As I said before, we were unable to get a bus from Cappadocia direct to Istanbul when we needed one. Omar’s advice wasn’t really great, he was right that there are a lot of buses, but there were apparently more people than seats. So, my advice is to book your direct overnight bus tickets in advance.

As it was, we took a bus to Ankara for 25 lira. I figured we had three options 1) stay the night in Anakara 2) catch a sleeper car on the train or 3) catch a different bus to Istanbul.

So, we woke up and lounged around our super high end cave for a while enjoying all the amenities before going to the bus station and catching our bus to Ankara. It was about 5 hours to Ankara and the bus stopped at one fairly expensive tourist shop/roadside restaurant along the way. At the stop, I started talking with a man near us named Ramazan. Ramazan is the comptroller for a Turkish Bank and is fortunate to be able to travel all over Turkey for business. He was a very friendly, good natured guy who was excited to get back home and see his pregnant wife in Ankara.

I asked him what he thought the best option was for us out of the three above. He said we should definitely get the train but if the train was full, he knew of a fairly cheap hotel near the train station. I asked him how to get to the train station and he said that since it was on his way home, we could share his cab and that he would help us to book our tickets. Another very nice man offering to help us on the bus in Turkey!

From the Otogar in Ankara which was truly massive with hundreds of buses going to all points in Turkey, we followed Ramazan and got into a cab which took us to the modern and architecturally interesting train station. It was situated near a giant amusement park that made me remember going to Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm when I was a kid.

The sleeper cars were full on the train. So were the regular seats. So were the first class seats. Apparently since Ramadan was coming up, lots of people were on holiday and heading to Istanbul. Ramazan told us to follow him and he would lead us to the hotel. He was apologetic and told us that if his wife weren’t pregnant, he would let us stay with him. He couldn’t find the hotel he thought he remembered though and so he started to make calls as we took a long walk around the amusement park.

The truth is that every hotel in Ankara was beyond our budget. Since it’s not a tourist place, the hotels are priced around business and politics and thus are priced high since the people in both fields usually have someone else footing the bill.

Ramazan walked us back to the Dolmus station and showed us which Dolmus to take back to the Otogar. That was what we saw in Ankara.
The Otogar, the train station, an amusement park, and a Dolmus station. With only that to judge by, I have to say that I think Ankara must be a beautiful city and I look forward to seeing more of it. I also felt that in that time I made a good friend in Ramazan. I hope we get the chance to spend more time together in the future.

At the Otogar, we found that nearly every bus was full but finally we managed to catch a bus with Metro Bus Lines, the only catch was that we had to wait five hours during which we ate, drank tea and orange juice, and browsed the many book vendors in the Ankara Otogar.

When the time arrived, the Metro bus was very nice and got us all the way to the ferry on the Asian side of Istanbul by about 8 am. It was 35 lira each from Ankara to Istanbul.

In Central Anatolia lies a land that looks like it comes from The Lord of the Rings- Cappadocia. Even the name has the ring of a fairy tale Kingdom.

“I, Sir Vago of the Kingdom of Cappadocia, do ride forth to seek out new lands and great fortunes.” – or something like that, though Cappadocia was never a kingdom of its own and in fact was a place of troglodyte refuge for Christian outcasts and societal misfits.

The landscape of massive stone chimneys (wistfully called fairy chimneys) and dream like rock formations are the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It was a poor place though from the 4th to the 11th Century a community of Christian refugees carved an unbelievable number of churches from the stones. Houses were also carved and the traditional livelihood was agriculture until the 1980′s when a tourist boom started. A friend of mine, Cemil has lived there since that time and he remembers when there were only three hotels in Goreme. Now there are literally hundreds and as I detailed in my last post, when we arrived, they were almost all full. No need to tell you what the number one industry is now.

Still, Goreme is a magical place and filled with charm. An interesting fact from Lonely Planet is that in Goreme, it used to be that if a man didn’t own a pigeon house, he wouldn’t be able to get married. These days there must not be many marriages, though more likely is that that particular tradition was tossed aside with agriculture when tourism became so lucrative.

Virtually everything in Goreme is directed at tourists from the hot air balloons to the travel companies, tour companies, restaurants, and tourist shops. Unlike Fethiye though, the prices seem reasonable and the people don’t seem so hungry for the hunt. It’s one of the things that really makes me sick about tourist places is that the people who work in tourism tend to forget that the clients or customers are real people, instead they become prey. It’s the same for criminals, people become prey and they are something to be hunted. I went through it myself as a tout and as a stock broker, if people simply become a means to an ends, life becomes much less magical and satisfying. While we did encounter quite a few people who were on the hunt in Goreme, it was less than Fethiye or Fez and the hunt itself was less in your face than either place as well.

We had a very nice breakfast with our friend Cemil at the Blue Moon Hotel before heading out to the Goreme Open Air Museum. this is an astounding place, though no more than Goreme itself. The big draw at the Open Air Museum are the rock cut Byzantine churches and the painting and frescos they contain. Admission was 15 lira each.

Despite me explaining why flash photos weren’t allowed and several guides telling her not to take photos (they say the flash destroys the color of the old paintings) Hanane kept taking photos on the sly, her reasoning was that since everyone else was doing it, why shouldn’t she be allowed to? And in fact, everyone else was doing it.

