Of Travelers and Tourists
I feel I should take a moment to elaborate on my definitions of “tourists” and “travelers.” To me a “tourist” is someone who buys a package vacation or tour and rides around on a tour bus seeing the same major sites that everyone else sees and skipping everything in between. You see them everywhere around the main attractions of any city being lead around like sheep by a guide with a raised umbrella or stick etc. Travelers on the other hand are more independent and tend to spend more time digging into the local culture rather than only visiting the touristy spots. In other words, tourists are in a speedboat skimming across the surface while travelers are going for a swim. And in places like Turkey that can make all the difference in the world…
Istanbul is an incredible place and I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. Walking around the city is quite different to most places I am used to. Shop and restaurant owners constantly beckon tourists into their various establishments by asking where they are from and making small talk, many times claiming they are very special because they are the first customer of the day, when in reality the only thing special about them is that they are about to be taken for a ride. Such shops are often ludicrously overpriced and they get away with it because of uninformed visitors who just don’t know any better. For instance some people… we’ll call them “salesmen” may approach you with watches to sell and they will ask 300 Lira for them. Some people may just pay that thinking it is the price, when in reality they could be talked down to about 5 Lira. It is my experience that once these shop owners and hawkers realize that you know what you’re doing and that you’re not “just another tourist” they generally leave you alone and actually show you a bit more respect. I spent a few days wandering the city, seeing the sights, getting lost in the bazaars, eating the local kebabs and woken up by the call to prayer thundering over loudspeakers throughout the city.
Later, I made the leap and purchased what was my second one-way plane ticket of this trip: from Istanbul, Turkey to Bangkok, Thailand with a quick layover in Bahrain. I gave myself the better part of the week to see more of Turkey and I used that to bus it out to the very center of the country to an area known as Cappadocia (Kappadokya). I left on an overnight bus with two New Zealanders from my hostel room in Istanbul. Every time I take an overnight bus or flight, I seem to forget just how terrible they can be. I can never sleep sitting up and with an aisle seat there is no place to lean so it always ends up being a restless drawn out night that leaves me exhausted the next day. Nonetheless after a long night of riding the sun rose to reveal a desert-like landscape that soon gave way to the strangest area I have ever found myself in. Again, my vocabulary and descriptive skills fail me when thinking of how to explain a place like this, save to say it looks like another planet. The people that lived here long ago carved their homes and churches directly out of the mountainside’s soft rock and a good number of them are still in use by local residents and renters who used them to accommodate travellers. We stayed in the town of Goreme, which is overlooked on most sides by such mountains and indeed we stayed in cave rooms carved directly out of the rock for our time there. Granted they were modernized with bathrooms, heat and electricity.
The day we arrived it was rather cold and the weather was not cooperating so I took a nap for a couple of hours while the rain cleared before heading out to the open-air museum east of town. The open-air museum in Goreme is another UNESCO site and it features an array of small churches carved out of the rocks. The entrances to the churches are quite modest, but once inside you realize that the carved pillars, arches, domes and vaulted ceilings directly from the rock and covered them with frescoes. Though small, the craftsmanship is more than impressive. However extraordinary the museum was, it paled in comparison to the following day. I woke up around 9:30am and had breakfast before picking up some water and stocking up on a few apples at the local fruit market for my walk. I set out back towards the museum, but took a trail leading away from the road and up a hill toward the edge of a valley.
I passed a stray dog along the way and once I neared the top of the hill I looked back and found that it was following me. I don’t know why… I didn’t feed it, or pet it or call it… she just decided to tag along. I would stop to take photos and she would lay down just behind me and once I started moving on she would trail along. Eventually she caught up and laid down at my feet so, I pet her a bit while I rested. This small female german shepard ended up walking along with me for the entire 6 hours I was out hiking. I tried to give her some of my water and attempted to share one of my apples, but she would have none of it. I started off on the trail, but strayed off of it into the countryside as I worked my way around valleys and across fields before finding a marked trail that lead down into a small canyon and eventually to one of the places I was looking for called Rose Valley. Its name comes from the pink color of the rocks that line the gorge. Every time I would pass other people, the dog would stick right by my side. Sometimes she would track ahead on the trail and disappear around a corner and I would round it to find her waiting on me to catch up, but nearing the end of my walk on the way back towards the town I came to a crossroads. I needed to go left, but the dog apparently was headed right. We walked in our opposite directions and I never saw her again. It was the strangest thing.
