First day in Turkey (12/12/09)

****YOU MUST READ EVERYTHING IN THIS POST BECAUSE IT TOOK ME MORE THAN 10 HOURS TO FINISH****

As you all know, I was in Turkey from the 12th December 2009 until the 19th December 2009.

Here's the post for the first day (12th December).

I'll be writing a post for each day in Turkey. So, this is just the beginning. :)

We left Kuching on the 11th and arrived in Istanbul on the 12th. It was a freaking 12 hours flight!

This time, I took flu pills instead of coffee. Flu pills made me sleepy and so I slept for a few hours. That was great! ;)

I am not abusing drugs, I had flu that day, honest! :D It was necessary to sleep in the plane because we will arrive in Istanbul at 6am their time. The tour will start immediately after we landed. In other words, if we do not sleep in the plane, we must stay awake for at least 12 hours, unless you want to sleep in the bus.

We landed around 6am and then we went to collect our luggage. My family and I had to wait for at least half an hour for our luggage because we checked in quite early. We checked in when we were in Kuching and I think it was 6 hours before the real check in time.

When we got our luggage, it was off to the toilet for us. We did our changing and cleaning up in the toilets. We didn't get to bathe because they weren't any showers provided and we were also rushing. After everyone (the tour group) was done, we went to meet our local guide who was waiting patiently at the arrival halls. His name is Cihan but it is pronounced as (G-Han) in Turkish. He told us that we need to wait in the arrival halls until it was 8am (it was about 7.15am at the moment) because the operating time for the Blue Mosque was at 8am. Some people went for coffee, some went for breakfast, others just walked around and wait, while me and my siblings were feeding on the airport's WiFi to Facebook. :D

So smart of us. :D

Facebook (for me) is the only way I can keep in touch with my friends and the world you know!

After updating our status and checked our Facebook for updates, we got bored. According to our iPod's weather forecast, the temperature outside was 5 degrees celcius. That was when we wanted to know how cold it was outside so we sneaked out. SNEAKY MUCH? XD

At first it was nice feeling because we live in Kuching, near to the equator, and the temperature in Kuching is always above 25 degrees celcius. Eeeks!

5 degrees was enough to see our own breath as we breathe. When we saw our own breath, we were all so excited just like a bunch of sakai people. ==

After standing outside the airport for a few minutes, we went back to the arrival halls.

We departed at 8am to the Blue Mosque. It was cloudy and kinda dark for 8am in the morning (compared to Kuching). On the bus, Cihan introduced Istanbul and part of its history to us. Turkey's history is long and much more interesting because it involves Rome, Greece, Hellenistic Period, and of course, Islam.

Although there's history about the Islams, Cihan didn't bore us with bombastic terms like khalifah, khulafah, musyawarah, sumbangan-sumbangan, kepentingan etc etc like our History book did. Our History book sucks.

Their History is more world-ish and interesting because they are geographically located right in the center of two worlds: East and West; Islam and Christian; Asia and Europe, while Malacca is in the middle of..... What's the name of that strait again?

Aw crap, I can't remember!! Seriously! :(

On top of that, Malacca is just some random place located at some random strait for some random merchants to stop by. Big deal.

Enough of that and back to the tour. I sound so tour guide-ish. :P

We stopped at the Hippodrome for an hour or so before we walked all the way to the Blue Mosque.

Not many photos were taken because I was too busy keeping myself warm. Blame the carelessness.

As I mentioned earlier, we were all in a rush to get changed that I had forgotten to wear my long johns underneath my clothes... My socks were the thin ones too. In other words, I was freezing. My fingers were laggy while my feet were numb. I didn't listen to the commentary properly too! :O

While Cihan was explaining, I was wondering why isn't he cold when everyone is shivering. The cold is like nothing to him.

My nose was ice cold and watery and blocked at the same that I had to use my mouth to breathe. At that time, I HAD SORE THROAT TOO! The dry air made my throat even drier and painful. :(

So here are the photos I took:

German Fountain. Probably it was a gift from the Germans to the Turks.

Egyptian Obelisk, originally from Egypt and was brought here by Constantine last time.

Closer view.

And this is a relief of what I think are the spectators in the Hippodrome.

The Serpentine Column was brought to Istanbul from Delphi. The cauldron that was suppose to be on top of the column broke during an earthquake or something like that.

Column of Constantine Porphyrogenitus was once covered in bronze. The bronze was looted by the Crusaders and now you can't see them anymore.

The Hippodrome was built by the Romans and it was used for shows, gladiators' fight, chariot racing and so on. The Hippodrome used to be lined with large columns but only three columns made it until now.

So where is this Hippodrome?

This Hippodrome is buried under layers and layers of soil so now it can't be seen.

Everyone is literally standing on top of the Hippodrome now.

After that, we walked all the way to the Blue Mosque. The original name of this mosque is Sultan Ahmed Mosque and the reason why everyone calls it the Blue Mosque is because of the decorations inside, not the outer surface of the mosque. The Blue Mosque is decorated with a lot of turquoises and that is why it's called the Blue Mosque.

Turquoise means Turkish Quartz in Turkish and that is why this mosque is decorated with a lot of turquoises.

