Merhaba, y'all,

I'm currently in Izmir, on the west coast of Turkey, off the Aegean sea. Took a bus to get here just to get out of the clouds and rain showers, and it worked (hallelujah!). The plan is to ride from here south and east to Antalya on the southern coast over the next 2.5 weeks, hitting as many beaches as I can while the sun holds out, then take the bus back to Istanbul. Lucky me (and, oh, I'll be needing it by then!) I got a cheap ticket out of Istanbul to England at the end of December so I could spend the xmas hols with family. I chickened out on spending xmas and New Years alone - though it would have been an interesting experience, the choices were : 1) spend xmas alone in a newly familiar country that doesn't really celebrate it (Turkey), 2) spend xmas alone in a TOTALLY new and strange country that doesn't really celebrate it (India), or 3) spend xmas with family. And with Father Christmas! Santa Claus? Pah! Whoever heard of such a thing! It was an easy decision.

Traveling long distance in Turkey is easy - the buses will take you anywhere, and they tend to be new Mercedes luxury liners with at least one steward or stewardess on board to tend to us poor little travelers. The bike, which travels for free, gets loaded carefully on board, still fully packed with panniers. It's enough to make you want to stop riding entirely! Trains aren't used much, as they're not widespread enough for efficient travel, believe it or not. Example: bus ride 600 km to Izmir is 9 hrs and $14, while the train takes 48 hours, because of all the screwy rails! Who cares how cheap it is, if you've gotta live on board for that long.

The food is great - while fast food tends to be of the kebap variety, small restaurants serve a huge variety of different meat and vegetable dishes, rice, potatoes, soups, etc. Fresh fruit is available all over the place. And alcohol can be a little expensive and hard to find. If I can keep away from the Turkey Trots, I'll be living the healthy life for sure. Speaking of which I've already had a small taste of it, and once is quite enough of THAT particular experience, thank you very much. I'm much more careful about what water I drink nowadays. It's bottled or purified, exclusively. Hope the tea everyone drinks is well boiled, cause you can't show the slightest sign of being a sentient being without a glass of it being shoved in front of you. I'm sure its fine - the stuff sits on burners ALL day long.

The Turks are some friendly people, man. I guess its like anywhere - once you get over that small "stranger" barrier, you get a great reception. I'm trying hard to learn some Turkish and it seems to be working. The phrase book is handy, but the most fun I have with it is showing non-English speaking folks the section appropriately titled "Bad Turkish!". All the standard expressions are in there, as well as some that don't really translate all that well to English, such as 'son of a donkey' It took me a little while to get used to the lesser sense of privacy that is demanded around here - just 'cause someone is in your face doesn't mean a thing, I've realized. Everyone is always in everyone's face, will seem abrupt sometimes, and does lots of touching. The latter doesn't really apply too much to strangers though, but sometimes...

Smoking: its the national sport, just ahead of worrying about lung problems (I'm actually only half-kidding here!). I visited a smokeshop in Istanbul with the manager of the hotel I was staying in, to watch soccer and check out the water-pipe smokers. These things are huge (up to 3 feet high) and produce some serious volumes of smoke, usually in enclosed spaces. The place we were in had a 20ft ceiling (thankfully) - you could see which windows and gaps the air flowed through to outside, due to the layers of smoky dirt built up around those particular ones. But the tobacco used in them seemed much milder than cigarettes - nobody really smoked THEM in there, and when someone did it was immediately noticeable, even through all the water pipe haze.

Buildings within the old parts of the cities tend to have very varied styles, obviously - the outskirts usually have a serious case of "I want my block of apartments to look EXACTLY like the washed out shoebox right next to it" and so on, and so on. Houses are for the rich - these apartments are for everyone else. I'm slowly learning the traffic rules around here. There ARE some, but they're hard to figure out. The most prominent one is that when the traffic light turns red, you still have exactly 5 seconds left to try and get through the intersection. (Don't worry about the cross traffic who's light is now green...). Also, 3 seconds BEFORE a red light turns orange (?) and then green, you should have divined this impending change and started moving forward (again, don't worry about the cross traffic, which still has an orange or even green light...). And don't worry if you happen to lack this particular form of ESP - every driver behind you that DOES have it will start honking 5 seconds BEFORE you screw up to let you know about the mistake you haven't made yet. Oh, its fun alright. I'm SO glad I got that mirror for the bike. It's about 4 inches in diameter, and I wish it was 4 feet, sometimes.

Ramazan in Istanbul is a blast. Only about 50% or so of the population actually fasts, so most restaurants stay open (though I pity the fasting folks that work in them). But everyone takes part in a big carnival-type party on the Hippodrome every evening. Food, entertainment (traditional Turkish music - very Arabic sounding, with lots of discordance and wavering voices), even a mechanical buffalo for people to try their luck on! And I was lucky enough to be sitting in the hotel upstairs terrace for the fireworks on the first night - incredible, and close enough to really feel the thump and get ash sifting down on me from the explosions. Cat Stevens (oops, Yusef Islam) is big over here - his CD's are available everywhere, and tend to be in Turkish. Labelled not for export, though - we'll see about that! (Get that bail money ready...)

The bathrooms, now that I'm further in the sticks, are becoming more and more the holes in the ground with footprints beside, and a bucket of water in front for washing. Though not your hands. Slightly more modern places are usually set up with a commode equipped with a well-placed little tube behind to deliver water to just the right place when you're finished. Have I tried it yet? Shake my hand first, and then I'll tell you!

So! All is well, as long as I keep avoiding the water. I guess that'll be the plan from now on. All the best,

Mark