of hours longer. As it turned out, we might as well have done it that way, as our bus had a problem. It went very slowly and stopped several times for servicing, most of which seemed to consist of pouring several bottles of water into the radiator. All this seemed to be organised by one of the passengers. I don't know what the driver would have done if he hadn't been around. At one of these stops, outside a closed shop-house in a small town, the lady invited us to wait in her garden and offered a lot of fresh fruits. An experience of real Turkish hospitality which transcended the language barrier.
Fethiye was even more of a tourist town than Antalya, but we went for a specific reason - to do the popular 12-island cruise. This cruise is one of the most interesting of many available along the coast because there are a lot of attractions within a small area. We walked along the harbour the night before to find the best deal. It turned out that whichever boat you book with it makes no difference because they have formed a cooperative, charge the same prices and take it in turns to take their boats out for the day. Because of the decline in tourists there were only two boats likely to be going out. One of them was a yacht, so we chose the other one. Yoong is scared enough of boat travel as it is. In fact the yacht was not using its sails anyway, so it probably made no difference. Lunch was included, but the primary aim of the crew once we got underway seemed to be to sell as many drinks as possible at inflated prices. We had expected this and brought an adequate supply of water with us.
Maybe our failure to buy their over-priced drinks was the reason they left us behind at one of the stops, but I don't think so. One of the stops was at "Cleopatra's Baths", though it's questionable whether Cleopatra ever really made use of them. We were told that we had an hour and went off to explore the island. Most of the people just swam around near the boat. We came back forty-five minutes later and saw the boat disappearing in the distance. We managed to attract their attention and there was another boat full of tattooed German tourists still there who would have rescued us if necessary. We went through this boat to board our own, which came back for us. It turned out they had revised their stopping time to 45 minutes and we did not get the message as we had already gone. The people at our table had thought we were up on the sun-deck, which was a reasonable assumption as we had spent much of our time up there in the shady section watching the other passengers slowly turning lobster-red. We were not very pleased about the crew's failure to do a head-count. They obviously put selling drinks ahead of the welfare of their passengers.
Despite almost being stuck on a deserted island overnight, it was a very enjoyable trip. Apart from some young Turkish couples on holidays from Istanbul, most of the passengers were English package tourists staying a week or so in Fethiye. We had a kind of conversation with a family from Yorkshire, but it wasn't easy to penetrate their accent.
We were pleased to get away from the coastal resorts, which are pretty much like coastal resorts anywhere in the world and head for another big tourist attraction - Pammukale. This is where you find one of the most famous natural landmarks in Turkey, a white mountain formed into limestone wading pools by water cascading down from thermal springs at the top. In the tourist brochures you always see groups of happy tourists paddling around and playing in these warm pools. What they don't tell you is that these pictures were taken many years ago, that much of the water has been drained away by motels built at the top, that the mountain is now more yellowish than white and that people have been banned from the pools to try to regenerate the system in what is generally recognised as an environmental disaster. The Turkish Government actually promised to demolish the motels some years ago, and some do seem to have gone, but it is expected that it will take at least five years before it returns to its former beauty.
I knew all this from reports on the internet and wanted to heed suggestions to boycott the place, but Yoong, knowing all the big tour groups go there, insisted on it. It was actually worthwhile despite the problems, and it was not as far out of our way as I at first thought. The tour groups get driven up to the top, but the best way up is to walk up (and down later) via what is called the "travertines", little rivulets of water carved into the calcium deposits which get warmer as you go up. Shoes must be taken off and carried with you. By the time we had settled in to our hotel, it was quite late in the afternoon, and we had the rare experience of an overcast sky, so we could walk around in comfort, if you can call walking on hard stone comfortable. At the top are the ruins of the ancient city of Hieropolis, which was worth spending some time exploring.
Because both Fethiye and Pammukale are major tourist towns, we found ourselves the targets of further attempted rip-offs moving from one to the other. When we first got to the bus-station in Fethiye, we thought it would be wise to check prices to Pammukale before going into town. The representative of one company quoted us 2,500,000 TL each direct to Pammukale, but then kindly advised us that it was cheaper to get the (more frequent) bus to Denizli for 2,000,000 TL and get a dolmus the rest of the way for 150,000 TL. We were impressed by his lack of greed. We would not have known about the better and cheaper way. They also gave us their card and asked us to call them when the time came and they would pick us up from our accommodation. Even so, we did check another company before leaving the "otogar". They quoted us 3,000,000 TL, then offered a discount of 500,000 TL if we booked an open ticket with them on the spot. We decided that we would deal with the first company.
