Week Thirteen: The Gateway to The East
I left you on my way back to Kos last Monday and Tuesday was spent there, strolling around Kos town, relaxing, and writing various things, including finally starting a proper edit of Dissapearing Eyes. I also was given a few new ideas for books one stemming from Eminem’s song Rap God and the other from a news article. Some will know and some won’t but November is National Novel writing month. I’ve never had the chance to properly participate (write a short novel over the course of that month) I can now, but I’m frantically trying to finish The First Queen of the Pigeons by the first to let me start on a new idea. I’m unsure if I’ll manage but I suppose it’s not entirely important as I can spend the next three years doing nothing but travelling and writing.
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| Welcome to Bodrum |
On Wednesday I went for a long stroll along the beaches just outside of town and enjoyed singing along to my Ipod once I was far enough away from people. It is the one thing about the Greek Islands, I had been staying mostly in hotels and not hostels there and because of this had not been having any where near enough conversations. Singing couldn’t fix that but at least it served to get my voice back in use. Later that afternoon I picked up my bags from my lovely hotel and headed to the harbour, catching my ferry over to Bodrum in Turkey.
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| Bodrum Castle |
I got in rather late in the day but found my hotel easily and was impressed at the value for money there. 9 euros got me a twin room in a pretty decent place with free breakfast. Nothing compared to what Asia will be like but still, it was nice to escape the inflated costs of Greece. My initial plan was to stay in and watch Manchester United on the computer until I quickly discovered that Turkey has blocked most if not all sports streaming sites. It was the most intense blockades Ive ever encountered and eventually convinced me to head out to the bar and watch the game. A fellow united fan was there but really ruined the experience by just settling on three points in the game and harping on them all night. One was that Ferguson was a terrible manager and left the team because he knew we weren’t good enough anymore. Oh well, we won, so I was happy.
Thursday I spent the morning in search of an E-reader. I took a tiny mini bus out to industrial wasteland zone, walked a bit and found a street covered in huge box stores. I went to 4 massive electronic stores and they all had nothing in the E-reader department, though each one said the next one would. I was wandering through a huge shopping mall, hot and tired, when I saw a book store and figured what the hell. They had one Turkish E-reader left in stock and it was mine, so I’m now reading again! Hooray!
Thursday afternoon was spent wandering through the city of Bodrum, surrounded by countless little shops full of brand name goods (probably fake). I did cave and buy two polo shirts as some of my travel shirts have gotten a bit gross from overuse. I then headed out along the beaches at the outskirts of town and found a nice little writing bench and had a productive few hours writing and enjoying the southern Turkish warmth.
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| Ancient roman currency and it’s worth. |
Friday was a great day as I went to the Bodrum Castle and museum of underwater archaeology. I did not have particularly high expectations but I as blown away by the museum, which, set up across the entire castle is just an amazing place. I learned a ton about the history of currency, about shipping goods at the time, and about recovering items from shipwrecks. All this mixed with amazing views, ancient stones, and wonderful writing nooks.
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| Farewell Bodrum: A mosque in the Castle |
Saturday it was time to catch my flight to Istanbul, which went smoothly though I was shocked to find out just how massive the city is holding almost 20 million people when you include the surrounding area. It’s hectic, noisy, full of people, and yet remarkably clean.
I again was forced to a bar to watch United play, which was quite expensive but worth it for our come from behind win. I also got the fun of watching one of the waiters try to attack a middle age English man who did seem to start things and in the end made me want to punch him before leaving. Luckily 5 other waiters dragged their coworker away and forced the guy to leave, but it was quite an explosion at first, and lots of screamed curse words, even a punch or two thrown, a nice welcome to Istanbul for sure.
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| The Blue Mosque |
After a comfortable night at Harmony hostel (great place) I headed out the next day to do some writing in the shadows of the incredible Blue Mosque. I didn’t get too far into it before too guys managed to convince me to go to their travel agency with me.They spent a good three hours being charming and hustling me hard but in they end they won and I agreed to let them do my bookings for my next week in Turkey, and they also managed to book my flight to Nepal too. I have no doubt I paid them a little more than I would have paid doing it myself, but it should make things easy, and they were just so damn good at their job that I felt like doing business with them. I also don’t feel like I got that bad a deal either, and it works out nicely so that I’m at the airport a few hours before my flight to Nepal leaves on the 8th of November. A day I am very excited for.
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| Haggia Sofia |
After paying for everything they took me to lunch at a nice Kebab shop then took me to their art store, where I did not buy anything, although they did make me an offer to smuggle carpets into Canada this summer, in return I’d get one free carpet and the next week of travel free. Maybe I should have accepted but I took the safe route and declined.
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| Blue Mosque inside the courtyard. |
I spent the rest of the afternoon writing and then in the evening I spent the day on the rooftop terrace of this hostel, looking out on Istanbul and meeting cool people who ended up taking me to an awesome and cheap restaurant that will most likely be my mainstay food place for the next few days in Istanbul. Then we spent the nice discussing Fantasy and I was shocked to find a guy from Montreal who said he’d found an amazing book travelling and it happened to be by Brandon Sanderson, the Way of Kings. This opened up the discussion and got me feeling all passionate about fantasy again which was great, and I do find it amazing how many people do love fantasy if shown the decent stuff. It was wonderful to be back in a proper hostel again and talking at length with amazingly interesting people from all over the world. It is, if not the absolute greatest, one of a few greatest joys of travelling the world, and something I will always cherish.
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| Inside the Mosque, amazing experience |
Today was spent exploring Istanbul some more, heading back to the fountain in front of the blue Mosque and doing some writing before venturing inside the mosque itself It was fascinating to enter a temple of such a grand scale that wasn’t a Christian church. It was a beautiful building and I enjoyed my visit, Ill probably end up back there since its free to enter and fascinating.
and learning about Islam, which is something I am sadly ignorant about, though a little better now.
Now Im headed off for dinner at the same place as last night. Until next time Blogosphere!
Song of the Week: Give me Love Ed Sheeran
This is one of two songs by Sheeran I adore. Melodic, simple, and lovely, if a little cliché. Hope you Enjoy.
Reading Log: still working on: The Eye of the World.
I’ll leave you with a picture. Just because.
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| The sexiest damn statue I’ve ever seen, look at those chiselled chubby cheeks. |