The next day I went on a walk with the two Kiwis around a separate equally interesting section of the area and we got back a bit after lunch. We hung around the town and got our things packed for the overnight bus back to Istanbul before having dinner. The bus was about usual except this one had satellite TV on board and there was a soccer game on. Turkey was playing Norway in a qualifying match for next year’s european playoffs and the whole bus was really getting into it. Clapping a cheers would erupt after a goal and gasps for near misses. Turkey won the match 2-1. The rest of the bus ride was per usual and we checked back into the same hostel we left from around 8am and I took a nap. I spent the rest of that day organizing some last minute details for my trip to Thailand and went to be early. I was set to catch the 7:20am shuttle to the airport the next morning… I was awoken at 7:30 by the bus driver who had others on the bus waiting for me and I snapped into scramble mode and was out of bed and in the bus by 7:40. I got to the airport with ample time which was good since there were 2 security checkpoints (one right as you enter the airport and another at your gate) to go through, plus passport control. And the security checks are picky, you have to remove your belt, shoes, etc. They even scanned my watch. Are terrorists really that inventive these days? I mean, these airports seem to think you can fashion a bomb out of shampoo and a tray table…
After my layover in Bahrain I landed safely in Bangkok. I knew I would be heading back through the city later anyway and I decided that I wanted to head straight for the southern islands, so I went through immigration and found a really cheap flight to Surat Thani, the port where you can catch ferries to Ko Samui, Pha Ngang, and Tau. I landed and hopped a bus to the port. The balmy heat hits first as you exit the plane. Looking out the bus window the landscape reminded me, oddly, of Vietnam. But only in the sense that, if you watched a film about the war it would be set in this type of environment. Forests of palm trees, flooded low grasslands, makeshift towns on the banks of muddy rivers and cows wandering across the street as they please… As I got closer and closer to the pier I couldn’t help but realize: This is a whole new ballgame.
At the pier I found a Thai woman offering beach hut accommodation on the island of Ko Pha Ngang. The price was reasonable and I was exhausted and I didn’t want to haggle when I got to the islands so I took her up on it and caught the ferry out. It was dark when we arrived and the owner of the huts was there to meet me and a few others at the port. I jumped into the “free taxi” which was the back of his truck and he drove us off the main roads and through what I would almost call a jungle on one of the roughest dirt roads I’ve ever seen. Soon enough, though we arrived at the little complex which included a resturant and a few huts right near the beach. They lead me to mine and put my things down. It was exactly what I expected and what I was looking for. A little fan-cooled hut on a secluded beach… but it wasn’t $8. It was $9.50. High season, you see.
The hut was about as basic as it could get. Just one big double bed, a fan, a bathroom with a cold shower and a toilet with a flusher that consisted of a bucket of water and a sprayer. It was basically a shed… but a shed, quite literally in paradise. I have to imagine that when most people picture paradise in their heads it doesn’t look too much different than this island. After I got settled in, I went up to the open-air restaurant and ordered some food, which I found to be quite good. I turned in early and slept until about noon the next day, catching up on my sleep and nursing my jet lag. After a few days there the weather wasn’t holding up so I decided to move on to Ko Tau and find a place to do my scuba certification as planned.
