Mercedes-Simon World Tour: Istanbul

Monday, May 11, 2009

Istanbul

If I ever live in Istanbul, I think I'll be ok, no chance of getting bored. This city is amazingly full of energy. A perfect respite from our 3rd world travels because it just feels like Western Europe.

I went out on Friday night with my local friend Ertugrul, who was nice enough to show me around Beyoglu and Istiklal street, the area where the city never sleeps. After dinner, we joined his friends for drinks, including "raki", the anise-based local favorite. This drink tasted much better than I expected, so I suffered the consequences on Saturday morning. Everyone was able to speak English, so I managed to mingle with the young and cool Istanbulians (sp?). Ahhh.... Always refreshing to stay out late.

Since I'm joining my NYC friends throughout Turkey, I'm staying at a hotel that is much better than what Simon and I are used to. Sebnem hotel is very cool, especially its rooftop overlooking the Bosphorus. Sultanahmed has something in common with Stone Town in Zanzibar: hotels have rooftops with sea views, so every morning we join the pilgrimage upstairs to get breakfrast. From our own rooftop we can see tourists in other hotels doing just the same. The morning sun and the views are totally worth it.

The NYC crowd is comprised of Bart, Eddie, Erick, Ines and Juan, so 3 Argentineans and 3 Americans. And we visited the touristic highlights: Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar, Spice Market, Taskim Square, Ortakoy, and Galata Tower. We even went to a hamam: boys and girls were separated in two different rooms completely covered in ancient marble. These turkish baths have been around for hundreds of years. There were several packages offered. Ines and chose one that included a massage, and since we had no clue of what it entailed, we just waited for directions from the hamam ladies that spoke very limited English. The entire experience lasted about an hour, I don't necessarily feel more relaxed, but hey, they kept advertising that it is one of the 1000 places in the world that one must see before dying.

We have every meal: lunch, coffee, and dinner, at a venue recommended by at least the "Style City" guide book, and most of the times, friends of friends that we have decided provide reliable culinary advise. There's no casual: "oh, this restaurant on the corner looks cute, let's eat there". No, every meal is carefully choreographed ahead of time. The result: all meals have been outstanding. Ah, travelling in style.
Mercedes

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Ranking of Memorable Experiences

OCEANIA
1. Skydiving in Mission Beach
2. Climbing up the Sydney Harbour Bridge
3. All-Blacks beating the Wallabies in Wellington
4. Melbourne footy game at MCG
5. Down the 52-degree railway in Katoomba, Blue Mountains
6. Open fires burning in Kakadu National Park
7. Loosing a piece of sashimi to a seagull in Darling Harbour

EASTERN MOST ASIA
1. Hiking through rice terraces in north Luzon
2. Crowds hiking in park outside Seoul
3. Sleeping in tree house on Camiguin Island
4. 4-corner intersection crossing in crowded Tokyo
5. The smallest hotel room we've ever seen at Washington Shinjuku in Tokyo
6. Walking and paddling inside the Sumaging cave in Sagada
7. Dangerous cliff road between Banaue and Bontoc in North Luzon, especially the bus on the way back in the rain
8. Pictures of the head-hunting, skimply-dressed aborigines around Sagada and Bontoc, North Luzon
9. Biking uphill and being rewarded by cold streams at the end on Camiguin Island
10. Back alley bars in Tokyo

CENTRAL ASIA
1. Yurtstay in the jailoo at Song Kol. Cooold night
2. Homestays throughout Kyrgyzstan
3. Long drives through the Pamirs Highway, Tajikistan
4. Tunnel drive through the flooded pass between Dushanbe and Penjekent, Tajikistan
5. Policemen on every corner, especially on the Pamirs and the big cities

MIDDLE EAST
1. Balloon ride in Cappadocia
2. Giza pyramids. Set in a desert in the middle of Cairo, going inside Keops' hot and empty chamber
3. Abu Simbel temples. Imposingly set by the lake on the Nile, and with well preserved carvings and drawings
4. Boat cruise off the Turkish coast. 6 passengers, 4 crew including chef
5. Bedouin camps in Wadi Rum and Sharqiya. Dinner and overnight stay in Jordan. Coffee, dates and chat with children seating on antique armchairs in Oman.
6. Climbing up and sliding down sand dunes on a 4WD
7. Floating on the Dead Sea
8. Skying indoors on a 40+C summer day in Dubai

AFRICA
1. Climbing Kilimanjaro. Exhaustion, lack of showers
2. Lake Malawi. Mumbo Island and Cape Maclear's tranquility and design
3. Tanzanian Safari. Seeing lions, elephants, zebras, wildebeest and giraffes so up close
4. Victoria Falls: the spray, the steepness of the gorge, the proximity of the view points
5. Drive from Cape Town to Johannesburg. A 10-day road tour through vineyards, mountain passes, ostrich farms, windy ocean coasts, townships, and mountain ranges
6. Diving for the first time in Pemba. On the ride back, the instructor lost his glasses trying to fix the engine
7. Mombasa to Arusha bus ride. Dust everywhere, conductors fighting for customers, and sauna-feeling due to overheating radiator
8. Plane flight between Pemba and the islands in Quirimbas archipelago, runways with cows, terminals comprised of only little huts
9. Lake Malawi to Ilha de Mozambique 4.5-day trip, including our friends from LAM at Tete airport
10. Riding an ostrich at farm outside Oudtshoorn, Little Karoo
11. Simon getting a haircut at the little hairdresser's hut in Ilha de Mozambique