Two days later, sure enough, we telephoned them and they brought around the actual bus to pick us up. I double-checked the ticket-price on the phone and got a kind of non-committal yes. But when we got to the bus-station, when they wrote out the ticket, suddenly it had become 5,000,000 for two. When I queried this, they insisted the price had just gone up and showed me all kinds of official-looking documents and stamps to prove that this was a direction from the government. We had had enough of this kind of petty cheating and refused to pay. We went back to the bus, took back our bags and starting walking away. As I half-expected, the man called us back and informed us that he would be able to sell us the ticket at the old price after all. He made some show of back-dating it, perhaps to save face, and we proceeded on our journey without the worry of how we were going to get out of Fethiye. It was a bit of a bluff on our part, but we probably would have checked back at the other company. The man we had talked to initially was not present when all this took place, but that may not necessarily mean he was innocent.
By this time we were very wary of bus companies. When we got to Denizli we went around to all of them to check the price of tickets to Selcuk, our next destination. Unfortunately one of the touts who hang around the otogars tagged along with us, which we felt might tend to distort the prices. They all quoted 2,500,000. They seemed to have their act together in the same way the cruise boats in Fethiye did. However, when we got to Pammukale we found that our hotel could organise the same bus for 1,500,000, including a shuttle service to Denizli. A check of other transport offices we passed confirmed that this was indeed the correct price. No doubt if we had booked in Denizli, a couple of million lira would be going into the pockets of whoever sold us the tickets and the tout who accompanied us there.
Before our dolmus even left Denizli, a young man joined us for as while and persuaded us to check out his hotel, a big Backpackers-type place called Hotel Meltem. He was not too pushy, and it sounded like good value, so we thought we'd try it first. He asked our driver to stop us at the appropriate place. This saved us having to deal with the touts who crowded around the dolmus as we arrived at the main Pammukale bus-station. It turned out to be quite good, though a bit impersonal. Certainly it was not worth looking around when it was just for one night - and we wanted to start our sight-seeing immediately as we would be leaving the next day.
We let the hotel organise our bus-tickets to Selcuk, to give them a bit of business. Selcuk is the closest town to Ephesus, one of the most important archeological sites in Turkey. The tour groups tend to do it as a day-trip from Kusadasi, yet another beach resort that quotes prices in Deutschmarks. There is a lot of Australian and New Zealand influence in Selcuk. I suppose it shows we're getting closer to Gallipolli. This is shown in names like "The Aussie and Kiwi Guest House and Carpet Shop". We actually had a look at the "All-Blacks Guest House" where we were greeted with "G'day Mate" and a lot of other talk in a very Australian accent. It looked like quite a good place, but we had had a recommendation, from Birsan at Lake Egirdir, for Vardar Guest House. The owner, a lady who apparently speaks very good English, was away on holidays but we negotiated a deal with her parents, despite their very limited English. We got half pension for 5,000,000 TL (about A$20), which means we not only got breakfast but also a home-cooked Turkish dinner. The second day (of three) the lady was ill and unable to cook so they only charged us 2,000,000 for the room, making this the cheapest place we stayed in Turkey. Unfortunately, the room was very hot during the day, as we found when we tried to have an afternoon rest. This was kind of made up for by the rooftop terrace with a lovely view where we could have our meals and watch the sunset.
Yoong was so affected by the heat that she almost collapsed later when we were walking around the town. I went into a shop to buy a bottle of wine and some water, and when I came out I found her sitting outside a souvenir shop talking to the very friendly young lady who owned it and a couple of Japanese girls. Apparently they had assumed she was Japanese at first and asked her to join them. A few minutes later she felt very weak and needed to lie down. The shop-owner took her inside the shop to lie down on a "bubble-sheet", put on the air-conditioner, closed the shop up, and brought her an ayran (a yoghurt drink we generally ordered with our meals). We were very touched by her kindness, and went back to visit her a couple of times, even helping her attract some Taiwanese tourists into her shop (same dialect as Yoong's). Not much chance of a sale though as they were from a package tour and the tour guides keep a sharp eye on any tourists who are likely to wander off and buy things at places where the guides can't get their huge commissions. We saw some nice ceramics there that would have been worth buying if not for the difficulty of carrying them around with us.
