Istanbul is divided into the Asian side and the European side by the Bosporus and many tourist attractions are concentrated at the old town located at the south part of European side separated by a small inlet, the Golden Horn. The northern part of the European side is regarded as the new town with modern buildings and shopping streets. Since I'd been looking forward to staying in this city, I'd booked the accommodation 5 nights in each area; that is 10 nights in total. However as I arrived earlier than the original plan, I needed to find bridging accommodation and I decided to stay at a (in)famous hostel Tree of Life mainly targeting the Japanese budget travellers in the Middle East.

Just 10 minutes on foot from the Blue Mosque, Tree of Life is on the top floors of a multi tenanted building located at the back of the main street in which the tram is operating. Climbing up to the 4th floor by stairs, we reached the reception and it was the classic example of a Japanese hostel. There were dozens of Japanese travel guides and comics on the bookshelves and whenever I called into a room somebody was reading those books and smoking cigarettes. Incidentally, the staff working there was not the proper employee of the hostel but a long term resident who bartered his accommodation fee (and a bit of daily allowance) for the post of caretaker. According to him, the owner lives in a different place and come to the hostel occasionally. Despite the gray colour in legal terms, it's an absolutely win-win solution for the budget travellers who want to reduce their daily expenses and the owner who wants to reduce the personnel expenses. It could be an exemplary business model.

The biggest attraction of the hostel is its price; only 8 EUR per night is one of the cheapest in Istanbul (For your info, the hostels I booked by hostelworld cost 15 EUR per night). What's more, cooking the meals with the other Japanese travellers would reduce the food expenses significantly. I can recommend this hostel as the best for the budget travellers needing to make their expenses as low as possible. Besides, there are piles of Japanese travel books and by luck you could possibly meet the people who have traveled the actual place you intend to go. This hostel is very suitable for making your travel plans.

Nevertheless, I have to tell the truth that it was not my taste. I'm afraid of speaking ill but the atmosphere was quite dingy. The people staying there looked in a way very typical Japanese travellers who had become tired of their life and escaped from Japan. At Seven Heaven of Dahab, I met a lot of Japanese but most of them were totally fascinated with scuba diving and even none divers looked enjoying their own lives. In contrast, the people at Tree of Life, they talked like this "Uh, I feel bored. What am I doing today?" They can find so many interesting things around them! Yet they are actually very nice people and our communication was very smooth. I suppose we know how to talk in Japanese manner pretty much. Besides, one more thing I should mention is the hostel is not really clean. I know for the price I must not complain it but it looked very difficult to keep the hostel clean with only the amateur caretaker.

I have to emphasize this again; it was just not my taste. If you seek for other Japanese travellers and information (providing you speak Japanese of course), you should at least consider staying at Tree of Life. Speaking for myself, I was positively trapped by the Japanese famous comic series and couldn't go to the bed until I finished them all after 4:00 a.m. It may sound bizarre, coming to such a far city from Japan yet I was absorbed in reading Japanese comics. But I reckon it was the life in a Japanese hostel abroad.

Well, I'd like to introduce the hostels I booked by hostel world too. But it takes long again and therefore to be continued. I'll write about my tips on hostelworld too on the next entry.

The accommodation at Gyoreme

>What's more, an interesting thing about Cappadocia is that you can sleep inside the caves. Besides, not only the expensive touristic hotels, there are some reasonable backpackers hostels available too. At this time, we stayed at "Yashin's Backpackers Cave" which is reviewed in avery good manner at hostelworld.com. Although Shin and Tomoko, who were travelling with me, hadn't booked there, the owner, Yashin, kindly gave us a three bed private room. Yashin knows everywhere about Gyoreme since he's been brought up there. Restaurants, tour info, Turkish Spa etc., his advice(with discount!) helped us a lot. I found 20TRY(15USD) per night with a deliciously cooked breakfast was very reasonable. Though the quality and cleanness of the facility were not as good as the decent hotels', their personal service and hospitality could be on a par with the 5 star luxurious hotels.

