Day 4 - Pamukkale

We wake up early in the morning so we can go to town to book our bus tickets to Marmaris. After a quick breakfast, we head into reception to hand in our keys. Moishii walks up to the woman at reception and hands her the key, without even looking at our room number, she says "Aren't you supposed to be checking out today? You've only got your room booked for one night". We start panicking when she decides to go and grab our paperwork whilst I start yelling that I have another copy of the voucher. I'm about to run back to our room when she comes out and says that she made a mistake and didn't enter in the extra night. Like WTF? The woman doesn't even look at our room number and tells us that we need to checkout, then she reckons she made a mistake with the booking even though she doesn't even bother checking the computer. I'm ready to jump over the counter and strangle her when we realise the time and decide that we're better off heading into town to get our bus tickets instead.

We walk out of the hotel looking for the bus stop that will take us right into town. The hotel bus is sitting right infront of us. We walk towards it only to notice that there is no driver. We ask the nearest staff where the bus driver is to take us to town, when they inform us that we're at the wrong bus stop. The bus stop we need to go to, is over a frickin hill about 1km away. They point into the distance saying "That's the bus stop". We stand there for a few minutes staring and staring and not seeing a bus stop. We have no choice but to start hiking. I pull out the sunscreen and start lathering up as we walk. The sun is glaringly hot at 10am in the morning. I whip out my sarong and wrap myself from head to toe and managed to save myself from burning to a crisp. About 20mins later, we finally get to the bus stop after climbing a hill and hiking through bush. The bitches wouldn't even give us a lift to the bus stop! Its not like the hotel bus was in use!

The Dolmus (Mini bus) arrives and we hop on. 45mins later we end up at Denizli town. The same town we were supposed to go to last night. Its not really a town as such......more like a bus stop that has a few shops surrounding it. We quickly by our bus ticket to Marmaris for the next day and sigh a big sigh of relief. We walk to the nearest shop to buy some simit (Turkish Pretzel) for lunch before Moishii decides to make a pit stop at the restrooms. I'm waiting outside, the only asian within a 20km radius, when these two turkish women walk up to me and talks to me nonstop in Turkish. I'm trying to tell them that I have no freakin idea what they are talking about (Considering I AM BLOODY ASIAN) when they start screaming at me and storm off. ?????? Where the HELL do I find these freaks?? We jump onto the first bus we see and asked the bus driver how to get to the actual Pamukkale. He said he will take us right to the door step for $2.50 each. We settle into our seats when he pulls into a little "town" at the base of the cliff where Pamukkale is (About 15km from where we got on). The woman also wants to get to Pamukkale, but the driver insists on charging her $5 instead of the $2.50 he's charging us. She throws a tantrum and refuses to get on. We drive off and eventually make it to the top of the cliff.

We get off the bus and walk to the start of the only open path through Pamukkale. In order to preserve the natural beauty of the place, you cannot wear shoes whilst walking along the path. We take our thongs off and hide them under a bush and start our walk. It was a nice relaxing walk through a few pools of cooling water.....for the first 2mins that is. The smooth cool stone beneath our feet suddenly became ridges of jagged rock and loose gravel. This is the start of the MOST PAINFUL 3hour walk of my life. Every step felt like I was getting the skin ripped off my feet. We decide to head into one of the deeper pools of water to try and ease the pain in our feet. BAD IDEA. The pool is filled with jagged gravel and rocks which dug into my feet like the needles on a cactus. If you look at the photos we took, there are a series of photos where we look so happy, we must have been on drugs. Let me tell you, that is not the look of happiness, but the face of agonising pain. We spent more time screaming "TAKE THE FARKIN PHOTO ALREADY!!!" than actually enjoying the water.


After limping along the path for about 30minutes, the crowd thins out considerably (Most people have given in to the pain a long time ago). Pamukkale is absolutely STUNNING. The view we saw at the beginning of the cannot COMPARE to what we are seeing right now. Looking all around you, if it wasn't for the baking heat, you would think that you are in the middle of a snowfield. It is the most wonderous sight you will ever see, and if you ever go to Turkey, DEFINATELY go to Pamukkale. You won't regret it. Amazed by the scenary around us, we decide to keep pushing ourselves along the path, knowing that the scene will only get more beautiful as less people venture this far along the path.



We limp for another 30mins when we see the end of the Pamukkale in the distance. Down the hill, is a path that will lead you all the way down the mountain. This is when we realised that had we carried our shoes with us, we can keep walking all the way to the end (where the ground is surprisingly smooth) and catch a bus back to the hotel. Instead, we will need to retrace our steps through the most painful walk of my life. !@#$!@#%@ Not willing to experience the walk so soon, we walk to the nearest pool of water and gingerly climb in. We manage to find a spot with less debris that will stab into every inch of flesh we have and soaked in the water.

5 shades darker, we make our way back to the top of the cliff. The walk back was much faster since we didn't stop for photos. Except that one time we filmed a guy who bought his guitar with him to sing in the middle of Pamukkale. (???) We get back to the start of the path and I have NEVER been so grateful for shoes in my life. We walk to the nearest store and start buying postcards like there is no tomorrow. We find a rest area where we sit and zone out for awhile before we find a gozeleme stand. You would all have seen a gozeleme stand if you go to any fair in Sydney. There is always a red and white tent with turkish women standing in the back rolling out mass amounts of turkish pancake that is fill with spinach and cheese and sometimes mince. We order 2 servings and take a seat. 20mins later we still don't have our food. The woman who took our order suddenly looks at us, then turns to the woman beside her and asked her why didn't she give us our food. Apparently our food has been ready for a long time already, and the woman just "forgot" to give it to us. We're sitting right infront of you FFS, and you just "forget" to give us the food? What the hell? We grab the food off her and start shovelling the food into our mouths. It tasted like they put salt paste inbetween instead of potatoe and cheese. We quickly throw the rest of the food and our money down the drain and run into the nearest souvenier store and buy more postcards.


