so my first solo turned out to be much more enjoyable than i'd thought it'd be. most of my fears were banished when i saw how the rest of the crew were so friendly and fun-loving, and they were terribly patient with me and guided me along throughout the 6 sectors. of course, it helped heaps that my batchgirl - the lovely sharon - was on this trip with me. it was a journey filled with singing cheery tunes, playing silly pranks, eating way too much chicken tikka and briyani and playing foosball in the lounge - a perfect recipe for a memorable first solo indeed!
our first day in dubai saw us baking under the cloudless blue sky. sharon and i ventured out of the hotel but only managed to make it to the supermarket down the road - the only thing that was open on a friday afternoon - before we retreated back into our rooms to feast on a lunch of tuna and crackers while watching movies and mtvs on cable. i got so bored i was pacing around my room like a caged animal, jumping on the big bed and tearing my hair out until i finally decided to go for an evening swim (after slapping on a whole bucket of sunscreen).
istanbul the next day was much better. it wasn't as hot as it had been in dubai, and everything was open for us to visit. sharon, first officer nicholas and i (all first-timers in istanbul) walked and walked and walked till our feet were sore, and covered much more ground than necessary to get us from place to place (coz everyone seemed to point us to a different direction and the maps were really useless). it was a good thing that the roads were all kinda interlinked so we did eventually see what we'd set out to see, but we definitely did go in circles.
our first stop was the ayasofya mosque, where we took in a bit of istanbul's colorful history and saw this church that has been turned into a mosque. with muslim inscriptions added on the walls, (rather ugly) drawings painted over angels, and arms of crosses removed to turn them into lines, attempts have been made to muslimize this church, but its christian roots still came through in various mosaics of jesus and mary.
we walked over to the sultanahmet after that. also known as the blue mosque because of the many blue tiles used in the building of the interior, the sultanahmet didn't appear to be very blue to me, so i left feeling kinda blue. arhaha. jokes aside, the sultanahmet is a working mosque with a large, cool interior with segregated male and female praying areas. we had to take off our footwear before entering, and women with bared arms had to wrap themselves with a large scarf before they could go in.
we took a long walk down and up the pebbled streets of istanbul thereafter, and ended up at the grand bazaar after stopping by a small street stall for some turkish kebabs. the grand bazaar is like a larger, corridored version of melbourne's victoria market and housed thousands of stalls selling everything from jewellry to apple tea, lamps to pashmina, leather jackets to fake LV bags, turkish delights to magnets. it was HUGE and everywhere we went, it was as if the merchants were playing a "guess where they come from" game: "konichiwa!", "ni hao!", "you from singapore?", and even a "united states of america?". we tasted some turkish delight and apple tea at one of the stalls manned by a bunch of very cheeky and friendly men, and came away a fair bit poorer but happy with our buys.
we spent ages at the grand bazaar and after a while, every stall looked the same and every corridor we walked down resembled the previous one. leaving the grand bazaar, we walked even more and found the spice market (though we didn't see many spices) and discovered another, busier part of istanbul that we don't know the name of. this area seemed like where the locals do their buying and selling, with shops all lined up selling everything one would need, and it was so crowded that we thought we'd been transported to india.
the yerebatan sarnici, or the basilica cistern, is an underground cistern built in the 6th century by the romans who were famous for their aqueducts. the cavernous cistern covers a total area of 9800 square metres and there are 336 marble columns holding everything up. the main attraction in the cistern are two medusa heads that have been carved into two of the columns. one of the heads is upside down, while the other's lying down like it's gone to bed.
we could walk no further after the whole afternoon of exploring, so we settled in a little restaurant near the cistern, for some good old turkish mixed grill, turkish pizza, turkish beer, turkish apple tea and turkish raki! raki is brandy flavoured with anise and sipped by the turks during meals, and contains a potent 45% alcohol. it tastes quite licorice-ish and needless to say, i didn't enjoy my sip much. bleah. the staff at omar were great though - they played pranks on us like the one on me where they told me that the restaurant didn't have a restroom and gave me directions to walk to one outside, complete with the restaurant's namecard for discounted entry and a coin for payment (the loo's actually on the 3rd floor); chatted with us, made us laugh when one of them whipped out a hand-held vacuum cleaner to clean the table after our meal, folded serviette tulips for us, gave us free drinks, and generally made us feel very at home.
in the end, the manager even gave us a lift back to our hotel! this is one country that doesn't need a smiles campaign to make good ambassadors out of her people.
back in dubai the following day, sharon and i managed to make our way to the city centre shopping mall that houses shops like mango, topshop and zara (being renovated though). window shopped and rack-browsed but didn't buy anything except for the least-ugly magnet they had to offer as a momento.
it might have been the heat, but dubai turned out to be terribly boring. hopefully the next time i go there, it won't be so hot and i'll be able to go to the desert for some sand boarding and for a camel ride!
*and yes, i've got photoshop!!! all thanks to my laling minmin - i lub chew deep deep!!!!!!!
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