The rock cut churches had interesting pews and tables carved in them, graves which had been robbed or excavated in the floors, and of course the paintings. This was a monastic community and then became a pilgrimage site for Christians in the 17th Century.

Hanane was not overly impressed with the paintings, in particular the Red Ochre made very little impression on her. “I could get up there and paint the same thing right now. They’re fake.” By this point, we were laughing each time she called something fake but I still think she was partly serious. Once again we opted to skip the extra fee, this time 8 lira each to see the frescoes in the Karanlik Kilise. I feel no regrets over that. I really hate to pay an entrance fee only to be faced with another entrance fee.

We exited feeling that we had both seen enough churches. While we didn’t have the time this visit to go to the underground cities, it was a nice thing to whet our appetite with the rural charms and comedic tourist hunting that takes place there. As examples of how the hunt is conducted in Goreme you can look at the names of the Pesions. Flintstones Pension, Bedrock Cave Hostel, Ufuk Pension, Shoestring Cave Pension and more. We were recommended to try the Peri Cave Hotel, though as I wrote previously, we were very fortunate to be staying in the Moonlight Cave Suites.

We strolled through the Rose Valley and then went back to Goreme village where we had an unremarkable, actually it was bad dinner, at Cappadocia Pide Salonu. Not recommended.

From there we hiked up to the highest point in Goreme and watched the sun go down and the lights of the fairy chimneys flicker on in Goreme. A bottle of wine would have made it perfect.

From there it was back to our cave to enjoy the hot tub, king size bed, and overall luxury of the Moonlight Cave Suites.

The bus ride from Fetiye to Goreme was 55 lira. I’d asked Omer if I should book our tickets from Goreme to Istanbul in advance and he’d told me that there was no need, later I found every bus we wanted was full. If you want to go from Goreme to Istanbul on a specific day, book it in advance. At the Fetiye Otogar, I felt like some sort of shell game took place as we were led to a different bus company than I’d bought tickets for and our tickets were changed for new ones. We were then led to a big bus that wasn’t nearly as nice as I had thought it would be and then we set out. I looked for another bus heading out at the same time as us, but didn’t see one, maybe it was legit but something stunk of a swindle to me. Regardless, our bus left when it was supposed to and took us where it was supposed to so maybe being in a tourist trap had simply made me paranoid.

We slept on the bus and arrived in Goreme where Omer had said there was no need to make a reservation. I called our too top choices to see if they had cave rooms for us but they didn’t. In the small tourist information booth, I found another place which looked good and they did have a room so we went with them. They told us to sit and wait and the room would be ready in a few hours. I got on the net and realized they were trying to charge us 20 lira more than their published rate. When I asked why, the manager said it was because the room was bigger than the one’s on the web. He refused to budge and at 100 lira a night, I felt like we could find more than just a big room since this wasn’t even actually a cave.

Hanane wasn’t happy with me as we left with our bags but I wanted to walk and look and find the place that seemed best to me. I went into a few and asked the prices and if they had rooms. It seemed that 100-150 lira was the going rate for a double room. I started to walk into Moonlight Cave Suites and Hanane grabbed me and told me to stop because there was no way we could afford this one. It was beautiful. I almost listened to her, but to be honest, I was tired of not following my instincts and instead bowing to her Moroccan sense of ‘shame’ and ‘hshuma’ meaning that she didn’t want to ask because she didn’t think we could afford it. I went in and she decided to just wait in the street.

It was more beautiful inside. It was a new place and they’d spared no expense making it deluxe and beautiful. I’ve no doubt that it will become one of the top boutique hotels in Goreme. I say will become because in fact, it hadn’t really opened yet. They’d had a soft opening a few nights before and were offering rooms at incredible discounts just to get the word out.

Before he would tell me the price, the owner insisted on showing me the room. We walked in and I knew it was beyond our range. A beautiful cave room suite with a large flat screen TV, leather sofa, deluxe king size bed, full size jacuzzi bathtub, mini bar, jet shower, white robes, white slippers, and incredible inset lighting. It was gorgeous.

He laughed when I told him it was the nicest room I’d seen in Turkey. “It ought to be,” he said “We just spent 8 million Euros making this place.But wait until you see our deluxe suites…” The room I was drooling over was a ‘standard’ !!!

He suggested we go back to his office and talk about the price. I saw his rate sheet on the desk and knew it was going to be beyond us. Standard suite….180 Euro per night. We spent a few minutes talking about my travels in Turkey, travel writing, and the business of promotion. We settled on a price of 100 lira for the night! I was flabbergasted. I told him that I needed to let Hanane see the room before I said yes for certain. I was desperately afraid she would say no since I wanted to enjoy this room, but of course, she saw it and wanted it too.

Now, with a room like that, it’s hard to leave but I wanted to go get our bus tickets to Istanbul for the next night since we had the top suite at the Hotel Ayasofya reserved for our last night in Turkey.

