Turkey talk: Woah.
Jen and I met up in Marmaris, Turkey at Marmara Hotel. Her flight was late but we managed to have an amazing dinner buffet on the rooftop overlooking the sea and pool. After that we went and sat in a wobbly police stand that was situated next to the boardwalk that ran around the bay. We saw a drunk 12 year with a friend on each arm. The next day, we had to get to Fethiye for the start of the cruise. The bus ride was only 1.5 hours. A cab driver didn’t exactly know where in the harbor our boat was leaving from but he managed to take us down some side streets to a small hotel called V-go’s. Paul and Naila joined us in the car for the trip down to the boat. We were then informed that the 5-day cruise we bought was actually only 4.
The boat was pretty big. The first thing that happened was this guy from Seattle came over to talk to Jen and me. He was from Seattle and had red glasses that folded and separated at the nose. I told him I liked them and then he launched into his 1,000,000-word story. I think his name was Roger. His wife was skinny and kept her camera in a zip-lock bag. One time when the boat was traveling along the coast, we heard this gigantic howl that sounded like a large human baby crying. Somebody went “what was that?” and I go “I guess we finally found Jean Benet” then down the way I heard mini-whispers (Roger’s wife) go “who’s Jean Benet” and then red glasses would go “that girl that was kid-napped in Colorado”. This sort of thing happened a lot, where I would say something to one person and then eavesdroppers would peer in and ask their friend 4 an explanation. I kind of liked being involved in two conversations at once.
There were 20 vacationers on the boat, and 3 people working on the boat. At our first meal, all the vacationers managed to get a seat except Jen and me. So we just grabbed a plate and shoved our way down into the kitchenish inside area where there were a few steaming plates of rice and vegetables. Captain said we could not sit down there and needed to make our way to the top deck where there were no chairs. Jen sort of exploded and yelled at them all. Captain said we had to get food from up top and then could sit down there. It was a bad way to start the trip. This would be the last time that we had to sit downstairs.
At night, there was too much talking and not enough other so I got some people together to play cards. Naila, dreads, Jen and I played spades. I was partnered with Naila. By then, I had gotten kind of interested/obsessed with Naila. She had gotten a grant from Harvard to travel around Turkey for eight weeks to write her novel. She had a mini-lisp and a purple swimsuit. She said lots of things like “what’s your favorite color?” which kept me interested. Most of the people on the boat really liked saying stories about themselves and only got involved in conversations so that somebody would say something that they could respond to. Nyla and dreads were different. Dreads had been traveling around Africa before he came to Turkey. He most sat around and kept quiet and didn’t say much, which I appreciated. He makes cartoons and showed me some ideas he had been working on. One such idea was based on the seven deadly sins and sports. I think it had something to do with a tall, overeater catching a basketball. Dreads asked me to take a picture of him jumping off the boat. The first time I tried getting the action shot, I shot it too early. I asked for a second try and got total action on that attempt. He was pleased.
As for cards, spades is really fun and challenging. It involves some math and partners. Nyla and I won after a really long couple rounds. She gets excited very easily, which is fun to watch. I was later partner with dreads. That partnership was also victorious.
At night, most of the people on the boat slept on the deck of the boat because it was so hot inside the rooms. The moon was full and gave you just enough light to see everybody tossing and turning in their sleep. Breakfast was usually around 10:30 and consisted of bread, eggs, tea, coffee, and fruits. Everybody swam a lot. There was a shower on the side of the boat where you could wash sea-salt off your bod before you went and layed under the sun.
