Financing the Middle East

You don't to be an oil mogul to travel in the Middle East, but it wouldn't hurt. Here's the lowdown on what Andy and I spent during our time in a few countries in the region. These rates include any visa or exit fees, activities, food, lodgings, and transport for two people, but not flights. (And we included the numbers for Egypt in our last Africa finances post.)

Jordan: $103/day. You can find fairly cheap food (50-cent falafel sandwiches!) and budget hotels ($15-$30 a night) in most places in Jordan, and public transport isn't crazy expensive. What drives the average up is high admission prices for tourist attractions--the main example for this being Petra, which costs a whopping 50 dinar (about $70 US) per person to visit for the day. Our jeep tour around the Wadi Rum desert was a bit expensive too. But since those are the two coolest places to visit in Jordan, there's pretty much no getting around forking over the money. No visa fees here if you're a US citizen, but there is an exit tax (which we learned the hard way is nonrefundable , even when Syria won't let you in and you have to come back into Jordan).

Israel: $94/day. Israel is basically the opposite of Jordan in expensiveness--many historic sites of interest are free to visit, but food is incredibly pricey...and good luck finding a hotel room(or even two dorm beds) in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem for less than $55 US per night. Public transport is also quite expensive, though Israel does have an excellent network of buses, so at least it's fast and easy to get around, with no negotiating necessary.If you want to visit Israel on a small budget, we recommend trying to couchsurf. Again, no visa fee if you're American, but a hefty exit tax upon departure.

Turkey: $82/day. Turkey is pretty good value, since for the most part it feels like you're in Europe, but you're paying closer to developing-world prices. Istanbul is expensive, with two dorm beds (around $10 per bed) costing much less than the cheapest double room we could find (around $35), but even there, you can always find a cheap kebab if you don't want to eat fancy. In the rest of the country, we were able to afford better food and a private room most of the time. As for transport, a quirk we discovered in Turkey is that an overnight bus pretty much always costs the same price (around 50 lira, or $33) no matter how far you're going, so we paid the same for a 7-hour overnight bus ride as we did for a 20-hour one. Buses are kind of pricey, but quite luxurious, with personal seat-back TVs (Turkish-language movies and shows only, sadly) and refreshment carts bringing you coffee, juice, and packaged cakes at random times (usually right after you've dozed off for the night).

That's all for the Middle East. We wish we could bring you some financial data on Syria, but they turned us away at the border for not having a visa arranged in advance in the US. Feel free to write to their government and complain on our behalf.

Obsession for MEN (Middle Eastern Nations)

Not so many countries that we traveled to in the Middle East (not our fault--most of them didn't want us), so not many obsessions. Here's what we have, though. As a reminder, we included Egypt in the last Africa obsessions post, though it is arguably more like the Middle East than like Africa.



Jordan- Sweets. Most of the Middle East has a sweet tooth, but it is most pronounced in Jordan. In addition to tons of regular candy shops selling everything from candy coated almonds to gummy rings, most of the sweets come in two basic baklava-like types: fresh and dry. Fresh are generally not so good, but the slightly drier ones (shelf stable, nonetheless), are really, really good.



Israel- Security. Probably an obvious one, but after practically strip searching me on the way into the country (before they had even decided if I could come in), and having to have our bag x-rayed to go into a supermarket, this is definitely the only choice for Israel's obsession. Well, unless being really expensive is an obsession...



Turkey- Sensor Lights. Is Turkey part of the Middle East? I say yes until they are part of the EU. What's a sensor light, you ask? One of those lights that only comes on when there is movement, like some people use for security lights. Most of Turkey's lights seem to be sensor lights, especially in hallways. Most annoying, though, are the bathroom sensor lights that turn off if you stand at the urinal for more than about 10 seconds. Sure, you just have to move to turn them back on, but it's hard to wave at the lights if your hands are otherwise occupied.



Short and sweet. Hope that you enjoyed!

Savoring Turkey...?

Because I was silly enough to give Andy a choice about which aspect of Turkish cuisine to blog, I have been stuck with writing about savory foods in Turkey. Sigh.

It's not that Turkish food is bad, it's just kind of monotonous--at least when you're on a budget. There's just no way around it, you're going to end up eating a lot of chicken sandwiches.

OK, Other choices may include yogurt, eggplant, lamb, and parsley, though if you're Andy you hate all those things and will eat nothing but chicken and sweets. My diet was slightly more varied, but I have to admit that I'm not terribly sad to be leaving most Turkish food behind as we set out for India.

