i'm back!!!! yes... back from turkey... very nice place.. mountains, people, rivers, buildings... the place was pretty cold.. nice and windy... Ottoman empire.. romans.. byzantimes... B.C this A.D tht.. sorta like a hist lesson..only much more fun...

flight time there is abt 13 hrs.had a transit stop at dubai halkway thru.flight there was okay... watched a couple of shows.. then had to stop coz the tour would start immediately once we reached (flight was at night, so when we reached it was morn)...
our tour guide was great ; noy... nice friendly guy. really funny. but had a funny accent. which made him really boring to listen to sometimes...but overall he's great..
we had a tour leader too..from s'pore... nicole...also very nice... young and pretty... hehe...

1st 2 daes were pretty boring.. visited lots of mosques. istanbul (note: it is not the capital of turkey..lol)... lots of history stuff... nothing much... sightseeing only took up the mornings.. the rest of the afternoon were left for travelling to another place.. so more or less the entire trip i spent lots of time with my ass stuck to the seat...

day 4: then came the nice part.. we went to Ephesus... ruins of an ancient roman city.. damn... u can imagine. lots of things u see on tv..tht kinda stuff.. columms and statues...
then went to the House of virgin mary... according to legend Virgin Mary died there.. ya so... nice lil hse...

day 5: Pamukkale... more ruins. visited an ancient graveyard.. hierapolis.. roman mass graves.. had a walk thru them.. according to the guide, romans put their valuables inside the grave together with the body. so robbers had used dynamites to blow the stone tombs up to get the stuff inside.. yuck...kinda creepy..
then went to the white cliffs, or Cotton castle.. natural phenomenon where entire cliffs are coloured white...becoz of white calcium deposits in the water flowing thru tht came up from the hot springs above.. over thousands of yrs.. the entire cliff became covered with calcium.. so from afar it was BEAUTIFUL...like a snow covered cliff... damn nice... and the water was warm.. so there was sorta like a stream flowing thru where u could soak ur legs...ahhhh.... beautiful place...

day 6: Cappadocia...another beautiful place... becoz of erosion of the land, came strangely shaped pillars and cones called "fairy chimneys".. hard to describe..see the pics... in the past christians hollowed these structures and lived in them.. so there were holes and stuff in them. windows...unique...
then there was an Underground city.. had tunnels and rooms and stuff.. had to crawl thru the tunnels.. cool...
also... i went on a hot air balloon!!! weeheheh... very very nice... expensive tho.. $200 for one person...but nice... it was early in the morn... so when we went up it was sunrise.. watching the sun go up together with us... beautiful scenery...

day 8: back to Istanbul...went to the Grand bazaar..like a giant market.. selling all sorts of stuff.. damn big place... after tht went to some restaurant for dinner and performance.. belly dancing... ahem... shant go much into it...

went back home the next day.. really sad departure... miss the tour group.. tour leader.. tour guide... but glad to be back too... gotta start work.. miss my friends.. miss lotsa stuff... mixed feelings inside of me now.. oh wells...
btw for those of u expecting presents (i shant mention who..ahem) .. forget it, there was nothing much to buy there.. even for myself i only got a shirt and some turkish sweets...so... =)

strangely the thing i miss most abt turkey is the tour bus... coz we changed hotel every night.. and we spent so much time on the bus travelling... almost like a home to me... the nice cosy pink (yes pink..but who cares) seats... staring out... sigh....