Day 9 - The accident

We're up at 7am, and out the door by 8:30am. The plan was to find the first restaurant we see and grab breakfast there before heading to the Notre Dame church. Unfortunately, theres nothing open, and the few places I did find open, the 2 girls didn't think their bowels could take the risk. So there goes my idea of squatting on the street and eating.

We get to the Notre Dame church and take a few photos:



We head back to the hotel, in order to find food. Thankfully we walk past a Pho24 before we pass out from hunger.

Pho Duc Biet - Combination Beef Noodle soup

Ice soya bean and avocado shake

We get back to the hotel and relax a bit before we realise that we never ate the watermelon my sister bought. So she whips out her trusty chopping board and knife and starts hacking away. So imagine 3 chicks crowded around a bathroom sink, shoving a whole watermelon down their throat, 15mins before checkout.

Completely stuffed, we grab our bags and head off to the hotel.

The flight back wasn't too bad. We get home around 6pm and we're starving. After a quick shower, we all head off to a local hawker centre for dinner. The hawker centre is next to a playground. So whilst we let the kids run wild, the adults start ordering the food:

Sugar cane and lime juice

Hainese Chicken Rice

Boneless chicken feet

Chicken congee

Rojak

Satay chicken sticks

Laksa

After dinner, we go to the local bakery and load up on freshly made bread and buns for breakfast tomorrow. The traffic is atrocious and at a complete standstill. We wait at a park around the corner whilst my brother in law gets the car.

The kids are having great fun on the monkey bars whilst I stand there chatting with my sister, when next thing you know, my niece is on the floor. She had leaped up to try and grab the monkey bars and missed. She basically landed hands first onto the ground. She's screaming and crying like I've never seen before. My sister tries to calm her down as my brother in law pulls up. We jump into the car, and my niece is still screaming and crying the whole way back. I know she can sometimes be a drama queen, but we've never seen her behave this way before.

We get my brother in law to drop us off at the local medical centre and get her checked out by the doctor. The doctor suspects she's got a fracture in her wrist and probably sprained her other wrist and both elbows. He recommends that we go to a hospital and get it x-rayed. Meanwhile, my niece is in incredible pain. The doctor tried to find a sling to put her arm in, but would you believe that a medical centre doesn't have a sling? I ended up using my cardigan and turning it into a makeshift sling for my niece.

We drive straight to the hospital where it was a massive wait. It took us close to 2 hours before they would even see my niece (Even though 15people who arrived AFTER us got attended to first). And only because one of the other mothers saw my niece in so much pain that she went and begged one of the nurses for us. We finally get to see the doctor, and it took him less than 5 mins to send us to the x-ray department. And it was only then that they gave her any pain killers.

We get the x-ray done and then its another 30min wait for the doctor to check the x-ray. Unfortunately, she does have a fracture in her wrist. Luckily, its only a hairline fracture and won't require putting her arm in a cast. We go out and wait another 15mins to get her arm bandaged up and put into a sling before we're sent home. The whole process took over 3hrs and we didn't get home until about midnight. The bad thing is, its her first day back at school tomorrow. :(

Day 30 - Recuperating in Istanbul

The great thing about staying at a proper hotel is that they provide you with breakfast. However, that is of no use to anyone when you get at up 1pm. And the only reason we got up at 1pm is because the stupid hotel had a blackout in the middle of the night and shut the air con off. I woke up a few times during the night to turn it back on, but the black out has a loud clacking sound which kept waking me up in the middle of the night. It blacked out atleast 2-3 times from memory. Since the air con was off, there was no air in the room. I'm surprise I didn't suffocate and die overnight.

We finally get changed and decided to go search for breakfast. Not after being confronted by Bellboy. We walk down the familiar shops before we find a Simit place where we stopped for some tea and simit.

Simit is basically turkish pretzel that is heavily crusted with sesame seeds. I got a simit pizza to kick off my day. Probably wasn't a great idea since my throat was still fairly closed up and the sesame seeds was making my coughing even worse.

After breakfast, the plan was to do some shopping. Moishii's friend recommended a shopping district where half of the shops sell things in bulk and at a good discount. We jump onto a tram and got off at the last stop. From there, it was a 20-30min walk to the shopping area. Why we didn't catch a cab is beyond me. We get there, and immediately we needed another tea stop.

Once we were reenergised with Cay, we moved on to the shopping. By the 10th shop, Moishii was disgusted that I didn't buy anything. But the thing is, everything they were selling were either dirty or plain slutty. To make things worse, half of the shops aren't even open. within 45mins, we called it quits. The place was desserted as its their rest day and the shops don't open. We jumped into a cab, almost get killed going down the narrow streets and end up in Taksim.

