Turkey (and getting there)

Couple more emails

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Have left santorini am now back in athens at the airport- we are sleeping tonight at the airport before catching our flight to Turkey! ick! have also spent the last nine hours on a boat from santorini to athens on top of that :P

the keyboard and computer terminal i am using are very very weird with metal keypad and lacking several key buttons! strange! would write more but there is time limit on here, and fankly am absolutely shattered from yet another day of full on travelling :P rash looks better at least... lol

oh well, back to my comfy airport seat bed. i feel like an extra in The
Terminal movie!

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Sorry I haven't emailed in so long! It took us a while to find an internet cafe in turkey that wasn't, well, seedy :P

First thing I have to say about Turkey is this: TURKISH MEN ARE PERVERTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would explain further, but it would take a really long time- Janine has had really bad experence and is quite shaken by it... they take any opportunity to touch your bottom or breasts through what I like to call "Purposeful Contact": the city of Istanbul has over 15 million people in it alone! So you can imagine how busy etc etc it is here... PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!!!! So, it's easy to "accidentally" brush up against people, and Turkish men seem to take every opportunity to position their hands in such a way that they'll brush against said areas as they're walking past you. They'll do more if you hesitate. They also won't stop leering at you if you're an unaccompanied (ie, have no male companions) female! so you can imagine the trouble the three of us have come across here! Nina the most because she is young but also blonde.

We met up with this really nice couple who are also staying at our hotel, so we've been tagging along with them some places and voila! No more men hassling us! So I won't be coming back to Turkey unless in the company of male friends/family members/husband/etc etc... too difficult otherwise!

Asides from that kind of crap to deal with, I've actually bought a lot of neat things in Turkey. Have become addicted to turkish apple tea.

I'm going to have to be quick now because I'm running out of time, so brief overview:
Have visited the Dolmabache Palace, The Blue Mosque, have yet to go to the Hagia Sophia, even though it's very close to our hotel! heheh. Am staying in old turkish quarter. Amazing to see all the muslim women. Get woken up in the morning byt eerie muslim wailing-chant, calling muslims to prayer. Kinda cool to listen to. Happens five times a day!

Unfortunately am not dealing with sitiophobia overly well. Hard too because Janine and Mum are greatly disliking all the food in Turkey, and it can be expensive to eat out (same deal in Greece). Everything is absolutely swimming in oil. I even had chips tonight that were swimming in oil, it was incredible(-y bad!)!!!! So haven't had opportunity to really try anything; Oh! Had a chocolate crepe yesterday! yummy! *drool* But then, that's not exactly healthy, heheh.

Money is interesting here too, because although we have been working in euros so far, Turkey is in lira, working in millions and thousands, which can be really confusing- ie, 3 coffees cost 17 million lira! So bizarre!



[edit 29/06/05]

Anyhoo, I just realised I might have worried you with all that talk about
turkish men being perverts, we're quite alright actually and are fairly
safe. Men are just sleaze balls and make icky comments when you're walking
by etc. For the most part. heh. We're all fine though and our hotel is
lovely and the people running it are SO nice!