Istanbul... I think I'm going to die in a horrible vomiting shitting mess. The fact that I am here today writing this proves that I didn't die, though I wished that I did at the time.
"Arse of steel, arse of steel" I calmly repeat over and over to myself. One question remains as I make it to the hostel, "How have I not shit my pants yet?"
I collapse, a doctor is promptly called, who promptly calls an ambulance, which promptly arrives and rushes me to hospital. As I'm in the ambulance a single thought enters my dehydrated semi-conscious brain, "When I wake up, I hope they've cleaned the shit and vomit off me".
Once I regained my conscious ability to think my first thought, rather then being something profound about near death experiences, the meaning of life, or the way silent Velcro works, was "fuck somebody shit their pants". My second thought followed within seconds, simply "Oh fuck". Holding my breath made the unconsciousness come faster.
For a holiday experience I'd really recommend waking up in a pile of shit stained sheets on a low bed in the hallway of a busy foreign hospital, it really puts things in to perspective. There will forever be the before and the after, life changes from this point onwards.
As I regained my strength but certainly not my dignity; "No" I thought to myself, "dignity would come much later", I was acutely aware of a stabbing pain in my arm. "Hurt, pain" said a Turkish accent, despite the words not being a question "Yes" I answered, to no one.
It turned out that he was a Doctor and he was squeezing a bag which led to a drip in my arm. "What are you doing?" I asked accusingly. "Hurry hurry, busy busy" he said indicating the already overflowing hallway, I took it to mean that the concept of triage had decided to check me out as quick as possible.
I was allowed a shower and soap which went someway to restoring dignity. In a plastic bag I found my clothes with a bit of vomit on the tee shirt but thankfully, and incredibly no shit whatsoever. To this day I don't know whether they had washed my boxers or if I'd managed to hold on, I'd like to think it was the latter, and I'll swear to the day I die that that's what happened if anyone asks.
Dignity restored, and feeling like a million dollars mostly due to my newly and speedily hydrated body, I knew that I needed receipts for my medical care for insurance purposes. This was denied me by the long line and no English speaking receptionists. Fuck it.
The comedown from the magical Saline solution didn't take long, so I slept for about 12 hours and woke with a pain in my stomach. A burning ring of fire later and I thought that I'd better get in to the prescribed medicine.
Three days later and feeling like I was about to lapse back to square one, I crawled downstairs and hit Wikipedia. One final shit, I was determined that it was to be the final one, and I was off to the pharmacy with the name of a drug. Of course the drug was prescription only, my face dropped and I thought maybe if I shit myself here in the pharmacy they'll get the picture that I'm not fucking around.
Instead of shitting myself I calmly place twenty lira on the counter and look the pharmacist in the eye, he holds my gaze. I repeat the process until there is a hundred lira on the counter, his gaze falters. I've got him, he's mine, and so are the drugs.
Forty minutes later gazing at the beautiful Blue Mosque of Istanbul, words drift aloud from my lips "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I smell no sulphur."
Ironically and without emotion, my raw chaffed arse gets the joke and laughs with relief.
Thankfully there are no photos.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Goreme, no kebabs please.
Still with most of the guys from the boat, I check in to Kose pension at around 6.30am with Kim cause shes so god damn organised. Crashing out for a few hours is required following our gazillion-hour overnight bus journey. It takes a morning snooze and a walk around to realise that we are in fact in a really, and I mean really beautiful part of the country.
Surrounded by volcanically created scenery we take lots of photos and hit the open air museum in the afternoon. Its hard to enjoy in the 45 million degree heat but impressive all the same. An early night and a swim in the hostel pool concludes the day.
Taking in the main sites of Cappidocia proves to be a sweaty all day task, apparently the bus has air conditioning, apparently. Highlights of the day include a walk by a river where some old women appear to be beating a sheep to death, and me climbing in to a fairy chimney closely followed by a woman who gets stuck and holds up the entire bus, I was the only one who found it hilarious though.
I meet a carpet salesman and his Canadian wife while wandering past their shop. The man is having difficulty with his digital camera and he can't speak any other English apart from the word "help". His wife explains that despite the instructions being in English she can' be bothered reading them, and would I like some tea? Of course I want tea, what do you think I'm doing walking past a carpet shop for?. Fixing the digital camera takes about 12 seconds and we chat for a few hours about nothing of consequence but its nice to experience some more Turkish hospitality.
The next day I spend lazing around in the pool with Jess and her British friend until grabbing a kebab and taking another overnight bus to Istanbul.
