The Day We Did Things In Istanbul

May 9:

The night before we had found a new acquaintance by the name of Lucie and together the three of us planned to see some of the main attractions around us in the city. Once we got up and going we headed to the Hagia Sophia. We got in line but, after I asked around, it was the line to get in and we had to go through another line for tickets first. During this process we met an engineer from Edmonton who stayed with us for most of the day. Once we got in we looked around. The Hagia Sophia is a museum now, not an active mosque so you don’t have to be specially dressed to enter. It was really interesting to see the juxtaposition of old Christian mosaics with newer Islamic symbols. Other then that the Hagia Sophia is known for being old and big and I can attest to its being both. After a thorough walk through we went off in search of some lunch. After lunch we hit up the Blue Mosque, it’s use as an actual mosque meant that there were some restrictions on attire but the only ones that needed addressing were that we take off our shoes and Lucie cover her head (something they were more then willing to provide for but she decided to tie a shirt around her head instead. The mosque was pretty though the effect was lessened by the inherent sexism in making women cover there heads and pray in the back corner. Next on our list was the Basilica Cistern, a large ancient cistern situated right by the Hagia Sophia. It was pretty neat. Having done so much that day we were pretty tired but once we got back we had to start planning our next step. We had only one more night booked at the hostel and no plans after that. We soon got the computers running searching out a place to fly to in Asia. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur seemed like the easiest/cheapest places to fly to. Looking into cheap flights we could find some for around $500 but most of them had ridiculous layover times. We were able to find one flying through Kuala Lumpur International to Bangkok with just a two and a half hour layover two days from then. We booked the flight and the Lub D Bangkok Siam Square Hostel for five nights and then booked another night at Harmony Hostel on our way out to the post office. I have mail to send back to Canada and had been trying to send it since Greek Orthodox Easter.  Today was not my day though as the post office was already closed. We put it on the list for tomorrow then headed back to the hostel to play video games. After a while we went out to get food and when we got back Pat couldn’t get on the internet so we headed back to our room and I was soon asleep.