As the weather was bit tricky, Cappadocia in early May was a kind of off season in Turkish local tourism. In fact, there were a few European groups at the accommodation and Gyoreme town didn't look very busy. However, quite a few Japanese tourists were walking on the street. Besides, they were not backpackers, but ordinary tourists who used huge tour buses and went to luxurious cave hotels with spa and pool. I knew Turkey is one of the favourite destinations among Japanese tourists, but when we thought about it carefully it was the middle of a Japanese holiday week, the so called the Golden Week. We have to be careful for that we could lose the sense of days easily during the long journey.

Pros and Cons of package tours

In terms of package tours, I don't really like them. In fact, because of that I'm bad at travelling with groups, I'd rather choose travelling alone. Nevertheless, so vast is the area of Cappadocia of which a number of famous spots dotted within several ten kilometres radius that we were encouraged to join the local tour. The tour was so-so, just as we expected. In fact the guide efficiently took us through many places, which were not really reachable as a personal tourist, such as the underground city and the old monastery but "the efficient guide" was bit argumentative as he hurried us when we wanted to stay longer whereas he remained longer where we didn't care much. I know he had to make his pace for "the greatest common good" of the all participants but I painfully realised that I should avoid the tours attempting to cover a lot of places. Probably, the best way is chartering a taxi and asking the driver just to take us to the entrance of the places but the budget no longer allowed the ordinary backpacker to do so.

My best form of travelling

Therefore, for the near spot, disregarding to the efficiency we decided to go there by ourselves with the local bus info from the accommodation and a rough map from a guidebook. Following to the advice from the local people and the intuition of travellers, we made headway to the destination. If I'd travelling completely alone, I could've been a bit worried about daring this kind of adventure but my amiable fellow travellers could change the situations drastically. Even losing and recovering the way became a sort of fun. Speaking so, I suppose a couple travelling together is a kind of ideal form. Though sometimes they have to overcome the ordeals, as far as the couples I know looked keeping their distance moderately and enjoying themselves travelling together.

After walking on the wild land with strange stones, finally we arrived at the destination. This mushroom shape stone is a kind of icon of Cappadocia as the photo of it is overly used on every guide book about this area. Not caring about the geologic instructions, the different layers which were eroded blah blah blah, we were just stunned by the shapes of the stones which were different from the ones around Gyoreme central. Incidentally, we found out from the view on the stones that we didn't use the proper paved roads but just wandered along the local farm roads. Thanks to not being led by an experienced guide, we could enjoy this type of adventure. In these days, I strongly believe that travelling is not just having fun at destinations but it is literary 'travelling', I mean the whole process of going to and coming back from the destination is an entertaining part of travelling.

On the way back to Gyoreme, we were challenged by going back on foot as the bus didn't come soon. When we came there it took less than 15 minutes by bus. So it should take no more than 1 and half hours even on foot. It would be pleasant walking as the view on the street was quite nice even though we'd already walked more than 3 hours. After walking 30 minutes under the intense sunshine on the early May, we were called by the local guys driving a car. They asked us "Where are you going? You can come with us." It's very kind of them indeed. "To Gyoreme!", we replied and they gestured "Come in." Thanks to them we skipped a one hour walk. Although I could've had a bit of serious concern if I had been alone, we had three people and they were two. Considering the locality, we judged it wouldn't be very dangerous. Though sometimes it sounds bit tricky, the kindness from the local people always cheers me.

Like this and that, we spent 5 nights in Gyoreme. The next destination will be Istanbul the bridge between Asia and Europe. At last the travelling on the Middle East is close to the end.