Hanane laid down for a nap while I went to go get the tickets. Every bus company was sold out. I cursed Omar for his bad advice and tried to figure out what to do. The bus companies just told me I would need to wait another day. I couldn’t do that, we had another suite waiting and paid for!

I sat for a minute and figured it out. We’d take a bus to Ankara and from there we could take the train or a bus to Istanbul since the bus service is more frequent from Ankara than from Goreme. So, I bought tickets to Ankara and started to dream about catching a sleeper train to Istanbul. The only problem was that the bus to Ankara left at 2pm instead of 7 pm so we wouldn’t have time the next day to explore or take a tour.

Back in our deluxe cave suite, I forced Hanane to wake up since we only had half a day in Cappadocia and I thought it would be a shame not to see anything while we were here.

One of the great things about being associated with Lonely Planet is that I get to belong to a vibrant community of travelers, bloggers, and writers. Periodically, we get together and share our thoughts on a particular topic, idea, or place.

The results are often fantastic.

We will soon be releasing our first collaborative book under the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa brand and we have been working together on many other things as well. You may remember that I hosted a blog carnival about Culture Shock a few months back.

This week, Sash at Barefoot Inked hosted a blog carnival called ‘Love on the Road.’

I was one of the participants and you can guess who I was talking about (;)). The other participants were diverse and wrote about experiences on four continents among people with some very different ideas of what love is all about.

So, if the idea of Love on the Road gets your heart pounding, have a look.

http://barefootink.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/love-on-the-road-blogsherpa-carnival-8/

We were taking the night bus to Goreme in Capadocia and it didn’t leave until 7:30 pm, so we had the whole day to do something with before we got on the bus.

We decided to visit the ‘Greek Ghost Town’ of Kayakoy. Kayakoy is reputed to be an eerie place. I can’t say that we found it particularly eerie, but certainly it was interesting.

We caught the Dolmus from the station near the Mosque in Fetiye. It was 3.5 lira each for each way.

So, what is Kayakoy?

Prior to World War I there were big Greek communities throughout Turkey and big Turkish communities throughout Greece. One such Greek town was Kayakoy, then called Kaya or Karmylassos. It was a fair sized place with around 3000 stone buildings, 3 pharmacies, a school, a couple of churches, and a few monasteries. The town dated back to the 1400′s.

After WWI, when Turkey was building a Turkish Republic, there were population exchanges where entire communities were uprooted and forced to return to their native lands, even though their family roots dated back to the 1400′s or earlier. So whole towns full of Greeks in Turkey were forced to move to Greece and whole towns of Turks in Greece were forced to move back to Turkey. Kayakoy was one such town, the only hitch was that the Turks who moved back, didn’t want to live in Kayakoy and so it was largely abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair.

In the 1950′s there were big earthquakes in the regions and the people in Fetiye and other cities nearbly, used all the wood parts, doors, and windows from Kayakoy to repair their damaged homes. After that, the weather did its bit and finally the government decided to make it a monument.

The charge to get into the abandoned village is 8 lira each. I didn’t really want to pay that because I didn’t really find it to be that wonderful a place. It was interesting, but paying 16 lira to see a bunch of houses that were less than 100 years abandoned because of heavy handed government policy didn’t strike me as essential.

So instead, we got out of the Dolmus and started hiking up the hill to enter the town from the side and thus miss the gate. Somewhere along the way Hanane had lost her purse with the money I gave her for souvenirs in it, she was frantic but I wasn’t too worried because luckily it didn’t have her passport or anything irreplaceable in it, just money. Still, she was inconsolable.

But, nothing consoles a Moroccan girl like finding a big fig tree full of fruit that nobody is eating. As we walked up the hill, I looked around and realized that these houses on the edge of Kayakoy were not derelict at all, there were people living in them! These weren’t ghosts and this wasn’t a ghost town! Still, I didn’t want to spoil Hanane’s recovery by telling her so we at figs from the big tree and wandered further into the maze of Kayakoy.

Soon we came to a path with a small dog tied on it. My wife is fearless in many ways. She will pick up bugs, stand up to thugs, and face down police, but I am baffled by the two things that do scare her, dogs and lizards. She is absolutely terrified of both. Lucky for us, this was a dog which is the lessor of her two terrors.

She immediately wanted to go back, but I realized this was a chance for us to meet one of the ghosts of Kadikoy, so I stood just out of the dog’s reach and shouted hello down to the stone farmhouse which obviously had inhabitants. Pretty soon a voice answered me. Then a big Turkish woman lumbered up and said hello to us.

The path into the part of Kayakoy where everyone says you should visit was through her yard, so I set about making friends with her. She spoke just enough English for me to know that she interacted with tourists pretty frequently.

I asked if we could see her house and she smiled and said yes. Inside we sat with her and her mother and she told us about how her grandfather had come from Greece and taken the house. Not many of the repatriated Turks had taken houses in Kadikoy, but some did. Now she lives there with her wizened old mother and her brother. She gave us fruit and water, offered to give me some coffee but I told her it was too hot for coffee.

