Day 80-83 - Singapore - End of world trip.

Sunday 10 October 2004, 14:00 Singapore time

Well, it's finally over. In just over 4 hours, I hop on a plane, and 83 days, 4 hours and 25 minutes after I left Perth for Auckland, I arrive back in Perth having circled the world. I miss my home city, but I feel sad now that this adventure is coming to an end. It's been an experience, and one that has changed me in a lot of ways that I'll probably only fully appreciate after I get back to a normal routine, working, saving money and seeing my friends.

My favourite places have been, in no particular order: Auckland, Vancouver, Vienna and Singapore (along with Melbourne and Perth).

People have been curious to know what I think of Singapore - apart from the fact I am totally not acclimatised to the weather (32C and humid every day), this place is amazing. Food is cheap, and now that I know how to use it, the public transport is amazing and gets you anywhere on the island. The tropical scenery and surprisingly clean streets make for a certain experience. The smells remind me a little of Hawaii, as the vegetation is in some ways similar. I've been to the Museum of Asian Civilisations, Sentosa Island and the National Orchid Garden - I would have done far more but I am tired after 12 weeks of holidaying out of a bag, and I think my health is still recovering from Turkey.

I'm definitely planning on coming back here - possibly as a 2-3 week domestic trip incorporating Melbourne, Auckland and a bit more of New Zealand, and Singapore, which is quite doable from Perth. I'll have to see what it costs though.

Anyway, my money is being extended to new lows right now, so I have two minutes left at the net cafe. See you all back in Perth!

Day 78-79 - In transit, Singapore

Wednesday 6 October 2004, 23:40 Singapore time (GMT+8; same as Perth time)

Well, I've made it to Singapore! Firstly, let's follow on from the previous post.

After posting the last post, I had dinner at Orban, a quick nap, and then went back to Orban Restaurant. It was quite amusing - I went there with the intention to buy food, but for whatever reason I never got asked to order, ended up watching MTV and bantering with Nigel for about two hours, and got two free teas. (I love free tea in Turkey, especially when the person offering is not trying to sell me a carpet.)

Then it was off on the shuttle to Atatürk International Airport, a surprisingly large and modern facility. On the way, we saw the modern, green beachside suburbs to the west of Istanbul and part of the remains of the old city walls. I didn't get to go to Kariye Museum or the city walls - that will have to wait for another trip. While Istanbul was a crazy place which I didn't handle too well, I think I'd be more ready for it if I went a second time in a few years.

Free entertainment at the airport was provided by the Singaporeans and Hong Kong citizens on my flight, every single one of whom failed the security check. After going through so many of them I have no problems passing them at all, it's one of those things that if you follow the routine, you can't go wrong. Mine is - dump mobile, camera, coins and keys in the bucket, dump anything I'm carrying, plus the backpack and my jacket into the conveyor belt, then walk through, and collect my stuff at the other side starting with the jacket. I always wear my jacket through airports as it provides another few places to store small items such as the phone, and is too heavy and large to pack.

The flight to Singapore, as it turned out, went via Dubai, where we had to get off for security reasons and go through a security check. Dubai's got a very nice airport and it's a city I wouldn't mind visiting at some future point. I bought a couple of postcards, walked away with uncertain change from a US dollar (not being able to read Arabic would be an issue in the UAE) and got on the plane again. *edit* Turns out I got 2.50 dirham change, which is almost 1 Australian dollar. The Web is a good thing :)

For the curious, the route taken by the plane was:
- Southeast through Turkey to around Alanya
- South, crossing the easternmost tip of Cyprus
- East, crossing Lebanon to eastern Syria
- Southeast into Jordan and from there, drawing a neat parallel line with the Iraqi border through the Saudi desert - so no insurgent pictures, which may disappoint some readers
- Over Al-Khobar, then north of Bahrain and then into Dubai from the Gulf
- From Dubai, almost a perfect straight line to Singapore across southern India.