The photos are far more impressive than today's meagre writing effort so you'd best look at them here:
Surrounded by volcanically created scenery we take lots of photos and hit the open air museum in the afternoon. Its hard to enjoy in the 45 million degree heat but impressive all the same. An early night and a swim in the hostel pool concludes the day.
Taking in the main sites of Cappidocia proves to be a sweaty all day task, apparently the bus has air conditioning, apparently. Highlights of the day include a walk by a river where some old women appear to be beating a sheep to death, and me climbing in to a fairy chimney closely followed by a woman who gets stuck and holds up the entire bus, I was the only one who found it hilarious though.
I meet a carpet salesman and his Canadian wife while wandering past their shop. The man is having difficulty with his digital camera and he can't speak any other English apart from the word "help". His wife explains that despite the instructions being in English she can' be bothered reading them, and would I like some tea? Of course I want tea, what do you think I'm doing walking past a carpet shop for?. Fixing the digital camera takes about 12 seconds and we chat for a few hours about nothing of consequence but its nice to experience some more Turkish hospitality.
The next day I spend lazing around in the pool with Jess and her British friend until grabbing a kebab and taking another overnight bus to Istanbul.
The photos are far more impressive than today's meagre writing effort so you'd best look at them here:
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Olympos, Turkish style...
Due to being my usual disorganised self I hadn't booked anywhere to stay and it was pretty much the busiest time of the year. Fortunately I had met Kim on the boat trip and she was over-organised and had overbooked and prepaid, this we found was advantageous to us both. We stayed in a room named "Sunset Strip". The "luxurious" Sunset Strip kind of had its own toilet and shower and was outfitted hilariously with, for two people that don't really know each other, a double bed. And just for your information, yes Kim is a total wild one in bed. I honestly haven't had such hilarious conversations with a sleep talker since 1992 where my younger brother Daniel, at age seven thought that 1am in the morning was a good time to do his tax returns.
Apart from Kim's night time shenanigans, Olympus was relatively uneventful, though there were a few moments to remember. There was a decent rock to jump off at the beach and I met a group of local kids, some of which were crazy enough to jump off the rock head first. Also during the beach visit I noticed that there was a decent amount of good skimming stones along the beach. I was having a grand old time skimming stones, right up until the point where I inadvertently hit one of the local kids on the head with a rock. I guess I was fortunate that he could understand the word "sorry" in English, pretty funny in hindsight actually.
With making a sly getaway at the forefront of my mind, I ended up going quad biking with some of the guys from the boat trip, it was notable for a ripe-for-the-picking fig tree, my hooning, and one of the other guys (Ben) driving in to a ditch.
After quad biking we checked out the famous Chimaera flames (above) which were pretty cool.
On our last day in Olympos we went to lunch at a cool restaurant situated in trees on a river and literally ate lamb-loads of lamb cooked in a kind of Turkish hangi before taking the night bus to Goreme.
Click here for all the Olympos photos.
Apart from Kim's night time shenanigans, Olympus was relatively uneventful, though there were a few moments to remember. There was a decent rock to jump off at the beach and I met a group of local kids, some of which were crazy enough to jump off the rock head first. Also during the beach visit I noticed that there was a decent amount of good skimming stones along the beach. I was having a grand old time skimming stones, right up until the point where I inadvertently hit one of the local kids on the head with a rock. I guess I was fortunate that he could understand the word "sorry" in English, pretty funny in hindsight actually.
With making a sly getaway at the forefront of my mind, I ended up going quad biking with some of the guys from the boat trip, it was notable for a ripe-for-the-picking fig tree, my hooning, and one of the other guys (Ben) driving in to a ditch.
After quad biking we checked out the famous Chimaera flames (above) which were pretty cool.On our last day in Olympos we went to lunch at a cool restaurant situated in trees on a river and literally ate lamb-loads of lamb cooked in a kind of Turkish hangi before taking the night bus to Goreme.
Click here for all the Olympos photos.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Four days of pirating pleasure...
Looking back on it all, all the days seem blur in to one. Basically I spent my time swimming, drinking, reading, eating, snorkeling, fishing, and then repeating the cycle with a great bunch of people.
I guess there was one particular moment of note though. After mooring in a bay for our final night on the water with about 20 other boats we found ourselves taking a water taxi to a bar.
Firstly, I should explain that this is not the kind of terrain that one would expect a bar to exist in, a rocky but calm bay on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey only accessible via boat, and utterly devoid of people. In fact it seems like this is the last place someone would put a bar. I guess no one told the owners of Smugglers Inn.
