Given that u are travelling off the beaten path, you are most likely to share part of your trip with fellow travellers, which is, really entertaining.
Nobody asked me, or Qibah where we come from when we were in Istanbul ~ well, apart from the shopkeepers or waiters that made us want to hang a card saying "I'm from Malaysia"
Talking about the popular question "where are you from", I always answer alternately between Malaysia and Czech.
First, it is fun doing it.
Second, the conversation will somehow require me to explain once again that I hail from Malaysia and am a student, in Czech Republic.
A fellow traveller who travelled on the same nightbus to Pamukkale asked me a question never been asked to me before ~ do you study art?~ when he heard that I'm studying in Czech.
I almost topple backwards upon being asked the question.
Why?
Because I have no idea that I look like an art student(never, even in the just waken up state) and Cikgu Faezah of SOKSEK would have inquire herself if I really did perform in her art class for someone to ask such a question to me.
And there were also those retired gramps who was travelling on suitcases, which are not backpacks, obviously. I feel that they deserve a post on their own. Funny folks, they were. Made up for all those stressful, laughterless days of exam revision month I had just in a short 7 hour tour.
Being a hijabi prancing around places like Cappadocia, going up and down the hill, barked by 4 large, hairy, dark dogs (although, thankfully, were fastened), went on night buses might attract a considerable headturns but most of it, or all of it, turned out good. Believe me, most of the time, curiosity wins over hesitancy (provided that u don't wear that stay-clear-of-me expression)
And yes, for a hot, sticky and stuffy Istanbul (definitely not my fav place), I learned a bit of this and that, and had some good points to ponder too.
The Sultanahmet area is patronized by tourists coming from all crooks and nooks of planet earth, and also, streetsellers, coming from Turkey itself.
They sell sweating bottles of mineral water, some sort of sticky sweets, books, toys, fan, umbrella-cap and sweating bottles of mineral water.
You can't help but to want to avoid them and at the same time feeling pitiful for them.
I mean, these people are working in this sticky, hot, stuffy Sultanahmet under the scorching sun, going from person to person, trying to sell their goods, which mostly were met by 10 NO in a row (or perharps more than that), and headturns~the opposite way.
I expressed my concern to Leyla, the Just Ask Me that has maintained contact with us.
Her words washed off my feeling of guilty straightaway ~ that they may look pitiful and they can be really trying to earn some money but it's just not right that they are selling stuff at skyrocket price compared to the original price.
If anybody ask me whether I would return, the answer would be definitely yes.
I haven't had enough of Cappadocia and I am yet to check out Saffranbolu and Ephesus, and as for Istanbul, I would gladly skip that.
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