Istanbul, not Constantinople

Okay, I know I always talk about wanting to move to different cities we visit, but this time I'm serious: I want to move to Istanbul. Shut up, it's for real this time.

We spent our first 8 days in Istanbul, completely enthralled by everything. Granted, the first 2 days we just wandered around in a culture-shocked stupor, mumbling about how smooth the roads are, how fresh the fruit looks, and how amazing it is that the buildings have elevators. (When we first arrived at our hostel, we were deliriously hyper because it was 3am and we had been traveling from Nepal for 20 hours. When I saw the elevator I screamed, "ELEVATOOOR!" and giggled the entire way up, even though Ross and I were squished into the tiny little space with a large and somewhat perplexed Greek man. That is when I realized I had culture shock.) But once we got over that, we were like, daaayum, this place is actually fucking AMAZING, yo. In those exact words.

First of all, it was nothing at all like what I expected. I think, looking back, that I expected something out of Aladdin -- lots of dusty roads and little monkeys in fezzes running around. It was not at all like that. No one was wearing fezzes, and there was not even a single monkey, which was disappointing. Instead, Istanbul was an enormous, cosmopolitan city with well-dressed people in sky-high heels and cute little cafes and shops everywhere. The skyline is studded with beautiful mosques, while the ground is dominated by an inordinate number of adorable stray cats, which added to the city immensely. It is an extremely glamorous and eye-catching city.

More mosques than you could shake a doner kebap at:



Stray kitten + ancient sculpture = golden photo opportunity:



Another thing I quite enjoyed is the quirky Turkish culture. It seems like life is lived in the streets here -- people don't stay at home surfing the internet (like some people do back home, but I won't mention any names). They go to cafes, sit around on little stools sipping overly strong but inexplicably tiny glasses of tea, smoke hookah, and play Backgammon. There's much more of a community feel here than in North America, and I really like that. I WANT TO INFILTRATE YOUR COMMUNITY, Istanbul. And I must admit, the ubiquity of Backgammon has made me really want to learn to play. (Although I can't say the preference for tiny furniture and child-sized glasses of tea has particularly won me over.)

"WHY IS THIS CUP SO TEENY?"



or alternatively, "WHY AM I SUCH A GIANT?"



What really grabbed us is that Istanbul is just European enough to be familiar, but just Asian enough to be very interesting -- a combination we've been searching for this whole year while scoping out potential future cities to live in. The fact that it's relatively cheap definitely doesn't hurt either. We half-seriously started to point out neighborhoods we might like to live in and restaurants we'd like to become regulars of. Not that we're thinking too far ahead or anything. Just because I've already made friends with the crazy neighborhood hobo, DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING, OKAY?

One potential future home, dog included:



I also had no idea how historically rich Turkey was until we got here. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, The Ottoman Empire, The Byzantine Empire -- all those topics I learned about in history class, they all happened RIGHT HERE! How crazy is that? Considering that both countries I've lived in have a history no longer than 300 years (not counting Russia, of which I have no memory), that is PRETTY FUCKING CRAZY, if you ask me.

We actually got to see original sculptures from ancient Rome:





As well as original tablets with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on them:



Is your mind blown yet? Because, I don't know if you realize this, but mine was.

We also visited Aya Sofya and The Blue Mosque, two absolutely stunning buildings which were impossible to photograph properly, but just trust me, they were great.

The marvelous Blue Mosque:



Part of the interior of Aya Sofya, built in 562:



The Basilica Cistern was fascinating and spooky. I had no idea what a cistern was before visiting this one, and when I learned that it's basically just a place where water is stored, I was a bit confused about why we were bothering to go see one. But then the reason quickly became clear: it's 100,000 sq ft, built in 532 and gorgeous. Plus, two of the columns are supported by giant Medusa heads for some reason. One of the heads is sideways, the other is upside down. I don't know why, but I like that. When those emperors built stuff, they really did it properly (and somewhat strangely).

They built this JUST TO HOLD WATER:



Creepy 1,500 year old Medusa head:



There were many more amazing sights - The Topkapi Palace, The Grand Bazaar, Suleymaniye Mosque, not to mention being able to go from Europe to Asia on a 5-minute ferry ride - but I'll just summarize by saying GO TO ISTANBUL, it will be fucking awesome and you won't regret it. And by that time, Ross and I will probably have moved there, so we can all hang out and play Backgammon. Alright, now this post is starting to sound like an advertisement or something, so I'm going to stop there.

Now we're in Selçuk, a cute little town right next to Ephesus, which are meant to be the most beautiful and well-preserved ruins in all of Turkey, if not all of Europe. (A side note about Selçuk: We just realized we can see the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, literally right from the terrace of our hostel. This place keeps getting more and more fucking amazing.) We'll be doing a tour of Ephesus today! I can't wait, because I am nerdy like that, and ruins make me giddy.

Angkor Watever

We just arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia and our last stop in Southeast Asia. Since Thailand, we have spent one week in Laos -- pronounced to rhyme with "how," not "house" -- and one week in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

I don't want to go into great detail about Laos because, although it was pretty, we found it a bit boring. It was like a much poorer, less insane version of Thailand, and given that we've spent the last 4 months in this region, we found it a bit "same same," as the locals would put it. Perhaps the most interesting part of visiting Laos was finding out about its history. It turns out that Laos was bombed to hell by the U.S. during the Vietnam War -- wait, the U.S., bombing the shit out of a country full of poor brown people? Who would've thought?