Vardar was one of the few guest-houses which did not provide a free shuttle service to the ruins of Ephesus. This was probably an advantage as we found out that these shuttle services invariably end up at a cousin's carpet shop. We left early in the morning to avoid the heat, and found the thirty-minute walk was along a shady tree-lined avenue. Even walking back later was quite pleasant.
The tour-groups start at the top of the hill and walk down to the lower gate, where their buses are waiting for them. We arrived at the lower gate shortly after opening time, and would walk back through the ruins again for a second look. We were early enough to avoid the hordes of tourists who were filling the place by the time we got to the top. If this is a bad tourist season I wouldn't like to be there when things get back to normal. Of course, there is an advantage in having all the groups around. You can always tag along for a while and listen to the commentary if it's in a language you understand. There were lots of English and French groups at Ephesus. We were also quite impressed to hear Turkish guides speaking in what sounded like perfect Japanese. Sometimes the guides contradict each other in their commentaries, and it is not unheard of to perpetuate misinformation. For example, one of the ruined buildings here was originally thought to be a brothel, as a famous Priapus statue was found there. It actually turned out simply to be a residence but some guides still prefer to give their clients the more sensational description.
Apart from yet another ancient theatre, one of the most spectacular buildings here was the two-storey library of Celcus, but there were several other interesting structures to explore. In fact this is considered to be the best-preserved Roman city in the world. One place popular for photos was a big public toilet, which had no partitions between the seats.
In the afternoon we visited the Ephesus museum, which is fairly small but with a very interesting collection, including the afore-mentioned Priapus statue, featured in one of the top-selling post-cards available in Turkey, and a well known statue of Eros riding on a dolphin.
The next morning we went to see a little village called Sirince, noted for its lace-making and gozleme, a kind of pancake with meat or cheese. You see the women at the front of the restaurants, rolling out the dough and making them in the open. A bit of a tourist gimmick, but we fell for it.
In the afternoon we went to Kusadasi, the big tourist resort town on the coast, where we thought we would make another attempt to solve a money problem which was starting to get serious.
One problem that we could not solve was that we had taken along some French cash with us, the two biggest denominations of which turned out to be outdated notes which can only be changed at a bank in France (we hope). The other problem was that we had a five-hundred US dollar American Express travellers cheque left over from another trip. We had already used up our valid French money, most of our American cash and a hundred-dollar travellers cheque, so we had to do something with the remaining one. (We had some Singapore money, but that couldn't be changed anywhere outside Istanbul, if at all). However, we did not need anything like five hundred dollars and would lose heavily if we changed the whole lot only to change back later. Turkish money is useless anywhere except in Turkey, and, apart from the rapid devaluation of the currency, we would lose on exchange both ways. The exchange rate for travellers cheques is not as good as for cash, even if no commission is charged.
We tried a bank that we knew did not charge commission, and they directed us to a money changer. We asked if we could change one hundred dollars of our travellers cheque into lira at their listed rate and get the other four hundred back in cash. We had tried this elsewhere some days earlier and they had explained that they would have to convert the whole amount to lira (at the unfavourable TT rate) then convert four hundred dollars worth of lira back into American cash. We realised we would lose a lot of money this way and, of course, declined their offer. Now it seemed that we were lucky enough to find a place that would make the change we wanted and which we had carefully explained to them. Yoong counter-signed the cheque and they passed us the money to count (no receipt at this stage). We soon realised they had done exactly what the other place had warned us they would do. We were about forty dollars down on the hundred we had changed. We demanded an explanation and the receipt turned up, showing they had made the double exchange we had tried to avoid. Even if they had not understood what we wanted (which I doubt) we thought it very unethical that they gave no indication of what they had intended to do and how much we would lose. We refused to accept the deal, and they offered to give back the travellers cheque. We were under the impression that a travellers cheque must be counter-signed in front of the recipient, and thus can not be used once it has the second signature. They told us it was okay and would be accepted by any bank or money-changer. We were not convinced and insisted they fulfil the contract we had made verbally. We were prepared to stay there and make a fuss until they sorted out the problem, knowing that it would not look good for them in front of other potential customers. Eventually, when it became clear we were not going to go away, one of their staff led us to another money-changer in the bazaar area, explained the situation in Turkish, and, sure enough, the man there changed our travellers cheque with no hesitation in the way we had initially requested. We examined our American hundreds rather carefully, having become very suspicious at this stage, but they were okay. We will never know whether this shop was a higher-up branch of the first one, which may not have been able to make the change without authorisation, or just a shop more considerate of their customers' needs. Somebody we talked to outside the shop assured us it was the best money-changer in Kusadasi. It's a pity the bank hadn't directed us there in the first place.
