The Heart Of The Day

I left Adana by plane for Antalya.  Outside the Arrivals Hall I asked a gentleman if he spoke English. He didn’t but another one with a very busy 4-year old in tow, overhearing me, asked if I needed help. The city  was a considerable distance from the airport. “Do the Red buses leave everyone off at the same place in the city?”  Yes, he said, but my friend can give us a ride into town. Oh my, I thought!  Ever since I arrived the Turks have been friendly and generous everywhere! He even gave me a Turkish pastry to eat on the way!

I am staying in the Kaleiçi (KAH-leh-ee-chee) a castle ruins at the center of the sprawling modern city which was a Roman town, then the Byzantine, then the Seljuk Turkish, and finally the Ottoman town.   There are oodles of shops, boutique hotels, guesthouses and restaurants along the narrow winding walking streets. I am staying at the Sabah Pansiyon…with breakfast…very friendly and helpful staff. And wifi in my room!  It’s a short distance to both the city center and the many coffee houses that line the beaches.  So the easy walking has been a pleasure.

I had to laugh today at an outdoor cafe with a view of the Taurus Mountains. About 40 German guys took nearly all the tables and chairs and ordered beer. The first one took a taste and made a face! lol. Turkish beer not so good?! ha! Then a Turkish guy tried to sell them all cologne and perfume. They had great fun with that!

I’ve been corresponding with a woman in Germany. When she read my blog and saw that Antalya was full of Germans she said:

The place where you are staying sounds very romantic. I know I would enjoy it there. The pension inside the ruin makes it even more romantic. I wish I could join you, but I don´t think I would like meeting so many Germans. I hope they behave and respect the country and the customs. There are reasonable ‘packages’ for a vacation in Turkey, so that must be the reason, why so many Germans are there now. We had a very tough and long winter . The sun has been out for the last two or three days, but next week, winter will be back again.

I assured her the Germans here were very well-behaved and gracious. lol I told her I felt sorry for these Germans. Cold in Germany and it’s been damn cold here!

I have never seen so many stray cats in a country. The people put food outside their doorways to feed them. Dogs too. The surprising thing is they are so mild and gentle and approachable. Never seen an approachable cat before! I think this says a lot about the people here. They treat animals with love and care and it is a joy to watch.

I called another couchsurfer and a food writer, Tijen, whom I had had lunch with in Bangkok a couple of years ago. I was delighted to find that she lived only about a 10 minute walk to my pensyon in the Castle.  She cooked a lovely vegetarian lunch for me…steamed artichoke hearts with oil and lemon and a lentil salad. Says she:

“Green lentils with dried eggplants, wild leeks and dried tomatoes (I just soaked green lentils in water for few hours, then add all of them in the pot with some water and cooked it down. Of course there is salt, pepper, cumin seeds and olive oil. You can use normal leeks or onions, doesn’t matter. Buon appetite!”

The next day we had a breakfast of Borek, a wonderful Turkish pastry made by an old Borek Master in his tiny three-table restaurant. He learned it from his older brother and his uncle, Tijen said. Watch the video below showing how Borak is made:

Making Borak

Well, Tijen surprised me this morning and came by my pensyon to see if I needed anything. So I walked her back to her apartment and on the way we stopped and bought a bus ticket for tomorrow at noon to Bodrum. Thank God! I would have gone to the bus station not knowing there was only one bus a day and might have missed it! I told her she was my angel! She is leaving in the morning for Morocco. She is lucky she can travel all over the world for her work…writing food articles.

This morning in the breakfast room I talked again with a tall blond Danish guy…about 50. A former journalist, he is enraged by the lack of transparency and the corruption in Denmark! And the stupidity of the EU. Of all places! That should tell you a lot about all the other countries! When he described his Prime Minister I told him she sounded like our Sarah Palin. “Worse!” he said! She’s never worked…just always been a politician/bureaucrat. He actually said a lot of other things too I won’t repeat here.

