Hello yes, how are you today? Where are you from? Oh Sydney or Melbourne? You come with me for Turkish hospitality and drink tea (and buy carpet/package tour). No where have I heard that before. The words are a little different but the song remains the same. We spent 2 days in Insatbul. This was one of the places I was really looking forward to visiting - the travel books hype it as a really unique place where East meets West, but really you could use that term to describe Saigon or Bangkok as well, although the East influence is obviously more Middle East than Asian, so I was a little let down. Don't get me wrong, its great to bargain again and get meals for less that $2 and it is still a pretty impressive city, it just didn't quite living up to all the hype. The funniest thing is the sound systems on all of the mosques, it looks like they all try to outdo each other during their prayer time broadcasts (they're still guys after all), seriously I reckon theres nowhere in the city of 16 million people where you go without hearing their 'singing'. For those interested in the bus journey it actually wasn't that bad. The fist night in a full compartment sucked but the rest of the trip we had a whole cabin to ourselves. There was a little debacle with the 4 Americans next door where the 2 girls got off to get some water before the 2nd night and the train left without them. Their husbands were runing up and down the corridor trying to get the train to stop and all the Bulgarian conductors had no idea what they were on about. The girls just got a cab to the next station so no big deal, but it was entertaining at the time.