Death threats on the luckiest man in Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Greetings, and thanks for tuning in again for another exciting episode of the Further Adventures of the Wandering Gaijin. For those of you just joining (where have you been???) I am currently in Istanbul, travelling with Sparkles and Shakira (not the real one). I woke up slightly behind the 8-ball after drinks with the new arrivals last night. Speaking of 8-balls, I am going to make a slight seg-way. I have a tradition of consulting my magic 8-ball (which I came across by not so honest means) before I travel overseas with a few questions to get a feel for the trip. This time around I asked the most important question first. "Will I come home in one piece." The answer was "Don't worry about it." This was a rather dubious answer, as I did not know whether it meant I didn't need to worry about losing pieces of myself because it wasn't going to happen, or because it WAS going to happen and I should make the most of my time before losing pieces of me. The second question was "Will there be shenanigans while I am overseas?" "I wouldn't bet on it." Obviously the magic 8-ball doesn't know Sparkles and Shakira. "Will I have a great time overseas?" was the final question I asked. "Without a doubt". Obviously I don't have an Australian English magic 8-ball, as the answer would have been "Too fuckin' right!" My housemate Wee-man also asked a question on my behalf, but what happens in Bentleigh East stays in Bentleigh East. Anyway, enough of the seg-way. So, I woke up a little hungover. I knew that the Nobel Hostel would provide an amazing breakfast for just this situation, so I headed upstairs for a brilliant cup of Nescafe and a hydrating breakfast of cucumber, tomato, watermeloo and boiled egg, with a couple of bits of bread. Sparkles and Shakira joined me shortly afterwards, more hungover than me (hehehe) to recuperate in a similar fashion. There is an amazing view from the terrace of the hostel, which you can see if you check out my Facebook profile picture. We decided to start our Istanbullion adventure with a light bit of shopping at the Istanbul grand bazaar. We headed out of the hostel and wandered up to the bank-o-mat machines to get some local currency. While I waited for the girls to get cashed up, a short and rotund Turkish fellow approached me with a big smile on his face. From my previous experience in Turkey, I knew he would compliment me on something, tell me he had family in Australia, and that his brother had a store nearby that I should look at. Sure enough, he liked my sunglasses, told me his cousin lived in Bondi, and that his brother's store was "just over there". I politely told him that we were headed the other way and wished him well. We headed up to the grand bazaar of Istanbul which is somewhat akin to Chadstone shopping centre (for those Melbournians that know the place) only with a Medieval and marble feel. There are hundreds of stores there, but not much variety. If you want carpets, scarves, jewellery, leather, spices, backgammon boards, or Turkish tea sets you're set. There are a lot of amazing things in Istanbul that you can buy, unfortunately most of them are either too large or fragile to take back with you. Unless you have a Sherpa, but Lapzang was not accompanying my on this trip due to the new addition in training to his transportation company, little Olivia Street. Awwwww. After wandering around for a couple of hours, not having any idea where we were, we decided to grab a bite to eat at one of the restaurants of the grand bazaar. We sat down and ordered a whopping great big meat mixed grill and an aubigene (eggplant) and lamb skewer. The meal also came with a salad and a couple of yoghurt dips. Unfortunately my memory of Turkish silent upselling wasn't as good as my memory of "my brother has a store just over there" and we got fleeced by the guys running the place. Annoyed, but kicking myself afterwards, that just happened. As we were eating, a trio of girls came along and sat at the table next to us. I had seen these girls eating at the restaurant next to our accommodation the night before while I was waiting for Sparkles and Shakira, and I was pretty sure they had been on the same flight from Dubai as me. I leant over and asked them if they had arrived in Istanbul the day before from Dubai, to which they said yes. I told them I was on the same flight, and they mentioned that I had a good memory. I mentioned that I had noticed them because of the pants that one of the girls was wearing... pulled an odd face and said "That sounded much more dodgy out loud than it had in my head." The pants in question were the same as an ex of mine used to wear, that tied up at the front and back. We chatted a little bit, and it turned out that one of the girls was petrified of cats. There are a lot of cats in Istanbul, and they plague outside food venues. The waiter at the restaurant came over and sprayed a cat with a water spray bottle, and left it on the table for this girl to use. She kept on squealing and grabbing onto her friend next to her, and we tried to convince her to use the spray bottle on the cat. Since Sparkles and Shakira are social girls, I checked with them first before asking the girls if they would like to join us for dinner. They agreed, and we organised a time and place to meet up. I should also