On arrival the said owners of Smugglers Inn 'treated' the crowds of people to a selection of pop music from various times in the last thirty years. You know the kind of music that everybody knows the words to and screams at the top of their lungs and dances like flocks of headless chickens to? So um yeah that's basically what we did for a few hours. Eventually in the early hours of the morning, sweating and laughing, we caught the water taxi back to our boat.
But our hardy drinking souls had not quite finished yet, no not when there were still cold beers on the boat to drink and pop songs still fresh in our minds. During this final beer someone had a fantastic idea (well all ideas at this stage of a big night out are fantastic), Lets streak! This so-called 'fantastic idea' was later attributed to me, however to this day I disagree to it being my idea personally, in my opinion it was more of a group decision arrived at collectively after some rigorous democratic debate.
Either way there were ten very drunk and very naked people in the Mediterranean that night. However there was one problem, the definition of streaking implies that one first get naked and then run around stupidly in front of people who are not, as we were, in a state of undress. Where the hell were we going to find such people in the dead of the night? let alone somewhere to simply 'run around stupidly' while swimming in the middle of the bloody Mediterranean?
The answer was quickly discovered after some more 'rigorous democratic debate'. 'Hey look a boat' someone shouted, 'lets go' added another. So there we were, drunk, naked as the day we were born, and about to climb aboard another boat with the intention to 'run around stupidly'. Climbing aboard presented no real problem, they had conveniently left a ladder down so that we could do so. The problem was that unlike the pirates of time gone by, we were neither stealthy, ruthless, or indeed cunning. Between us our pirate skills amounted to drunkenness, loudness and an exceptionally high quality of stereotypical pirate-like quotes.
'Hand over ye booze and women ye scurvy scoundrel, or I`ll keel haul ye and throw ye bloody remains to the sharks, ARRRRGHH'
Hence with only one of us on board the ladder was withdrawn and one unlucky soul was made to unceremoniously walk the plank. We returned defeated but defiant to our own boat and slept soundly, the subject of our dreams being similar to your average Wilbur Smith novel.
Finally, a collective sigh was uttered as peace reigned again over the Mediterranian, ...
Boat trip photos here:
I guess there was one particular moment of note though. After mooring in a bay for our final night on the water with about 20 other boats we found ourselves taking a water taxi to a bar.
Firstly, I should explain that this is not the kind of terrain that one would expect a bar to exist in, a rocky but calm bay on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey only accessible via boat, and utterly devoid of people. In fact it seems like this is the last place someone would put a bar. I guess no one told the owners of Smugglers Inn.
On arrival the said owners of Smugglers Inn 'treated' the crowds of people to a selection of pop music from various times in the last thirty years. You know the kind of music that everybody knows the words to and screams at the top of their lungs and dances like flocks of headless chickens to? So um yeah that's basically what we did for a few hours. Eventually in the early hours of the morning, sweating and laughing, we caught the water taxi back to our boat.
But our hardy drinking souls had not quite finished yet, no not when there were still cold beers on the boat to drink and pop songs still fresh in our minds. During this final beer someone had a fantastic idea (well all ideas at this stage of a big night out are fantastic), Lets streak! This so-called 'fantastic idea' was later attributed to me, however to this day I disagree to it being my idea personally, in my opinion it was more of a group decision arrived at collectively after some rigorous democratic debate.
Either way there were ten very drunk and very naked people in the Mediterranean that night. However there was one problem, the definition of streaking implies that one first get naked and then run around stupidly in front of people who are not, as we were, in a state of undress. Where the hell were we going to find such people in the dead of the night? let alone somewhere to simply 'run around stupidly' while swimming in the middle of the bloody Mediterranean?
The answer was quickly discovered after some more 'rigorous democratic debate'. 'Hey look a boat' someone shouted, 'lets go' added another. So there we were, drunk, naked as the day we were born, and about to climb aboard another boat with the intention to 'run around stupidly'. Climbing aboard presented no real problem, they had conveniently left a ladder down so that we could do so. The problem was that unlike the pirates of time gone by, we were neither stealthy, ruthless, or indeed cunning. Between us our pirate skills amounted to drunkenness, loudness and an exceptionally high quality of stereotypical pirate-like quotes.