And, and, we had to take off our shoes to enter the mosque and that was bad.

IT WAS SUPER COLD I TELL YOU! 

I prefer Turkish mosques to Malaysian mosques.

Just look for yourself. :P

This mosque looks so grand.

One of the six minarets.

The inside of the mosque, this is my first time in a mosque, so yeah.

You can't really see the turquoises from here.

During the Ottoman period, everyone used to pray here together with the royal family.

The corridor I think.

After touring the Blue Mosque, we once again walked to Topkapi Palace. The cheese pretzel was yummy! Topkapi Palace was the place where the royal family used to live. Now this courtyard is converted into a museum.

We passed by this shop selling belly dancing costumes. The costumes are very Arabic, just like Aladdin's costume. ==

Did I mention that it was raining? It was so damn cold.

This photo is nice.:)

Spot the blurry part of the photo?

That's a spirit! 
*
*
*
*
Just KIDDING!!

It's actually rainwater. ==

The entrance reminds me of the castle thingy on every Faber Castell's colour pencil box.

Map of the Ottoman Empire I think.

Inside the courtyard.

No photographs are allowed in the museum, so yeah.

These trees look evil! :O

The things used by the royal family was displayed in here. Everything was beautifully carved and decorated and plated with gold, bronze, silver and embroidered with precious stones etc etc, even the swords have bling-blings real diamonds on them!

It's amazing that the grass is still green when it's already winter. :O

This shot looks so pro. :D

I have no idea what these buildings are called and their functions.

Nice background for a photo.

Me! I am making my fingers warm as you can see...

And underneath my winter jacket is my thin blouse.

Brother and sister.

Me and my brother. I have no idea what I was doing.

The Blue Mosque from afar.

Walking back to the bus.

After we got onto the bus, it's off to lunch for us. It was the Malaysian's first time tasting the original Turkish food. ;)

We arrived in this Turkish restaurant along with other tourist from Japan and Singapore. Took some photos while waiting for the food to be served.

Different types of spices in jars.

Turkish buns.

We eat them with lentil soup. Well, the soup tastes a tad like potato and pea soup. It was creamy and starchy at the same time, not to forget warm.

Yummy!

Pastry with cheese. It's like lasagne with only hot cheese inside. Salty but yummy. :D

*No photos of the main course because the hungry me wolfed down everything, smiley face.*

After lunch, it was a two hours bus ride to the hotel in Canakkale.

On the way, it snowed!!

Everyone in the bus were oh-so happy and started to take photos of the snow from inside the bus. Even the people who were sleeping woke up, stare at the snow, celebrated and then went back to sleep. ==
It was Turkey's first snow for the winter. :D :D :D
LUCKY US!

These were some of the best photos I took since the bus was moving quite fast.

Believe it or not, this photo was taken at around 4pm Turkish time. Daytime in Turkey is short.

The trip continued and around 6pm Turkish time (12am Malaysian time), (almost) everyone on the bus were fast asleep. Thanks to the recent staying up late practice I got from Facebooking, blogging, surfing the net and studying (I sound so rajin :O), I personally developed a skill that allowed me to stay up late without feeling sleepy. Neat one ay?

My iPod was my only companion that kept me entertained while everyone else was sleeping, how I wish Janice was there.

We arrived at the hotel in Canakkale (Tusan Hotel) at about 7.30pm and had our dinner. It was Turkish and this time I took a photo of the main course. :)

Beef patties with fried potatoes and rice and grilled beef. Yummo!

Caramel pudding. Extremely sweet!

Chocolate pudding. Extremely sweet again!

After our dinner, we went to our rooms. My sister and I had one whole room for ourselves! :D

It feels so great to shower after 30 hours of not showering. Not because we didn't want to, it's because we can't! :O

Showering with Carrie Junior's Baby Bath and lukewarm water when it's cold outside is very relaxing! :D You've gotta try it someday! Mom didn't want me wash my hair because she said it's very cold outside. At first, I wanted to wash my hair so badly since I had yogurt in them.

The yogurt got there the first place is because I peeled the cover of the strawberry yoghurt open on the plane. I think it was the pressure that made the content of the yoghurt to splash on me (not everything actually, just a few drops). == Of course I went to the loo to clean my hair! :X

Back to the story, I wanted to wash my hair so badly but it was real cold outside and it takes my hair an hour to dry in Kuching. Since I can't wash my hair, I wet my hair (many times) to make me feel cleaner. I swear my hair was clean after that.

I've heard that yoghurt is good for the hair too because some people use yoghurt as one of the ingredients for a homemade hair mask. That can't be a bad thing right? To make myself feel even better, I kept telling myself that yoghurt is a good moisturiser and it is good for the hair since the weather is dry and cold.

Guess what? The hotel had WiFi and I updated my status on Facebook and Twitter and chatted with some people. These people were really nocturnal because it was already 2am in Malaysia! :O

I went to bed at around 9pm Turkish time because I didn't want to sleep at 6am Malaysian time (12am Turkish time) and confuse my body's biological clock.

With that, I conclude this post.

I started this post at around 10am today and it's almost 10pm! This is such a long post. :O

Now I command you to appreciate my hard work!

P/S: Stay tune for my next post. :)