Thursday, Aug 23:Istanbul

The flight to Istanbul was 9 hours long. It wasn't too bad despite the fact that I only slept about 3 hours. For the first time ever on a long flight I was wearing shorts and flip flops. I suppose that given the Thai heat I couldn’t' have brought myself to wear long pants and shoes. I was done with luggage claim by 5:30am at which point I realized there was no one manning the supposedly 24 hours a day tourist information booth. Further, the few workers that were at the airport barely spoke any English and were neither nice nor helpful. Welcome to Turkey I suppose. In fact, I was contemplating departing later in the day straight to Romania.

Eventually I managed to get my hands on an Istanbul map and directions to an area in the old city that should have hostels. As is the case in Thailand, people here seem to solicit all the time (taxi, food, rugs, and so forth). This is one of the ultimate signs of a third world country.I say keep'em out of the union.

Anyway, after using the train and the tram I got to the relevant area and eventually found a hostel around 9:30am. Next, I got a haircut, which is ok but most certainly far from being spectacular (where is the barber from Nelson, NZ when you need him?). At11:30 I finally went to bed for a power nap.

The nap was good but from the depths of my sleep I could hear a man screaming through some speaker system. Yes, it was the Muazzin. I don't get this. Is God all mighty and deaf? Does he really need people to use speakers? I woke up at 14:30 and shortly thereafter went to tour the old city. I passed by Topkap and Ayasofya museums, and only admired them from the outside. I did go into the Blue Mosque, otherwise known as Sultanahmet, which was built between 1609 and 1616. The Mosque is most impressive and I can see the appeal of becoming Muslim. I was not let into the mosque during prayer unfortunately...

In the evening I went for a long walk along the Bosphorus straıts.

One thing about driving: for the first time in 6 months I'm back in a country that drives on the right (in more ways than one) side of the road. It was slightly confusing at first, but as I had anticipated, it took very little time to get used to it.