Post #29: Istanbul, Turkey
As I write this part of the blog, I’m at a Kebob shop on my final day in Istanbul, reflecting on my time here as I await a super cheap and delicious wrap. Turkey had been on my travel bucket list for a while, and it didn’t disappoint. The locale is beautiful, the people are friendly, everything is super cheap because their currency has been significantly devalued. In 2008, $100 would have gotten you 117 Turkish Lira, but now, it gets you 845 TL. Oh, and the food, the glorious food. If I stayed here for any significant period of time, I think that I’d gain back all of the weight that I lost.
I’d originally planned to be here for 5 days, but I was really digging it and decided to extend for an additional 3 days. Like my previous destinations, I’d opted to go for the Airbnb route to have a more authentic experience. I have a Turkish software developer that advised me to stay in Moda, a hip and modern neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul. I found what looked like a pretty sweet place and it was only $30/night, which was awesome. I’ve always found Muslim people to be extremely hospitable, and my Airbnb host was no different. On my first day I was running out of clothes and needed to do laundry, so I asked him where I could find a laundromat, and he immediately sent someone to my apartment to launder my clothes, refusing to accept any payment. By the time that I got back from a tour, my clothes were neatly folded on my bed.
Anyway I didn’t know anybody in Istanbul, so I had to establish some type of social network. To that end, I:
- booked a group tour on Day 1
- booked a pub crawl
- fired up my Tinder app
- visited the local tennis court, which was only a 2 minute walk from my Airbnb.
I’d like to think that all of my efforts were a smashing success, although on the way to my tour, the Uber driver reported me for not wearing a mask. The historical part of the tour was boring for me (as usual), but we also went to a really cool hookah bar and an awesome restaurant for lunch. The restaurant that we were taken to was definitely for locals, and the food was absolutely amazing. My guide even ordered one of my favorite drinks, a mix of carbonated water with fresh lemon juice. They called it a Churchill.
The Hamam Experience
Okay, so I wanted to write this experience immediately afterwards, so as to remember the most details, so I’m sitting at a restaurant right across the street. For anyone that travels to Turkey, it’s basically a must to visit a Hamam (Turkish bath). My tour guide from the other day referred me to a nice one, and shortly thereafter I had scheduled a ‘Tip to Toe’ experience. It was around $80, which is pricey for the locale. While I usually try and avoid the man-sage, these Hamams only offer same-sex treatments. Whatever, I’ll apply the ‘when in Rome’ principal here and roll the dice.
I was met by my attendant, Erdal. Erdal was short, compact and stocky; picture a more muscular George Costanza. He led me to a private changing room, where I was to change into this traditional sarong-type towel. Once properly dressed, he brought me into what I can only call a marble labyrinth, with a huge slab in the middle of the room and meditation areas at all four corners.
I was to relax in the meditation area for 15 minutes. It was like a sauna, but slightly less intense. The thing that amused me was that I was super slick and my back was suctioned to the marble, and made loud farting sounds when I shifted.
After the 15 minutes elapsed and my body was the ideal temperature for the procedure, Erdal led me to the marble alter in the center of the room, had me remove my sarong and lay on the marble slab. He then strategically positioned the sarong to cover my genital region. It was against all of my training to avoid man-on-man nude experiences, but I thought of him as a doctor and complied. I closed my eyes basically the whole time so as to avoid scaring my fragile psyche. He started off applying soap all over my body and vigorously rubbing me with some rough cloth that seems like a more gentle version of sand paper. He even sanded off my tattoo that LK mocked me for. After I was adequately cleaned from head to toe, he began dumping water over my head and it felt like I was being water boarded.
Then came the next stage…the stage that they refer to as a bubble bath. When I think of a bubble bath as an adult, my sick brain thinks of a buxom nurse and definitely not Erdal, but so be it.
He got a loofa, and some outrageous amount of foam and he went to town, giving me a full body, soapy massage. That dude made strong and vigorous strokes like no massage that I’d ever gotten. He was a pro, and while there was definitely some pain, I felt great after. Following the massage, he has you disrobe and he dumps buckets of hot water over you to clean off the suds.
The end of the ceremony consists of sitting in a nice room with tea and Turkish delights, which was nice. Overall, the experience, while weird, was enjoyable and a ‘must do’ at least once in your life. It felt like a super ancient tradition that may be done before you are coronated as king, or before a virgin is sacrificed to the gods.
The 20yr Old Tinder Date
I write this section of the blog while getting an excellent $8 foot man-sage on my last day in Istanbul. In the beginning of my trip, I got a match on Tinder with a cute 20yr old girl from Morocco. I usually wouldn’t go for a girl that young, but I had recently been warned that a 23yr old Moroccan girl was too young for me to pursue (you know who you are, AM), so this seemed interesting and taboo. You only live once, right? I even polled some friends about about the ethics of dating someone that is nearly half your age, and most seemed to enthusiastically approve of the idea. Immediately following the Hamam, she invited me to meet her at some Irish bar in Beyoglu (RIP delicious restaurant in the UES – victim of the pandemic). We then went to a hookah bar with live music, which was more my style. While radically different ages and backgrounds, we actually had some things in common. We have the same birthday (March 10th), both agree that sleeping over after ‘lovemaking’ just makes sleep less enjoyable, and rejected our rigorous religious training that had been instilled upon us as children. She had some good stories and I was really amused by the whole situation.