The day I checked out of the hut I hopped into the back of the owner’s truck once again as he drove me back to the port where I caught the ferry to Ko Tau in a nick of time. It was an express ferry which cut through the waves like a dull hatchet would a tree and the engine quit twice, but it got me there in good time nonetheless. Once arriving at the port there were a multitude of dive companies waiting to greet us with their information paphlets and what not, but I chose to skip by them so I could check out a few different places on my own and see the place first hand before I made a decision. I caught yet another back-of-the-truck taxi to the far end of the main beach and began walking down, passing all of the dive resorts along the way. In the end I settled with Big Blue Diving. The course was cheaper than I thought, plus after some negotiations I scored a free room and PADI book along with it. Not to mention that their operation seemed solid… which I turned out to be right about. So over the past few days I’ve been doing the course and its bringing back a lot of memories just as I suspected it would, since my parents used to own a dive shop when I was a kid. With the smell of wetsuits, the taste of regulators and the sound air tanks clanging together come fond recollections of a time that I’ve always been partial to. It reminds me of home…
Its 11pm and I have to be up by 6:30 for the last dive of the course so I suppose I should wrap here. I’m not sure how long I will be on Ko Tau as I’m seriously considering staying to do my advanced certification after this and then there are many places around the island that offer special courses in underwater photography… which seems up my alley. I’m sure its a bit pricey though, so we’ll see.
So far my impression of Thailand is one of the most positive I’ve had of a country so far. The people are incredibly friendly which I find to be such a refreshing change from eastern Europe and it is about as gorgeous as gorgeous gets here. I finally understand why there are so many expats in this country.
Pictures are coming…
-Tyler
On the Move
Getting out of Albania is not particularly easy. I walked out to the trashed stadium in Tirana where my bus left from and checked my backpack under the bus. Luckily it was a nice modern bus, but the seats were incredibly cramped. Once we got out of the city areas around Tirana the pavement disappeared and only reappeared in sparse rough patches dotted with potholes. After a long bumpy ride winding through the mountains we finally arrived at the Albanian border checkpoint. Everyone on the bus had to get off and line up at the counter to have their passport checked before the guards pulled every bag out from under the bus, matched them to their owners and looked through them. Once the bags were put back under the bus and everyone was in their seats the guards came through the bus and double checked the passports as well as the carry-on bags we had with us. Once we hit the Greek checkpoint, it was smooth sailing. A quick stamp on the passport and we were on our way back onto well-maintained roads. And by well-maintained, I mean they had pavement and lines painted on them.
We arrived in Athens around 10am after some arguments broke out between our driver and some passengers, about what I don’t know. After getting off the bus I caught the metro to the area around the Acropolis where my hostel was. After wandering around the confusing streets for the better part of an hour looking for it I finally got a bed for the night. I used that morning to catch up on all of my picture work, uploading and posting since the hostel had a wifi connection. I slept early and got up around 8:30am to head out to the Acropolis. I’d heard that it was overrun by tourists midday and to aim for either early morning or late afternoon. I got there about a half an hour after they opened and by the time I go to the top I had to push my way (literally) through tour groups to get a glimpse at the Parthenon etc. The site is spectacular and impressive in every way, but I found the experience to be incredibly dampened by the amount of tour groups clogging the area. There’s nothing like hearing old Americans complain about the Acropolis not having an elevator so they don’t have to climb what little stairs there are. Seriously, I heard that. And I know they were American because the lady had that oh-so-familiar southern drawl. I find myself growing more embarrassed by the day with where I come from.