Now we were able to start shopping for all those things we wanted to take back to Singapore and thought we wouldn't be able to afford.
The next day we got a bus to Bergama, the modern town where ancient Pergamon is located. We were only overnighting there and decided to give the ruins a miss this time, as we were a bit ruined-out, and it would involve a lot of climbing. We stayed at the Athena Pension at the foot of the hill where we had a good view of the Acropolis anyway. We felt there was no need to go and see it closer up. We had already seen the best of the ancient cities at Ephesus. We went out to a nice restaurant, one of a row of three identical places with identical food and prices. I had a drink of raki for the first time. It has the aniseed taste of the Greek drink, ouzo, which was probably stolen from the Turks along with most other things (at least the Turks will tell you that). It is clear in colour, but when you pour water into it (highly recommended) it turns cloudy. It was very potent stuff, but worth a try.
After this we headed for Assos, unknown to most foreign tourists, but popular with Turks and expatriates who come from Istanbul or Bursa for the weekend. I had information from the internet about the Timur Pension, supposed to be one of the most spectacularly-located accommodations in Turkey.
This pension was actually built into part of the ruins at the top of the village. It had a wonderful view across to the Agean sea (which we walked down to in the evening) about a kilometre away. There were only a few rooms there, but they had a lot of character - and also some low beams so I had to be careful not to bump my head. Unfortunately there was a misunderstanding with the young owner, who had only been running the place (with the help of his sister) for about a year. He was under the impression that the deal we negotiated included us eating our evening means there. We did so the first night and had a very nice (bit fairly expensive) meal of fish, chips and eggplant salad, but the second evening we thought we might return to a restaurant in the village where we had already had a good lunch. The owner was very nice but his English was limited. When we came in at night it looked fairly deserted. We asked, "Are you open?"
He said no, but then started turning lights on, so we tried asking if he had fish. The answer was yes.
"So you are open?"
"No." And he showed us to a seat.
Open or not, it looked like we were going to have our meal there, so we ordered and I went back to our pension to get a bottle of wine we had half-finished the night before. When I was leaving I told the young man we were eating in the village. His expression darkened and he told us he was charging us a special price for the room because we had agreed to eat there. I assured him we had made no such arrangement. He insisted we had and said we would have to pay a higher room price for the second night. He even said, "Ask your wife. She knows you agreed to eat here." That was not very likely as my wife was waiting for me in another restaurant, and would certainly not be doing so if she thought we had agreed to dine at our pension. As it was already the most expensive place we had stayed in Turkey, and we had spent a considerable amount on the previous night's dinner, I was not very pleased about his attitude, and told him if he wanted to change the terms of our agreement we would find somewhere else to stay the night. This was not just a bluff as we knew that the guesthouse associated with the restaurant where Yoong was waiting was available for only two million lira, a third of what we were paying here. He said it was too late to move and that he had had to turn away three couples already because the room was unoccupied. This was clearly a fabrication as the (almost identical) room next to ours had been vacant until about 7 p.m. when a young French couple had turned up and had a look. We had even recommended the place to them as the best in town and they had come back to take the room after first verifying our assertion by looking around at a few other places. Ironically these two were sitting within earshot of the conversation now taking place. I told him we would talk about it later as our dinner would be ready, and he reluctantly let me go.