But, as always, there were a few gems. On to the pictures!

Here is the ubiquitous rotating hunk of tavuk (chicken) on a spit--the part that's close to the heat source cooks on the outside, then the server scrapes the cooked parts off with a huge knife and puts them on your ekmek (bread), dürum (wrap), or pide (naan-like bread) to make a döner kebap sandwich. This one is fun because it has carrots and other vegetables embedded in it, making it more colorful and nutritious than your usual hunk o'tavuk.
Like any good New Yorker, I love bagels, and sesame bagels are my favorites. Well, who knew there were sesame bagels sold on the street all over Turkey?? They are called simit, and are a bit less bready than NY-style bagels, but delicious just the same. No day in Turkey was complete without a simit or two in my tummy.
Kofte are Turkish meatballs, made out of lamb. This sandwich might have been OK if it had come with any sort of moistening condiment on it. This was our main complaint about many sandwiches we had in Turkey.
Pizza is a popular dish in Turkey, and unlike its Italian counterpart, it doesn't automatically come with cheese on it. The round, thin-crust version is called lahmacun, and is topped with ground lamb and various herbs and veggies. The slightly thicker-crusted version is called pide and costs about three times as much as lahmacun, even when it has the same toppings. That's a lahmacun on the left, pide on the right--we had to order both to compare value. Lahmacun won, and that's all we've ever ordered since.
In Selcuk, the town near Ephesus, we went out for dinner with our new friend Christine and got a tasty mixed mezze plate, which came with samples of five different appetizers of our choice. The hummus was the best, followed by the rice-and-raisin stuffed pepper, but the baba ghanoush, spicy cous cous, and fried zucchini weren't bad, either. You are now looking at what was probably the tastiest plate of savory food we had in all of Turkey.
At that same meal, Andy also ordered a chicken şis (shish) kebap, a.k.a. grilled chicken on a stick. It tasted pretty much how it looks--like chicken.
You know what the sight of all that melted cheese means: Neither Andy nor Tara ordered this dish! This is Christine's moussaka, an eggplant stew with ground meat. We tasted the stuff under the cheese and it was OK, not great.
Gözleme, or stuffed Turkish pancake, is one of Turkey's better savory creations. They are usually fairly cheap and vegetarian-friendly, too. This one has spinach and potato in it.
Turkey has a few flavored yogurts available, but plain still rules the supermarket fridge cases. Finding a single-serving size is very hard--a pint of yogurt was often the smallest container I could get. It is thick like Greek yogurt and very nice with honey or cherry jam mixed in.
But the real star of Turkey's yogurt scene is Ayran, a drink that was originally described to me as plain yogurt with water and salt added. I thought that sounded kind of gross and avoided it for a while, but since pretty much everyone in the country was drinking it with their kebab sandwiches except for me, I eventually broke down and got one with a lunch. It was much tastier (and less salty) than I expected, though I did later try a saltier brand which was kind of gross. I think its extreme popularity is directly linked to the lack of condiments on sandwiches--Turks need something to moisten their mouths which while they munch on so much bread!
Wow, this picture looks really vile, but trust me, this is the best kebap in Turkey: the Iskender Kebap! Invented and perfect in Bursa (where we tried it), it is thinly shaved beef served over bits of bread with tomato, browned butter, and a side of yogurt. Very delicious.
This might loosely be described as a casserole. Chicken, vegetables, and soupy stuff. They are fairly popular in much of Turkey. Andy says it didn't have much taste and needed a lot of salt and pepper.
Here you can see the contents of one of the better tavuk döner kebaps I had, this one in Gazi Antep (better known for its baklava). It's on fresh pide bread, which helps. The addition of French fries and pickles also help. And the meat was juicy, but also nicely browned. High marks, Antep.
Another lesser-known G. Antep specialty is pistachios. The few that escape being ground up and turned into baklava sometimes get sold by the kilo to hungry people like moi.

If you've ever dreamed of crowning yourself the king or queen of bagel-land, there is a bakery in Sanli Urfa, Turkey, just waiting to oblige you with a giant simit.


The typical Turkish breakfast definitely falls into the savory category. White cheese, olives, a hard-boiled egg, tomatoes, and cucumbers are all mainstays, and if you eat any less than two-thirds of a full loaf of bread with all this, you are a wuss.