'Hand over ye booze and women ye scurvy scoundrel, or I`ll keel haul ye and throw ye bloody remains to the sharks, ARRRRGHH'
Hence with only one of us on board the ladder was withdrawn and one unlucky soul was made to unceremoniously walk the plank. We returned defeated but defiant to our own boat and slept soundly, the subject of our dreams being similar to your average Wilbur Smith novel.
Finally, a collective sigh was uttered as peace reigned again over the Mediterranian, ...
Boat trip photos here:
Monday, August 07, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Selçuk, and I saw breasts too...
Well they're just not common in Turkey... anyway...
Making it to Selçuk I depart the air conditioned stuffiness of the bus and crash headlong in to a wall of heat, sweating as I head for the shade in the park across the road I am met by a smiling Turkish feller who walks me a block or two to the 'Australia New Zealand Guesthouse'. Fittingly the owner is Turkish/Aussie/Kiwi/Korean etc. well basically he has the accents down to perfection.
The evening BBQ and beer hits the spot, but I'm shattered so I hit the sack only to wake at about 5am to the airy loudspeaker broadcasted morning prayers that somehow seemed louder here than elsewhere.
Breakfast turned out to be a fair reason for getting out of bed I thought as I greedily munched down the decent sized omlette on the roof top terrace. Now lets get one thing straight, if there is one thing that I'll take home from Turkey its the roof top terrace concept but understand this: I'm a fan of omlettes and as you know I'm a fan of the roof top terrace concept but combine the two? Genius.
This hearty breakfast inspired me to borrow one of the hostel bikes and have a beach day, the beach being about 8kms away. I picked what I thought was one of the better bikes, ie. the one where the pedal didn't fall off when I touched it, and I thought to my self that this will be a good little half hour work out right? Well it took about 40 minutes but the beach was fantastically worth it.
I did howver feel a look of puzzlement cross my face as I observed the odd Muslim woman swimming in her clothes with full on head scarf, but I thought to myself 'Don't knock it to you try it Ben', but lacking a head scarf there was to be no trying that today so I biked off.
Twenty minutes later I realised that the bike I had chosen was, (while being one of the better ones) not exactly road worthy and I ground to a halt with a flat tyre and no front breaks. After sweating my ass off walking 20 minutes and then running out of water my soft ass decided to hail down an extortionly priced taxi rather than walk back.
The following day I went to the ancient city of Ephesus with another Kiwi and some Aussies. The ruins were impressive and I got the odd good photo. The hostel drove us there and then back to a resturant where we lazed on carpet and cushions eating Turkish pancakes, drinking Efes beer and snoozing.
As the sun set I tucked in to the hostel BBQ and the cold beers that I had bought from a curious old man who in halting English promised me a small refund on the glass bottles if I brought them back once empty. Laughing and drinking followed as we played a stupid drinking game until finally pulling out the MP3 players and speakers and rocking out to some tunes until the early hours of the morning.
In my mind I had designated the next day as another beach day, fortunatly there were others who had the same idea so we headed to a different beach nearer Kuşadasi where the girls treated us to a rather spectacular (i.e. bare breasted) sychonised swimming routine, don't tell their mothers, or more to the point the thousands of surrounding Muslim people that shun that kinda thing, but a round of applause duely followed all the same.
Oh yeah and a weird old Turkish guy pinched my ass... twice. I was mildly disturbed.
Finally picked up some new shorts from the Selçuk market on the Saturday and life was good.
And so are photos so look at them.
Making it to Selçuk I depart the air conditioned stuffiness of the bus and crash headlong in to a wall of heat, sweating as I head for the shade in the park across the road I am met by a smiling Turkish feller who walks me a block or two to the 'Australia New Zealand Guesthouse'. Fittingly the owner is Turkish/Aussie/Kiwi/Korean etc. well basically he has the accents down to perfection.
The evening BBQ and beer hits the spot, but I'm shattered so I hit the sack only to wake at about 5am to the airy loudspeaker broadcasted morning prayers that somehow seemed louder here than elsewhere.
Breakfast turned out to be a fair reason for getting out of bed I thought as I greedily munched down the decent sized omlette on the roof top terrace. Now lets get one thing straight, if there is one thing that I'll take home from Turkey its the roof top terrace concept but understand this: I'm a fan of omlettes and as you know I'm a fan of the roof top terrace concept but combine the two? Genius.
This hearty breakfast inspired me to borrow one of the hostel bikes and have a beach day, the beach being about 8kms away. I picked what I thought was one of the better bikes, ie. the one where the pedal didn't fall off when I touched it, and I thought to my self that this will be a good little half hour work out right? Well it took about 40 minutes but the beach was fantastically worth it.
