Week 20 & 21: On the westward wind

Our past two weeks have been travelling west, first to Singapore, and then on to Türkiye.

The last time I was in Singapore was 2015. My first impression was that Singapore was a tropical, futuristic city, which started my love of metro systems. I even brought my metro card from 2015 with me on this trip, with the hope I could use the rest of the credit I had left. Tragically, the machine informed me it expired in 2021 (which is to be expected, but that ten bucks would’ve been nice). To be fair, nowadays you can just use your contactless debit card, so we used our Wise rather than a metro card anyway.

Social media is an amazing thing - seeing that Andrew, our friend from uni, was in Singapore for work, we managed to catch him for a meal before he headed to the airport. It was great to catch up, even if it was definitely in an unexpected spot! We were also fortunate enough to have Manuel and Ash join us in Singapore, flying from Melbourne. It was a wonderful time, exploring the different gardens in the city, swimming in Manuel and Ash’s hotel pool, and drinking happy hour cocktails while the sun went down. Jerry in particular is incredibly envious of Melbourne’s cheap Scoot flights to Singapore, coming in at an astonishingly low $550 per person return. 

This is our last stop with a pod hostel (we’re looking at apartments and hotels for the rest of the trip at this stage). This time, we tried out our first queen bed pod, and it was decidedly less coffin-like. We’ve reflected on our travels how we’ve become absolute fiends for accommodation with breakfast included. On a year-long trip, there is really something to be said for not having to decide on what to eat first thing. I am not a big breakfast person, but free breakfasts might just convert me. 

Our queen bed pod - cosy!

Singapore was a city of light shows. The light show in the Gardens by the Bay SuperGrove was a highlight. The theme for April was retro fever, and I can’t imagine a better music theme for the show. They played songs from my mum and dad’s 70s and 80s car-trip CDs, some of my favourite Singstar hits, and brought back great memories from when my dance school did a disco-themed end-of-year show. All in all, very nostalgic!

We also watched the lightshow at the Marina Bay Sands, and in the Jewel at Changi Airport. Singapore is very glitzy, and they have their light displays down. I’m a sucker for anything with an inspiring music backing, but we’ll have to get Manuel’s opinions on the technical side - being an audiovisual technician, he probably has a lot more to say than I do. 

Singapore is also a melting pot of cuisines, with some seriously delicious food. We frequented several hawker centres during our time there, including the famous Maxwell Food Centre. There are so many different aromatic, flavourful dishes that we tried in Singapore. Ultimately, we were only in Singapore for a stopover, so there will still be more stalls in the hawker centres that we will need to save for another day. 

Changi airport is a tourist attraction in and of itself. It has a butterfly garden, a waterfall fountain, free movie screenings, and more eateries than I can count. We were most unlike our usual selves, and over-dicked-around while there, having to dash to our gate to board.

Thankfully, we made it on the plane, and settled in for the 11 hour flight to Istanbul. We were seated in the bulkhead row, which isn’t a typical spot for us. For context, to choose those seats, we’d have had to pay $100 for the extra legroom. Not our vibe. But that’s the seat they assigned us. We assumed we’d be next to a baby, since the seat beside us was the bassinet seat. When we arrived on the plane, we were shocked to get the row to ourselves, especially since the rest of the flight was packed full. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (can someone tell me the etymology of that phrase?! What an odd idiom), Jerry promptly moved into the spare seat, ready to stretch out. It wasn’t until a very polite flight attendant had to ask Jerry if he’d ordered a baby meal for himself that we realised the seat’s occupant must have missed the flight. Kudos to the flight attendant for not making assumptions, or asking where Jerry had stashed his baby.

After lying across our row and using very little of that extra legroom we had been given (we send an apology out to the long-legged people of the world, and the poor parent who missed their flight), we made it to Istanbul airport. The Turkish government, having heard about our great love of metro systems, had built a metro line between the city and the airport, which opened only a month before we arrived. So considerate! Saved us from having to face our great travelling fear, the taxi *cue ominous music*.

When we originally planned our route, Türkiye was one of our non-negotiable countries, with Istanbul being pretty much number one on the list of cities we wanted to visit this year. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one city. We are delighted to share that this colourful, vibrant city has lived up to our expectations, and then some.

Geographically, Istanbul lies at the intersection of two continents; Asia and Europe. It has had many names over the years, including Byzantium, New Rome, and Constantinople. Modern Istanbul is a great blend of busy-ness and relaxation. It is common to sit and sip a coffee or tea for an hour (for many this is accompanied by a cigarette). We had one of the best walking tours we’ve ever had,  which was helped by the fact that every step has another artefact or building that dates back thousands of years, and Istanbul has been at the centre of so much history.

