Uninformed Social Commentary and Other Snap Judgments | Eat, Bicker, Love

Something came over us a few months ago, and we decided to go to Egypt. Needless to say, Egypt hasn’t exactly been a top destination for western tourists for a while. But things seem pretty good right now, and we decided to give it a whirl. Janine has been talking about wanting to see the pyramids for years and we were in the neighborhood, so we decided to stop by for a visit.

Once we decided to come to Egypt it became clear that we had to take a Nile cruise. I mean how do you go to Egypt and not go on a Nile cruise? The trip began with two nights at a hotel in the town of Luxor, after which we were to embark on our river boat. The travel agency described the place as a four and half star hotel, but it turned out to be closer to a three and five eighths star hotel. It was fine, but it had the slightly gamy air of a Graham Greene novel. They keep the lights in the lobby off during the day (to save electricity?), the wifi only works in the lobby, and there was a general sense of semi-dubiousness about the place. No matter, we were staying in a hotel in Luxor, on the mighty Nile! And it had a very nice view of the river. So there’s that.

Three and five eighths stars, but a nice view.

We were met at the airport by an interesting fellow who called himself Bob. Bob? Really? Yes, he insisted, even his wife calls him Bob. He says that people started calling him Bob when he was a teenager because of his love for Bob Marley. He wears a polo shirt with the name Bob embroidered in hieroglyphics. He’s about my age, he’s about the same height as Janine and he has a slight build, a close cropped beard, and stylish glasses.

As in Turkey and so many other relatively poor countries, you can sometimes be skeptical about people’s motives. Someone offers to help you and then asks for a tip. I really can’t blame people for trying to make a living, but it can be hard to get around without being hawked at. Sometimes the hawking is quite respectful, but other times it’s less so. In the car on the way from the airport, Bob wanted to know if we were interested in an extra tour on our free day. Why, we wondered, did they put a free day on a tour when they know very well that the guide will suggest more? My guess is that it’s because that’s just how it’s done. Bob had a bunch of suggestions, none of them cheap. But we had come all this way and figured we should try to see as much as possible. Could we just add it to our tour cost? Nope, he wasn’t able to take credit cards. I was starting to wonder how this was going to go.

We arranged for an event that night and then a full day’s excursion the following day across the river on the west bank of the Nile. Bob told us that he going to be our guide for the duration of the tour. He’d accompany us on board the boat, sail upriver with us, (We’re traveling upriver, which is south, which is confusing because the Nile flows north and most rivers flow south. Did you get all that?) and guide us around the sites along the way. Bob says that this is how it’s done here. Each group, no matter how large or small, gets its own tour guide.

I should point out that we have done zero homework about the places on our itinerary. I mean zero. Janine knows a bit about Egypt, but as far as I know, the Temple of Karnak is where Johnny Carson kept his turban. Smart people bone up on the places they’re about to visit, but we just haven’t made the time to get even the most rudimentary information about our Nile trip. This puts us at something of a disadvantage. Do we want to go to the Sound and Light show on the first night? Houseboat Dan mentioned something about it, so we figured we’d give it a try.

That night, Bob collected us at the hotel and we drove a few minutes to a cruddy parking lot ringed with souvenir stands. This was not looking so good. We waited by what appeared to be the entrance – two concrete pillars strung with a skinny chain. Finally, someone unhooked the chain, and we were led in the near-darkness down a wide walkway where we could barely make out a colonnade of what looked like some sort of sphinx-y things.

The entrance to the Karnak complex.

Just then, music blared from hidden speakers, the sphinx-y things were bathed in light, and the temples emerged under huge floodlights. I nearly wet myself. It turns out that we were at the temple complex at Karnak. Imagine thinking that you’re at a dopey light show when you’re actually at one of the greatest archeological sites on the planet.

The show was an audio dramatization of the story of the temple complex (it’s a complex because the pharaohs kept adding to it over time), complete with very old timey British narrators who sounded like actors in one of those goofy mummy movies of the thirties (with a soundtrack to match).

No matter. We were led from one part of the temple to the next and as we advanced they’d light up this part of Karnak and that, the crazy music would swell, some Edward Everett Horton-sounding dude would talk about Amenhotep or Tutankhamun, and you’d get glimpses in the dark of this extraordinary series of temples with one hundred thirty four columns, the largest of which are more than sixty feet high, which are over thirty five hundred years old. Since we were there in the dark, and they would only light small bits at a time you were left to wonder what the entire place looked like. It was an archeological peep show. Things were looking up.

