/Beautiful Disaster

/Thursday, May 31, 2007

Turkey, 13 May - 16 May'2007

Day 2, Izmir,Turkey, 8pm:
We are leaving Izmir for Cappadocia now! A long 12 hour bus journey ahead! My butt is aching already! And we met this horny Turkish bastard who tried to make friends with us...We ignored him...And he tried to snap pictures of us! Without our permission! His hairy arm, armed with his HP will just appear out of nowhere from our backs! Damm annoying! He attempts to buy coke and ice cream for Rachel somemore...Damm gross...And he kept attempting to talk to us in Turkish and typing SMSes in Turkish before jabbing it into my face to read what he typed! That DumbArse!

Luckily, we were seated right behind the bus driver....His farking annoying antics caught their attention and the bus driver and another staff were nice enough to help us, scolded the men and asked him not to harrass us anymore.

And that bastard actually rebutted that we were friends with him and we could speak english with him! Damm! Luckily, the two staff that helped us were DAMM fierce with him....and he stopped his nonsense....He was also made to changed seats with another passenger so that he can't harrass us anymore!

Traumatic bus ride for Liang-Mei-Mei and Lee-Xiao-Mei!

Oh...The best part....Towards the end of our bus ride, he bought two soft toys, waves it at us, but hesitated to give them to us.... Then, suddenly the bus stops at a damm ulu spot and he was the only one that got down the bus in the middle of nowhere...Right before we reached the final destination! Damm weird.

("-_-) x 1000 + *roll eyes* x 2000

Anyway, back to the captivating Capppadocia. It is a really beautiful area located in the heart of central Turkey and is well-known for the most beautiful natural landscapes that have numerous queer-looking cone shape mountains. It is also an anthropologist's dream research haven with it's numerous abandoned cave homes, underground cities(35 metres deep!) and churches that were used by people in the 16th and 17th century!

Cappadocia means "Land of the beautiful horses". I remembered this because Rachel won an egg-shaped onxy stone as prize during a random quiz set by our guide! Haha...

There are millions of "fairy chimney" in Cuppadocia..They are actually small homes carved out in the cone shaped mountains for pigeons and not fairies! 400 years back, pigeons' eggs are really important because they are needed by people to make paints for drawings and decorating homes and frescos inside churches. Now, these little homes are legacy of the past.

Day 3, Cuppadocia, Turkey: We reached Cuppadocia at 7 am and the weather was kinda of grey and cold...Rain, rain...Boo.

We felt quite shagged so we decided to "nuah", explore around town by bicycle and go for a two-hour hike in the rose valley and watched the senset.

A picture of the town Goreme in Cuppadocia. There are many towns in Cuppadocia. I guess Cuppadocia is probably 15 times bigger then Singapore. *hecks*

Our room in traveller's cave pension! The staff there are really nice and friendly and it's like Little Asia! 80% of the tourists living in this pension are Koreans, Japanese & Chinese. It's damm popular with Asians lah! It's nice staying here cos everyone is so nice and chummy and you could make many new friends there.

Our cave room!

It drizzled...so we skipped the bicycle tour around town and walked instead! Went to the "open museum" instead. Tah-dah! More cave homes and fairy chimney homes.

We went for a 2 hour guided tour thru' Rose valley!($12.50 per pax, by Traveller's Cave Pension) Though tiring, the trek was really good and we explored many caves, churches and the view high up the valley was really gorgeous!

Picture of the entrance of a fresh water catchment. People in the past built these to collect water since the main river is really far away. There were many abandon water catchments in Rose valley and they're really deep!

Church!

Tombstones!

None of the photographs I took could do justice to the beautiful landscape!

We managed to gain private access to a locked-up cave church and the frescos were beautifully preserved! A few hundred years old! *noticed that they have NO eyes???* Freaky.

I will let you know why Jesus, Mary, the angels and the saints have no eyes.... in private. *heh*

The beautiful sunset! And that's the end of Day 1 in Cuppadocia...ZzZzzzzz.....

Day 4, Cuppadocia, Turkey: Woke up at freakin' 4am for Hot air balloon! It's a one hour flight and we were really looking forward to it!

Up, Up and away! The view is really gorgeous and there were 12 other hot air balloons floating around! It was a really wonderful feeling....=)

After the short-haul flight, we were awarded certs and had celebratory wine (Cuppadocia has really good wine and it's world renowned!)....Did you know that 20 people could be ferried in one hot air balloon basket? We had 16 other people squeezing in with us! =)

After the hot air balloon tour ended, it was only 8 plus in the morning! And we embarked on a guided tour soon after.... I was so so tired and I snoozed from 6pm onwards till the next day!

Day 5, Cuppadocia, Turkey: We did turkish bath and rode around town in bikes! The turkish bath was really relaxing: Suana, massage & we were scrubbed all over, with a huge pile of dead skin cell removed after the session.*heh*

Yeah! I finally gotten a chance to ride a bike! I was damm scared initially but I felt damm shiok after that! I don't think I want to get my bike license anymore...because too many people advise me against it. *There goes my dream of owning a RED vespa bike!*

Rachel and her new beau...*winks* This guy is always flirting with her and they are in cute couple outfit! *hecks* =)

We enjoyed ourselves very much in Cuppadocia! But we had to leave at 8pm that particular evening for a more exciting city, Istanbul!...Long 12 hour bus journey ahead...AGAIN! *Ouch*

it just ain't right @ Thursday, May 31, 2007