She was a very nice woman and told us about the herbs she grew, showed us her garden, and escorted us down to the path that would take us to the abandoned churches and buildings. She then showed us her craft stand where she sells overpriced things to tourists. I didn’t want to insult her hospitality by giving her money but I did buy two of the very overpriced bracelets she was selling. I just took her initial starting price of 10 lira each which was about 9 lira too much, but the fact is the food and stories she had shared was worth more than the 16 lira we would have paid to enter. Was she scamming us and tourists? A little bit with her big prices, but then, it wasn’t like she had other job opportunities living there as a woman in her 50′s supporting her old mother. Still, Hanane wanted to strangle me for paying so much.

I have to admit, there were a few fleeting moments in Kayakoy where it was eerie. It was a little like being in a nuclear war zone or a place where the people have just disappeared. The two things spoiling it were the fact that I knew that the people had been transplanted and that hiking outfit clad European and American tourists would come around corners every few minutes talking and laughing loudly. I asked one guy “Seen anything interesting?” and his reply was “No, not really. Not here anyway.”

We walked around, saw the churches, took some pictures and then went back to our new friend’s house where some of her relatives from Izmir had shown up and were visiting. I helped her brother in law to cut down some big bunches of red grapes, we drank some thick plum juice which I suspected would soon be wine judging by the sugar that was liberally added to it in the big jug it was in, and sat feeling the breeze as it cooled down the valley below us. Our new friend gave Hanane a pair of woven pot holders that Hanane had admired and she loaded us up with grapes and plums. I think she may have felt bad for the price gouging, but I felt like it was money well spent.

On the bus ride home we went through the tourist town of Oludeniz which seemed like a total and complete version of hell. Every restaurant sported signs that said “English Breakfast”, every sign showing prices was in pounds, and more chubby English middle aged women in bikinis were walking around than I had ever seen in one place before with just about everything hanging out. It wasn’t pretty.

I don’t want it to sound like I don’t like English people, I do. However, this was a gorgeous Turkish beach town which seemed to be catering exclusively to the Bucket family. The only thing missing was a trailer park. As we passed the many ‘pubs’ and munched on figs and grapes, I realized why our friend was able to charge so much for her bracelets. It was the people who make their holidays in Oludeniz.

Back in Fetiye, which didn’t seem nearly as terrible now that I’d seen Oludeniz, we gathered up our bags and waited for the shuttle to come pick us up and take us to our night bus to Goreme.

I realize this post is a little bit out of sequence with our trip to Turkey, but as many of you know, I’ve moved from Morocco to Turkey. A lot of friends on facebook and twitter are asking me “What went wrong in Morocco?” and there is some concern about what is happening.

I intend to clear all of that up with this post.

The short answer is nothing went wrong in Morocco. Here is the summary of what went very right.

I left Hawaii in 2008 looking for a home and not feeling like I would find it in the USA. I was drawn to Europe and had felt like Turkey might be a place for me for some time.

However, while I was in Spain, I kept hearing from people I met about how wonderful their travels in Morocco had been. Now I usually think of things like this: If I hear something once, no big deal. If I hear something twice, it’s coincidence but my ears perk up. If I hear it three times I start considering what the universe is telling me. And in this case, I heard from dozens of people about why I, me specifically, should go to Morocco. So I went.

I’ll be honest here and those of you who have been following my travels will remember this: I wasn’t crazy about Morocco from the beginning. I felt like the touts in Fez were among the most pushy I’d ever met. I felt like everyone I met had an agenda. I was aghast that a country with such a beautiful landscape should be filled with so much garbage and litter.

And yet, I felt like I was there for a reason. That’s when I went to Sefrou for the first time and met Hanane. The love of my life, now my wife. Still, I wasn’t crazy about Morocco. I tried to get her to run away with me. I tried to leave. Three times! And yet, I kept having to go back to her. I realized the only way I could get her away from Morocco was if I married her and so we began the nightmare of bureaucratic red tape to make our marriage.

In the meantime, I managed to start a successful business based on blogging and web design, I started to make money writing, and I landed a job teaching English in Fez. All of that was very right.

In fact, everything went right. We got our marriage papers, I got residency (which helped with the marriage papers), we were making some money, and I managed to rent an apartment in Sefrou and then to be closer to my work, an apartment in Fez. Since I was teaching on a contract, it was important to stay until it was completed, though I wanted to evacuate right away on one level as soon as we were legally wed.

The contract ended, we took an exploratory trip to Turkey, we both got jobs, and now I am here getting things going and she will be coming in about a month. So, there is the short answer, everything went right in Morocco and now, it seems to be going right in Turkey.

Now, the long answer is going to be a bit more controversial. Essentially, this is the answer to the question “Why don’t you want to live in Morocco?” This is going to piss some people off. In fact, it already has. The bulk of what I’m about to tell you was published as a guest post on a fellow travel writer’s blog and the negative reaction to it and to me was so strong that he asked my permission to pull the piece. I assented. The gist of the reaction was from those who had traveled in Morocco and went like this “I traveled in Morocco and found it to be wonderful, Vago should go back to his clean sanitized USA” or ” I lived in Morocco in the 1970′s and I can tell you this guy is full of shit”. And similar sentiments. Before I give my response, I’ll share my essay which is really a different answer to “What went wrong in Morocco?”