Airport food and the service was in a class of its own with Singapore Airlines - more like meals than the usual sort of prepackaged food you get on planes. By the end of the flight, though, my knees were sore and I was underslept, so most of yesterday (Wed) was spent sleeping off the last of the Sultan's Revenge and recovering from the flight. It's bizarre how after 3 weeks in Turkey the so-foreign thank you, "tesekkür ederim", and hello, "merhaba", has become habit and I feel almost strange saying "thank you very much" in my own language in this city. I'll get used to it, I'm sure, just like the left-hand drive, which took me about 15 minutes to get used to. It seems funny not talking about millions of the local currency any more, as well. A bottle of water here costs S$1.20, not one million.

In the meantime, I have discovered the joys of the Shaw Tower's food centre. Food in Singapore is clean, healthy and ridiculously cheap for the most part if you know where to go, and I had the benefit of a few good tips. Roti and vegetarian buffet with ginger tea and grass jelly for brunch, big bowl of green vegies and meat for dinner, and hopefully murtabak for breakfast tomorrow. People speak good English here and are generally friendly, and the traffic is orderly. Despite the heat and humidity, you can walk quite easily between most places, and airconditioning is almost an institution here. My hotel, for which I am paying less than half the price, is awesome, and I have vouchers for almost all the major attractions. I also like the fact that this city accommodates both cheap tourists like myself and the big end of town - meaning I get the place to myself whenever I want it and don't have to compete with masses of tourists with loud shirts.

Loud shirts are, as in Hawaii, a big thing here. People watching can be quite an amusing activity :) A note about sellers - I've noticed how many people call to you from the street trying to sell you stuff (most notably trishaw rides, camera accessories and food). I'm amazed how hardened I've become to it all after Istanbul - I even say "hi" to some of them and keep on moving at the same speed. A guy over the road from my hotel this morning was trying to sell me a wide-angle lens for my camera for S$199 (A$180) and seemed offended and dismissive of me when I said I didn't know the market and wanted to find out more about lenses before buying. At least I got to try it out - but it seemed to distort the image a bit?

Anyway, off to enjoy the town. I've been to the Arab Street and Sultan Mosque, and right now am in a pleasant net cafe in Little India. More to report later.

Day 75-77 - Istanbul

Monday 4 October 2004, 12:00 Turkey time

This is the biggest city I've ever been in, and I'm under no illusions that, firstly, while there's certainly a lot of money floating around this place, this is for the most part a third-world city with corresponding infrastructure, and secondly, I'm well outside my comfort zone.

After the Kaçkar experience (see Day 61), I decided it was safest not to chance it on the local food where it doesn't come specifically recommended. At times, I have survived on Diet Coke (called Coca-Cola Light in Europe and Turkey), which you can buy out of a fridge even in small shops, and potato chips in a sealed packet. I have, however, eaten at two decent restaurants in the last few days. The first is Lale (The Pudding Shop), on Divan Yolu pretty close to the Blue Mosque, a restaurant established in 1958 and still owned by the same family, which used to be the start of the "hippy trail" to Kathmandu. Nowadays, while the service and food are excellent, it is quite pricy. The second is Orban (Anatolia) Restaurant on Piyerloti Caddesi near my hotel. The staff are extremely friendly, the food is excellent (I recommend the Adana Kebab if you like spicy and Urfa if you don't) and well within my budget, and when I was stuck for money the guy even shouted me an apple tea while I chatted with some British tourists. While I doubt his real name is actually Nigel, he's provided most of my enjoyable dining experiences in this city. There's a free bellydancing show in the evenings, I'm thinking of checking it out tonight - my last night in Istanbul.

Let me offer you an insight through my eyes of the city in which I presently find myself. This part, Sultanahmet/Eminönü, is full of small, steep streets with traffic that probably would run you over. Traffic in general in Istanbul is completely insane, and often ignores traffic lights and other road signals. As with most places, the worst are the taxi drivers. Many footpaths are dangerous to use by way of being broken up or under maintenance, so most locals walk on the road and ignore horns, diving for cover only when they're about to get hit. The horns get annoying after a while, but I don't mind some busdrivers who have installed almost cartoonish ones (including the Fez bus driver).