The title of this paragraph is “Other people on the boat”. Let me start off by saying that I mostly hung out with only a few people or kept to myself so I don’t know a lot about “other people on the boat”. Charlie: from Hong Kong. Jen said she saw him again at Istanbul airport. He was tall and laughed at about everything. Everything includes not funny things, as in not even funny to a twisted sense of humor. Australian girl who thinks she is hot. She hooked up with some reasonable guy on the boat and lost her swimsuit at one point. She had a belly button ring. Reasonable guy fished a lot and introduced me to the idea of pouring beer on food for added taste and juiciness. He also showed us magic tricks (4 of them which he repeated each twice). Cameron had long hair and kept pretty quiet. He often associated with dreads. Pimply back had red hair and only made one remark worthy of writing about. The night we were going out to a bar all together, he noticed that Jen was wearing the whistle I had given her as a gift in London for the trip. By 11, she had been blowing into it a bunch and was obviously annoying pimpleback. He said this: “What the heck did she bring that whistle for? I mean, did she actually think “I should bring this on the trip’ and bring it all the way over here”. I thought tot myself, yes, that’s exactly what happened. I saw pimple back in Istanbul. I was walking around with some Doritos and had my headphones on or else I would have stopped to chat with him for hours. I guess we could have talked about the Doritos. There was this girl Sarah on the boat who is going to Savannah next year for fashion design. She said a few things that were so vacant and nothing that I didn’t really even bother saying anything. She did get really psyched about playing ‘’food hangman”. Somebody was trying to guess mine and the little part of my hangman board that listed the letters that weren’t there were L S and R. Sarah said something like “if you put two O’s in-between l and S and an e between the s and r, it would spell loser.” Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! I don’t know what the F she is going to make in school, but I hope I find out somehow. Her mom was on the boat and was really smart and helped us with spades. She was also a good dancer at the bar. OH MY GOD: my favorite couple: the Smalls. There was this tiny man on the boat from Italy that we named Mr. Small. He was definitely under 5 feet tall and loved sun bathing and had tons of funny facial expressions. His wife was small, too. They didn't really talk that much to each other, but they were a good couple nonetheless. Mrs. Small danced a lot at the bar. Mr. Small was very polite. The night that we stayed at the tree houses in Olympus, the smalls went with our group on the bus to the mountain with fire coming out of it. It was basically a huge stone hill that you had to climb up for an hour. At the top there were little gushes of gas that caught on fire. The smalls fell asleep on the bus. On the bus, Naila and I shared a seat that faced the back. We faced everyone else facing forward. It felt like we were on stage. I asked Nyla if she wanted to have a spitting contest but she said that it might hit somebody in the bus. She had a point. Paul is from Canada and works at a software development company. He has a lot of Canadian pride. OMG!! At our first lunch, Paul had just gotten out of the water and headed directly for the dinner table. He had on his weird swim shorts. As he was leaning to scoop out a portion of salad, there was water and drool running down his face and beardish stubble right off into all the food as he reached. I am definitely sure it made it into the coffee grounds and instant tea because as Paul was weaving and wondering around the table, all the other people eating at the table were watching the drool come pouring down and moving the food on the table out of his path. It was like watching a retarded person peeing himself, except the urine would have to be poured on sandwiches and snacks. That was the only time Paul drooled.
I think my favorite things about being on the boat were the long swims that I took, seeing peacocks and goats and cats everywhere, and being surprised by the food when it magically showed up on the table and not having to order or care what to order or how much it was because it was all included and I didn’t have any say. I also loved sleeping outside, playing games, and wearing sunglasses most of the day.
After the cruise we went to the treehouses. We only spent one night there because we needed to get headed over to Istanbul for Jen’s friend’s wedding. We stayed one night in Bursa. We went a little bit outside the city by cab and found some gem. We basically slept there all day, watched tennis on TV, and then went out at night to look for her replacement wears for the wedding. These kids were playing soccer by the street and the ball went super high in the air. I was close to the road where the ball was heading. I instinctively jumped into the street to catch the ball for them. I almost got ran over, but at least I saved their ball. We had really good food for dinner. I asked our server if I could take his picture and he adjusted his tie to make a good photo. For dinner I had meatballs. They were pretty greasy so I asked tie adjuster what meat they were and he said “WHALE” with low deep voice, then turned around and walked away.
