Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

Istanbul, the East meets West city that never sleeps. It promises a contagious infatuation to everyone who visits – and a bowel blasting bug to match. In hindsight Istanbul was a very mild introduction to the Middle East (ME) but we did face some preliminary culture shock as we met the stares of curious locals, hawkers of everything (un)imaginable, Turkish masseurs who knew no boundaries, and our first squatter toilets.

And then there was Tarkan (which really justifies a blog post all on its own) a Turkish Elvis-come-Ricky Martin pop god who happened to be performing a free concert the Saturday night we were in the city! It was the first concert I’ve attended that was attended by police armed with machine-guns and the only words I have to describe it are cold, wet, smoky, hairy, and awesome.

Bidding adieu to Istanbul we caught a night-bus/boat (complete with a squatter toilet, which I’m pretty sure was someone’s idea of a sick joke) to Selchuk where we were greeted with sunshine, smiles and 2 700 year-old ruins just waiting for us to discover them. We found a hostel (or, rather, one found us) dropped our bags and headed to Ephesus *insert Wikipedia definition here* where we wondered around taking cheesy photos and then taking an equally rewarding nap in the nose-bleed section of the amphitheater until being woken up by an Australian couple we had previously met in the Turkish bath (take note of this couple, they appear again later). We promptly went home and slept for another 14 hours.

The next day we found ourselves in Denizli, a Turkish town known for nothing but its proximity to Pamukkale and the birthplace of an Ebola-like virus that hit our bowels hard. From this point on in our Turkish travels we had to insure that we were no farther than 20 metres from a toilet (preferably the western variety) at any given time. We past the bug back and forth between the two of us for the following week (and I’m still suffering from it at the time of writing). We’ve tried a few goggled home remedies but none have proven to be a cure. The most useful advice we’ve found was to avoid dehydration by drinking obscene amounts of salt-sugar-lemon water which isn’t as bad as it sounds.

With a liters of lemon water replacing our lunch (which we were now too afraid to eat) we ventured forward in Turkey to Pamukkale where we traversed the travertines and once again bumped into the Australian couple. Turns out we had been stalking them for a reason, earlier that day, they had gotten engaged. We were the first ones they shared the news with and they invited us to celebrate with beers and hookah (much to our body’s dismay).

From Pammukale it was another night bus to Cappadocia, the cavernous province that is central Turkey. Aside from the landscape I will remember Cappadocia as the place where I failed horribly at pottery, melted my coat and spent the coldest day of my life wondering around caves. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Guess what comes next? If you guessed ‘night bus’ you’re twenty-five percent right. In fact it involved four buses to get from Turkey to Syria, all involving transfers at ungodly hours. The highlight was a stop over in Keysari where we were met with an entire bus station of hospitality and passed a few hours chatting with locals, drinking tea and visiting the barber. Then it was transfer, transfer and transfer again... and pinch yourself, you ain't dreaming, you’re in Syria.