I’ve always said that people running for government office should be required to have some time in the workplace first. He’s been aggravating government officials with letters and questions he doesn’t get answers to. He is afraid they will find a way to nail him and shut him up. So he is writing a book. He’s supposed to be here resting from all the controversy but it’s so cold he has been miserable…and we’ve both gotten chest colds…we think from the unclean air con/heating units in the rooms. I told him I was sorry to get him revved up again but he said no, it’s all just going round and round in his head anyway and that it was good to talk. I hope so.

I caved in this afternoon and had my first Burger King in 5 months!

Map of Mediterranean Coast

After Antakya, I took the bus to Adana where I stayed with a lovely couchsurfing host, Gursel, and her daughter Nida in their beautiful high-rise flat.

The evening of my arrival we sampled traditional Turkish food in a popular restaurant. And later, Gursel took us to a specialty cafe that served a to-die-for dessert called Künefe, a shredded pastry with cheese, that is actually famous in Antakya…it’s origin. Lahmacun is a kind of Turkish pizza but my friend Dilek bristles at this comparison. And of course Kabob is skewered and grilled beef, chicken or lamb.

The highrises in the “new city” are chock-a-block together and there wasn’t much to see walking around from Gursel’s apartment. But no worries!  She spoiled me with home Turkish cooking and of course many good conversations over the three days I stayed with her. I also really enjoyed her bright vivacious daughter, Nida, who wants to study in the U.S. after high school.

Gursel had asked me to cook something for them but alas I was unprepared and couldn’t think of anything original on the spot except maybe Mexican food and of course there were no available ingredients. I’m sorry, Gursel! From now on I will be prepared for cooking for my hosts!

After having been in Thailand for several months I was not prepared for the cold spring in Turkey, so Gursel kindly gave me one of her sweat-shirts and a warm pull-over to sleep in. Thank goodness for Gursel! It was freezing cold all over Turkey!

One evening we visited a huge open but covered market where I bought some really sharp paring knives for $3US and a yummy soft leather bag $7US for my newly acquired iPad that was handed down from my son in Hong Kong. I was wishing I had room in my baggage for more!

The last day of my stay, Gursel drove us through bustling Old Town where we saw the tallest clock tower in Turkey and out to the Seyhan River and the Taskopru Bridge…a 4thC Roman bridge that has the Sabancı Central Mosque, the largest mosque in Turkey, at one end and the Hilton Hotel at the other. We wound up having a Turkish coffee at the lake behind the dam where locals spend time at the many coffee and tea houses on the banks.

Adana is Turkey’s 4th largest city, 2 million people, and is an agricultural and industrial boom town in the middle of the Cilician Plain…the commercial capital of the eastern mediterranean coast. Click on the photos to enlarge:

Manti is a smooth yogurt soup with Turkish dumplings…kind of like Ravioli. There I go again! BTW, there is no better yogurt I’ve had in all the world like yogurt made by the Turks!

After the family reunion on Koh Samui I flew back to Bangkok for 3 days while I waited for my flight out and for more last minute dental work. ... [Continue reading this entry]

[gallery] The above photos are just a few of the 40 couchsurfers I have hosted over the last couple of years. I retired in 2002 and spent the next 5 years on the road...then chose Oaxaca as a home base. Since ... [Continue reading this entry]

I joined Couchsurfing.com with a million members last year while I was traveling in Asia.  Couchsurfing is a world-wide social and cultural program run mostly by volunteers to foster cultural understanding...much like Hospitality Club (which I also belong to) ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bought plane tickets a month ago to go to Burma with a Thai friend. But Air Asia won't let us cancel our tickets without losing the money. So I spent all afternoon in the embassy office with a few others ... [Continue reading this entry]

I arrived on Samui, an island in the south of Thailand, from Bangkok on tuesday. Doug, my son and his Thai wife Luk found me a lovely quiet hotel with a pool right in the middle of Lamai but ... [Continue reading this entry]

You hardly find a mention of Soi 22, where I usually stay in Bangkok, in the travel guides. Interesting. Not anything here for sightseers really. But good if you live here long term. The well-dressed tourists in the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Last Saturday (your Friday) I flew to Bangkok...carrying on a nice conversation with a Malaysian man sitting next to me. He says Thaksin did help the rural farmers...but the system takes time to change. And he says Thaksin began ... [Continue reading this entry]