The next day we took a cab, train, and bus to the marina where we took Ito to Istanbul. It was like the ferry that Miki and I took from England to Belgium minus the person sleeping under her legs. I had a nice orange juice onboard. Then we took a bus and cab to Diva’s Hotel in Istanbul. Our room was fancy but there was no pool even though they said there was one. I went looking for a beach to dunk in but there were only piles of rocks with fishermen on them. Istanbul is big and cobblestoned and a lot less hot than southern Turkey. I did a lot of looking around solo as Jen met up with her friend, friend’s sisters, and friend’s fiancée. I went to the grand bazaar and Blue Mosque. The Grand Bazaar is basically a huge garage sale/sample sale with tons of blankets, pillowcases, glass, beading, leather jackets, and ceramics. You had to take off your shoes in the Blue Mosque so everyone was walking around with theirs shoes in a bag. There were tons of Persian rugs glued to the floor and people sitting Indian style. Our last day in Istanbul we signed up for a guided tour of the Bosporus. We figured it might be worth the $45. A lady in a Blue 4-door car picked us up. We weren’t sure what was going on. We figured she just got paid to drive us but she kept saying things like “this is Hagia Sophia.” She didn’t have many details so we figured she was just a know it all. When we got to where the tour was supposed to start, she got out of the car and went and bought us tickets for the boat that is basically a shuttle between the boroughs of Istanbul. She bought our ticket for $5. We kind of figured out what was going on and said we’d rather not take her “tour” anymore, considering it was just going to be her in a sea of people yelling out ½ baked facts about here and there. She pretty much shrugged her shoulders and walked away. The boat went ½ hour in one direction and ½ our back. We got off and had a Turkish bath. You get there and pick out how many specialty services you want then change into a towel. Then you put on these weird little Japanese looking shoes and walked into a big marble foyer with tons of little faucets all around. You scrub up and then some big huge guy in a robe comes over and cracks your back and arms and gives you a massage. After that, he poured a big bucket of water on my head then scrubbed my scalp. He pointed to my peeling shoulders and made a bitter lemon face. When I was done, I laid in a hot room. On my way out, they offered me water and then charged me for it. At least I got a free pair of sleep shorts in a tiny bag. I threw them away at the hotel.
So the wedding was a two-part event. The first part was on Friday night. Jen was already there so I took a water taxi to the other side of Istanbul where “an older guy with green eyes” was meeting me. I was waiting there for about an hour before I started getting sick from all the bus fumes. I called to make sure I was still being picked up and was told 10 more minutes. 10 more minutes later I started eye-balling everybody up trying to figure out whose car I was going to be climbing into. These two curly haired broads were totally staring at me so I stared back hard-core. About 2 minutes later Denis tapped my shoulder and said, “Chuck?” so I figured this was my ride, except he was with the two curly hairs!!! I had to apologize for total mean stare but they didn’t care. We drove for about 45 minutes inland. There was no English in the car so it was fun trying to figure out what the heck the four of them were talking about. The driver looked like Small except he was more Arabic. For some reason we stopped at an Ikea for 10 minutes. The driver changed shirts then we drove the rest of the way. The event was already cooking by the time we got there. It was a gigantic hall that had neon colored ceilings and a mini area for the dj. The dj had a gigantic keyboard and a little drum. Most of the music was provided by a guy playing a zoojaa or something like that. It looked like a little clarinet with a trumpet mouthpiece but sounded like a mix between an oboe and a bagpipe. The rhythms were interesting and provided a good beat to dance to. The bride and groom were super nice people and were happy to see all their friends and guests. The food they had was watermelon, rice, beans, and some chicken that was mostly dark meat. I got a few compliments for my dancing, which is always nice. At one point, mother of the bride collapsed in tears during some traditional dance. Also, our hands got slathered in green gak that turned out to be henna. The next day, my hotel bed had tons of stains from my henna hands on it. It looked like a crime scene. I was thinking of leaving a note for the cleaning lady explaining that it was henna and I was at a wedding, but I couldn’t find any paper to do so.
The best things about Istanbul are the guys on the street selling Spirograph drawings, the corn vendors, cheap ice cream, and really friendly carpet salesmen.