The lack of hygiene here is palpable. You don't have to walk far to find a pool of offputtingly smelly water on a road (or just wet patches), or a pile of rubbish. Abandoned cats exist everywhere - some barely the size of my shoe or even smaller - and get very territorial with each other about rubbish piles. However, they're timid with humans and most probably will walk or run away from you. The oddest bit for me is that some of the food shops and street merchants operate next to the most smelly bits. You wonder how they sell anything!

A few safety tips. Firstly, if someone is trying to get you to come into their shop or is trying to get your attention (even just saying hi), act like they don't exist and walk on. Even saying "no" to them is taken as encouragement, and they will hassle you. It is hard to completely ignore them, but you just have to do it. This applies as much for 6-year-olds as for adults - I've had kids try to sell me stuff and get very insistent. Also, if you don't have a watch on and someone who is clearly not a lost tourist asks you the time, they're most likely trying to find out what pocket you keep your valuables in. Treat them like the others.

Another thing to watch when crossing bridges is that they are congested with fishermen trying for their daily catch, and they don't watch behind them. Just make sure that when you're passing them by, that you don't get hit when they withdraw their line.

Also, don't venture out of known areas without a map. I recommend the map from HI-Cordial House for 3 million, and although not all streets are marked, most streets don't have signs anyway. If you're looking for signs, turn down any road and look for little blue signs on the sides of buildings which have the street number, street name and neighbourhood - but you have to be really close to them to see them at all.

Finally, there are a number of scams which operate. I had read Tom Brosnahan's excellent Turkey Travel Planner website (which offers a wide range of useful and interesting information), but I'll draw your attention to this page and its links as I agree with all of it. Yesterday evening, I got a bit lost coming out of Taksim/Beyoglu district and kept on walking anyway as I knew I was headed in the right direction. A boy of about 19 came up to me and started a conversation with me. He said he was from Cyprus and was going to work with his uncle. He seemed friendly but I was wary. Among other things, he started asking where I was from, also questions which were designed to determine my financial status and credit cards, whether I wanted to see Turkish women, or even men, and started recommending hamams (Turkish baths) to me. My experience the other day in the Turkish bath revealed you put your valuables in safe locking facilities. This was fine in Cappadocia, but I'd imagine this guy would have had arrangements with the particular establishment. I handled it by answering everything vaguely, implying that I was basically poor, and that I had a group I was part of who were expecting me back at a given time. He followed me onto the Ataturk Bridge, at which point I picked up the phone, dialled a friend back in Australia and started speaking in a mix of Polish, Hungarian and random syllables, making sure to recite each of the streets, bridges and suburbs clearly in English. The kid got scared and parted ways with me. I was a bit freaked out but as usual, I survived without losing a penny.

I've been potentially scammed so many times around the world, and every time, it's stayed in the potential territory. I think this goes back to the fact that I'm an eternally suspicious and untrusting person and, although I'm a nice guy who at times finds it hard to be assertive, when it comes to the crunch I can do it. I think it's just a matter of remembering that you owe this person nothing, that merely their being friendly to you entitles them to nothing, and that walking away and/or being rude to them does not cost you anything and you'll be gone in a few days anyway.

What I've done in the past few days

- On Saturday, I walked up Babiali/Ankara Caddesi, the university/publishers' quarter, and checked out many small bookshops and such. While most of the books were in Turkish, it was an interesting way to kill a bit of time. Afterwards, it was on to Eminönü, the port of call for the boats and ferries, where one could check out the street sellers, the nearby Galata Bridge, and the mosques nearby. You get an excellent view of the Galata Tower and Dolmabahçe from here. A word of warning - avoid the WC under Galata Bridge. Don't ask why - just avoid it. At night, I headed off around the back of the Sultanahmet Mosque to Akbiyik Caddesi, a slightly more happening spot full of young backpackers, pubs, Fez's head office and the HI-Orient Hostel, which seemed decent. There's a bar under it with bellydancing shows (almost ubiquitous in Turkey, it seems) and drinks at the sorts of prices one would usually expect to pay. I got lost on the way back, but found my way out of it eventually.