I got back to the restaurant in time just before our meals arrived and Yoong was surprised to hear of what had taken place. The meal was very nice but we were a bit disturbed about the situation we were in. By the time we got back to confront the pension owner, he had had a chance to think about it and was more amenable to discussing it sensibly. For a start he seemed to have realised that he could not get away with his claim that he had turned away potential customers. He eventually agreed that it may have been wishful thinking that had led to his assumption that we would be ordering a meal both nights, and we gave him a bit of advice on the importance of pleasing his guests as word-of-mouth is vital in his business. From earlier conversations we knew he was very ambitious and was hoping to eventually develop the accommodation into a place that people would pay a hundred dollars a night for. He told us that any money he earned now would be put into building more rooms, and he was clearly disappointed that he would not be earning as much from us as he had assumed. It all ended amicably and he offered to take us into Ayvacik the next morning where we had to pick up our bus for Canakkale. We accepted his offer, as it was easier than carrying our bags down to the village square and waiting for the infrequent dolmus. We knew he would expect to be paid for the lift, as this is normal in Turkey, even when hitch-hiking. We thought it prudent to check with him in the morning how much he expected. Although he insisted that the offer was unconditional we offered him a million, which is what the dolmus would have cost us and he was quite happy with this.
Looking back on this experience, we thought this young man was really the wrong person to be running such a nice pension. Greed (or need) for money should not be allowed to intrude on giving guests good service. The man with the restaurant was a much more sympathetic and happy person. Although his guest-house was not as nice, and apparently empty, we would probably have enjoyed staying there more due to the friendly treatment he would have given us.
Canakkale is full of young Australians and New Zealanders. We stayed at the Yellow Rose Pension, which was part of the tour booked through the Orient Hostel. We were supposed to do the Gallipoli tour the next day, followed by a late bus to Istanbul. However we arrived in plenty of time to do the tour the same day, which would allow us to get to Istanbul earlier in the day. Not that it mattered much, as the tour included transfer to the Orient, which was already booked for us. Late night arrivals are not a problem anyway in a city that sleeps so late.
We were glad we had arranged a tour, as it would not have been easy to get around the Dardanelles on our own. Also we were very fortunate in having an excellent guide, whom we had read about in other travellers' journals on the internet. He was a very dignified ex-military man in his fifties, who spoke good English and saw his role as educating us about what Gallipoli was all about.
When we got to each memorial or battle site he would sit us all down and give us a detailed lecture about what happened there. His most important message was the mutual respect that the Anzacs and the Turks had for each other. This can be seen in the messages written on some of the monuments, such as Ataturk's assertion to the mothers of the Anzac soldiers who died there that they were now also the sons of Turkey. The fact that the Turks won the Gallipoli campaign is attributed largely to Ataturk's leadership and the decision to conscript as soldiers young men who actually lived in the area so that they would feel they were defending not just their country but their own families and land.
Ali was very territorial. If another tour group approached while he was explaining something to us, he would politely but firmly ask the guide (in Turkish) to be quiet until he had finished with us. He was rather contemptuous of another guide who crossed our path twice, who carried a tape-recorder around with him and played the various countries' national anthems at the appropriate memorials. Ali felt this was an unnecessary gimmick and used up valuable learning time. He claimed the guide concerned knew nothing about the Gallipoli campaign and just made jokes about it. There may have been some professional rivalry here, but we did feel we were much better off with our own guide.
Ali always singles out a lady in the group to pick a flower and place it in the hand of a statue at one of the monuments. In our group he chose Yoong, whom he addressed throughout the day as "Lady Yoong". I suppose he normally chooses whoever appears to be the oldest lady in the group. She also had to go inside the monument and write a message in a book. He gave her a souvenir - a key-chain with an Anzac bullet, together with a Turkish bullet and a piece of shrapnel, all of which he had personally found on the battlefields.
The tour was an interesting and quite moving experience. Later we watched a documentary about the Gallipoli campaign and the next morning we watched the film with Mel Gibson. We actually enjoyed the documentary more. Usually people see this the evening before they do the tour, but we thought it was more meaningful to watch it afterwards as we could see the places we had been to during the day.