Jen and I met up in Marmaris, Turkey at Marmara Hotel. Her flight was late but we managed to have an amazing dinner buffet on the rooftop overlooking the sea and pool. After that we went and sat in a wobbly police stand that was situated next to the boardwalk that ran around the bay. We saw a drunk 12 year with a friend on each arm. The next day, we had to get to Fethiye for the start of the cruise. The bus ride was only 1.5 hours. A cab driver didn’t exactly know where in the harbor our boat was leaving from but he managed to take us down some side streets to a small hotel called V-go’s. Paul and Naila joined us in the car for the trip down to the boat. We were then informed that the 5-day cruise we bought was actually only 4.
The boat was pretty big. The first thing that happened was this guy from Seattle came over to talk to Jen and me. He was from Seattle and had red glasses that folded and separated at the nose. I told him I liked them and then he launched into his 1,000,000-word story. I think his name was Roger. His wife was skinny and kept her camera in a zip-lock bag. One time when the boat was traveling along the coast, we heard this gigantic howl that sounded like a large human baby crying. Somebody went “what was that?” and I go “I guess we finally found Jean Benet” then down the way I heard mini-whispers (Roger’s wife) go “who’s Jean Benet” and then red glasses would go “that girl that was kid-napped in Colorado”. This sort of thing happened a lot, where I would say something to one person and then eavesdroppers would peer in and ask their friend 4 an explanation. I kind of liked being involved in two conversations at once.
There were 20 vacationers on the boat, and 3 people working on the boat. At our first meal, all the vacationers managed to get a seat except Jen and me. So we just grabbed a plate and shoved our way down into the kitchenish inside area where there were a few steaming plates of rice and vegetables. Captain said we could not sit down there and needed to make our way to the top deck where there were no chairs. Jen sort of exploded and yelled at them all. Captain said we had to get food from up top and then could sit down there. It was a bad way to start the trip. This would be the last time that we had to sit downstairs.
At night, there was too much talking and not enough other so I got some people together to play cards. Naila, dreads, Jen and I played spades. I was partnered with Naila. By then, I had gotten kind of interested/obsessed with Naila. She had gotten a grant from Harvard to travel around Turkey for eight weeks to write her novel. She had a mini-lisp and a purple swimsuit. She said lots of things like “what’s your favorite color?” which kept me interested. Most of the people on the boat really liked saying stories about themselves and only got involved in conversations so that somebody would say something that they could respond to. Nyla and dreads were different. Dreads had been traveling around Africa before he came to Turkey. He most sat around and kept quiet and didn’t say much, which I appreciated. He makes cartoons and showed me some ideas he had been working on. One such idea was based on the seven deadly sins and sports. I think it had something to do with a tall, overeater catching a basketball. Dreads asked me to take a picture of him jumping off the boat. The first time I tried getting the action shot, I shot it too early. I asked for a second try and got total action on that attempt. He was pleased.
As for cards, spades is really fun and challenging. It involves some math and partners. Nyla and I won after a really long couple rounds. She gets excited very easily, which is fun to watch. I was later partner with dreads. That partnership was also victorious.
At night, most of the people on the boat slept on the deck of the boat because it was so hot inside the rooms. The moon was full and gave you just enough light to see everybody tossing and turning in their sleep. Breakfast was usually around 10:30 and consisted of bread, eggs, tea, coffee, and fruits. Everybody swam a lot. There was a shower on the side of the boat where you could wash sea-salt off your bod before you went and layed under the sun.