mention (briefly) that next to the restaurant was a carpet store, and the fellow running the store kept on coming up to us and asking if we (and the girls on the next table) would like to come over and check out his store. We all said no, but he kept on coming back and asked several times. The girls also were trying to take photos of each other, and he would try to get into the photos. It got to the point where I was about to walk over, count to 10, and tell him politely that we weren't interested and we would like him to leAve us alone (even though I wanted to use a few language that would make Chopper Read's ears burn... wait...), but we finished lunch and opted to move on. We continued to browse the grand bazaar, and I picked up a few cotton shirts, which was the only thing that I was keen on buying, and Sparkles and Shakira went in to a store to look at some Pashmiri scarves. In order to help them barter the fellow down, I pretended to be Sparkles' husband, and told him that I didn't want them spending too much of my money, and that the scarves "would make my wife and my headache happy". Sparkles being my wife and Shakira being my headache. After about 30 minutes of choosing and 10minutes of haggling, we got the 2 scarves at the price I had suggested. We then headed back to the hostel, where the girls had a tactical snooze while I updated yesterday's blog and had a sneaky beer or two. Mmmm. Efes. The beer that all discerning Turks drink. We then got ready and headed out to meet up with the three girls that has been on the same flight as me. They had suggested meeting at the fountain in the square between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia museum. This had seemed like a good place to meet at lunch time, but turned out to be a bit tricky. This time of the year in Turkey is Ramadan, so there were thousands of people on picnic blankets in the area. Fortunately, we saw them pretty much straight away, after commenting how hard it would be to find them in this crowd. The three girls, Nello, Diana (Deeana) and Laura (Lowra) were all Emirates hosties who had decided to get out of Dubai during Ramadan. We looked at a restaurant at the corner of the square, which unfortunately only offered a set menu, so we opted to go for a wander to find a better place to eat. Diana saw a rooftop restaurant that we thought we should find, and headed in that direction. Not sure if it was the one that we saw, but we opted to head in to a hotel that had a rooftop restaurant. After fitting the 6 of us into a lift designed for 5, going to the top button and walking up 2 flighs of stairs, we got to the restaurant which had an AMAZING view of the surrounding area. Actually, the view was of the whole Sultahnamet area, the Bosphorus bay and the Asian side of Istanbul. As we were being shown to the table, the head waiter asked the girls if he could kill me and take my place, as I was the luckiest man in Istanbul. And since these were 5 very attractive girls, I did feel like the luckiest man in Istanbul. This joke got less and less funny every time he said it throughout the night, but made me want to rub it in more and more as the night went on. And who said Schafenfreude was dead? The service was terrible, as half of our meals arrived quickly, and the other half of the meals arrived an hour later. Fortunately the alcohol kept coming, the view was amazing, and the company was fantastic. We had a great laugh getting to know these three girls, and really hit it off. So much so that Sparkles invited them back to our rooftop terrace for some more drinks (basically to polish off the bottle of vodka that I had bought the day before). I had to head down to the restaurant next to the hostel (which is part of the hostel) to get some glasses. The head waiter there is a rather attractive fellow (which I am comfortable enough in my sexuality to say) who I had seen chatting with Nello, Diana and Laura the previous night. Well, more trying to chat up. Unsuccessfully. After asking the the glasses, he told me that normally they don't let people drink their own alcohol on the balcony (bollocks!) because they serve alcohol from the restaurant bar. I told him that I was drinking with my two friends and the three girls from the night before. I could see him thinking for a moment, then a look of stunned shock and appreciation came over his face. "5 hot girls?" he asked. "Yes" I replied, with a smug smile on my face. He shook my hand, clicked his fingers and told one of the bus boys to go and get 6 glasses for me. He shook my hand and told me of I needed help with the girls to come and get him. I shrugged and said "That's ok mate. I've got this one." I returned upstairs and told the girls this. They pissed themselves. (For my international audience, 'pissing oneself' in Australia is not a literal term - it means to laugh very hard.) We polished off the bottle of vodka, chatted and had a fantastic night, admiring the view... of the nearby Blue Mosque and the Bosphorus from our terrace. Not as good as the rooftop restaurant, but at a much cheaper price. So much enjoyment was had that we agreed to meet up the next day to see more of Istanbul together. The girls headed back to their hostel, Sparkles, Shakira and myself had another drink before going to bed, and I will end Day 2 of my further adventures there. Hope you have enjoyed. Spread the Gaijin word.