20:37
Location: Ejder Restaurant in Selcuk, Turkey

I like Turkey already. It feels like the rules--and the prices--are being invented moment-to-moment, like my 4,000,000 TLR meal (salad normally 1,000,000, for you 500,000...) and my 22,000,000 bus ticket to Istanbul tomorrow night, arranged within 10 minutes of my arrival in Selcuk, possibly even more efficient than the automatic ticket machines in Madrid. After the last couple of days of enforced inactivity, it feels great to be on the road again.

The ferry trip over was sunny, funny and cost a LOT of money. Funny, because two ferries left simultaneously and raced across neck-in-neck (mine lost). Expensive, because on top of the very un-Greek 30 euros for the 90 minute trip (more than the overnight couchette to Samos) there was a 8.80 euro port tax in Vathi, another 13 euro tax in Kusadasi, and 20 euros for passport visa to enter Turkey... Ouch!

Kusadasi was full of tourists and carpet salesmen, all cheerfully engaged in trying to persuade each other that a sale was, or was not, an inevitable part of life. I had no trouble getting directions to the minibus (dolmus) stop, which was far better organized than the equivalent Grands Taxis in Morocco. On the way over, a very fancy ATM with a full-colour touch-sensitive screen coughed up ridiculously large denominations with practiced easy, the exchange rate being 1,000,000 Turkish Lira to CND$1.16.

In Selcuk the dolmus dropped me at the autogar (bus station), and my prior reservation quickly cleared the area of would-be room salesmen, each of whom offered directions to my pension as a parting gesture of goodwill. When I started looking around for a bus schedule for tomorrow, one of the touts took me under his arm to the appropriate sales office. A short time later I was checked in at the hostel, with a full day of Ephesus time available tomorrow between the 8am breakfast (included) and my 21:30 bus.

All in all, not bad considering my ferry only docked 2 1/2 hours ago!
posted by Tom at 9:03 PM | link |