Greetings from Turkiye

Here I am in Turkey again, but with my mom and my friend Karen joining me for this trip. Having been to Turkey a few times, I thought everything would go smoothly but I ended up with an eventful day the moment I landed in Istanbul.

It all started at the Istanbul Atartuk airport. Upon arrival, we proceeded to collect our baggage as usual. I don’t know why but I guess I was too tired, I stared at a passing luggage that looked like mine. Karen asked if that was my luggage. I hesitated a while before saying ‘err..yes’ but the luggage has already passed me by. I got my mom’s luggage and shortly after, the same luggage came to us and I lifted if off the belt. We left the airport.

When we reached the hotel, the room was not ready so we ended up waiting at the lobby for another 1.5hours. During this time, I realised that my mobile phone does not have network coverage. It turned out that Turkey is not covered under M1’s Pay Per Roam service. Talk about Murphy’s Law. I had to call M1 customer service from overseas just to activate my autoroam. Fortunately I got it within 2hours. Our room was also ready by then, I was looking forward to having a good shower and sleep before we set off again at 1pm. Our drama begins here…

I suddenly realised that the luggage bag I lugged off the belt earlier was not mine. It was a black Samsonite, which is exactly what I used to carry for my previous trips to Turkey. But this time, I carried a blue Samsonite of the same design! All my sleepiness were dispersed immedidately, questions flooded my mind and I thought ‘oh dear, who’s luggage have I got here? The owner must be panicking now’. I thought about my furry friends too, fortunately I didn’t have them checked in *phew*. Call it concidence, the wrong baggage belongs to a Singaporean and there were contact details on the luaggage tag. We contacted the owner after some initial difficulties and got her to pick it up from our hotel. We rushed down to the airport to locate my missing luggage.

After much calling, waiting and verification, I finally found my luggage *thank God* :) It was already 1230pm. I didn’t manage to shower or sleep, just wash up and off we went for lunch and shopping. My eyes were dry, red and very uncomfortable due to lack of sleep. Honestly, I wasn’t quite in the mood for shopping, all I wanted was to sleep. I was walking around like a zombie. Finally, we decided to go back to our hotel after 3hours but not without a grand finale to my sotong day - I almost walked straight into a glass panel at the Levis store thinking it was the exit. And the best thing was, everyone was following behind me :P Hee… I really needed a sleep very badly.

Back at the hotel, I had a good 2hours sleep and felt much better. Our first dinner in Turkey was alfresco dining at this seafood restaurant by the Mamara sea. It got a bit cold as the sun set and this is summer time. My eyes got a bit dry again with the wind blowing and I was glad when the dinner was over. Gotta have some good sleep before we get up at 6am tomorrow for 2D/1N west black sea tour. I should be back to my own self tomorrow :)