The remainder of the trip was spent in Istanbul. We arrived back on Saturday night and the next day we did a ferry tour on the Bosphorus. We were only allowed to get off the boat at one of the five stops so we chose the final destination, Anadolu Kavagli, a little fishing village with a lot of touristy restaurants. When the boat stopped at Kanlica, famous for its yoghurt, the guys who go round selling drinks suddenly produced containers of yoghurt, and yelled out "Kanlica! Kanlica!" as if they had actually just got them from the town. People flocked round to buy them before it was too late. Actually there were plenty available for anyone who wanted them later in the trip. We gave it a miss as they were expensive, we were on our way to lunch and it was probably no better than any other yoghurt we've had in Turkey (confirmed by travellers we asked who tried it). Actually yoghurt is excellent anywhere in Turkey. It always has a thick crust on top which can probably be eaten, but which we usually threw away. We ate yoghurt almost every day to prevent any digestive problems. It may be one reason we remained healthy throughout the trip.
The other two full days were spent walking around various parts of Istanbul, and catching up on sights we had not yet seen such as the Chora Church, now a museum, with beautifully preserved mosaics. We also did a lot of shopping, mainly for food, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, olives, pumpkin seeds, cans of stuffed vine-leaves, some good Turkish wine and some boxes of Turkish Delight. We would have loved to bring back some of the delicious cherries that were in season everywhere but did not think they would survive the journey.
We tried to find some good restaurants for our last few nights. There was one recommended on the Internet as the best in Istanbul, so we went to the trouble of finding our way there. The food looked beautiful, but no prices were listed. We took our usual precaution of asking prices of everything. They were about double what we usually paid, but we felt this was justified by the quality of the food. However even a place like this can not be trusted. I ordered a beer after confirming with the waiter that the price was 500,000, once again about double the usual price. When the bill came it seemed too high and it turned out that, in addition to a bread charge, which may be normal in more expensive places, they had charged a million for the beer. Perhaps the drink waiter had not told anyone we had already established the price. We queried it and they reluctantly cut off 400,000 TL. We did not argue any further as it would be usual to add a bit extra anyway. This restaurant is popular with well-to-do Turks and would probably not see many tourists, yet they still seem to treat foreigners differently from the locals as many of the more touristy places do. It was one of the best meals we had, but the cheating spoilt it a bit.
We did better on the last full day, when we tried a restaurant in Uskudar (the Asian side of Istanbul) highly recommended by the Lonely Planet. This one actually had a menu with prices, and the food was much cheaper than and almost as good as the one the night before. So we ended up with a delicious meal without any attempt to cheat us. We needed some really good quality food as , by this time, we were getting a bit tired of the ordinary Turkish food and starting to dream of laksa and curry fish-head.
Despite the constant attempts to extract extra money from tourists, Turkey appeared to be a very safe place to travel (apart from the crazy drivers, who see red lights as advisory only and feel no need to stop just because there are pedestrians in front of their cars). We never felt threatened in the way that you can in parts of American or even many European cities. There were some nuisances such as aggressive beggars and very persistent shoe-shine boys, usually Kurds, who were really wasting their time with us. I was wearing Thai sandals which have no parts worth shining and Yoong was wearing an old pair of leather sandals which could theoretically be polished but which she intended to throw away at the end of the trip. We saw one tourist succumb to the pleas of one of these people, only to be charged three million lira at the end of it - probably enough to buy a new pair of shoes.
How did this trip compare with others we have made? Japan was much more exotic (and, of course, much more expensive) and Istanbul, with all its wonderful buildings, can not compare with Prague or Paris for over-all beauty. Cappadocia, though fascinating, could be matched by the stone forest in Kunming or even the limestone hills of Guilin, Ha Long bay in North Vietnam or Krabi in Southern Thailand. (Though the enormous underground cities are certainly something different.) We know Turkish food and culture from Melbourne, so we did not find it as exotic as travellers from other parts of the world did. However it was a very enjoyable trip, many of the people are friendly and hospitable, apart from those who have been spoilt by tourism, and accommodation and transport are reasonably-priced (by Western, not Asian standards) and comfortable (by any standards). It was enjoyable enough for us to want to return some time in the future to explore parts of Turkey we have not yet seen.