Joe, a gregarious Dai tour guide who hangs out at the tourist haunts looking for business invited me to join him and his family and friends, including a young French couple, at the new BBQ restaurants on the road along ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hard to believe I was in Beijing for two weeks. But you know what they say about stinking guests if they stay too long. So today I flew to Kunming in Yunnan Province in the south ... [Continue reading this entry]

When Barbara and I were in Mexico City last week it almost felt as if the resistance had moved to that city. We stayed in a Quaker guesthouse about two blocks behind the Monument To The Revolution. A ... [Continue reading this entry]

After three weeks in Salem sorting through 40 years of junk...one pile for St. Vincent de Paul, one pile for the dump, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Just so you don't think I drowned in the Sangkren waters of Thailand, I spent the next few days in a great new 38 bed hostel called HI Sukhumvit in an upscale Bangkok neighborhood about 50 yards down Sukhumvit 38 ... [Continue reading this entry]

Luang Prabang is an outstanding example of the fusion of traditional architecture and Lao urban structures with those built by the European colonial authorities in the 19th and ... [Continue reading this entry]

At the Smile Guesthouse I attend cooking school. A Dutch couple and a German girl and I each have our own "station" with a wok sitting on a gas burner. O (pronounced O?...the voice rising up at the ... [Continue reading this entry]

I have changed hotels. I am now at the brand new Bau-Tong Lodge with free WiFi that is down little soi 3 off Loi Kroh...for half the cost of the Galare Guesthouse where I was for the last three ... [Continue reading this entry]

Flew from Koh Samui on Bangkok Air (the only airline off the island because Bangkok Air built the airport) and then on to Chiang Mai on budget Air Asia. I guess Bob is in ... [Continue reading this entry]

We're back on Samui and I have rented a brand new furnished one bedroom house for $12.00 a night at "Solitude Resort" on a mountainside about a mile from Doug and Luk's bungalow. The first evening we were welcomed by our ... [Continue reading this entry]

Visitors, to the south of Thailand, including foreigners, will soon have an opportunity to experience muslim life in a village in the province of Yala. A "Widower's Village" is being built in Rotanbu Village under a resettlement project funded by ... [Continue reading this entry]

Taking a fast sleek train, we are visiting our country's capitol city for a few days. "Taxation Without Representation" is written at the bottom of D.C. license plates here in the District of Columbia. Don't know why DC's ... [Continue reading this entry]

I had to check out of Thailand...thought my visa was 90 days that I got in Kunming in December but it was only 60 days. So at the end of March I had to pay a hefty fine at ... [Continue reading this entry]

Photos While I was in Guizhou Province, Bob headed off for Putuashan Island and then circled back to Shanghai via Hangzhou...then flew to Jinghong to meet me at the Banna Hotel. We picked ... [Continue reading this entry]

Video Was really fun to spend time in the Camellia Hotel compound in Kunming, familiar from our 2002 visit to China, and fraternize with all the Western travelers and trade street-stories at the Mieli ... [Continue reading this entry]

In Shanghai, exploring the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree web site, I noticed a query from a young woman from Kaili in Guizhou Province who was offering to arrange a homestay in a Miao minority ... [Continue reading this entry]

The last time I was in China it was freezing cold in January 2003. The weather is fantastic this October day in 2004. After slogging it out across Russia and Mongolia, we soak ... [Continue reading this entry]

Greetings- Have been in Mongolia for the past week--initial few days in a ger bordering on a national park--lazy, relaxing days with hiking and Mongolian pony riding (when on the horse my feet nearly reach ... [Continue reading this entry]

Video Terelgj National Park, an hour by car outside of Ulaan Baatar, is a spectacular valley surrounded by high eroded rock formations, pine covered mountains and steppes carpeted with sheep, Mongolian horses and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Siberian countryside with endless kilometers of grassland and golden pine and white birch trees... small wooden, weathered, unpainted, picturesque, single story bungalows throughout Sibera with blue painted shutters-the banya (toilet and shower) in ... [Continue reading this entry]

The next morning we are picked up at our homestay in Irkutsk by a sullen driver who drives us five hours over pot-holes, through the taiga and across a bay of the beautiful blue ... [Continue reading this entry]