Morocco is a beautiful country. It is filled with a huge variety of natural landscapes from the sands of the Sahara to the magnificent peaks of the High Atlas mountains. Surrounded by two oceans and a sea of Sand, it offers an amazing diversity of scenic places. When you add in the exotic culture, the beautiful people, and the magnificent architecture, what you get is a photographers Disneyland, an ethnographers delight, and a visitor’s peak travel experience.

What you get when you are an expat is all of that…plus the frustration of learning to adapt to a country that has a built in excuse for not doing anything, a nightmarish bureaucracy, and a cultural history that is part fantasy, part reality, and totally fucked up….at least in the grand scheme of things. I’m not saying Morocco isn’t a wonderful place because it is. It is one of the most developed nations in Africa and it is figuring out ways to make itself a more important place in the scheme of the world. What I’m saying is that there a number of things in Morocco that by living here, you learn to recognize as just plain f***ed up.

I’ll keep this brief rather than going into all the details but here are the things that cause me to want to leave Morocco.

1) A large number of Moroccan men who are uneducated, living in poverty, not married, and under the age of 25 (a sizable percentage of Morocco’s male population) are a particularly disgusting sort of leches. These young men seem to consider it their duty and their right to harass unescorted women on the street whether it is broad daylight or any other time. Those who are least educated are the worst offenders. Harassment ranges from obscene gestures and words to grabbing and rape. While I am a man and don’t have to suffer this, each time I see it, I want to smash some guys teeth out. Unfortunately, if I acted on that, I would be leaving at least four or five guys toothless every day. My wife gets harassed unless I am with her. If foreign women understood what is being said to them, most of them would leave and never return.

2) Public health nightmares. Moroccans eat from the same plates, drink from communal glasses, and many ‘restaurants’ have a very loose idea about cleaning dishes in a sanitary way. Foods are often left out far longer than is safe without being covered or refrigerated. Restrooms are considered to be just about anywhere you choose to go for a large number of people (That’s not a dog turd you just stepped in Mister!) . Despite the frequent washing that Islam requires, soap is not used for hand washing by a very large number of people (from what I can see), even though the left hand is most definitely used in place of toilet paper. (Once again, this is a matter of income, education, and other factors) Now, I’m not a clean freak, but I do think that all of this adds up to a future public health nightmare and I don’t want my family or me to be a part of it.

3) Great starters, lousy finishers. If you travel or live in Morocco for any length of time you will see countless unfinished projects from houses to hotels to highways to bridges. Moroccans are great starters, unfortunately, it seems that they usually start a new project before finishing those they have already started. This includes work at the office, bureaucracy, and even housework. My mother-in-law works ten times harder than she needs to because she starts everything and finishes nothing. Part of this is a result of interruption, no matter what you are doing, if someone enters the room you are expected to stop and exchange greetings and formalities.

4) Inchallah is used as the ultimate cop out. Those Moroccans who choose to can have a built in excuse to not do whatever they don’t want to do whether it is their homework, attending a meeting, or fulfilling their duties. Inchallah, basically “If God Wills it…” such as “I’ll find a job, Inchallah” which means, “I’m not looking but God will give me one if he wants me to have one, meanwhile I’ll sit in this cafe all day and harass the women God sends by for me to harass.”

5) French Bureaucracy + Inchallah = Total Hell. The French have the reputation as having the most nightmarish bureaucracy on the planet, but Moroccan is worse. During the French Administration of Morocco, the French installed their bureaucracy and when they left, the local administrators added “Inchallah” to it. The result is a system that combines French leave with the will of God, meaning that no one is willing to answer any questions and they don’t want to send you to someone else because they don’t want that person to get any sort of improved status from helping you (not that they would anyway) or to have anyone see that they really aren’t doing their job.

6) Crabs in a bucket. Moroccans are a status crazy people. Unfortunately, the easiest way to bring your status higher is to drag someone else down. Gossip and slander are non-stop in Morocco. Like crabs in a bucket, as soon as someone gets near the top, the ones under them pull them down to try to climb over them. The result is a nightmare of everyone trying to protect themselves while they try to attack anyone seen as a threat. In the pre-French times, this was common among tribal clans. When a leadership coup happened, it was common to take the ousted leaders, seize their possessions, leave them destitute, publicly humiliate them, and often kill them. Even if it was your brother or father.

7) Hshuma. Hshuma is the concept of shame. It is a complex subject that causes huge misunderstandings and difficult situations. One example is concerning lying. It isn’t hshuma per se to lie, but to admit being a liar or to be caught in a lie is a big time hshuma. So, no matter how outrageous the lie, a Moroccan will almost never admit to it. Lying is very common. Admitting a lie is almost unheard of. Here is an example. A boy in the medina might meet you and tell you he is an orphan. Later you become friends and he invites you to his house where you eat with his mother and father. Despite the obvious truth of the situation, the boy will never admit that he is not an orphan. This happens in millions of situations daily in Morocco from prices to gossip to homework being late. And it’s not just lying, hshuma dictates a huge portion of daily life from who you can talk to, to where you can go, to what you can do. There are anthropological tombs written on it. It’s fascinating, but I don’t want to deal with it or be subject to it. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have much shame.

