Entering Asia

After writing my last blog post, I finally got in touch with Sophia, only to find out that her work schedule was tight and wouldn’t take them through Fira. So, we said our final goodbyes over the phone and I camped outside of town, heading down to the port to catch the ferry to Rhodes the next morning. It was a long ride, sliding past Greek islands under clear skies and a red sunset. I arrived in Rhodes an hour or so after dark, and, not wanting to try to find a place to camp so late, got a ride to a hostel with the manager of the place, who was waiting at the port.

He drove me from the port into the middle of the old down of Rhodes, a fortified medieval city dating from the Crusades. My hostel, the Rhodes Youth Hostel, was right in the middle of the old town, next to an old Byzantine church. I dropped my bags and went out to take a look around. Narrow stone streets, old Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques side by side, archways spanning the walkways just above head level–this island has been a major focal point for Mediterranean trade for a few thousand years now, and shows it in the feeling of a crossroads of eastern and western sea culture. In the old days it was famous for housing one of the seven wonders of the ancient world–the Rhodes Colossus, an enormous statue that dominated the harbor and was the first thing many ships saw upon sailing into the city.

I booked two nights, since the ferry to Marmaris on the Turkish coast left too early in the morning to give me enough time to explore the city. I spent the next day walking around, seeing as much of the old city as I could and walking out along the seafront, where more recent Turkish architecture can be found, as well as the island’s long beaches. That afternoon I stopped back by the hostel, and met a fellow traveler called Philippe, a Canadian from Quebec who was traveling for a bit before beginning a PhD program in mathematics in Paris. It turned out he was also traveling to Turkey, so we joined forces and caught the ferry the next morning to the Turkish coast.

The Turkish visa process was surprisingly easy, costing only twenty USD and taking no more than ten minutes to process. We headed straight to the Marmaris bus station and caught the first bus north along the coast to a city called Denizli. In Turkey, the city buses that connect the main cities are fast, comfortable, and generally on time. On top of that, passengers are served tea and snacks en route, even on trips of only a couple of hours. Quite a refreshing change from some of the other bus journeys I’ve taken.

After a trip through the arid mountains and plains just inland from the Turkish Aegean coast, we arrived in Denizli and took a small bus, or dolmus, to the town of Pammukahle. In Turkey, dolmuses provide local public transportation, usually at a rate of around two lira (roughly one Euro) for a ride. They’re shortened white buses, generally packed with locals, that network out from every major city to the smaller villages and towns nearby.

Our destination, Pammukahle, is home to a cascading series of sulfuric pools, resulting in pure white cliffs and still pools of milky warm water, with the sprawling ruins of the ancient Roman settlement of Hieropolis stretching out on the plateau of them. We checked into a local inn for only about fifteen lira each and were introduced for the first time to Turkish hospitality. The owner, a portly man by the name of Omar Sharrif, sat us down after we’d paid, gave us tea (in the traditional Turkish style, served hot in curved glasses), and talked to us for a bit. Despite his thick accent and our lack of Turkish, we got on well. When his wife came to ask him for the money, he shook his head and rubbed his brow. “Wife asks for money. Son asks for money. Little son asks for money. I am crazy.” I suppose some things are the same in every culture.

The hot springs are famous in the region as a health spot for visiting tourists to wade in mineral water, and for a hefty fee, to go swimming in the old baths–complete with original Roman marble columns. The stairstep pools, with their white walls and pale water, were pretty enough, but I was especially impressed by the ruins of Hieropolis. Sprawled out across the valley, the vast majority of theme seem untouched, and none of them are closed off or restricted to visitors. As Philippe and I were walking through the ruins of an early Byzantine style octagonal church, we were approached by some gypsies who offered to sell us some Roman coins for twenty lira. They felt fake, and I very much hope they were, because I didn’t buy one.

We headed back to the hotel around sunset, where we were treated to a truly excellent Turkish dinner of lamb kebabs, grilled eggplant, rice with butter, and a number of other excellent side dishes, by Omar’s wife. As we ate, Turkish music played, and the hotel owners’ teenage daughter and twenty-one year old son danced in the courtyard as the rest of us watched and clapped in time. Altogether, not bad for less than the price of a dorm bed in a hostel in some of the big cities of Europe.

The next day we headed to the ruins Ephesus, taking another bus to Selcuk. We picked up a hotel room there and were driven to teh ruins by a friend of the owner, where we walked down through the crumbling city. Though better preserved than Hieropolis had been, Ephesus was more crowded and more restricted. Still, at around six most of the tourists left to head back to their cruise ships on the nearby coast and the ruins were nicely abandoned for sunset. We walked back into town, where we met back up with the friend who’d given us a ride to the ruins. He was a Kurd, who owned with some friends and relatives a trio of shops just off the main street of Selcuk. We sat around and talked, drank tea, and smoked nargila, or a Turkish water pipe with flavored tobacco. The owners showed me their rugs, including some truly spectacular specimens–which were, of course, well beyond my price range.

