My recent trip to Turkey with my parents and my aunt with Chan Brothers was really good. Unexpectedly good I might say. I approached it with some apprehension and skepticism, initally especially because I haven’t been on a package tour since I was 9. I wondered if the herding around and following the cheesy yellow flag might detract from our enjoyment of the holiday. Another reason was that I wanted to spend this 3 week break on a holiday with friends my age instead. Enough of being the youngest in the bunch. Time to do young-people-things! However, parental coercion, practicality, safety issues AND the constant envy of others who’ve returned from Turkey raving led us to attempt a packaged tour this time.
Meeting our tour guide, Cynthia, at the airport was okay; I guess there was the briefing at the check in counters where everyone stood around her for instructions that was just a wee bit unsettling. There was the general feeling of dread in my gut that went: “Here goes. Time to be good little sheep.” The flight on Air Turkey surpassed my expectations. We all had our own entertainment systems, and this cool view of the runway on all the screens as the plane lands. On arrival at 5am, we met Cem, our Turkish guide, and were whisked away immediately on a city tour of Istanbul.
Turkey impressed me tremendously with the beautiful architecture and design in their mosques . In all, we visited 4 of them. The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the Grand Mosque, and Green Mosque in Bursa. I thought that the Blue Mosque was the most majestic and impressive. Then again, it could just be that we were there in the early morning before the tourist crowds came in, and it was cool, quiet and serene, that led me to this impression.
The Hagia Sophia (now converted into the Ayasofya museum) was the most interesting of the 4, with its history of being one of the greatest cathedrals before its conquest by the Ottomans and subsequent conversion to a mosque. There were many many examples of symbols of Christianity that were covered up by, or improvised cleverly into Muslim symbols upon its conversion. Presently, the curators are in the process of restoration and removal of some of the overlying layers to reveal the place’s Christian past.
The English names of the mosques were interesting too, as the Blue Mosque and Green Mosque are named after the colour of the tiles that adorn their interiors. Having covered all 4 of these in the first 2 days though, I was itching to see different things already.
Our trip took us through many towns and cities in Turkey, stopping by for a night’s stay at some of them. At almost every town centre we went to, there would be street vendors calling out, selling tops, the evil eye bracelets and keychains, and amazingly, everything would be one lira. There’d also be multiple stands selling this hard bread that looked like pretzels, which they call “simit”. With old men sitting around, chatting over a game of chess, or busy waiters serving the local tea or “cha” in their special cups on the trays that amazingly sway all over the place but never seem to spill, the average street hangout is always extremely vibrant.
I felt that the major attractions, the ones that made the trip there all worth my while, were Ephesus, Cotton Castle and Cappadocia. These, however, required insanely long bus rides across the country. It grew to be a habit for us to just climb onto our seats on the coach and nod off to sleep immediately.
Ephesus was astounding, with the ruins of a once great city covering an extremely large area. Many structures were also amazingly still more intact after a few thousand years of human activity, wind and erosion than I’d have imagined. It was an eye opener to see what ancient men could do with primitive tools, and the ideas and solutions to everyday problems that they had.
I was particularly impressed by their loos. There were seats with holes lining the perimeter of a room, for the men and women to sit on. The person’s dress (even men wore dresses then) would protect their modesty, and the sound of toilet business masked by a huge fountain in the centre of the room. They even had a little stream of fresh water running in a small drain for them to wash their hands after! Absolutely impressive.
The Cotton castle/ Pamukkale was also very beautiful, if not just a little bittersweet, I felt. Calcium carbonate deposited by the calcium-enriched ground water flowing over the gradient of the hill over thousands of years resulted in this pristine white cliff with little turquoise blue pools in it. However, I think that the interference of humans there has spoilt it. Even though the officials cordoned off the most intact section for preservation, there were still thoughtless tourists climbing over the rope and clambering on the cliff face to it to take pictures. There was no one to enforce the rules, and all the rest of us did was to watch haplessly.