I thought we were going to a dorky sound and light show. Turns out we were going here.

I started taking a liking to Bob as well. He is full of opinions about almost everything – the travel industry, his fellow guides, politics, sociology, religion – you name it. Ask Bob a question and he’ll answer it with candor and commitment. He can read hieroglyphs like I can read a boxscore. His English is excellent, although he speaks it with what sounds like a German/Egyptian accent, and his interpretation of English grammar can have exciting results. He is unfailingly polite, especially when making anatomical observations about Egyptian art. “Look this god, he got, excuse me, two willies.” “The queen here she got skinny waist and, I’m sorry, little poops” (he meant boobs). He gargles his r’s deep in the back of his throat – “Look at this picture of grrrrrrrrrrapes and ficks” (grapes and figs). If I close my eyes, he sometimes sounds like the Yiddish rabbi played by Gene Wilder in Frisco Kid.

Bob, reading to us in hieroglyph

He’s perpetually cheerful and energetic and he seems to know everybody. When Janine observed this, he replied, “I know! If I’m running for mayor I’m winning.” Bob hates to wait and he makes sure somehow that we are in the front of the line, first on the trolley, first in the building, whatever. When we arrive at any visitor center, the room with the National Geographic overview narrated by Omar Sharif (I’m not kidding, almost every significant site we’ve visited has a National Geographic video narrated by Omar Sharif) magically opens and is switched on. I have watched him grease a half dozen palms.

He has also procured for us, at various times, wine, water, tonic water, and a pile of limes. At the end of each day, he appears with whatever items we expressed interest in during the day. We will get the bill, and I’m sure won’t be cheap (nothing seems to be), but it will be reasonable.

In short, Bob is the fixer’s fixer. He’s the Pope of Greenwich Village, Egyptian style.

Every so often you just don’t feel it. You do all the things you’re supposed to do, see all the great stuff you’re supposed to see, but something is just missing.

Now that I have placated (I hope) the food readers (the food posts are by far more popular than anything else I write), I’d like to take a moment to explain the ebbs and flows of travel and expectation. For those of you who have been following along, when we arrived in Istanbul, we did the standard tourist stuff and stayed in the popular tourist neighborhood. We saw the big three – the Blue Mosque (really quite impressive), Hagia Sophia (good and interesting but a little messy) and Topkapi Palace (a fascinating look at the Sultans’ life). We tolerated the Grand Bazaar, but loved the Spice Market, which is basically the Grand Bazaar for spices. It has a jillion indistinguishable spice shops, but I had the time of my life once I picked my shop and started buying. As it turned out, my spice guy is a Turk who was born in Germany and lived in Japan for eleven years. Who knew? I am now the proud owner of lots of spice.)

Guenther, me, and spices

Still, Istanbul felt like it was missing something, or more accurately, we were missing something. All those places are just fine, but they’re packed with tourists, especially in the summer, and after a few days of being hounded by touts and jostling with a small city of touring Europeans, you’d be forgiven if you just threw your hands up and raced to the airport.

We needed to shake things up.

We decided to get out of town for a bit and explore some of the other famous regions in Turkey. We booked a tour that would take us to Cappadoccia (where you can stay in a cave), Pamukkale (a place full of natural hot springs and a very cool old Roman ruin), and Ephesus (once the third largest city in the Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria). We’d get out and about and expand our sense of the country. What could go wrong?

That little expedition reminded me why travel can be so much fun and so ridiculous.

We took a balloon ride over Cappadoccia, which was exhilarating, although for a moment there I thought I might need an adult undergarment.

Right before I almost soiled myself.

Later that day, we explored caves that had been used for churches by Christians, and we visited an underground city that had eleven levels that was carved out of lava rock. The city was constructed so Christians could flee the Romans, and later the Persians. People will go to a heck of a lot of trouble in order to pray. There, we had those fine meals at Fatima’s restaurant, Shirahne.