I did howver feel a look of puzzlement cross my face as I observed the odd Muslim woman swimming in her clothes with full on head scarf, but I thought to myself 'Don't knock it to you try it Ben', but lacking a head scarf there was to be no trying that today so I biked off.
Twenty minutes later I realised that the bike I had chosen was, (while being one of the better ones) not exactly road worthy and I ground to a halt with a flat tyre and no front breaks. After sweating my ass off walking 20 minutes and then running out of water my soft ass decided to hail down an extortionly priced taxi rather than walk back.
The following day I went to the ancient city of Ephesus with another Kiwi and some Aussies. The ruins were impressive and I got the odd good photo. The hostel drove us there and then back to a resturant where we lazed on carpet and cushions eating Turkish pancakes, drinking Efes beer and snoozing.
As the sun set I tucked in to the hostel BBQ and the cold beers that I had bought from a curious old man who in halting English promised me a small refund on the glass bottles if I brought them back once empty. Laughing and drinking followed as we played a stupid drinking game until finally pulling out the MP3 players and speakers and rocking out to some tunes until the early hours of the morning.
In my mind I had designated the next day as another beach day, fortunatly there were others who had the same idea so we headed to a different beach nearer Kuşadasi where the girls treated us to a rather spectacular (i.e. bare breasted) sychonised swimming routine, don't tell their mothers, or more to the point the thousands of surrounding Muslim people that shun that kinda thing, but a round of applause duely followed all the same.
Oh yeah and a weird old Turkish guy pinched my ass... twice. I was mildly disturbed.
Finally picked up some new shorts from the Selçuk market on the Saturday and life was good.
And so are photos so look at them.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Ayvalic...
Even though I stayed in a Pension that was once lived in by a French ambassador to a Sultan... Ayvalic was bit shit to be honest so I caught a bus to Selçuk.
Oh there is a nice photo:
Oh there is a nice photo:
Kia Ora and G'day's galore in ANZAC Çanakkale
"Thats Bull-Ant, but with only one 'L" our tour guide rather seriously pointed out to us as we set off on the Gallipoli tour with what turned out to be an awesome tour guide. His name was of course 'Bulant' and he was quite possibly the most knowledgeable man on earth concerning the subject of the World War One Gallipoli campaign, and he revelled in it. Honestly the way this man gives a tour you'd think his life depended on it, he obviously loves his job.
It was inspiring to wander along ANZAC cove and North beach knowing that along one of these beaches a distant relative of mine once wandered, or more likely crawled or ran for his life.
RIP John William Small, died 15 April 1915 Lone Pine Gallipoli.
According to my distinguished official family historian (i.e. Dad - is there anything he can't do?) he was my 1st cousin 4 times removed.
The trenches though mostly filled in and sometimes a little reconstructed were pretty cool too and i got some good photos. Chunic Bair was of course a highlight, it was airy wandering around what really should be a simple hilltop but is in fact the site of pilgrimage for thousands upon thousands of Kiwi's come every 25th April. A simple hill top where so much drama took place circa 1915 and so much literature written about it subsequently. Pretty awesome actually.
On the sagely advice of my guide book I didn't bother with the Troy tour and instead met crap loads of backpackers doing organised bus trips along the coast. We went out for dinner and I tagged along to enjoy their pre-organised discounts, special drink deals, and their multitudes of Australian women. Am i being sarcastic about that last one? I'm honestly not sure...
Check the photos:
It was inspiring to wander along ANZAC cove and North beach knowing that along one of these beaches a distant relative of mine once wandered, or more likely crawled or ran for his life.RIP John William Small, died 15 April 1915 Lone Pine Gallipoli.
According to my distinguished official family historian (i.e. Dad - is there anything he can't do?) he was my 1st cousin 4 times removed.
The trenches though mostly filled in and sometimes a little reconstructed were pretty cool too and i got some good photos. Chunic Bair was of course a highlight, it was airy wandering around what really should be a simple hilltop but is in fact the site of pilgrimage for thousands upon thousands of Kiwi's come every 25th April. A simple hill top where so much drama took place circa 1915 and so much literature written about it subsequently. Pretty awesome actually.
On the sagely advice of my guide book I didn't bother with the Troy tour and instead met crap loads of backpackers doing organised bus trips along the coast. We went out for dinner and I tagged along to enjoy their pre-organised discounts, special drink deals, and their multitudes of Australian women. Am i being sarcastic about that last one? I'm honestly not sure...
Check the photos:
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