Aleppo, the Second Biggest City in Syria

As Syria borders on Turkey, there are plenty of bus lines between these countries. However since there was no direct connection from Hama, we had to move to Aleppo, the second biggest city in Syria, at once. Although Aleppo is quite popular among travellers for its world heritage registered souk and castle, being preoccupied with the thought of Cappadocia we just stayed there one night for transit. Incidentally, there was one surprising point there. Aleppo has quite a few number of liquor stores. Although we had to bother a lot of passersby in order to find the liquor stores in Damascus and Hama, we could just see a lot of them on the street. Besides, the local people seemed using them too. I presume we were just entering the circle of influence of the Western culture.

According to the bus company at Aleppo, the only bus going to Antakya, which is the border town of Turkey, leaves at 5:00 every morning. On the next morning 4:30, we went to the bus station rubbing the sleep from our eyes. Though a heavy rain stroked us and the baggage inspection somehow took so long, the border crossing was as easy as usual. Having a Japanese nationality, we got the stamp to enter Turkey without visa. O.K. I entered Turkey which was the 13th country of the whole trip.

At the Antakya Station

After a couple of hours on the bus, we arrived at the Antakya station from which we had to find the connection route to Gyoreme at the central Cappadocia. No sooner had we stepped out from the bus than many local guys try to sell us the ticket to the next destination. The annoying hassles again. Though the people in Syria and Lebanon were quite shy - they wouldn't approach us unless we made eye contact intentionally - people here were quite aggressive. The building in front of us was too magnificent to make us realise it was the very bus terminal we should've enter and being weary and sleepy from the early departure, we just followed one guy who offered the bus to Gyoreme.

"No problem" was his favourite phrase. Whenever he answered our question, he added "No problem". "We wanna go to Gyoreme" "No problem, use this bus", "How much?" "No problem, XX lira(a rip off price, of course)", "Too expensive! Our guide book says XX lira" "No problem, it's OK.", "We don't have the Turkish lira yet." "I can take you to the money exchange. You can put your luggage on the bus." Like these, his attitude was quite dubious. Nevertheless, we anyway embarked on the bus as the price became appropriate and we had confirmed the bus was going to Gyoreme.

Is This the End?

The long distance buses in Turkey are famous for their high quality service. Usually, they have a dedicated cabin attendant and started with a wet towel, some snacks and amenities are served during the trip. What's more the reclining seats were large enough to get relaxed during 10 hours of travel. When I was looking at the scenery through the window with a little snooze, I realised the bus had stopped at the big terminal named Kayseri. And the cabin attendant told us that the bus would terminate here. What? We were on the bus going to Gyoreme, weren't we? We showed the ticket to her and she said it was written "To Kayseri" in Turkish language. Oh no, the guy tricked us! The memory of the guy saying "no problem" made our bloods\ boil. Even though we explained our situation to the people of the bus company, they didn't really understand us well due to their poor English. According to them, we could go to Gyoreme with a few dollar extra. Perhaps we could have accepted the deal as we really wanted to let our hair down at the accommodation.

"We paid for the bus to Gyoreme! You should bring us there! It's very unfair!!" Yelling at the staff of the bus company was a Taiwanese girl who was using the same bus as us. Since it was better to let the strong one negotiate, we, three Japanese and one Thai girl, were just watching how things went. As the driver and cabin attendant couldn't handle her, they brought us to their ticket counter and she kept howling. Even though the bus company offered a discount price, she didn't have the faintest idea of paying any more cents. After some 15 minutes, thanks to her amazing negotiation skill, the bus company yielded the free bus tickets to Gyoreme for all of us.

Strictly speaking, the people in Kayseri were not at fault. The culprit was the guy who sold the ticket. Thinking like this, we Japanese are prone to obey the absurdity while the Taiwanese girl fought against being mistreated. Probably, we should learn from her strong ego. Besides, it was the bus company's fault that they just let the irresponsible guys deal with their customers. I hope they make some improvements at the Antakya station due to the number of claims like ours.

Chewing some gum given to me by a vulgar looking guy (he was actually a nice friendly guy!) sitting next to me, my eyes had caught some strange shaped stones through the window. Finally, we arrived at Gyoreme the centre of Cappadocia.