- Yesterday, I went up Fualpasa past Beyazit Mosque and the University and around Suleymaniye Mosque, which is in quite a hard-to-get-to location if you're walking. Near the mosque is a pleasant botanical garden with no entrance charge - great place to stop for lunch or a water if you've brought some. Then wound down the zigzaggy little streets into the sort of area that Turkish people actually live, before crossing the Atatürk Bridge into Beyoglu. The Galata Tower (7 million entrance charge), a 13th-century Genoese tower in excellent condition which overlooks the city, reminded me of some of the other observation towers I've been up. The outside viewing galleries give you an overview of the entire Golden Horn region, the Istanbul bit of the Bosphorus, the Asian side, the mosques and Topkapi Palace, and the bridges. After getting lost briefly, I found my way to Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping street of Istanbul. This is like Hay Street Mall, but 2.5km long and twice as wide with tramlines going up the middle of it, and impossibly crowded for its entire length. I found that the crowds actually detracted from my ability to shop in it as the pedestrians were as crazy as the motorists. At its end is Taksim Square, where various political events in past times have occurred.

- Today I haven't really done much at all. Today is my last day in the Turkish Republic - there is so much to do in Istanbul, but I'm not in an ideal location for getting to many of the attractions. I'm hoping to see the Kariye mosaic museum today, though - it's a bit out of the city and I am hoping it'll shake my present feeling of claustrophobia just a little bit.

Day 73-74 - Cappadocia, Ankara, End of tour

Thursday 30 September 2004, 19:30 Turkey time

Today was our free day, so we went firstly to the former Greek town of Mustafapasa, formerly known as Sinasos. Like many of the Greek towns in Turkey the town had been built in typical Greek architecture style into the side of a hill, and is now largely populated by Turks who are trying to restore some of the old buildings to use as B&Bs and hotels for exploring the nearby region. I hope it works out - it definitely has potential as an idea.

Next stop was the town of Göreme, where I checked out the small shopping area. I got the chance to properly weigh myself and am 95.3kg - i.e. I have lost approximately 3.2kg net since leaving Perth, and about 7kg since my peak on the journey. I also spent some time in a music shop surveying a range of Turkish traditional and modern music.

Next was Avanos, a somewhat less touristy town where animals still roam the streets, the traffic on the narrow streets is completely mental, and everyone is selling either carpets or pottery. It was good fun but I didn't want to spend too long there.

Finally was the Turkish bath just out of Avanos, which was an experience in itself - I will try to explain it. First, you put your valuables in safe storage, then change out of your clothes and, wearing only swimmers, go into a steam room. This is one hell of a full on steam room - you can't see, your lips and eyes start doing funny things and you sweat like crazy. Next is the cold pool which you bathe in for 5 minutes or so, before going into a less steamy, less hot steam room for about another 5. Then you come out, lie on a hot slab of marble and wait for the (male) staff to call you for a massage and scrub with something only slightly more subtle than sandpaper. After the massage, you lie on another table and another staff member soaps you all over and massages you a different way. After this, you shower, then get a quick neck massage and exfoliation, then shower again. At the end of it all you get dressed and they give you Turkish tea. At the end, despite several somewhat harrowing stages, I was (and still am several hours later) incredibly relaxed.

One final note about Ürgüp. Hotel internet sucks - I paid bigtime for shared 56k and could barely use the net. Go to Campus Internet Cafe at the eastern end of Ataturk Bulvari near the tourist information and they charge you A$2 an hour, the access is fast, computers are modern (and even took my camera), the staff are friendly and if you're lucky you even score a tea for your trouble. I don't normally recommend specific businesses but this one deserved it, I think.