8) Litter. Garbage simply “goes back to nature” and even if you throw it in a bin, it is likely that it will go there.

9) The evil eye and djinn. Morocco is a Muslim nation. The educated have a more enlightened view of the Koran as a guidebook that needs to be interpreted, but for most of the masses, if it is written in Koran or Hadith, it is true. Ignorance on a scale that can only be matched by Christian Fundamentalists trying to convince you about their Creationist theories or Mormon’s telling you how Joseph Smith was able to talk to God through his hat.

10) Begging. Begging in Morocco is accepted and tolerated, even if you are sitting in a restaurant eating a meal or on a bus, don’t be surprised to have a beggar hounding you for coins or even picking the food from the leftovers on the plate. There is virtually no respite from them. If you meet their eyes for even an instant, it is through, they will be on you. This leaves no room for a sympathetic word or look, or for any kind of human decency. You have to ignore, pay, or tell them to bugger off.

This list could go on and on, but as I said at the beginning, Morocco is a beautiful country filled with exotic landscapes and cultures. The Moroccan people are for the most part friendly, educated, charming, helpful, and incredibly sweet. Once you get used to everything above, it starts to not drive you as crazy as it does at first, but in my opinion, until these problems are solved, Morocco will continue to be a developing country and perhaps it will even move backwards on the chart of human development.

So, as a start…that’s what I think went wrong in Morocco. To those who don’t want to hear my opinions or think I’m an ass for voicing them, I can only assure you that I’m not alone. I’ve been accused of being culturally insensitive, but then so were Levi Strauss, Franz Boas, and Margaret Meade, so at least I’m in good company.

To be fair, I know a lot of Moroccans to whom none of the above apply, but in my experience they are the very small minority. I think the King of Morocco is doing an incredible job and that he is actively trying to change things for the better, he is the Muslim version of Obama (in my humble opinion) but like Obama, his work is hugely overwhelming.

Now, as to my critics: It’s different to live in a country than it is to travel in one. As a person with many Moroccan friends, a Moroccan wife, and an extended Moroccan family that is far from priveliged (not to mention a background in cultural anthropology) I think I have a fairly unique position that is considerably different from that of someone who travels there for a few months, buys a riad and restores it, or someone who employs Moroccans (as servants, workers, carpenters, drivers, or even teachers). As to me going back to the United States because it is clean and sanitized…lofl…I dream of trading my USA passport for a Hawaiian passport or a Cascadian passport. In that case, you can expect me to come running, but otherwise, the USA and Morocco both have far too many problems for me to want to call them home.

So, my friends, my readers, please excuse this rather longwinded answer, but I wanted you to hear it straight from the horse’s ass … err… mouth.

We woke up early and true to his word, Omar’s breakfast was quite nice. The standard breakfast we found in Turkish Hotels and Pensions consisted of bread, cheese, egg, fruit, and coffee or tea. Omar’s also had small filo dough dolmoths which were a lot like eggrolls stuffed with cucumber and cheese. Very tasty. He also had a nice kind of baklava which came out fresh from his kitchen.

The van to pick us up came about a ½ hour later than expected. Omar told me he had talked to the Captain of the boat and told him I was a travel writer and that he had been assured that we would be taken extra good care of. I thanked him for it, but it seemed to not matter to them whether I wrote good or bad about them. When we arrived, they tried to put us on the cheaper, more crowded boat. I insisted that we had paid for the ‘VIP’ boat and it was only because we refused to get on the crowded ‘budget’ boat that we finally were shoved onto the ‘VIP’ boat. The difference? The VIP boat was supposed to have a maximum of 30 people and the other boat a maximum of 60. The VIP boat also had a sail so that in the afternoon we could enjoy some ‘engine free’ cruising before coming back to port. The cost difference was 25 lira for the regular versus 30 lira for the VIP. Both included lunch. We had to jump from the docks to get on the VIP boat because they had started to leave without us.

The company name was Kardasler and some of their claims were simply not met. They claimed to go to places not crowded with other boat companies. We didn’t visit a single stop where there weren’t at least ten other big tourist boats. Our afternoon motorless sail never happened. the promised visit to Cleopatra Baths also never happened.

Once we got on the boat, we looked around and saw that we were among about 50 European tourists. Not a Turk in sight on this one. Many of them had reserved two seats each by using their towels on the sundeck where there were 15 cushions while they sat in the comfortable deck chairs waiting for the cruise to begin. So, in short, even though there was no one on the sundeck, there were no places left to sit. I found this to be incredibly rude and annoying.

Rather than going to ‘swimming beaches’ the boat stopped at a number of deep water bays where it was essential to swim quite a distance to shore through deep water. Since Hanane doesn’t swim very well, this was a problem for us. The brochure said that they would provide snorkel equipment and flotation devices, but when Hanane asked, they said no. I found this hard to believe and looked under the ladder where I found several of those foam float tubes after our first stop where she wasn’t able to get in the water. I also found that they didn’t have fins but they did have two leaky snorkel masks and unattached snorkels. If they hadn’t of advertised having the gear, we would have just bought some. Also, we saw that people who were bringing their own snacks or drinks weren’t allowed to bring them on board. I smelled greed right away.