After roaming around the museum abit, we try to locate a dolmus that will take us back to the hotel. After searching for 20mins, we finally find one that has a driver in it and plonk ourselves down. This is when a car pulls up beside the bus and out steps the bride and groom. I mean, yes Pamukkale is beautiful, but who in their right mind will hike through the rocks, ridges, pebbles and pools of water BAREFOOT IN A WEDDING DRESS!? I nudge Moishii who looks out the window. Without even saying a word, we both pull out our camera to capture the moment.


30mins later, we're hiking our way back to the hotel from the bus stop whilst complaining about how tired we are. We decide that we're going to go have a massage the minute we get back since its an "all included" hotel package. We even agreed that if the massages aren't included, then we're not going to pay for one. We dump our things and head to the masseus. Now the next bit is a bit fuzzy to me since it all happened in Turkish. All I know is that we rocked up, alot of turkish flew between both parties, and the next thing I know, I am lying on a massage table $35 poorer. Despite us previously agreeing that we're not going to pay (Just like we agreed that we're not going to get off in the middle of a freeway), we ended up paying $35 each for a massage and a "facial". The facial turned out to be them slapping some mask on my face. I walk out of the massage room feeling all bruise and battered by the masseus and headed off to the pool area with Moishii. This is when he starts screaming at me saying that I screwed him over! Like wtf? Apparently when he got into his massage room, the masseus (Macho macho man) practically ripped his shorts off before slapping him around like a fresh peice of meat on the butcher's table. Totally professional of course.

After a nice relaxing dip at the pool followed by more soaking in the Thermal water, we head back to our room to shower and get ready for dinner. Dying of thirst, we call room service to bring us the biggest bottle of water they have. 2 hours later and still no water, we drag our dehydrated carcasses out into the court yard and start taking photos before heading to the buffet dinner. Now we happened to arrive at the same time as every single tour group staying there. We get ushered to the far side of the dining room where they have small individual tables. We end up with a really wobbly table, and instead of living with it, we changed to the table next to us which was a 4 seater. This is when the waitress chucks a tantrum saying that we're taking up too much room and need to move back to the 2 seater. My bitchiness must've rubbed off onto Moishii who refused to leave the table screaming that she wanted to give us a defective one. I felt so proud. :D

3L of water and plates of food later, we head towards reception where the souvenier shop is. Now if you remember, the previous night, the guy let us walk off with a tour book until we had money to pay. I walk towards the shop only to spot a huge rack of postcards. I throw myself onto the rack and start grabbing them randomly. I lost count of how many postcards I bought, but I ended up with 32 postcards JUST from Pamukkale. Postcards and another guide book in my hand, I walk into the shop to pay. This is when I spot a big rack of jewellery. I picked up a ring that I thought looked alright. Before I could even try it on, the sales guy starts bombarding me. Being use to this behaviour, I asked Moishii to ask him how much the ring is in Turkish. This is what happened.....

Moishi (M): He said its $50, but he'll give it to you for $35.
Me (L): $35? I'll do it for $20.
Sales guy: (Asking Moishii) Can I speak to your friend?
M: Go ahead (Who the hell asks if he can speak to me or not!?)
S: ITs a good ring, I'll do you a deal for $35.
L: I'll give you $20
S: The ring is $50! I'm only giving you a discount cos your friend is Turkish.
L: I'll give you $20
S: How about $30? Thats the best I can do.
L: That's alright then. I don't want the ring.
S: Why you break my heart for!?
L: Why you break my wallet for!? I'll give you $20.

What could he say? I paid $20. Happy with my bargaining, but not sure if I even like the ring, we head back to the room to dump our things. This is when we realise that we will be staying in serviced apartments throughout the whole of our Greek Island trip and.....

*Insert towel incident*

.....We leave our room and lazed around some of the deck chair/beds that they had around the pool deck. This is when the blue dress bitch walks past us and gave us the dirtiest look possible. The look of disgust on her face was unbelieveable! It was like we were laying around naked and playing ourselves! And all we did was laze around. Don't worry, we got a photo of that bitch. We quickly ignore her and grab a front row seat to the belly dancing performance.

The same guy comes out with his snake, shakes his ass, grabs audience up for participation etc. He was good. But the little 7yr old girl standing by the side of the audience was even better. She knew EVERY SINGLE move to his routine, and was dancing along with his performance. If I could move like her, I'll die happy. The belly dancer gets up and starts walking around to the tables to give "one on one" performances. Well, it wasn't a "performance", more like he danced at your table until you tipped him. The standing crowd quickly disperses, but because we were sitting and had a whole heap of cameras with us, by the time we were ready to make a get away, he was standing infront of us. Now don't get me wrong, he was a great performer and I would've loved to tip him. The only problem was, I didn't bring my wallet and neither did Moishii. The only thing we had was our cameras. So here we were, sitting at the table with a topless male belly dancer performing for us waiting for us to tip. It was the most awkward 1min you can go through. And the best bit? A photographer decided to capture the moment for us. He eventually gives up and moves to another table. We grab our cameras and run. By the way, he had nice abs *drools*