Adventures in Thailand

This article is very disturbing to me. Living in Turkey, I get no hostile feelings from any Turks that I encounter during the day… But then the sentiments described in that article are supported by this survey. In talking with some of my peers here in Turkey who look at this kind of stuff for a living, they are of the opinion that most people in other countries are just waiting for Bush to leave office…. Go figure.

Note: For whatever reason, I completely forgot about this post and left it unpublished and just found it today, May 9th, 2007.  I am going to finish it as best as I can remember, but I’ll probably forget a lot of stuff…

(This trip was taken in May, 2006, a year ago)

Meredith, Cathy (our neighbor) and I took a long weekend trip to the Black Sea coast of Turkey a few weeks ago. It was spectacular! I don’t know about anyone else, but before I actually saw the Black Sea, the preconception in my head was not a very nice one. I was thinking that the Black Sea was well, black. Meaning dark water, and kind of foreboding. If there’s one thing that living away from home teaches you, it’s that most of your preconceptions are flat out wrong. And man was that the case when we actually laid our eyes upon the Black Sea, which in Turkish is Karadeniz.

The Black Sea is far from black. The water was crystal clear, and turquoise, like the Caribbean. I was shocked. Of course, the water was extremely cold. We drove from Ankara north to a tourist town called Amasra. Amasra was nice, if a bit crowded being that it was a Saturday. Lots of Turks go to Amasra to get away from Istanbul on the weekends. We stayed in an overpriced, if clean hotel for the night; our room was directly adjacent to the elevator shaft, and we had thin walls, so we could hear everything. Amasra has two harbors, and a citadel. It was very picturesque. Anyway, we walked around town a bit and stopped at a pub for afternoon beers. The waiter, who spoke English, asked me where I was from, and assumed I was Russian. I said “America”, and he walked away. Cathy proceeded to tell us that he thought I was a Russian pimp, and Meredith and Cathy were my “girls”. Apparently the Black Sea coast is a huge prostitution center, especially for Russians. The sight of a man traveling with 2 women is an easy assumption of prostitution. We got a big chuckle out of that and continued drinking, of course. That night we ate dinner at a fish restaurant, and were treated to a show by an older Turk. There was some kind of special occasion, and he was singing away most of the night. It was an experience.

The next morning we jumped in the car and took off on treacherous roads towards Cide, which, if we had gone non-stop, would have taken us all of an hour and a half. When I say treacherous roads, I mean mountain driving on narrow roads on the edge of a cliff, with no guard rails and pot holes. And just to keep you on your toes, there are huge trucks and tour busses coming at you and also going the same way, which means you must pass them, because they’re really slow. Another problem driving was that the scenery was so spectacular, it was hard for me to keep my eyes on the road.

 (The rest is written from year-old memories, on May 9th, 2007):

We stopped at an empty beach and laid on the sand for a while, soaking up the sun and dipping our toes into the very cold water.  Then we packed up and kept on driving, winding along.  We stopped at a strange town to get something to eat.  I say strange because it kind of seemed like a ghost town, with only a few people walking around.  We certainly drew attention to ourselves with our big, shiny car.  We parked, wandered around a little bit and found a restaurant that did not smell very good.  It was the kind of place that had the food in a display cabinet, covered in plastic  wrap.  Meredith promptly nixed the idea of eating there, so we left and found a borek place and happily ate until we were full.

 After driving a little further, we found a cool little town that was kind of difficult to get too, but once we figured it out, we were treated to cups of tea on the waterfront, watching men build boats.  I don’t know what the name of the town is, but obviously it is known for its boats.  The people there were very nice, as was the tea!  We got back on the road, and stumbled upon a place that one of our friends had mentioned to us called Gideros. I don’t really think Gideros could be considered a town, but it had a sign on the road, so we took a left and descended very quickly on a very bumpy road to sea level on a picturesque cove where a fish restaurant beckoned us to come down and have a beer.  This turned out to be one of our most favorite memories of Turkey yet; we had intended to only have a few drinks and leave; we didn’t know we would be put to work.  We were sitting on the shore of this cove which was engulfed by small mountains that dropped straight into the water.  The restaurant had a nice arbor above its outdoor seating area, which had plants growing all over it.  They had several types of fish, and I had to try some of them, so I ordered what they thought was best and it came out fried in a tasty batter.  It was sooooo good.  My mouth is watering right now typing this.  Anyway, we were sitting there, having a good time, when the matriarch of the family-run restaurant beckoned me to come with her, down a small set of stairs to the rocky beach.  Cathy confirmed that she wanted me to help her, so I went.  The matriarch’s husband was attempting to pull a water-logged boat away from the incoming tide.  I tried to help, but the boat was just too full.  Luckily, there was a makeshift winch next to the boat.  Meredith and Cathy, who had been back at our table enjoying themselves, felt bad for me (or so they say!) and had decided to come down and check things out.  They were both promptly drafted into turning the winch around to pull the boat up the beach.  So imagine this scene: the husband and I are pulling and pushing this old boat with all our might while Cathy, Meredith and the matriarch are all pushing this winch around and around in circles, slowly lifting the boat out of the tide’s path.  We were all laughing out loud and enjoying every moment.  After we had secured the boat, we were thanked profusely and drove on to our final destination: Cide.

Most of the towns we stopped at on our trip that day were not on the map we had.  They were just too small.  Cide, however, was on the map, but had even less to offer than the small, picturesque towns we discovered.  It is a medium-sized city that feels pretty much empty.  Stoplights were not working, and the entire place seemed to become pretty dark as we drove in that evening, which probably had something to do with there not being any working street lights.  But we found our oasis in the form of our little hotel on the water.  It was a spartan place, for sure, but the people were very friendly.  We sat down to have dinner and started drinking beer.  We had a great Turkish feast and continued to relax and get a little goofy.  It’s anyone’s guess as to how many beers we drank that night…  We had a ball and slept great, waking up to a sunny day and a delicious Turkish breakfast, which prepared us for our long drive back to Ankara.

This post is getting very long, but I cannot end without writing about our experience attempting to follow a Turkish map to get us home.   We figured before we left Ankara in the first place that we would do a big circle, which is what one of our friends had done.  We looked at our map, felt comfortable with our route and left.  Well, it worked out great until we left Cide to get home.  We started going up and up and up into these beautiful mountains, following our map until we got to a town that clearly, according to the map, was past a turn we were supposed to have made.  So we shrugged and turned around, fully expecting to easily find our road.  It was nowhere to be found.  We kept on looking at the map, driving up and down the road where we thought it was supposed to be.  We even stopped and asked these guys (with Cathy’s excellent Turkish skills) where it was.  They didn’t know either.  So after an hour or so of frustration, we threw in the towel and turned back towards Cide, retracing our previous route, still dumbfounded over our phantom road.  We made it back to Ankara tired but happy….