Turkey, Day 1

Amongst the things that I am good at procrastinating, next to posting travel entries, is packing. My bags are usually the last ones to be loaded onto the trunk during family trips and since forgetting things is also my specialty, I get the scolding all the time whenever we are trailing behind with time and I’m still not done with all the ‘chop!’s and ‘alamak’s. As was the case on that sunny, plus-something-below-10-degree Tuesday morning- the day of our flight to Moscow prior to Istanbul the day after. (Un)Fortunately, my sister was there to do the scolding part. And somehow, I managed to hack it without spawning any tragedy- our flight was fine too.

23rd January, 2007.

Sheremetevo Airport was as arid as always, so we decided to hop on a bus to Mega, a shopping complex some 30 minutes away. I might have said this at every opportunity I had, and I will say it again- this country is expensive, even if it is sale time. Which made me wonder- Do only rich people go to shopping malls, then? You can get those designer goods at half the price during sale in Malaysia. Nonetheless, I did buy a couple of translated books by Pushkin and Bulgakov (what could I do? The choice of English books was cramped. Heh.), ones that we will learn in Russian class in the future. I tried in vain to find some English guidebooks on Turkey/Istanbul- might as well hunt for a chest of treasure for all it’s worth.

Back in hostel before we left, my roomie had helped me check the weather in Istanbul, which happened to be around 15 degrees, though reportedly it will plummet to about 5 degrees by the end of our stay. I quite merrily forgot about Moscow and its lovely wintertime, so imagine the extent of my grimace when the pilot announced before landing, “The weather in Moscow is good. The temperature outside is -16 degrees Celsius”. Was he trying to be funny? I was already a walking glacier by the time we got onto the shuttle bus, which served me right for dressing autumn-ish. My consolation was the snowfall that we did not get (only once or twice thus far) in Volgograd- Moscow was a white mantle of virgin snow that day.




Later that night Fatin and Kak Nadiyah joined us (they took a later flight) bunking on the adamantine airport benches. Funny to be missing my hostel bed for once. But who knows if one day I’ll be in a situation where I’ll miss those benches for a change. Anyways. An airport is a place to go online for RM25 an hour and drink a cup of RM15 tea. They rarely get as good as that anywhere else. ;)

24th January, 2007.

Our flight was at 10.45 am- a 3-hour-and-a-half journey without a hitch. Alhamdulillah. Although having requested halal meals for all of us, my reservation was not registered by some mistake, leaving me no choice but to pau my sister’s share. Hehe. I haven’t quite worked out the idea, but in some dishes offered in restaurants in Russia, salmons are cheaper than even tuna. Rather a blow to my preconceived idea of salmon being the fish for the upper-class people. Regardless, smoked salmons are pure delish.



The very thing that I did not want to happen happened- I fell asleep. And upon glimpsing the blue sea besieged by land housing buildings after tall buildings, connected by a couple of imposing bridges, I scrambled for my sister’s camera. I could recall several problems concerning this trip but the camera topped the list. Since my camera had gone out of the picture for a while, all hopes were placed on my sister’s, which in fact was having a problem of its own. It operated on 4 AA batteries and lately had been on some kind of a rampage, bingeing on batteries in the same amount of time it took you to finish a meal. My only living comfort was the fact that they were disposable batteries, and you could get those practically everywhere, right? But little did I know then how much trouble we would have to go through to feed this little baby some juice.



Upon touchdown, we immediately scurried for a toilet (as if there weren’t any toilet on the plane. haha.). After screwing our watches one turn anti-clockwise, we headed out of the arrival hall, half-expecting a placard with our names emblazoned across somewhere in the crowd. Right.

First thing on our agenda was to draw out local currency cash, the New Turkish Lira. As we were making our way to the counter, a forty-something guy crept up to us, offering help. He said he was from the information board and could help us plan our entire trip, including going out of Istanbul. Now, when your mother told you not to talk to strangers, she must have had a good reason for it. Bear that in mind all the time, so that you won’t be whisked away to some tourist agency office, blown silly by some ridiculously expensive tour itinerary sketch (although they kept repeating ‘We are here to help traveling students’. They weren’t.) for half an hour and tricked into buying absurdly overpriced sim cards.

We still couldn’t get through to our contact person Mr. Pasiad after several attempts. Finally succeeded in escaping from Pak Cik Unta (because we were annoyed and he had these extra-long eyelashes), we roamed about the airport with the hope to find our rightful escort. We found him almost at once (actually it was the other way round) and he led us out to our mode of transport, a neat Volkswagen van. He was a nice guy and it turned out he could speak Russian, as he once lived in Kazakhstan for four years. Not like my Russian was of much use anyway. *cowers in shame*

We took the coastal route from the airport and my first thought was, cantiknya… the playgrounds, tennis courts, basketball courts, all overlooking the gleaming sea. The waves were dancing passionately against the dull-coloured rocks, and, as we passed a small bridge, one giant splash of the rippling water hit our screen, effectively washing away any dirt there was.

The traffic in Istanbul was relatively smooth, nothing compared to, say, Bangkok. Hehe memang la kan. Up till then, we had no idea about who we were going to live with for the next ten days- students, that was all that we were told. At long last, we stopped at a small flat and the guy ushered us to the 2nd floor, where our host lived. A pretty Turkish girl who introduced herself as Kevser invited us in and showed us to our room. She lived with two more people, a Korean and a Vietnamese. The apartment was rather plush, consisting of a spacious living and dining room, three bedrooms, and two toilets. You could never afford that in Russia. Never.

It was only our first day and we could already discern traces of the people’s warm hospitality in the welcoming treatment we received. We ate a simple dinner prepared by our gracious host before the three of them watched a Korean movie with our Vietnamese host, whom we called Ruki. And me? In front of the laptop, of course ;)

ps: I know there aren't many pictures in this entry, but the next entry will! I haven't quite finished with it yet though, so... =D