Istanbul ticks a lot of our favourite boxes - delicious food, rich history and culture, varied and cheap public transport (trams, ferries, metro, funiculars)...Ultimately, we have been overwhelmed and besotted by the friendliness of people. Istanbul sees a lot of tourists, so it would be a fair assumption that locals might be a bit tired of us by now. It’s also a big city, where we rarely expect a great deal of friendliness. However, we experienced kindness in so many different forms. It was the kitchen shop owner who wouldn’t let me buy a spice scoop, gifting it to me instead. It was the woman on the funicular, who didn’t speak a word of English, but spoke to everyone until she could find someone to translate that she thought I was beautiful. It was the man in the rug store who dressed me up in a kaftan and scarf to take a photo together, after I asked to take a photo of his store. I had already bought the cushion covers; he wasn’t trying to sell me anything. It was the countless twinkly eyes, big smiles, and conversations when they discovered Jerry and I were, in fact, more than friends. “You are MARRIED?” each one would shriek delightedly, before launching into questions about our shared history. Apparently, Jerry and I give off “just friends” vibes? Maybe we just give off “young” vibes? That skincare routine must be working.

This country is going through some complex challenges, with some pretty severe inflation. Jerry, ever the economist, has been keenly observant of what this looks like on the ground. Printing prices on menus becomes an issue, because they change so regularly. The prices are usually written with whiteboard markers, or sticker price tags which can be removed. We experienced in the moment inflation - our fish wrap from Mario the Fisherman was 130 lira on Wednesday, then 140 on Friday (still a great deal, would recommend).

We hit a great pace in Istanbul, trying to emulate the mix of busy-ness and relaxation that we observed. Lots of stops for cups of tea (and to watch the men playing backgammon in the cafes), but also visits to the different districts of Istanbul. We loved wandering along the waterfront by the ancient city walls, sitting in front of the mosques to listen to the call to prayer, and frequenting the Simit carts that are ubiquitous amongst the city streets. Jerry became very good at spotting the freshest ones (usually on a table beside the cart, or as they’re freshly delivered), and even found a fresh Simit bakery in Karaköy. You can buy them with Nutella inside, but we instead went to the supermarket and bought a jar for our own DIY version. Türkiye has a lot of hazelnuts, so you can get hazelnut spreads with a much higher concentration of hazelnut. I am a fan. 

The mosques: Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Two incredible structures, standing opposite each other.

HAGIA SOPHIA

The Hagia Sophia, rebuilt in 532-537 AD, has been a church, a museum, and a mosque. I am not a spiritual person, but it is near-impossible to be unmoved by the history of this building. Standing inside, I couldn’t help but reflect on how many different people and moments in time that the Hagia Sophia has borne witness to.

THE BLUE MOSQUE

The Blue Mosque isn’t quite as ancient, being built in the 1400s. However, it felt much more active as a mosque (the Hagia Sophia is a blend of both a museum and a mosque), and the tiling on the domes was awe-inspiring as well.

BASILICA CISTERN

The Basilica Cistern lies unassumingly underneath a street just across the road, but is well worth a visit underground. We’re usually more interested in the ancient elements of a place, but the modern sculpture of Medusa and her shadow had us mesmerised.

We took the ferry to a few different spots on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, including Kadıköy, a cool district for wandering, antique hunting, and stopping for a hot drink. We tried Turkish coffee. It is made over sand, and you don’t filter the grounds. It’s not for me, which I can say confidently since we went to one of the best-rated Turkish coffee cafes and I still wasn’t won over. I’ll stick to tea while we’re here.

We also took the ferry up the Bosphorus, towards the Black Sea, to a little town called Anadolu Kavağı. We had fresh seafood, and explored the castle ruins. I felt like I was transported into a children’s pirate story, or maybe the Famous Five series; clambering through seaside castles really invokes a childlike sense of imagination.

I attended a traditional Turkish hammam. It is much less common a pastime now that homes have their own plumbing and showers, but back in the day, people would come to the public bath house to be scrubbed, buffed, and soaped. I went on my own, for a few reasons. Most hammams are split into male-only and female-only times, so I went during the day with the other women. Jerry is also frightfully ticklish, so the idea of being scrubbed by another person while wearing nothing but his underwear was a traumatising concept for him. Hence the solo visit. The only way I can think to describe my hammam experience is a mix between a luxury spa experience, and being given a very soapy bubble bath as a toddler, by a loving but very bossy mother/grandmother. I loved it much more than I thought I would - went into it thinking I’d have a memorable experience, but came out feeling very pampered, and the cleanest I have ever been.

We’re now heading inland to the Cappadocia region, famous for its hot air balloons and fairy chimneys. The forecast is for a week of thunderstorms, so it might be a bit of an adventure!