I left the Acropolis site and made my way to the quiet hill across from it where I enjoyed the view a great deal more with some peace and quiet. But, I was also impressed with the shear amount of smog I saw hanging over the city. After a long walk around the area reading up on the history, I walked around to some of the other sites like the impressive Ancient Agora and Roman Agora and a few other sites that the 12 Euro ticket gives access to. By the time I got back to the hostel it was dark, so I took care of my ferry ticket to Crete and booked my hostel for the next day before turning in. I left Athens around noon the next day and made my way to the port of Piraeus. I had my ticket in-hand but I didn’t know where to find my boat in the massive harbor. I asked around at a few different places and eventually found that I could catch a bus to the opposite end of the port where my ferry, “Olympic Champion”, was waiting. Time was short though, so I hurried over to the bus stop to find the bus empty. A greek man standing next to a scooter shouted “Olympic Champion?!” I said yes and he informed me that the bus didn’t leave for another half hour… when my ferry would already be gone. The thought of running across the harbor with my full pack on was entering my mind when suddenly the man said “come, I take you!”, hopped onto his scooter and motioned for me to get on the back. I was hesitant and said “are you sure? How much?” to which he replied “I don’t know… 1 euro… you won’t make it, just get on!” I looked across the bay, looked back and jumped onto his scooter, pack and all. We raced across the port as he yelled back about having friends in New York and pulled up to the boat just in time for me to thank him and board the ferry. The ride was long and I arrived in Hania, Crete around 9:30 at night where I caught a bus to Rethymno. I had the name of my hostel and what street it was on, but no map. I asked the bus driver where the street was and he gave me some rough directions, so I threw my pack on and started walking. Of course I couldn’t find the street so I asked around to no avail for the better part of an hour. I finally came across some cab drivers, which by the way are always good to ask for directions if you’re in a pinch, and they pointed me to the right street. I checked into the hostel and hit the bed hard. The next morning I went about washing my clothes by hand and walking around the city. That night I was introduced to a few other people at the hostel as I helped a South African girl, Ingrid, book her flight on my laptop. Afterward about 10 of us went out for drinks at a local shisha bar before we split up and went to different places. Myself, Lambrose, Natalia and Ingrid headed out to the rocks on the ocean below the old town fortress for a couple more drinks while the others headed back to the hostel and on to other bars.
The next day we all woke up late and Natalia, Taryn and I took a day trip to Hania to explore its old town area. There wasn’t too much to see so we wandered and stopped for milkshakes while we waited for the next bus back to Rethymno. The next morning I was talking to Lambrose and found that 5 of the others were renting a car and going down to a beach town called Matala for the night so he suggested that he, I, Natalia, Taryn, and Lautaro all pitch in a rent one too to go with. Everyone was up for it so we hammered out the details and Rene (more on him in a bit) took me down to the rental place to get the car. After we picked it up we had to navigate around a parade to find a parking spot, but before we knew it I was driving us all down, following the other car through the mountainous passes. We stopped off at a small village along the way to visit some of Rene’s old friends and arrived at the beach early in the evening.
By Rene’s look some may pass him off as just an old hippie, but when you sit down and talk to him he was quite an amazing person to meet. He spoke 10 languages including Swahili, which sounds a bit far fetched, but I personally overheard him carrying on conversations in English, Dutch, Greek, German, Spanish and another that I couldn’t place. He worked for the UN as a peace keeper in Africa for 25 years the last of which was in Dar fur specializing in child soldiers. When you hear first hand accounts of having a machine gun pressed against your head unable to do anything while the militia takes the kids you were trying to help back to be brainwashed and made to fight you understand why he was in Crete on a leave of absence contemplating whether or not he could go back to this work…
The beach was quite a sight. On one side there was a massive cliff face dotted with caves. Apparently after being excavated the caves were deepened only in the sixties by hippies who decided to live in them. These caves are abandoned now and you can explore them, but judging by the smell they seem to serve as toilettes for visitors. As the sun went down we made a fire on the beach and gathered around it with a few bottles of wine after going for a swim along the cliff side. Good times were had and most of us ended up sleeping right on the beach. I woke up the next morning and stirred the fire to warm up a bit. As the sun came up a few of us decided to walk over to the local bakery and get some coffee. We were a bit early though so we sat around on the curb of this empty town waiting for them to open. Once they did we ordered some coffee and took a seat at a table outside. While we were sipping our coffee and eating pastries an old frenchmen which, I have to say looked strikingly like Willie Nelson, strolled by. Christian, who had been to the town before, recognized him and called him over for a drink. Come to find out, there are still hippies living in the caves on the other side of the ridge and he was one of them. We all made small talk and bid him farewell as we headed back to the beach.
