Saturday, May 03, 2008

Turkey 5 : Some Roman leftovers called "World Heritage"

Since I'll be cursing and complaining about the Fat Basturk a lot, I might as well post up a picture of what he loves and talk about most...

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Behold!! The great Olive Tree!! All hail Olive...all hail Olive....

Now, back to the main story....

I don't think I have mention this before but Turkey gave me an impression that it is one very messed up country...why? Well, they practically have every sort of architecture of every age!! And as I listened to Basturk nag about Olive trees...I witnessed the age of men as I traveled along the road to ....ermm...sorry, forgot the name of the place...

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Once again...the hotel we departed from...

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Is this what they call Third World? Looks a lot like Kelantan or Terengganu to me....

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View of a great town that stretches to the horizon...

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Then, as if transported by time, I'm brought to the time of Adam and Eve before they ate the forbidden fruit and "became adult"...

*In the background*
"And now on your right, another meadow being prepared to plant Olives we turks are so gawd damn proud of...blah...blah...oil...blah...olive..."

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Reaching our destination, I realized that I'm transported to the time of the Romans!! or what's left of the Roman empire....

Despite my lame caption for the picture above, I was actually awed by the spectacle before me. What was shown above wasn't exactly Roman ruins...but it's more to ruins of various empires. Since this is near the sea, it was somewhat an important city dealing with trade. Various empires have rendered this place to ruins, rebuilt on it, only to be captured by another empire....and this went on and on for many many years. As a result, this city became a place that possess different architecture of various empires...Romans, Persians...etc

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The empires who captured this city.....they must have been poor, or they were environment friendly people because they reuse the fallen pillars and walls to build a new one. Ehem...very sorry to have misled you on "different architecture of various empires"

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Look at them two.....notice how they are built from different types of stones. Oh btw, I'm talking about the two pillars behind the girls...

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Of all the pictures I took, this one inspired me the most....made me feel that I must not get fat and must remain in shape even in old age so as not to block the path.....

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This....this is one of the earliest blogs...written by the great Caesar himself. The text speaks of how his fat soldiers stopped the attack of enemies by blocking the pathway to the city...

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The "Bibliotek"...it's said that, the library was sandwiched between two buildings, so, to make it look bigger, the pillars in the middle was built thicker than the ones at the end so as to create an optical illusion that makes it look more spacious.

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The pillars on the upper level are built thinner than the bottom ones to create the same effect...

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The theater....the place where many people fell asleep to some boring play.

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Then Boon and Friends came along to cheer the people up...

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One last look at the great theater...and with that we ended our tour at...aww shit, what's the name of the place....Anyway, it was truly a beautiful place. Being in Asia for so long, seeing all this was truly an eye-opener...never knew the world was this big. Oh, throughout the whole tour, Basturk was giving some kind explanation on the site, but I found out that I can get more info by reading the information boards posted along the way.
I once tried to test that guy by asking him about what I read from the info boards....and as expected, he don't know anything!! He said "that there's no such thing...where did you heard that from, you annoying spectacled Malaysian??". I answered by "I read it from that info board behind you, you Fat Ignorant Basturk..." He must have hated me for that as he ignored most of my questions after that!! Haha....1 for Malaysian 0 for Olive loving Basturk...

I didn't mean to humiliate our guide, Mr. Atilla a.k.a Fat Basturk but I was merely curious about how much he knows about the place as he have been there many many times...

And I regretted testing him about his knowledge....I was sorry...truly sorry.....you see, after the tour, he tortured us with more stories when we get into the bus!!!