God I miss the days when I had time to blog at work. Or at home. Or even just in my head. Ever feel like somebody’s just pressed a NOS button in your brain and you’re rocketing through each day in a whorl of blue flame, burning rubber and bad movie cliches? Then you blow the welds on your intake manifold, fry your piston rings and realise you’ve seen Fast and the Furious waaaaay too many times. Mmm, Vin Diesel in an RX7.
Anyway, today I snuck out of work early and skipped the gym in order to cook myself a proper meal and sit down and do sweet, sweeeet FA. Check me out with my fully mad culinary skilllz:
That’s mushrooms, prawns, chilli, garlic, bok choy, corn and some other random vegetation.
Please don’t tell my mother or my best mate that I can cook. For years, both of these wonderful ladies have taken every opportunity to cook me the most delicious, nourishing meals in the belief that I’m on the verge of dying from beriberi. Which I probably am, but the culprit is bone laziness rather than any real deficiency in the kitchen. I hate cooking from scratch, but sometimes the occasion calls for it – like when you’ve had a f***er of a week and need some antioxidants. But more on that another time.
Well I’m back from Turkeyland.
The stay was amaaaaaaazing, I can’t rave enough about how amaaaaaaazing Turkey is. There just aren’t enough aaaaa’s on my keyboard. But more on that later.
The actual travel part, however, was f***ing awful. Excruciating. People who carry on about how much they love to travel are FRICKEN LUNATICS. It was 36 hours from Melbourne airport to the hotel in Turkey, and in that period I went from homicidal to suicidal to xenocidal about thirty times over.
The first mistake I made was straightening my hair. My curly haired sistas out there will understand precisely why I did this prior to a long haul flight, but apparently airport security do not. I was eyed up and down and greeted with “new hairstlyle?” at check-in, at the international terminal entry, at immigration, and finally as I boarded the bloody plane itself. No, my hair is not curly like my passport photo - get over it, shut the hell up and let me on the damn plane. Once I and my aberrant hair had boarded, I discovered I had the middle seat in a middle row. Joy. Eight hours to Kuala Lumpur with two people on either side of me and not a window in sight. I was scared to drink anything for eight hours in case it made me want to pee, and subsequently I had a stonking dehydration headache by the time I got to KL. With another 4 hours to kill before the next flight, I drank a litre of water, downed four Panadol, checked my ticket for my boarding gate number, found the boarding gate, then curled up in a nearby corner like a derelict and managed to nap for all of 15 minutes. I’m not sure what I did for the next 3 hours, but I assume I blacked out from chronic crankiness. About 10 minutes before departure time I realised no one was congregating near the departure gate. Hmm. I wandered over to the info monitor and found the departure gate had changed. To a different building. SHIT. I found a map and located the new departure gate, which had a cute little train icon next to it. Double shit. I bolted halfway through the building, found the ‘Air Train’, leapt on board and hurtled off again at what I hoped was the right stop. I threw my passport at the gate security guard, who gave me a cute smile and said “oh, new hair style?” - whereupon I clobbered him into a pulpy, oozing mess with my hand luggage. Safely on the plane, I found a Malaysian woman sitting in my window seat. “Sorry, I think you’re in my seat” I said. She feigned surprise. “Oh I’m sorry, I just wanted to sit next to my son”, and she gestured to a glowering, hirsute, obese slab of teenage angst slumped next to her. “But you can sit next to my daughter!” The said daughter smiled brightly and pointed to the aisle seat next to her. I looked at hairy-fat-angry-boy, looked at the aisle seat, thought about peeing anytime I wanted, then took the aisle seat. KL to Dubai was spectacularly uneventful due to the complete lack of in flight entertainment, unless you count the upholstery. Each seat was wrapped in what looked like a sarong, each seat in a different colour, with no discernible pattern. I felt like they should’ve been handing out joints instead of peanuts.
We had a brief stop in Dubai, but no one appeared to have forewarned Dubai. It was about 2.00am and everyone piled off the plane, only to find the gates were shut. You’ve all heard that joke about the blonde getting stuck on an escalator – well I actually saw it happen in Dubai. Picture an entire Airbus A330 worth of people unloading themselves onto an escalator, only to find the people in front of them aren’t going anywhere...the whole crowd had to walk backwards while the escalator kept running underneath them. I was able to have a smug chuckle, because I’m one of those people who take the stairs whenever they’re available. Of course I was stuck too, but at least I didn’t have to walk backwards on the spot like a twit. Eventually, a pretty young thing in an official looking outfit came trotting into the crowd. At least, she was a pretty young thing until she opened her mouth, after which I realised she was a drill sergeant. “Du-BAI!!” she hollered, “Everyone leaving at Du-BAI! Please step forward! Passengers for Istanbul, step BACK! BAACK! Du-BAI, FORWARD! FORWAAARD!” About ten passengers shuffled meekly forward, while she glared at the rest of us like we were communists. “Anyone else for Du-BAI?” she roared. No one moved a muscle, whereupon her shoulders slumped and she gazed around with hurt amazement “but, but...why not?”
After landing at Istanbul, I had a three hour layover until my domestic Turkish Airlines flight. I bought something which I thought was chocolate, but it turned out to be figs. I couldn’t understand a single thing anyone said, even when it was in English. The paper towel holders in the toilet were motion activated, which took me an inordinately long time to figure out. I glared at everything that moved, and even stuff that didn’t.
The hour flight from Istanbul to Antalya was brightened considerably by the best tzaziki I’ve ever eaten. Also there was an elderly Muslim man next to me who couldn’t figure out how to do up his seat belt, so I fastened it for him, all the while expecting him to suddenly declare me a harlot and stone me to death (yes, like most Australians I’m completely ignorant about Muslim culture). Once in Antalya, I found a huge hairy Turk in a pink shirt holding a sign saying ‘Hello, Inga!”. He introduced himself as Mustafa, which appeared to be the entire extent of his English. Nonetheless, we had several Turglish conversations on the three hour drive to Kaş – at no point were we discussing the same thing, but it mattered not. Mustafa appeared to be a graduate of Snoop Dogg’s ‘drive it like it’s hot’ school – I’ve never experienced so much dodging, weaving, tailgating, and blatant disrespect for road markings and traffic lights. In Australia, red means stop. In Turkey, it means stop if you feel like it. The scenery from Antalya to Kaş is breathtaking; pointed rocky peaks lurching straight out of the ocean, and the highway lacing itself through them, stitching tunnels and then shouldering back onto the glittering blue sea. The majesty was marginally diminished by Mustafa’s hammering the Renault at 140km/hr round the bends, overtaking on blind corners and generally doing his best to kill the Aussie tourist. Fortunately he lost that little game, and I ended up safe, sound and slightly delirious at the hotel around 4.30pm – at which point I tucked myself into bed, pulled the cover up over my head and vowed never to leave Australia ever, EVER again.