The title of this paragraph is “Other people on the boat”. Let me start off by saying that I mostly hung out with only a few people or kept to myself so I don’t know a lot about “other people on the boat”. Charlie: from Hong Kong. Jen said she saw him again at Istanbul airport. He was tall and laughed at about everything. Everything includes not funny things, as in not even funny to a twisted sense of humor. Australian girl who thinks she is hot. She hooked up with some reasonable guy on the boat and lost her swimsuit at one point. She had a belly button ring. Reasonable guy fished a lot and introduced me to the idea of pouring beer on food for added taste and juiciness. He also showed us magic tricks (4 of them which he repeated each twice). Cameron had long hair and kept pretty quiet. He often associated with dreads. Pimply back had red hair and only made one remark worthy of writing about. The night we were going out to a bar all together, he noticed that Jen was wearing the whistle I had given her as a gift in London for the trip. By 11, she had been blowing into it a bunch and was obviously annoying pimpleback. He said this: “What the heck did she bring that whistle for? I mean, did she actually think “I should bring this on the trip’ and bring it all the way over here”. I thought tot myself, yes, that’s exactly what happened. I saw pimple back in Istanbul. I was walking around with some Doritos and had my headphones on or else I would have stopped to chat with him for hours. I guess we could have talked about the Doritos. There was this girl Sarah on the boat who is going to Savannah next year for fashion design. She said a few things that were so vacant and nothing that I didn’t really even bother saying anything. She did get really psyched about playing ‘’food hangman”. Somebody was trying to guess mine and the little part of my hangman board that listed the letters that weren’t there were L S and R. Sarah said something like “if you put two O’s in-between l and S and an e between the s and r, it would spell loser.” Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! I don’t know what the F she is going to make in school, but I hope I find out somehow. Her mom was on the boat and was really smart and helped us with spades. She was also a good dancer at the bar. OH MY GOD: my favorite couple: the Smalls. There was this tiny man on the boat from Italy that we named Mr. Small. He was definitely under 5 feet tall and loved sun bathing and had tons of funny facial expressions. His wife was small, too. They didn't really talk that much to each other, but they were a good couple nonetheless. Mrs. Small danced a lot at the bar. Mr. Small was very polite. The night that we stayed at the tree houses in Olympus, the smalls went with our group on the bus to the mountain with fire coming out of it. It was basically a huge stone hill that you had to climb up for an hour. At the top there were little gushes of gas that caught on fire. The smalls fell asleep on the bus. On the bus, Naila and I shared a seat that faced the back. We faced everyone else facing forward. It felt like we were on stage. I asked Nyla if she wanted to have a spitting contest but she said that it might hit somebody in the bus. She had a point. Paul is from Canada and works at a software development company. He has a lot of Canadian pride. OMG!! At our first lunch, Paul had just gotten out of the water and headed directly for the dinner table. He had on his weird swim shorts. As he was leaning to scoop out a portion of salad, there was water and drool running down his face and beardish stubble right off into all the food as he reached. I am definitely sure it made it into the coffee grounds and instant tea because as Paul was weaving and wondering around the table, all the other people eating at the table were watching the drool come pouring down and moving the food on the table out of his path. It was like watching a retarded person peeing himself, except the urine would have to be poured on sandwiches and snacks. That was the only time Paul drooled.
I think my favorite things about being on the boat were the long swims that I took, seeing peacocks and goats and cats everywhere, and being surprised by the food when it magically showed up on the table and not having to order or care what to order or how much it was because it was all included and I didn’t have any say. I also loved sleeping outside, playing games, and wearing sunglasses most of the day.
After the cruise we went to the treehouses. We only spent one night there because we needed to get headed over to Istanbul for Jen’s friend’s wedding. We stayed one night in Bursa. We went a little bit outside the city by cab and found some gem. We basically slept there all day, watched tennis on TV, and then went out at night to look for her replacement wears for the wedding. These kids were playing soccer by the street and the ball went super high in the air. I was close to the road where the ball was heading. I instinctively jumped into the street to catch the ball for them. I almost got ran over, but at least I saved their ball. We had really good food for dinner. I asked our server if I could take his picture and he adjusted his tie to make a good photo. For dinner I had meatballs. They were pretty greasy so I asked tie adjuster what meat they were and he said “WHALE” with low deep voice, then turned around and walked away.
