Episode 6: Return of the Gaijin

Day 6

So, this was the day that I got to go back to Gallipoli and check out one of the places that I firmly believe makes up part of the Australian identity.

We broke our fast in the kitchen area, and got prepared to go snorkeling. There was about 15 of us that headed out for the snorkeling trip, Aussies, New Zealanders, a British couple, and the sister from the South African duo of the night before.

My initial reaction to snorkeling off Anzac cove stands, which you can read in an earlier blog entry, although this time I was armed with a waterproof camera. It was amazing to see the remains of the Milo, the ship sunk off the coast of Anzac cove – an Allied scout ship that was holed so that troop carriers could pull up next to it, giving troops a platform to disembark and run across a bridge to the shoreline, as well as bring wounded soldiers back and have them transported to Allied medical ships.

The water was cloudier than last time, but we still had a great view of the sunken vessel, and I was super glad that I had bought the water-proof camera especially for this day.. If ever you travel to Turkey and go to Gallipoli, I recommend that you do this snorkeling trip. One of the highlights of the trip overall.

We returned to the hotel, had a shower and prepared ourselves for the day of Gallipoli touring. Lunch was included, so we had a bite to eat and got to know the English couple that had been snorkeling with us in the morning. He was from Yorkshire and she was from Birmingham. If you have ever heard those accents… well, I don’t need to go into the reaction you would have to their accents.

The tour was fantastic. Pauly reintroduced me to Bill (Bulent), the tour-guide, who again didn’t remember me personally, but since he is one of the preeminent tour-guides from the area, isn’t surprising. For me, it was great to go back to a lot of the places I had visited 3 years earlier. For Shakira and Sparkles, they were both extremely happy that they had opted to go to Gallipoli and check out what had happened during WWI and how the Australian troops had defined themselves. Once again, you can go back to an earlier entry in my blog to see my initial reaction to doing the Gallipoli tour (plus you can see my earlier trip to Turkey as well).
Bill turned around as we were completing the trip and said to the bus “If somebody comes on my tour for a second time, I tell them that if they come again that the tour is for free.” I piped up and announced that he had said that last time, which got a laugh from everybody on the bus, but I did feel bad as I didn’t want Bill looking like a carpet salesman since he gives a fantastic tour.

We returned to the Crowded House hotel and (after showering since it was a stinking hot day) had a bite to eat in the Secret Garden beer garden. Megan challenged me to a game of back-gammon, which she won (as in Turkey they play best of 5) and as I had wagered my bag of cigarette filters and papers, she was quite stoked. Megan preferred to smoke rollie cigarettes and had tobacco but no filters.
The evening progressed with Megan and Pauly joining us for drinks. Sparkles decided to head off to bed, and Pauly offered to take us to the Boomerang bar, an Anzac themed bar.
I must acknowledge that Megan led Shakira and myself astray, as there was a mannequin there with a bright blue wig. Which I ended up wearing for a lot of the night.
One of the bar staff there, who Megan dubbed Stevie Wonder (due to him wearing his sunglasses in the middle of the night) was a fantastic drummed. I need to figure out how to get the video of him doing his drumming routine onto facebook for you all to see.
At one point during the evening, Stevie and a couple of the other people that worked there took out the ‘Boomerang bar’ – a boomerang shaped bar, appropriately enough – and started to run towards the water. The bar owner, who was dubbed ‘George Michael’ was laughing with Pauly, Shakira, Megan and myself, until they neared the water-front, at which point he got up and started yelling at the trio of miscreants. Fortunately, they stopped short of throwing the bar into the water, but we were worried for a second that it was going to happen.
Many drinks were consumed that evening, and we returned to the hotel to have one final drink, before Shakira and myself headed upstairs with the sun starting to dawn at 5.30 am. “What the fuck?” Shakira announced. I bit her on the arm (a little bit too hard) to give her some incentive to head upstairs, and we caught whatever sleep we could before checking out the next day.