The area around Pamukkale was extremely rich in ground water, enriched by various kinds of minerals. Pamukkale was formed by calcium-rich waters. The hotel which we stayed in was famous for their thermal pool with iron-rich water. Of course I had to give it a shot, so my parents and I dressed in our swimsuits and covered up with the hotel bathrobes, and trod down to the pool at 9pm after dinner. I thought that the whole thing had a rather rusty smell to it, and the water was rather milky such that one cannot see the bottom of the pool. But it was an experience nonetheless.
I even drank spring water from an Ancient pool nearby, which is touted to have numerous health benefits to the body, especially the GIT system. Many Caucasians took their 1.5l bottles, filled them with this water, and gulped it down. I thought that it had a very strong calcium taste, which is rather ugh.
The absolute highlight of the trip for me had to be Cappadocia, often described as the Moon on Earth. The undulating shape of the valleys, as well as pillars of rocks called “fairy chimneys” predominate there. These amazing rock formations were formed by a serendipity of geography and events over thousand of years in a small triangular valley in the middle of Anatolia.
I had the privilege of taking the hot air balloon with my family and some other members of my tour group, so that we were able to view these astonishing sights from the air. It was especially beautiful, as the view was enhanced by the soft light of dawn. Our friendly and might I add – Extremely skillful, balloon captain even obliged us by taking us high up into the clouds, where it was rather cold and misty, and all the way down below so close to the cliffs that we could touch them. He even flew us between two of the fairy chimneys!
The cave houses in Cappadocia were also very interesting. Because the rock in the region is very soft, and when I say soft its like when you touch the rock, the texture is such that you can actually feel how soft it is and how it would be easy to break apart with a chisel. So the locals dug caves in the cliffs, and multi-storey houses in the fairy chimneys, and lived there for several centuries. It was fascinating to see their unusual neighbourhood and underground villages. We even got to visit a fairy chimney house that is fully furnished, and clamber underground through 3 storeys of a 10 storey underground town in the area.
Some of the food we had on the trip was excellent as well. In my 8 days there travelling around, I never missed home food ONCE. Although some meals provided by the tour package were rather disappointing, the good local fare that we managed to try made up for it.
Our excellent turkish tour guide told us about many local snacks whose names I couldn’t catch, such as yoghurt with honey and poppy seeds, “Kumpir” which is baked potato mashed with cheese, salt and butter, with your choice of a huge array of toppings, this other prata-like dish which is a flat bread with beef and feta cheese which was delicious. He even showed me Mado turkish ice cream (apparently the best!), which my family and I (and my blouse) enjoyed very much indeed.
There was plenty of fresh salads and fruits as well, served at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Salad bars were commonplace. The cherries were so sweet and luscious, and CHEAP, that we ended up buying several kilograms of them to munch on some of our extremely long bus journeys, and to bring home as well.
And at the bazaars, the bargaining is the way to go. We got some pretty good bargains for our mosaic and blown glass lamps, and our Aladdin lamp. The stall owners can be extremely friendly too! I got a generous cube of delicious, fresh, feta cheese from the cheese seller in the photo below for taking his picture. The turkish delight in the spice bazaar was also astounding. It came in huge slabs, chockful of nuts, and has to be sliced and weighed according to how much the customer wants. However, I must also add that some of the men I encountered at the bazaars were -too- friendly. They would approach us with words like “Lady, you are so beautiful. Are you married?”, which can be rather scary, but flattering of course.
In all, it was an exceptional vacation. All my expectations were exceeded, and apprehensions laid to rest, and I enjoyed myself tremendously. We returned with a bagful of Turkish goodies like hazelnuts, turkish delight, apple tea and figs, a lifetime of memories, and a cameraful of 764 photographs that chronicles our experiences there.
And now after the whirlwind of unpacking and settling back into Singapore life, comes the usual requests by my parents for me to arrange, edit, and enhance the photographs in time for them to bring to the office on Monday, so I should be getting down to it pretty soon.
By the way, I’ve already done 2 other posts this same trip(found here on my old blog). My family and I actually in those pictures there, so go there if you want to see those.
