Malena in Turkey

Before I get into the meat of this entry (describing a 12 Islands boat tour Kate and I took in Fethiye) I have two random incidents that we were lucky enough to experience.

1. One night in Fethiye we went out to a bar, and we saw a couple of British tourists-expats-something. They seemed high or drunk or something when they started talking to us, asking if we had seen their child outside and how was she. We could only assume they meant the big enormous dog that tried to follow us in. But then, in a moment that I see as totally ridiculous, at 11PM on a Wednesday night an actual child wandered into the bar! A blond girl around 8 years old who did not seem to speak any Turkish! Apparently they had sent her outside for the 30+ minutes they were in the bar drinking. And then they sent her back outside, telling her to stay on the righthand side of the bar. And this was in a city in Turkey - How is it even remotely acceptable?

2. I met my first certifiable Turkish creep on the bus from Antalya to Goreme. When Kate and I were talking at the beginning of the trip (around 8PM) he was giving us mean looks and complaining to the attendant. Then, while I was falling asleep in the seat ahead of him, I felt something in my haır - the airconditioning I assumed. After about ten minutes of feeling it on and off I looked behind me… and his nasty little fingers were actually stroking my hair! Ugh. I was (and am) sort of grossed out. I decided at the next stop I would tell his frıend (the attendant, who spoke no English) to move either him or myself. Fortunately he got off the bus before then. But, ugh. Not acceptable!!

As for the boat tour, it was really very nice. A little chilly (only from the wind) but we definitely still got some sun. Also, there were a number of interesting tourists to talk to. My personal favorite was the native Turk who wore his speedo all day. Sometimes when it got a little chilly he would put a fleece on over it, but never any pants! And lets just say his speedo was not very high quality. We would be walking around an ısland, pushing our way through pıne trees, and we would see him coming towards us from the distance, still wearing nothing but a speedo! Awesome.

In addition to seeing far more of that man than I ever needed to, we also made a number of stops at islands (five I believe) and saw about a million more from the boat. Some of the islands had ruins, some just had little beach like things, some of them had farms and gardens and pubs. One even had movie star homes. But lets be honest, after 8 hours and 5 islands everything starts to look the same. The best part of the trip was probably just relaxing on a boat all day.

The worst part, speedos aside, was walking up a hill, finding a dog with ticks all over his body, and then having to walk back down the hill, pushing our way through bushes. Ugh.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 3:35 am and is filed under 01 - Turkey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.