One day left with the tour group. To be honest, I'll be glad to be on my own again, although the tour guide (Ayhan) has been excellent, informative and possesses a great sense of humour, and I will miss his insights. I have whinged and whined about various things along the way, but overall, the tour has been good and I have seen a lot of stuff I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I guess my priorities are just different to a lot of people, though, and this sort of thing brings out an ugly side of me where I look down on people (in this case, some of my fellow travellers) for being so dreadfully normal and predictable. I never have been either, and mediocrity so annoys me in ways which it really shouldn't.

Friday 1 October 2004, 23:45 Turkey time

Back in Istanbul - after most of the day in a bus. I am staying in a room with a broken TV, a broken phone, and a smoke problem. Yes, welcome to Istanbul. :)

Today, we drove from Cappadocia to Istanbul via Ankara - some of the group went up in hot air balloons to see Cappadocia from another angle, but I'd already bought a picture book anyway, and $200-$300 on my present budget was completely out of the question. In Göreme I saw some places charging less than half those rates, but the tour guide pointed to the small print - they only have one balloon, there's no guarantee of the reservation and there's no insurance once you're up there. On the way, we stopped at a petrol station where I enjoyed yet more tea and watched an armoured personnel carrier filling up at the pump. I suppose they've got to fuel up somewhere...

On that note, something I haven't actually mentioned before. The number of military (jandarma) sites here at just random unexpected places, often just out of the city centre, with young guards carrying full-on weaponry who will happily chat to you in English if you say hi to them, is just incredible. The police carry guns here, and I'm not just talking a pistol either. Just before the turnoff to Gallipoli from Tekirdag, almost every intersection was being manned by armed military personnel. It's quite intimidating until you get used to it. Most of the people in question would, at a guess, be young people doing their compulsory national service.

Anyway, to Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and a very modern city completely unlike Istanbul with shiny buildings, good and generally straight roads, leafy suburbs with small mosques, shopping centres, the world-renowned Museum of Civilisations (not part of the tour, but reportedly one of the world's best museums of its kind, considering the sort of stuff that's in Turkey already) and the thing we'd come to see, the Atatürk Mausoleum - the final resting place of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the site of a museum dedicated to Atatürk memorabilia (clothes, cigarette cases, photos, his actual office complete with a stuffed cast of his favourite dog), World War I, the Independence War of 1919-1923, where Atatürk led the Turkish people against the Ottomans, and against the Entente powers who'd extracted huge sections of Turkey through the armistice agreement in 1918, and Turkey's post-independence history up until Atatürk's death from cirrhosis in 1938. It was a very moving experience - they'd done the museum extremely well with background sounds and music in some of the rooms, letters and memos written by the man himself, etc. The thing which struck me was how this guy could have had absolute power if he'd wanted it in 1923, but preferred to create a modern, secular democracy and use his power and influence to force Turkey into each of those three aims. Outside was a detachment of soldiers performing a ceremony not unlike the changing of the guard.

The Ankara experience was capped off with a visit to its biggest shopping centre, Migros, to enjoy fast food. While most opted for Burger King or KFC, I found a nice restaurant completely devoted to the Iskender kebab, the original kebab as perfected in Bursa (a city to the south of Istanbul). I finally got to try one, and it was really nice.

Next was the 6-hour drive to Istanbul. At first, we were somewhat hampered by the fact that all of the freeways out of Ankara were dug up for construction, but by guesswork and a bit of cheating, we made it onto a freeway further up. After travelling through the mountains and stopping in Bolu just before sunset, we finally hit the outskirts of Istanbul. At this point, the traffic came to a complete standstill, and we were treated to free entertainment of drivers cutting each other off, driving in four lanes when only two were drawn, etc. Finally, we got over the Bosphorus Bridge and into Istanbul by about 10pm. This was the end of the Fez tour, and we bid farewell to Ayhan, our guide for the past 2 weeks. They say a guide can make or break a tour, and with his sense of humour, intelligence, passion for his home country, excellent English skills, his width of interests leading to a range of interesting discussions, and his local knowledge of places to eat, I think we got an excellent deal.

I'm kind of relieved to be on my own again, but am so far outside my comfort zone in Istanbul that I think the two almost cancel each other out. More later...