Our first stop was, as I said, a deep water bay. It did have a rocky beach which we saw just about every other boat lower their gangplank to so that people could go ashore. We anchored far enough out so that it was not really practical. I’m not sure what the name of this was but it might have been either Gobun Bay or Cavy Bay. The water was clear and a delight to swim in, but there was something disturbing about swimming around a boat with 45 tourists bobbing in the water around it.

Our next stop was Red Bay where the water was an amazing electric blue color. This was a short stop with no beach. The water was amazing. I’m sure if Kardesler could have charged us extra for it, they would have. The small bottled waters on the boat were being sold for 3 lira each, sodas for 5 lira each, and beer for 7 lira. These are exorbitant prices and since they wouldn’t let anyone else bring drinks on board, it was gouging pure and simple.

Next stop was ‘Flat Island’ where we finally got to go ashore to a beach, but it was more crowded than the Jersey Shore on a summer weekend. Massive amounts of sunburned, pudgy English tourists. Only a part of the Island was flat, the rest was a small hill which we climbed and got some beautiful views of the two sides of the island from. It was here they cooked lunch. Unlike our beautiful fish lunch on the Kocegiz boat trip, this was slop served buffet style. Pasta with no sauce, overcooked tasteless fish, and runny salad. They charged us extra for the water and can of soda we had with the meal.

After lunch we cruised to another island where we were among about fifteen other huge tourist boats and then we stopped at another bay where it was just us and four huge tourist boats blasting music. We did swim because I had found the water noodles they told us they didn’t have and the water was beautiful though it was disturbing to be around so many bobbing pink tourists in such a beautiful setting.

The music they blasted on the way back wasn’t Turkish music but bad Western pop. Even if they had set sail, the music would have destroyed any peace that would have come with it. Each time we got up to swim, someone would move our things from our seats and take our places while no doubt leaving their things in two other places at the same time. While the scenery was gorgeous, the mercenary capitalism, overcrowded stops, lack of any beach time, and awful lunch combined with too many rude and obnoxious people on the boat made this the worst money we spent on this trip. Total for the day was 40 lira each when we factored in the drinks and a couple of ice creams.

Beautiful, yes. The water was nice. It was just too bad that this felt like we were being raped at a tourist trap. We didn’t make any friends on this trip and the view of the Lycean Tombs above Fetiye were humble in comparison to those we saw in Koycegiz.

I think it may be possible to have a wonderful time in Fetiye but the hotel prices, the tourist gouging, and the horrible customer treatment certainly didn’t make things wonderful for us.

That evening we ordered take out food from Pasa Kebap. (www.pasakebap.com) We ordered pide and the thin Turkish pizza and a couple of Turk colas. The Turk Cola’s were good with bit of lemon in the flavor. The pide and pizza were delicious and came with a light salad. Cost 11 lira including delivery. You can call them at 614 98 07 or 614 76 72. Man, it’s nice to be able to order take out food again for delivery.

This may come as a shock, but Fethiye was a disappointment to us. Our friend Darren had told us before we left Morocco that the one place we didn’t want to miss was Fethiye so despite having quite a few other recommendations from other friends, we decided we wouldn’t miss Fethiye. I’m not convinced that it was a terrible place, in fact, it seemed like a very nice place- I just think that maybe having great expectations and coming from our great time in Koycegiz sort of meant Fethiye was destined to be disappointing.

The mini-bus from Koycegiz to Fethiye was only 10 lira each. The bus from the otogar to the town was free and in a strange fit of being prepared I booked our tickets to Goreme for two days later and our 12 Islands cruise for the next day while we were at the bus station. This is very untypical behavior for me and I don’t recommend you do the same thing as it limits your options to be booked ahead.

Looking in the LP, it looked like everything was a bit more expensive in Fethiye and so we opted to go with the cheapest hostel that was rated as decent. The Ideal Pension.

The Ideal Pension should be called the Sketchy Dump

DON’T DON’T DON’T GO TO THE IDEAL PENSION. Lonely Planet is way outdated on this one. Don’t go there.

I used to manage hostels in Hawaii and I’ve stayed in hundreds and as soon as I walked in this place, I was sure that it was a sleezy dump. First impression was that it was dirty, unkempt, and that we would be likely to get our bags stolen or catch bedbugs there. Still, I went up to the desk because I wanted to at least see a room.

The guy at the desk had this intensely negative energy that was like hot grease poured on water. I later found out from other travelers that he was the owner and that there have been some major drug problems and sexual harassment at the Ideal Pension.

I asked him about a double and he told me 60 lira, shared bath, and no a/c! I looked around the dump and decided I would rather take my chances elsewhere. “You won’t find anything better for that price!” he yelled after me as I walked out. Thankfully, Hanane decided to just trust me on this one as I couldn’t really explain why we were leaving right then. I just wanted out of that place. I didn’t want to spend time explaining.

We walked less than a hundred meters and found Yildirim Pension. The owner, Omar agreed to give us a big double room with a/c, private bath, and tv for 60 lira per night. The furniture and bedding were pretty worn, the bed wasn’t very comfortable, the water didn’t get very hot, and the curtains didn’t quite stretch enough to cover the street facing window but Omar seemed a pretty nice guy and told us that he made a great free breakfast. I figured it was probably about as good as it would get in an overpriced tourist trap town.

