long holiday post
Sitting in an Istanbul internet cafe on a bright sunny day with vague Muslim chanting going on in the background, I realise I have finally located my inner Gandhi.
Cities are a lot like guys. Most of them you treat indifferently, some you hate on sight, others you fall in love with inexplicably, and the rest you know you should like but for some reason they don't do anything for you.
Singapore falls into the first category for me; Athens in the second, Istanbul in the third, and Santorini fourth. Athens is awful. For one thing, it's hot. Really, really hot. Which is good if you're lying around on a beach, but not so much if you're walking around ruins. Josh and I spent a whole afternoon first admiring the Acropolis and then pretending to admire it while downing bottles of water and then eventually giving up all pretense at any admiration and just taking as many photos as we could before getting the hell outta there.
Istanbul, on the other hand, feels like home. It's the same feeling I get in Amsterdam and Bangkok, like I could spend days here just ambling around and taking in the city and emerge a better person for it. (Even though Josh and I got cheated twice in rapid succession within the first hour of getting here. Well, we got cheated once at a restaurant and then the taxi driver tried to cheat us but I was so tired and furious by then that we yelled at him until he gave us our money back. I was this close to actually punching the snotty weasel.)
And Santorini may be the most gorgeous place on earth. The whole island looks like it stepped out of a postcard - everything is white and brilliant blue against a backdrop of giant craggy cliffs, and at night the towns are dotted with tiny sparkly lights. It looks like the Smurfs met Tinkerbell and moved to Wuthering Heights to multiply. The beaches are awesome (my nose is sunburnt), the sunset is out of this world, and the place is a major wine producer, for heaven's sake. It should be my dream city - but somehow all it triggers in me is numbness.
Maybe because I watched Da Vinci Code there. How ironic that such a beautiful place played host to the worst movie experience I've had in years (probably since Battlefield Earth - and at least that was horrific enough to attain cult status. DVC is just mediocrely bad, which is the very worst kind of bad ever). Everything that was awful about the book is singled out and magnified in the movie; it's like Ron Howard took a poll of DVC haters' "worst moments" and used that as the outline for his screenplay. The book's only saving grace - its plot, however melodramatic and overcliffhangered - seemed to have been thrown into the movie as an afterthought. The chase is more like a dull plod; the book characters' inspirations and revelations seem to penetrate the movie characters' thick heads by pure accident. And what on earth was Audrey Tautou doing in there? I can't tell if she made the movie worse or the movie was so bad it couldn't make anyone look good.
Okay sorry that was a long diversion. Here's another one: the annoying thing about being on holiday is that all strangers seem to take crap photos. I mean, how hard is it to frame a picture properly? I take all these decent photos for people and when I hand them my camera in return they inevitably crop off the top of the building or my feet or something equally essential. Not being able to take good photos is as inconsiderate as being fat and smelly and taking a 12-hour plane ride.
Have to go before all the shops close! People who want souvenirs, email me quick with what you want and where to get it.
Added: Just a note for the WoWers, who I know are all 60 already *grumble* - Europe WoW is incompatible with US/Asian WoW!!!! I found all these cybercafes that had WoW installed but you can't play on an European server with a US/Asian account!!! That completely ruined my trip man. Maybe I'll cross over to the Asian half of Turkey and see if they have Asian WoW there. Hahaha.
posted by zyn ::
10:45 PM ::
5 Comments ::
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