So far, so good. After our second day touring Cappadocia, were scheduled to take a night bus to Pamukkale. These buses are supposed to be quite nice. “Like an airplane seat,” someone said. Oh, it was like an airplane seat alright – a Cessna. This ride was just wrong from the beginning. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the overnight bus had no bathroom. Amazingly there was wifi, but the password didn’t work. There were American movies at each seat, but they were dubbed into Turkish. Janine was convinced that she could crack the code that would play the movies in English, but she never did (and I suspect it’s because they’re just in Turkish). We couldn’t tilt our seats back because the couple behind us had a baby bassinet on their laps. Sleep was impossible because the bus stopped every hour, ostensibly to use the bathroom, but I think the driver just wanted to smoke. (You haven’t lived until you’ve spent time in a Turkish truck stop, though.) Sometimes the bus stopped for two minutes, sometimes twenty. Repeated attempts to communicate with the bus attendant proved fruitless.

After ten thrilling hours, the bus spat us out in the bustling metropolis of Denizli at about six the next morning. I should note that these package tours involve a certain amount of magical activity. When you get off your bus, you hope against hope that some guy will be standing there with a sign with your name on it. If you’re lucky, then they take you to some place where there’s a reservation, a room, another useful conveyance, or some other proof that wheels are turning in logical and useful ways.

Sure enough, someone was at the bus to collect us to take us on another shorter bus ride to the town of Pamukkale, where we arrived at what could charitably called a backpacker’s flophouse. If you were feeling uncharitable, you might just call it a hellhole. For eight bucks we were able to attempt to take a short nap, shower, and leave our bags behind lock and key for the day before heading off for our tour. As ever, however, you get what you pay for.

Janine and I have stayed in scarier places, but not since the early Clinton Administration. I remember the time we stayed at a guest house in Kuala Lumpur in 1994. The room was a plywood and chicken wire cage. This was better, but not by a whole lot. The plaster walls were sloughing off matter like a leper. At first glance, the shower appeared to have a checkboard design. A second glance revealed the black sections to just be mildew. The room had an indescribable odor. It was a mix of mold and old food with maybe a bit of ripened socks thrown in for good measure. We slept in our clothes. The thing is, and this can’t be discounted, the people who ran the hellhole flophouse were really, really nice. They made us feel warm and welcome, despite the scandalous conditions. I liked them. Anyway, we were so tired that the conditions didn’t much matter. We used the checkerboard shower, changed clothes, rested a bit, then dubiously set out for our day of sightseeing, wondering why we would give up our nice, comfortable lives in one of the nicest cities in the fully developed world for backpackers’ hovels and moldy showers. Have we lost what little mind we had left?

We needn’t have wondered. Pamukkale was fascinating and beautiful. We wandered around the hot springs, which turn the hillsides white from the calcium content in the water, and from which they harvest travertine for tile.

The hot springs at Pamukkale.

The Hieropolis is a very well restored look at Roman life almost two thousand years ago. And we had a great time hanging out with other folks on the tour. Half of the fun of traveling is the people you meet along the way. Ben from Australia is in the middle of long trip, as is Shanti from Colorado. We compared notes about our journeys, and reminded each other how lucky we are to be able to do things a little differently. Melvin from Goa, India, reported that he slept well on the night bus, which reminds me that everyone’s experience is different. Either that or he’s narcoleptic.

That evening, we were deposited onto a train platform (I’m not joking – our minibus drove RIGHT ONTO the platform where the people were standing) for the train to Ephesus. After a day of touring Capadoccia followed by a night bus, a day of touring Pamukkale, and another five hours on a train, we finally arrived at a fancy, shmancy boutique hotel with a good shower, an actual bathtub (the first one we’d seen in Europe), and a glorious view of the sea.

A little better than an overnight bus.

Things were looking up.

After touring Ephesus and another blissful night at the hotel, we returned to Istanbul and repositioned ourselves across the river in the Beyoglu section of town. There we started to find the Istanbul that we had been looking for. That’s where most of the cafes and meyhanes and cocktail bars are. If we had more time we would have taken a cruise of the Bosphorous, wandered the junk shops and alleys in the Galatasaray neighborhood, poked through some art galleries, taken a ferry across to the part of the city that sits on the Asian continent, and eaten at more meyhanes, among many, many other things.

Sometimes it takes a little extra effort to find the essence of a place, but there are so many variables that go into your experience. If you give me a decent bed and a good meal and you smile every once in a while, I’m happy. If you put me in a neighborhood where real life is going on, I’m even happier. As we were hitting our stride it was time to move on, but better late than never.

Did I like Istanbul? Yes, eventually.

Would I go back? You betcha.