The next day we took a cab, train, and bus to the marina where we took Ito to Istanbul. It was like the ferry that Miki and I took from England to Belgium minus the person sleeping under her legs. I had a nice orange juice onboard. Then we took a bus and cab to Diva’s Hotel in Istanbul. Our room was fancy but there was no pool even though they said there was one. I went looking for a beach to dunk in but there were only piles of rocks with fishermen on them. Istanbul is big and cobblestoned and a lot less hot than southern Turkey. I did a lot of looking around solo as Jen met up with her friend, friend’s sisters, and friend’s fiancée. I went to the grand bazaar and Blue Mosque. The Grand Bazaar is basically a huge garage sale/sample sale with tons of blankets, pillowcases, glass, beading, leather jackets, and ceramics. You had to take off your shoes in the Blue Mosque so everyone was walking around with theirs shoes in a bag. There were tons of Persian rugs glued to the floor and people sitting Indian style. Our last day in Istanbul we signed up for a guided tour of the Bosporus. We figured it might be worth the $45. A lady in a Blue 4-door car picked us up. We weren’t sure what was going on. We figured she just got paid to drive us but she kept saying things like “this is Hagia Sophia.” She didn’t have many details so we figured she was just a know it all. When we got to where the tour was supposed to start, she got out of the car and went and bought us tickets for the boat that is basically a shuttle between the boroughs of Istanbul. She bought our ticket for $5. We kind of figured out what was going on and said we’d rather not take her “tour” anymore, considering it was just going to be her in a sea of people yelling out ½ baked facts about here and there. She pretty much shrugged her shoulders and walked away. The boat went ½ hour in one direction and ½ our back. We got off and had a Turkish bath. You get there and pick out how many specialty services you want then change into a towel. Then you put on these weird little Japanese looking shoes and walked into a big marble foyer with tons of little faucets all around. You scrub up and then some big huge guy in a robe comes over and cracks your back and arms and gives you a massage. After that, he poured a big bucket of water on my head then scrubbed my scalp. He pointed to my peeling shoulders and made a bitter lemon face. When I was done, I laid in a hot room. On my way out, they offered me water and then charged me for it. At least I got a free pair of sleep shorts in a tiny bag. I threw them away at the hotel.
So the wedding was a two-part event. The first part was on Friday night. Jen was already there so I took a water taxi to the other side of Istanbul where “an older guy with green eyes” was meeting me. I was waiting there for about an hour before I started getting sick from all the bus fumes. I called to make sure I was still being picked up and was told 10 more minutes. 10 more minutes later I started eye-balling everybody up trying to figure out whose car I was going to be climbing into. These two curly haired broads were totally staring at me so I stared back hard-core. About 2 minutes later Denis tapped my shoulder and said, “Chuck?” so I figured this was my ride, except he was with the two curly hairs!!! I had to apologize for total mean stare but they didn’t care. We drove for about 45 minutes inland. There was no English in the car so it was fun trying to figure out what the heck the four of them were talking about. The driver looked like Small except he was more Arabic. For some reason we stopped at an Ikea for 10 minutes. The driver changed shirts then we drove the rest of the way. The event was already cooking by the time we got there. It was a gigantic hall that had neon colored ceilings and a mini area for the dj. The dj had a gigantic keyboard and a little drum. Most of the music was provided by a guy playing a zoojaa or something like that. It looked like a little clarinet with a trumpet mouthpiece but sounded like a mix between an oboe and a bagpipe. The rhythms were interesting and provided a good beat to dance to. The bride and groom were super nice people and were happy to see all their friends and guests. The food they had was watermelon, rice, beans, and some chicken that was mostly dark meat. I got a few compliments for my dancing, which is always nice. At one point, mother of the bride collapsed in tears during some traditional dance. Also, our hands got slathered in green gak that turned out to be henna. The next day, my hotel bed had tons of stains from my henna hands on it. It looked like a crime scene. I was thinking of leaving a note for the cleaning lady explaining that it was henna and I was at a wedding, but I couldn’t find any paper to do so.
The best things about Istanbul are the guys on the street selling Spirograph drawings, the corn vendors, cheap ice cream, and really friendly carpet salesmen.
posted by chuck at 11:40 AM
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