Yildirim Pension is at 1 Kragozler Mah.Fevzi
Cakmak Cadassi Number 37
Fethiye – just around the corner from the dumpy Ideal Pension

Omar arranged for our transport to the 12 Island Cruise the next day and for the free shuttle to pick us up to go to the Otogar the day following. He told me that a big scam at the bus station was to sell the cheap cruise for the expensive cruise price. He called the tour company and told me that he had fixed things so that we were on the better boat now but we would have been on the worse boat. I’m not so sure his calls did any good.

We walked through Fethiye and it was hot! the weather was scorching and as we walked along the docks, I saw literally hundreds of tour boats competing for business. If I had been more patient, I’m certain I could have gotten us on an ultimately much better cruise for the same or less money (30 lira each plus ‘expenses’).

We found a great little restaurant off the tourist path called Efe where we a delicious dinner of pide (Turkish pizza), salad, and chicken wings for about 23 lira. The owner reminded me of Lee Marvin with his American accent and constant cigarette smoking. Nice guy, delicious food, reasonable prices.

As I said before, the breakfast at Fulya Pension was great. We were also able to get discounted tickets to take a boat tour. The guidebook said the tour was 25 lira, I’d heard that the other Tango Pension (the backpacker place) sold them for 20 lira, but at Fulya Pension they were just 15 lira each.

This was both of our favorite day in Turkey. It was also one of the cheapest.

We got on the boat at 9:00 and the boat took off at 9:15 am. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but sometimes that’s the best way to go. We were the only foreigners on the boat. Koycegiz is a holiday spot for Turkish people. Within a very short time we had made friends with a bunch of the people on the boat. They had all brought picnic baskets, coolers, games, books, and other things. We had brought just our camera and towels since lunch was included in the price of the trip.

Lucky for us we were sitting near a retired forester and his family. He shared passion fruit, apples, and figs with us.

Turkish lilikoi!

As we came closer to Dalyan, I was relieved that we hadn’t chosen to stay there. There were literally hundreds of tour boats along the shores of Dalyan and plenty of pasty, chubby tourists queuing up to get in them. Meanwhile we were chatting with our new Turkish friends. I was relieved the boats didn’t stop in Dalyan.

The view isn't always what you would expect on the Med, but check out that Muslim swim suit

Finally, we left and went to the mud baths. They were a very reasonable 4 lira each for the mud baths and the thermal mineral baths both.

I don’t recommend dunking your whole head under the mud since I got plenty of it in my eyes, ears, and nose. Instead it is better to just rub the mud on your face. It was fairly surreal to climb out and look at all the other mud covered people drying in the sun. Like being on another planet. The mud is slightly radioactive and contains many minerals which are supposed to be very good for your skin and health.

After the mud dried, a shower and a swim removed it. Then it was time to sit in the mineral baths. Also very nice. Our only complaint for the day was that we would have preferred to spend more time at this spot and a little less at the beach, but perhaps that’s only us. We were at the mud baths about an hour. a very fun hour.

When the hour was up we got back on board the boat and went back to Koycegiz. On the way back the guys on the boat pumped up the Turkish music and everyone danced! We were both exhausted and fell asleep without having any dinner. It was a great day. We met friends, had a wonderful day, and didn’t spend very much. Does it get much better?

I swear, he didn't steal my mustache! One thing I love about Turkey is I can let my mustache freak flag fly...and it's normal!

I swear my mustache is safe and sound with my cousin Lou. I might take the chance to grow a big Turkish mustache while I’m here though.

Don’t worry, this was catch and release! My wife has quick hands- don’t mess with her!

The mini bus to Koycegiz was 30 lira each and took about five hours. It was definitely the worst transport value we found since it cost more to sit in a less comfortable mini bus for less time than it had to sit in a big luxurious bus for more time. I didn’t really understand it, but that was just the way it was.

As I said before, Hanane had heard about the mud baths at Koycegiz and this had become the number one thing she wanted to do in Turkey. The mud baths are on the shores of Lake Koycegiz and there are a number of ways to get to them. Most people choose to go to Dalyan which is closer to the beautiful Mediterranean beaches and slightly more developed in it’s tourist infrastructure. We had a few people recommend it to us, but something told me to go to the town of Koycegiz instead. Some people we met didn’t understand why we would want to go there at all, but most hadn’t even heard of it although that was possibly because I kept calling it KOY-SEE-GEEZ but the name is closer to KOY-SHEEZ.

Alison had told us there were two pensions there. One for backpackers and one for families. I wanted the one for families since I sort of hate being around backpackers. That might surprise you but the truth is I’m not a backpacker. I have a shoulder bag. I don’t travel to get drunk with other foreigners. I don’t travel to meet other travelers, though sometimes this is a nice thing. I don’t travel to get laid by easy English girls in foreign lands, though that used to be a benefit I enjoyed. I travel because I like to see new places and the people who live in them. I like to see what life is like in the places I go. I already know what life is like in backpacker hostels.