Day tripper, y'all...

So on the way to Fethye from Selçuk I decide to check out Pamukale to see the famous Heiropolis ruins and the thermal water-filled natural white terraces (travetines).

The ruins, especially the Theatre, are quite impressive and make for some great photos. However the much vaunted travetines proved to be a bit of a let down. The brochures implied that you could walk around them and even swim in them however due to it being a protected area of natural beauty this was not the case. I wouldn't have wanted to anyway because the Turks, in their infinite wisdom, had drilled down elsewhere and taken all the thermal water, leaving a bunch of naturally created white dusty terraces. I think the Turks need a lesson on how we (mostly) look after that kinda shit back home.

My day however was not to be ruined because the bus stopped at this random point on the highway and we were told that we had an hours break and that there was a waterfall 10 minutes hike away that we could swim in. Of course this was told to me in Turkish and I had no idea what was going on but I followed the locals as they wandered off in to the forest. The waterfall itself was fantastic as the temperature in the bus was hovering around 30 degrees despite the best efforts of air conditioning. I play the crazy kiwi and do a few cliff dives, well I say cliff dives when I mean I bombed off a rock that was about 3m above the waterfall, but none of the Turks did it! Oh and I saw my first frog.

Arriving in Fethye I find Ned, the guy who "booked" my accommodation has not actually booked anything, fortunately he's the guy that owns the boat for the boat trip that I'm going on the next morning so along with two others in the exact same situation I get to sleep on the deck of the boat for the night for free.

Before sleeping there was the small matter of 'bars are open and they have beer that needs drinking', now that's a problem me and my trusty wallet can help with. I head off with Arthur and Kim and we head to a bar that is full to the brim of people that hilariously I've already met and are basically travelling in the same direction as me. Much drinking and dancing ensues until I decide to try out my new best come-on line "so I've got this boat..." and I bring back not one but two girls (Claire and her sister) for more beers. Of course I'd already met them a few days before in Selçuk but still, I gotta get my own boat man...

I end up not sleeping at all and the girls leave about 8am and I get some breakfast followed by a haircut and a Turkish style shave at the barber. Now for those of you that don't know the significance of a Turkish shave I will explain.

First of all they lather up your face in shaving cream then proceed to shave you with a cut-throat razor, once that is done they re-lather you up and repeat the process. This is followed by a lemon spray which inevitably makes my face sting like crazy and then some sort of facial cream stuff all over my face. The man proceeds to crack my neck and all my fingers and begins to massage my arms and shoulders. He then gets me to lean forward and washes off my face.

I thought it was all over but he dips his hands in alcohol and smears it over my face and puts his fingers in my ears. This is a little weird but nothing compared to what follows, he lights up a small torch and at this point I'm a little nervous because my face is basically flammable right now but he leans my face back and taps the flaming torch on my ears and face to burn off what remains of the hair. While I don't get burned or anything the smell of the burning hair permeates the air as I walk out reminiscing about the last time my face was this smooth, i.e. when I was 11 years old. Now lets be honest, the Gillette mach 3 has got nothing on the Turkish shave.