It's amazing how much you can see when you aren't trying to see things. This is a ramble-quest after all, so moving aimlessly, while observing and philosophizing seems appropriate -- to me anyhow. Here are some snippits from Turkey.

Walking along with a local Muslim guy, he spots a slice of bread in the street before us and becomes agitated. He picks it up and I'm thinking he just doesn't like litter, but then he places the bread on a window sill. He then explains that it is an Islamic tradition to raise the height of found bread but I can't get past the fact that he should have thrown it in the garbage, which also would be raising its height.

While walking alongside a busy highway between towns, I accidentally kick a turtle shell into the road. Many cars race both on the road and the shoulder, and I don't even know if the turtle shell is empty or not. Still, I immediately risk my life to retrieve it. Turns out there is a turtle inside but I see this as irrelevant. For some reason this story reminds me of a "Blade Runner" humanity test question.

On a long bus ride, two "Natashes" (Turkish term for prosititutes from the former Soviet republics) aggressively hit on me, even drawing pictures to demonstrate their skills. I shut them out but am amazed to see how interested the Turkish guys are in them! Several of them come round to get their phone numbers and a few even pay for a quick grope on the bus. These girls definitely have a good market in Turkey, which is why you see them so often. Eventually, the bus attendant, who in this case was very unusual in being a woman, rearranged the seating order of everyone on the bus in order to keep the Natashes at bay. One of the Natashes retaliates by stealing the attendant's cakes and handing them out to the bus.

I too casually mention to two Kusadasi hotel owners that I'm not enamored with their town because it has become almost completely spoiled by shopkeepers targeting the cruise ship tourists. These two knew I keep an internet journal and were immediately inordinately concerned that I write anything negative about tourism in their town. I tried to explain to them that first, I have very few readers so nothing I write would have an impact on their tourism, and second, the few readers I do have probably wouldn't be happy in Kusadasi anyway, so it was better to let them know about it in advance. Interestingly, they didn't try to deny that Kusadasi was spoiled, as I'd expected, but instead tried to make me feel guilty for endangering their livlihood. Stay in Selcuk or Bergamum instead, and if you do go to Kusadasi, check out the cute Pidgeon Island and climb up to the upper part of the town, ignoring the downtown as much as possible. And avoid the Hotel Sezgin there, unless you like freezing rooms, doors that don't lock and drunken Australians singing disco versions of Waltzing Matilda at 3am.

In fact, it is a good rule of thumb to avoid any place with any kind of reference, be it in name or logo, to Australia or New Zealand. First, because they are generally ripoff places of inferior quality, but also because they tend to have people there from those countries, who come to Turkey for Anzac Day, commemorating their troops at Gallipoli. Seems like a noble enough gesture, to come halfway across the world for rememberance, and for a very few of them, it turns out to be a culturally rewarding experience. Unfortunately the vast majority of them are there to get drunk on bad Turkish beer and misbehave. Actually, it is rather wise of these countries to send their young and stupid out to be drunken idiots in other countries instead of sending them to local colleges as they do in the States.

Finally, I'm climbing up among the ruins above the Seven Sleepers grotto, on the other side of the hill from Ephesus. Yes, I did crawl through a hole in a fence to get up there and yes, you could use this as a way to get into Ephesus without paying, but I'm not doing that. I'm just poking around, enjoying the view, when I jump down from some ruins into a pit formed by the remnants of a room. The weeds and grass in the pit have grown to waist height and as soon as I jump in it becomes alive with the hissing and rustling of snakes. It seems like an Indiana Jones movie, as I catch glimpses of long black snakes circling me among the weeds. Now, I'm far less afraid of snakes than the average person and came across many in Turkey, including monsterous brown snakes, that didn't bother me. But now, having so many, so near, and not really being able to see them clearly or know if they are poisonous adders, really got to me. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I start stomping in place, hoping this will chase them off, but it only seems to make things worse by agitating them. So, I just freeze, as completely as possible, and eventually, enough of them move away so that I have a path back to climb out. Look before you leap!