We finally headed back to our hotel at around two in the morning, and unlocked our room to find a couple sleeping in our bed. Needless to say, we were somewhat confused, and headed back downstairs to wake up the managers. This turned out to be harder than it looked, and when one of them finally stirred himself, he told us that they’d moved our room, and gave us the new key.

The next day we’d planned to head further north, but we both liked the feel of Selcuk and wanted to look around a bit more. At breakfast (provided, as usual, by our hotel–fruit, cheese, olives, bread with sweet Turkish honey, and tea) we met an American girl named Monica who was in Turkey for studies in Istanbul, and was exploring a bit the week before her classes started. She also spoke some Turkish, which turned out to be quite helpful as we explored the city. The three of us headed out that evening to the beach, a long beautiful stretch of sand with the sun setting behind the rocky mountains up the coast. We were the only ones there, a welcome change from the noise and crowds of Santorini’s main beach a few days earlier.

After another night in the hotel we headed for Istanbul. We decided to take the train through Izmir, a pretty port town, and on up the coast to Menemen. The train took us through a wide valley, past vineyards and villages, into the bustling port city of Izmir, where we booked a ticket on to Menemen. It only cost us a few lira each, and we were told to be back to catch a shuttle to the other train station in the city. So, we walked around for a few hours and returned to catch our shuttle bus. After half an hour in said shuttle, we were wondering just where this other train station was. After an hour, we saw the signs for the Menemen train station and had to laugh–we’d just taken a bus, using a train ticket, from the train station in one town to the train station in the next.

Menemen seemed to be a town fairly devoid of tourists or any of the infrastructure needed to attract them. It was sprawling and industrial, with no clear center. When we got to the bus station, Monica’s Turkish turned out to be a life saver, as no one there spoke English, and the station was a madhouse of regional buses and dozens of dolmuses. We also turned out to be minor celebrities, as they hardly got any tourists. My camera especially was a big hit, and at least half a dozen of the Turks lounging about in the station cafe asked me to take their pictures.

The bus toward Istanbul, to Ayvalik, where we planned to spend the night, turned out to be an hour late, not showing up until seven in the evening, and took longer than we expected. We had planned to go from Ayvalik to Assos, a little beach town nearby, but weren’t sure of the possibility of doing so arriving at midnight, so we hopped off a stop before, at a city on the coast. I didn’t (and still don’t) know the name of the town, but it turned out to be a sort of Turkish nightlife center, with plenty of Turks visiting and next to no foreign tourists–none, in fact, that we saw, other than ourselves. We ended up sleeping out next to a lighthouse, as it was a warm night and we wanted to catch an early bus the next morning on to Istanbul.

After a rather sleepless night and some good Turkish coffee the next morning, we boarded a bus to Istanbul, which took the better part of the day, and finally arrived that evening. Istanbul is truly enchanting, and I loved it from the moment I arrived. The city is massive, sprawling out across the land on either side of the Bosphorous, straddling Asia and Europe. Here, no buildings can be built higher than the mosques, and to look out across the city is to see a sea of buildings punctuated with minarets. Five times a day the call to prayer wails out across the city, sung by some of the best voices in the Muslim world–a sound not to be ignored, or easily forgotten. All combined, the city is alive, vibrant, and (to us westerners, at least) like something at the edges of another world.

We went out that night to the Taksim quarter. This was Monica’s third visit, and she knew her way around–we picked up some dinner (fish sandwiches on one of the Bosphorus bridges) and found a little bar with live Kurdish music. With a steady rhythm and beautiful wavering vocals sung by a Kurdish woman, I was fascinated. The best part was that other people in the bar were handing in requests–this isn’t folk music of the variety found in the states, meant to introduce a style of music to those unfamiliar with it; this is regional music, and the Kurds who come here know the songs by heart and often sing along.

Then, over the next few days, exploration and more exploration. We climbed a hill through an Ottoman cemetery and sat and watched the city. We walked through the Blue Mosque, craning our necks at the vaulted dome, inscribed in Arabic, far above. We descended into the old cisterns of the city, built in the 6th century and only rediscovered in the 16th–a cavernous vaulted space underground, with two feet of water in the bottom, fish swimming about, and rows upon rows of stone columns. We explored the opulence of the Topkapi Palace, seat of the Sultanate in the Ottoman Empire. And, of course, we walked, to innumerable little coffee shops and parks.

Istanbul has been the most unforgettable city yet, and I still have two more days here. On Tuesday I’ll catch a train to Aleppo, in Syria. I have less than a month left now, and am beginning to dread the date when it will all have to end. But I suppose it has to–after all, I’m going to have to start making enough money to pay for the next trip.