We went on a 2nd date later that week, the night before she was scheduled to leave. She was dressed in some casual punk-rock type outfit, but I convinced her to change into something hot and that we’d go somewhere really nice. It wasn’t a hard sell, and she seemed really into the idea. I had a kebob wrap while she went to her room to change, and it hit the spot. I also made sure to chew some gum after to avoid having kebob-breath. She came down to the lobby enthusiastically, gave a twirl, and I was impressed with the transformation. She kinda reminded me a little of the actress from The Nanny – not sure if that reference will land.
Now that she was dressed to the 9’s I had to take her to a place that would match her attire. An Irish bar wouldn’t be sufficient. I googled the best rooftops in Istanbul and it turned out that the best one was only a few minutes walk from her hotel. It was a place called Mikla, and its claim to fame was that it was ranked #44 in the world’s best restaurants in 2018. Not too bad, and I liked the idea of spoiling this girl that shared my birthday. We went up there and had excellent cocktails that were approximately 3x the price of other bars. It was a really cool scene.
The bar closed early, so we went back to my favorite type of spot in Istanbul, an outdoor hookah spot with live music. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, but the experience was lovely. She claimed that she had the best time of her life. Not sure she was being literal, but I’ll take it.
The Gay Tennis Pro
I love playing tennis. It’s great exercise and the mano-e-mano competition really does it for me. Also, I’d been eating waaaay too many kebobs and I needed significant cardio. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a tennis court within a 2 minute walk to my Airbnb. I’ve made a lot of friends via tennis in the past, so I walked down to the courts to find some people to play with/against. I ended up meeting a local pro that I ended up playing with 3-4 times in the week that I was there.
I found his stories to be interesting, particularly what it’s like to live as an openly gay person in a Muslim country. As an extremely hetero male, I don’t have a lot of gay friends, so I enjoyed hearing about his experiences. The idea of a relationship with both parties having a male sex drive seems rather extreme.
Anyway, I actually beat him pretty badly one match, although he claimed that he had just had a big burger before and couldn’t run. My serve was really good that match, and he just couldn’t handle my power. I was amused whenever he would exert himself and let out a stereotypically gay-sounding moan.
The Pub Crawl
So the girl that I had been seeing was gone, so I decided to be social and sign up for a pub crawl. It’s a nice way to meet fellow tourists and visit some local spots. I got there and the crew wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. It was 5 guys and 0 women…and it was an Irish bar with absolutely zero local feel. A little while after, the lone female tour-mate arrived. Surprisingly she was a local, worked as a hotelier and was maybe 5 feet if she wore sky-high stiletto heels. I was talking about how when traveling, I don’t like doing things that I can easily be doing back home. She asked me if I’d tried some super-strong local alcohol that sounded like Roku. I hadn’t and within a few minutes of meeting, we had exchanged numbers and had plans to try this ‘Roku’ sounding drink the following evening. I felt strong about my gamesmanship – it was extremely efficient, especially considering the male to female ratio in the group. The rest of the night was mostly uneventful, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the 4 bars that we went to – they were mostly dance places, and they almost exclusively played American rap and hip hop music. Not exactly the local experience that I wanted, and with my lack of rhythm and general disdain for those loud clubs, it wasn’t exactly my style.
The next day she and I had been in contact, and she recommended this nice restaurant that offers an experience with the drink she spoke of. The drink is actually called Raki, and it is basically Arak with a higher alcohol content. It has a strong anise (imagine black licorice) flavor, and due to its alcohol content, it is diluted with water. It really reminded me of the absinthe from Prague. They gave us a pretty hefty pitcher of the stuff, and we went to town. She was extremely sweet and proper, and maybe because she works in a hotel, she just seemed extremely hospitable. I didn’t detect even the slightest hint of bitchiness. As an aside, I think that I need to detect some amount of bitchiness, dirtiness or generalized sassiness to consider making moves on a woman. It’s hard to try to seduce someone that is so sweet and pure – it almost seems uncouth.
During dinner I told her about the awesome rooftop place that I’d been to, and she hadn’t been there, so I wanted her to see it. For some reason the cabs had no interest in stopping that night, so we walked to the spot. She really dug the atmosphere there, and even though it was a rather lengthy walk, she was a total sport. She even temporarily changed into flat shoes; she’d purposely worn high heels so that the huge height differential would be dampened.
I basically repeated the itinerary from the previous night, having cocktails at that rooftop bar and then going to an outdoor hookah bar with awesome live music. Totally my kind of night, and I can tell that she loved it too.
Afterwards she took me to some waterfront area where locals hang out. It was mostly a bunch of drunk kids that threw their trash all over a beautiful place. Classy lady that she is, she laid down a bag on the ledge that we were sitting on to avoid soiling her dress. It was almost 4am and she had to work the next day, so I put her in a cab. Such a sweet girl, and she even offered to come with me to the airport.
Food
I always liked Mediterranean food back home, but this was another level of deliciousness. I’d been so good on my diet of late, but that all fell by the wayside in Istanbul. The food is totally addicting, and I’ll need to overcompensate for this gluttony when I get home.
I don’t even know how many times I sat down for kebobs, tea and Turkish coffee. It was so good, so cheap and so plentiful. I’ll just include a bunch of food porn pics here instead of making this section too long
I’ll end this posting with some miscellaneous pics that didn’t deserve their own write ups.