For those as ignorant of history as I was before I came here, what happened was this: the Laos people (being the dirty commies that they are) had been allowing North Vietnam to transport supplies to South Vietnam through Laos along what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So the U.S. was like, "AWWW HELL NAW!" and bombed Laos to smithereens in order to help fight the Vietnamese. And then the Laos were like, "I CAN HAZ NORMAL LIFE PLZ??" and the U.S. was like, "NO. NOT YOURS."

Damn, they should probably get me to write history textbooks or something.

To get back to the story, it turns out Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita. The equivalent of one planeload of bombs was dropped every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. During this time, the Laos people survived by hiding in caves throughout the country, establishing entire secret cities inside these caves - schools, markets, theaters, etc. Not only that, but many of the bombs failed to detonate, leaving vast quantities of unexploded ordnance hidden throughout the country. 34,000 people have been killed by those since the war ended. So... that was kind of interesting to find out about, in a "makes me hate the U.S. even more" sort of way.

Some kids playing with their water buffalo in Nong Khiaw, a rural village in Laos:

But then we got to Cambodia, where the history is even crazier. For my fellow history-challenged friends: A communist party called the Khmer Rouge came to power in the 70s. Led by Pol Pot, the aim was to create an agrarian communist paradise. Somewhere along the line, "agrarian paradise" morphed into "deadliest genocide in history." Roughly a quarter of Cambodians were killed during this time, either through starvation and lack of healthcare, or from being tortured and murdered by the Khmer Rouge directly.

More fun facts: The Khmer Rouge particularly targeted intellectual and educated people. People would be killed merely for wearing glasses or for speaking a second language. (Hey, I do both of those! Not cool!) They also considered children to be a great way to help their cause - they would take children from their parents, and train them to torture using animals for practice. Lovely. They would often kill people with a single blow to the back of the head in order to save bullets. Or they'd sometimes kill babies by smashing them against trees. Aaaand now I'm depressing myself, so I'm going to stop there. 

As you might expect, Cambodia is still recovering. I think it's probably pretty difficult to try to rebuild society when all the people who had an education -- doctors, engineers -- were killed. It's definitely the poorest country we've visited on this trip - the majority of people live in shoddily built shacks with no doors, and make maybe $1 per day. Like in Laos, unexploded ordnance is still a huge problem here. And yet despite these horrific experiences, or perhaps because of them, Cambodians have been some of the most sweet-natured people we've met. It's a pretty fucking extraordinary place.

But I'll stop depressing everyone now. More jokes, less death! That's what I always say. So this last week we've been exploring Siem Reap, home to Angkor Archeological Park, the largest religious complex in the world. We hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us around all the temples for 3 days. His name was Mr. Lucky, which was cute at first, until he somehow managed to get a flat tire AND a fine during our 3 days together.

Three days seemed like quite a long time to ride around looking at ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples, but everyone reassured us that we wouldn't get templed out. They lied. By the third day, I never wanted to see another temple again, which is a shame because the third day was when we were going to visit the most impressive temples. But I can only look at so many Buddhist and Hindu carvings before my mind just shuts off. Even the abundance of carvings featuring boobs didn't help much.

See? This should help, BUT IT DIDN'T.

The biggest temple of all, Angkor Wat, was particularly disappointing. In my opinion, Machu Picchu was much more fun to explore and much prettier. We felt a teeny bit ripped off, because the canonical photo of Angkor Wat looks like this:

But I'm not entirely sure how anyone could've taken that photo, because what we saw looked more like this. WTF?

Still, it was somewhat interesting. And some of the other temples were quite pretty.

As part of our tour, we had Mr. Lucky drive us to a shooting range where you can shoot automatic guns, throw grenades, or even shoot a rocket launcher (provided you have $400 sitting around that you want to spend on firing a rocket launcher one time). I'm not entirely sure if this place is even legal, but they didn't seem too fazed to let a couple of giggling gringos in to use their guns. I was extremely uncomfortable from the very start. When we walked in, we were immediately surrounded by Cambodian dudes dressed in camo, smoking, and asking which gun we wanted to shoot. (Me: "Uh... I don't know... the big one?") This made me realize that if there's one place I don't belong, it's a Cambodian shooting range. I was raised in a suburb in California. I don't do guns, man.

But Ross was pretty excited to shoot an automatic gun, and convinced me to try it too. (Automatic guns are illegal in North America, even in shooting ranges.) Look! Here's us, shooting an M16! We're hardcore now, guys!

(Notice the muzzle flash on my gun!!)

After we were done, they gave us the target, and we were both somewhat shocked to discover that the dude in the target looks exactly like my dad wearing a fez! AHHHH So disturbing! Which one's my dad and which one's the target? No one will ever know.

Ross then threw a grenade, which was even more terrifying for me. I kept imagining him fumbling, dropping it, and killing us all. But this did not happen, because fortunately Ross is not me. I refused to throw it, because I'm pretty clumsy and that would be a really sad way to die. Even though the grenade was plastic and only had about a 4-foot range, I would be the one person to somehow fall, get my feet all tangled cartoon-style, and not be able to run 4-feet away in time. No thank you.

Later, to round out our extremely weapon-centric day, we visited a landmine museum, run by a former Khmer Rouge member - one of the guys who was kidnapped as a child and forced to kill people and plant thousands of landmines for the party. When he grew up and realized what a horrible thing he'd done, he committed his life to finding and disarming landmines around the country. The money from the museum is used to provide education and support for landmine-affected kids who were rescued by the organization. It was incredibly moving.

As you can probably tell, Cambodia has been fascinating and pretty emotional. Tomorrow we will be visiting the killing fields and Tuol Sleng, the prison where 14,000 people were killed and tortured. Should be a hoot.