S AMERICA
1. Salta. Road to Iruya on riverbed and car stuck in water
2. Cafayate. 50km bike ride through the canyon running out of water and slipping + jaming the chain. We rehydrated back in town with water and wine flavoured ice-cream
3. Patagonia. Trekking in Paine, El Chalten, and P.Moreno ice, and car ride across the border to and from Paine in the wind, rain, and spray from the lakes
4. Paraty. Boat and hikes to the beaches with green sea water that are only accesible by boat or foot.
5. Calilegua. Local bus to park and road/bridge blockade

SE ASIA
1. Hanoi. Walking to the train station with our lugagge and water up to our knees, followed by 24 hour train ride
2. Northern Thailand. Rain when we were walking around the hill-tribe village
3. Mekong in Laos. Tourists revolt and change of boat, including human chain
4. Water Festival in Cambodia. Boat racing in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap followed by people on streets and fireworks
5. Bangkok. Riding the local bus in rain with leaking roof
6. Luang Prabang. Tuk-tuk carrying our bikes on the roof on our way back from waterfalls
7. Thai-Laos Boarder. Crossing, immigration and customs via long tail boat.
8. Mekong in Vietnam. Slow boat ride from Chau Doc to Cambodian border
9. Gili Islands, Indonesia. Riding bike with torch back from dinner.
10. Sumatra. Hike to see the blooming Rafflesia, largest flower in the world.

Ranking of Nightmares

We've been very lucky throughout, but we had a few bad times:

1. Shared taxi that departed after a 90-minute wait and took 12 hours to go from Bishkek to Osh. Both of us were sharing the back seat of a small car with a sweaty mother and a smelly 6-week old non-stop-crying baby
2. Arrival in Hanoi and hotel scam. We got on the airport van that took forever to get into town because of the horrible traffic. By the time we got to the center it was dark, and the van dropped us at a different hotel. We discovered the scam, but where left in the middle of the street, not knowing which way to go. Thank God for blackberry and Google maps!
3. From Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh via Chau Doc. We rode with our luggage on our laps and no leg room on a minibus from Ho Chi Minh City to Chau Doc via bumpy Mekong Delta roads. In Chau Doc, the guesthouse had no windows and a musty smell. That was not all, after a 3+ hour boat ride from the Vietnamese border, our overcrowded bus was stuck in Phnom Penh traffic for 2 hours
4. Toilet facilities throughout Central Asia
5. Heat in Aswan and in most of Oman: over 40C during the day and over 30C during the night
6. Trip from Samarkand to Bukhara. The train was not running, taxis were too expensive, so we finally got on a non-A/C bus: 3 hours with no leg room and the exclusive view of piles of luggage in front of us
7. Walking at night in Padang, Indonesia. We couldn't find the bus station because of an inaccurate map, and we had to use a torch to avoid walking into one of the many open manholes on the sidewalk

List of Most Beautiful Places

SE ASIA
Halong Bay
Gili Islands
Krabi, Phi Phi, Hong, Rai Lei
Hoi An
Mekong River in Northern Laos
Luang Prabang
SOUTH AMERICA
Iguazu Falls
Perito Moreno & Spegazzini glaciers
Paraty area
Iruya
Cachi
AFRICA:
Ngorongoro crater
Zanzibar
Cape Town and Stellenbosch area
Drakensberg
Top of Kilimanjaro
Kisite Marine Park
Lamu
Ilha de Mozambique
Mumbo Island
MIDDLE EAST:
Istanbul
Alexandria
Sirince
Wadi Rum desert
Dahab and its reefs
CENTRAL ASIA:
The Pamirs
Altyn Arashan and Karakol, in Issyk Kol area
Song-Kol Lake
Registan in Samarkand
EASTERNMOST ASIA:
Palaces and gardens in Seoul
Rice terraces in Batad
View of Camiguin from White Island
OCEANIA:
Sydney Harbour
Great Barrier Reef
Melbourne architecture: colonial - modern contrast
Ayers Rock & The Olgas

How much time have we spent going from one city to the next?

OCEANIA
Total: TBD.
EASTERNMOST ASIA
Total: 4 trips by road in 28 hours, 5 flights in 18 hours, and 2 boat trips in 3 hours.
CENTRAL ASIA
Total: 11 trips by road in 66 hours, 2 flights in 10.5 hours, and 1 11-hour train.
MIDDLE EAST
Total: 15 trips by road in 57 hours, 11 flights in 28.5 hours, and 3 trains in 29 hours.
AFRICA
Total: 17 trips by road in 100 hours, 8 flights in 23 hours, and 4 boat trips in 6 hours.
SOUTH AMERICA
Total: 9 trips by road in 75 hours and 7 flights in 30 hours.
SE ASIA
Total: 15 trips in 46 hours by road (mainly buses), 15 flights in 58 hours, 1 train in 18 hours, and 9 boats in 30 hours.

Mercedes-Simon World Tour