Selçuk

It took an overnight bus trip to get to Selcuk, on the south-west coast, from Istanbul. Luckily the bus system in Turkey is incredible, and the bus station or otogar must be bigger than Sydney airport with rows and rows and levels of buses departing around the clock to various parts of Turkey. While there usually isn't a toilet on the bus, they do make a lot of stops to pick up other passengers and have a smoko break, and every bus has an attendant in his tie/bow tie who comes around with drinks and sometimes little snacks. I arrived in Selcuk just after 7am and Carlos fro my hostel came immediately to pick me (Attila's Getaway is 10 mins outside the main town). As soon as I arrived I dumped my stuff and had some breakfast before going to Ephesus. It was smaller than I was expecting, having spent a whole day wandering around Pompei, but it is really well preserved. I pushed my way through the crowds with an Australian girl from my hostel called Claire and took a few snapshots. Walking along the main street only took a couple of hours and the most impressive thing was the main theatre, in which a couple of tour guides were putting on a bit of show and pretending they were playing a match of tennis!

It was boiling hot so I chilled out in a little park just outside the Ephesus Museum. The museum itself had some amazing pieces pulled from Ephesus, including statues and frescoes, and there were some chunks of statues and columns in the garden out the back, which looked like someone's backyard. Then I wandered uphill to St John's Basilica. I didn't realise that Selcuk is actually where St John the apostle is supposed to have spent the last years of his life, in the company of the Virgin Mary, and his tomb is underneath the Basilica. From the site of the Basilica you can see the only remaining column of the Temple of Artemis, and nearby Isa Bey mosque. Quite the mish-mash of history and religion! I walked around town, had some very tasty pide and chatted to a few of the local shopkeepers who seemed very enthusiastic to see me. It turns out most people use Selcuk as stopover when going to see Ephesus, so the tour buses arrive unload some tourists for the day at Ephesus then whisks them away. So it's still a fairly underdeveloped town, but for me that meant nice and relaxed.

It was boiling hot so as soon as I got back to my hostel I had a very refreshing swim in the pool, complete with its own knock-off Greek statue. Then I met a girl from Melbourne who had just finished a 6 week archaeological dig in Macedonia, and an English guy who had just finished a year's exchange in Paris, as well as tons of other travellers as we lazed about on the huge cushioned areas around the pool. Then it was dinner time and the old Turkish ladies who work at the hostel can sure cook! It was soo relaxing and everyone was friendly , it did help that there were 2 cocktail hours every evening, and someone had ordered a nargile. But I still had to be up nice and early to do my organised day-trip to Pamukkale, which Claire tagged along on. It was about a 3 hour shuttle trip, but we stopped for lunch along the way (there were 8 of us in total), and our tour guide kept us amused with various anecdotes about Turkey and the area. She was an retired English teacher and she was good at talking. We heard about the history of Pamukkale, Ataturk, the Turkish government, marriage and divorce laws (apparently you have to have been married a year and then you have to have counselling sessions before a judge will sign off on it, so our guide's advice was not to get married in Turkey). We even drove through a town where it is tradition to put a bottle on your chimney if you have a daughter in the house who's of marrying age i.e. 17, as a way of signalling eligible men.

I was a bit worried, because I'd read a lot about the damage to Pamukkale that the masses of tourists had inflicted over the years, but it was still magnificent! We were lucky that we had sunny weather and it had been raining recently so the pools were full. Hopefully the photos I put up will do it justice. The most entertaining thing about Pamukkale was all the Russians wearing not very much and posing very seductively and n all seriousness for photos. Someone suggested it is particularly popular with Russians because they're one of the few countries, along wth New Zealand, who don't need to pay for a visa to Turkey. Whatever the reason, I have a few funny photos of Russians in bikinis. On top of the tavertines is the historical town of Hierapolis which has an antique pool, where you can swim in the calcium-rich water for a tidy sum. There also some beautiful ruins dotted around. I slept a good part of the drive home and then did much the same thing as the previous night: swimming, sitting, swapping stories, drinking and eating. Atilla, Carlos and our shuttle driver played a few rounds of pool with me and one of the Australian's who had been working there a few days, and they tried to give me some pointers but I had no hope against these guys, who stay up until about 4 playing pool and drinking and swimming pretty much every night.

It had to end though, and next it was on to Paris, so I flew out of Izmir airport the next day to spend the week with Martine and Damien.