As the sun came up and it got warm enough to swim again, Natalia, Lautaro and I swam out around the cliffs and found some smaller ones to jump off of. I had goggles on, but on one jump they came off and yet another contact was washed out of my eye while my spares were still in Rethymno. Taryn, Lambrose, Natalia and I headed out before the other car back to Rethymno to pick up my contacts and then the four of us drove out to Knossos, the ancient Minoan archaeological site. After we finished there we drove out further along the coast to find a beach, but we were all exhausted and when Natalia showed us the cut on her foot from the night before, we realized how bad it was and decided to head back to the hostel in Rethymno where Rene and I patched her up. The next morning I woke up and drove the car back to the rental place where I turned it in without any hitches.
My original plan was to go from Crete to Rhodes and then into Turkey from there, but because of the reduced winter ferry schedules I couldn’t make that happen. The easiest thing for me to do was go back to Athens via Santorini and then take trains into Turkey, so I did that. Natalia, Taryn and Lambrose were all headed for Santorini as well… on the same day. So we all went together. Our ferry pulled into Santorini and the girls had already made arrangements to stay at Perissa so they had transport waiting for them. Lambrose and I decided to stay in Fira, the main city and catch up with them later. The usual crowd of people looking to rent out their rooms greeted the ferry as well so Lambrose and I split up to see the lowest price we could get. After talking with a couple of people who insisted that I wouldn’t find a better deal than 30 euros a night, then 20, I bargained a man down to 15 euros a night for my own room. Not bad at all considering that a room like this would cost no less than 70 in summer high season. Lambrose caught up and we hopped in his van to go check out the rooms. They turned out to be better than we expected and we got our own separate rooms across the hall from each other. I took a walk around the town, but it was completely fogged in and spitting rain so I took the time to do my laundry and rented a couple of movies for that night. The movie place was pretty picked over, but I got Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland – two that I had been meaning to watch for a long time. Both are extremely good.
The next day the weather was only slightly better and I spent the day walking around the city checking prices to rent scooters and atvs, which proved to be too expensive. That night the weather was turning for the worse so we got dinner and went to bed early. The next day the weather was finally starting to turn in our favor so Lambrose and I decided to walk from Fira to Oia about 15km away. For most of the walk there was a path leading along the caldera with incredible views, but the last half is just along the roadside. Oia was a really cool town and much like Fira it was built along the cliff’s edge and has stunning scenery, but it was even quieter. The streets were empty and for a while it seemed we almost had the town to ourselves aside from the few locals strolling about. We spent a few hours checking out the city and caught a bus back to Fira which concluded a long day. I sent an email off to Taryn and Natalia who were still in Perissa saying that we may be headed that way the next day, but it was the wrong address and they never got it.
Nevertheless we caught a bus down to Perissa the next morning to see if we could find them and immediately after stepping off the bus we saw Natalia standing right there and Taryn was just around the corner. We all remarked about the odd coincidence and talked for a bit about what everyone was doing that day. The girls were set on walking from Perissa to Red Beach, almost as far as Lambrose and I had walked the day before, so he decided to split off and check out an archaeological site nearby and I went on the walk to Red Beach. It proved further than I thought. After the long walk we waited around and caught what we thought was a bus back to Perissa, but actually went straight to Fira so the girls got a taxi back to their place. Later that night me, Lambrose and Natalia met up for drinks at a local Irish bar in Fira that was throwing a 3-days-late Halloween party. Originally I was planning to catch the 7am ferry back to Athens the next morning, but the night ran long and I slept in. Lambrose was leaving around 2pm so we had lunch and talked Australian politics before parting ways. I ended up catching the overnight ferry from Santorini back to Athens the next day. As I was waiting for the bus to the port that night I met an old American couple that had just finished a folk dancing cruise-tour. We talked for a bit before getting on the bus and making our way onto the ferry. After that I wandered around the ship looking for a place to plug in my laptop so that I could work on some pictures. I found a place in a seating area, plugged in and sat down. As I was working someone who was laying down in the seats behind me woke up and started to stand to leave and we looked at eachother and jumped because it turned out to be Natalia. I knew they were on the ship, but I had no idea where and just happened to sit down right in front of her. We talked for a bit before trying (in vain for me) to get some sleep.