We immediately hit the shops and spotted a really nice pair of jock straps with an elephant on it for Gus. But when we walked into the shop, it was complete chaos with people knocking things over. We decided to bail instead.

We walked up and down the streets of Taksim (God this feels like Mykonos all over again) where Moishii started going a bit nuts buying his CDs. Meanwhile, I was on a hunt for Turkish cookbooks. After an intense shopping spree which didn't involve much buying, we were starving. I still remembered one of the first restaurant Moishii ever too me to in Taksim where we had the most delicious stuffed cabbage and shepards salad EVER. Actually, it was the first time I had shepards salad and I've remembered it ever since. After some hunting, we finally found Otantik.

After sitting down, we quickly ordered our food. Then the waiter goes to this massive wardrobe looking thing, pulls out this massive door and suddenly we had bread. So whilst the bread was plonked down infront of us, this other waiter walks in, opens the wardrobe and throws some leftover bread in. Err........ok. I may lay off the bread.

Finally, the food comes and it tastes just as good as it used to!

Stuffed cabbage

Mixed grill platter

Summer Salad

Cay to wash down the meal

After completely stuff ourselves, we went for another walk around Taksim. It was basically a search for a toilet. Why didn't I go at the restaurant? Someone had errrrrr... "destroyed" the ladies toilets. We walked into Starbucks where I left Moishii and ran downstairs to the toilet. There was a line outside the only toilet. There were 3 kids waiting before me when these other 2 other chicks came and lined up behind me.

5mins later, the chick in the toilet finally comes out and the 3 kids go in together. So the 3 of us were standing outside waiting and waiting. When the chick behind me steps infront of me and starts bashing on the door and then runs off (making it look like I was the one bashing the door down). And she kept doing that another 2 times before the kids came out. OK, I know they were busting to go, but so was I. So whilst I was in the toilet, they turned the lights out on me. Just for 5-10 secs and bashing on the door. Anyone who has gone out with me knows that I am really quick going to the toilet. So they were basically just being a bitch. Well 2 can play at that game. I took ALL the toilet paper that was left in the toilet (there wasn't that much anyway), shoved it into my bag and walked out. Lets see you use the toilets now BITCH.

I walk back upstairs where Moishii is in a panic thinking I got locked in the toilet again. We went for another walk around Taksim and watched these guys perform for awhile:

We decided to head back to the hotel when Moishii suddenly drops his sunnies:

That's what happen when you buy cheap sunnies off a guy on the streets. We also spotted a catholic church in the middle of Taksim:

And we managed to find Christine's new sugar daddy:

We finally get into the taxi stand. After spending 5 mins fighting people for a taxi, we finally got into a cab without any bloodshed. We decided to jump out of the cab earlier (since he almost killed us by driving into oncoming traffic) and walk back. We needed to buy more water and tea anyway. This is when we bump into another Christine sugar daddy potential:

We get back to the hotel where we shower and relax for awhile. My friend managed to get me a copy of Harry Potter on PDF which I had downloaded and was happily reading away on my laptop. (Don't worry, I already have the hard copy, I just don't like reading the hard copy in case I scratch/bend it.....).

As it got later, we decided to go to Maestro again for soup.

More bread

Is there any Salt and pepper!?!?!

Tomato soup

After our soup, we went back to the hotel to rest up. Because of the way the electricity is set up in the hotel, the minute we take our access card out of the slot to go out, all the electricity goes off. So that means the air conditioning goes off which means we suffocate every time we go back into the room. Even when the air conditioning it on, its extremely stuffy. Considering I feel like death has visited me and my nose is blocked like anything, I was finding it hard to breath let alone sleep.

So here we were, tossing and turning trying to sleep. It was probably about 2am, when I heard Moishii tossing and turning in bed and then *CRACKKKKK*. I don't know WTF he was doing, but he had managed to CRACK his head on the 2inches of headboard that is sticking up over the bed. However, the over hanging bit is a good 70cm from the bed. Maybe he was doing somersaults in the bed? I'm biting my lips asking if he's OK. Before he could answer me, I broke out into a laughing fit. Then he broke out into a laughing fit. I think it was the concussion setting in. I then spent the next hour trying not to laugh out loud so Moishii could sleep. but I wasn't really successful since I almost suffocated myself by burying my face in the pillow. He knew I was still pissing myself laughing anyway. I think I eventually passed out from laughing exhaustion at 3am.

Ouch!

Who said Volleyball is a non-contact sport?

It sucks being short and on the receiving end of an elbow..... Could be worse though. I could have panda eyes. Right now it looks like I had an accident with a magic marker.....or really poorly done runny makeup.....

Strange that I got elbowed in the cheekbone, but thats not where it's bruise. Oh wells. Lets hope it clears up for next Friday's massive company party. There will be plenty of photographers there.....