The ferry pulled into Athens and we all made our way to the train station and got tickets for our respective destinations. It came to my stop and we said goodbye for something like the 4th time as I left. Having been to Athens before I knew my way around, except this time it was 5am and the streets were completely empty. It was an odd experience walking around the Plaka (the central area around the Acropolis) with none of the shops open and only a few stray dogs as company. I got to the hostel I was staying at for the night, checked in and took a nap on the couch. I woke up around lunch time and got some food before heading back to my room. There I met John-Henry and Julia (a Kiwi and an Aussie respectively) who were traveling together with quite a story to tell… They had met only a week earlier on a train and apparently Julia had flown into Europe on a whim with only her purse and the clothes she was wearing at the time. Also in the room was Tulsey and nice Canadian girl. Julia went to bed early and John-Henry, Tulsey and I went about doing our laundry and having dinner. The laundromat turned out to be quite a happening place. As we waited for our clothes to dry more people from the hostel kept showing up to do their laundry and soon enough we had a sizeable little group hanging out.
The next morning I caught a train to Kalambaka, Greece around midday. I didn’t make it there until around 9pm because of some confusion about my transfer and a no-show train. Once there I caught a cab to Kastraki just a few kilometers away to find a room near Meteora. After asking a couple of people about rooms I found a place and settled in for the night. The next morning I woke up and pulled the curtains from my window revealing the towering rocky pinnacles of Meteora hanging over the small village. I was quite surprised since I had no idea this room had a view. I set out to explore the area, but the weather was overcast and threatened me with rain throughout the day. Despite this, Meteora proved to be one of the most spectacularly gorgeous and incredible areas I have ever seen. Wandering around I found myself second guessing the fact that I was actually awake because the scenery is so dreamlike. Its not something I would expect to find in reality. How these monasteries could be built atop peaks such as these in the 16th century can give the imagination quite a work out.
My room in the small village was a little expensive and I only expected to stay two nights, but I woke up the next morning and found crystal clear blue skies and couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. I set out through the area again and shot more photos with the much improved weather. I also found myself wandering for the better part of an hour along a random trail through the woods. I saw the entrance to this trail marked by a primitive cobble stone path leading through the forest so I followed it on a whim. It lead a good way into the forest and between two of the peaks, the cobble stones disappearing and reappearing the whole way. Eventually the odd little trail lead me to an iron gate with stone path beyond it. The gate was unlocked, so I opened it and continued on. It lead to the entrance of one of the monasteries perched on a cliff’s edge. It turned out to be one I had actually visited the day before, I had just found a back way in. I continued up the road back to one of the monasteries that was closed the day earlier and visited that one. Though the monasteries draw a good bit of tourism they are still in use and priests and nuns actually live in the ones that remain standing.
After I finished my second trek through Meteora I walked back to Kalambaka to check on train times for the next day. I turned in early and woke up around 6am to catch my train to Thessaloniki at 7:40. I arrived there around 10am and decided pretty randomly to go ahead and press on to Istanbul that night. I bought my ticket for the overnight train, locked up my bags and set out to explore the city all day. I caught the train and after a long night of off and on sleeping and standing in a police station at 4:30am to buy my Turkish visa, here I sit at my hostel in Istanbul, Turkey.
Having checked the visa requirements for Syria, which I would have to pass through if I were to head any further south to Jordan or Israel, I have decided to just fly out of Istanbul after exploring a bit more of Turkey. I still need to buy the ticket, but I find that making that leap is similar to that of buying my first ticket to get out here. It sets a deadline and guarantees my exit from Europe and on to a less known territory for me. I’ll buy it tomorrow, I think, since I’m anxious to have a beach to lay on for a couple weeks. I’m beginning to feel a bit burnt out from moving around so much and being on the road for so long, so when I get to Thailand I’m going to find a little bungalow on the beach (which you can rent out for about $8 a night) and just settle down and chill out for a week or two. Then I also plan on going to the island of Koh Tao to do my dive certification over the course of a week. Should be good.
-Tyler