Speaking of bread, Turks love it. When Andy and I stayed at a hotel with a breakfast buffet, we actually served ourselves less bread than we would get when a normal breakfast was served to us elsewhere!

It comes in many forms, too. Here are some plain pides we bought to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with when we got sick of kebaps. They are better when hot and fresh and don't have much flavor on their own...

Back in Istanbul at the end of our trip, we finally bit the bullet and got a kumpir, or massive baked potato stuffed with everything under the sun. Our reason for previous resistance had been price (they cost around $4 each), of course--we have no objections to topping a potato with lots of tasty stuff!
Here is an ayran fountain, which you can sometimes find on the street or in a restaurant. Its main function seems to be the frothing up of the yogurt-water-salt mixture known as ayran. I usually drank prepackaged ayran, but did have the fountain version once and found it weaker than the others I had tried. Who's watering down the ayran??

I leave you with a final shot of chicken on a spinning spit. I'm so sick of this stuff that I can't be bothered to keep a mental itinerary of all the different ones I've encountered, but Andy took this shot because he swears that this is the most massive hunk of chicken we've seen on a spit yet.

I imagine that this post may be somewhat controversial, since almost everyone we know who's been to Turkey raved about the terrific cuisine, and clearly we didn't agree, at least when it comes to the savory side of things. People will probably tell me that I cheaped out too much, or should have eaten more fish, or something. Eh, story of my life.

So I'll just close by saying that if I ever come back to Turkey, I plan to fill up my suitcase with food--it'll just be Tetra Paks of cherry juice, giant jars of cherry jam, and kilos of baklava, not chicken sandwiches! Please, lord, no more chicken sandwiches.

Bak-bak-baklava or Turkey with a Cherry on Top

Tara had the great thought to divide foods of Turkey into Sweet and Savory. For the first time in the history of this blog, I immediately said, "I will do sweets," rather than my standard, "I don't care" when Tara normally asks which section I want to write. Not only is that because I love sweets, but also because the food in Turkey is really boring apart from the sweets.

First, let us know which title you like better. I won't tell you which is mine and which is Tara's.

Starting on the plane to Turkey, Tara discovered that they really like cherry nectar in Turkey. Not only is it everywhere, it is really cheap. Since cherry juice and/or nectar in the US is really expensive, we have drank almost entirely cherry nectar (and water) in Turkey. The nectar tastes like cherry pie filling in juice form. It has the calorie content to confirm that. Tara wants me to emphasize that she really, really, really, really, really likes cherry nectar (and jam). A lot.
Thanks to our friend Mike, we tried the waffles of Turkey. We had seen them advertised, but might have skipped them due to cost had it not been for his suggestion of trying them. Basically, you get a thin waffle with whatever sweet toppings you want, but most are served with some flavored spread, kiwi, bananas, and lots of sundae-style toppings, then folded over and eaten like a sandwich. Not sure how this idea became popular throughout western Turkey, but it's a good one that they should bring to the US.
I will only talk about the right half of the photo since the left half is unsweetened. Jam in Turkey is runny, almost like a syrup. The cherry jam tastes like cherry pie filling. We have eaten it on just about everything.
Apple tea is somewhat of a specialty of Turkey. It has no actual tea in it, but tastes more like apple cider. This is a boring picture, but you'll have to believe me that it tastes a lot better than normal tea.
Turkey also loves its apricots, so we had to try the apricot nectar since we had never seen it. Like peach, but more apricoty and, therefore, not as good. We switched back to cherry immediately following this sample.
If you were a racist, what would you name your knock-off Oreos? How about this? We'll hope they just borrowed some Spanish...
Here is apple tea in its concentrated powder form. I liked it this way because then I could add about ten scoops to a glass followed by ten scoops of sugar (yes, of course it is pre-sweetened, but a little extra sugar never hurts). Finer establishments apparently actually use apples when brewing their apple teas. I don't believe we ever stayed at those establishments.
I was initially very excited to find windmill shaped cookies that look like the amazing Dutch spice cookies. However, we then noticed the little wheat plant on the package, which isn't how sweet cookies are normally marketed. They were on sale, so I bought them, hoping against hope that they weren't healthy. They turned out to be slightly wheaty butter cookies. They should not be able to use the windmill shape, but at least they were sweet and not healthy tasting.
McDonald's has blackberry sundaes in Turkey. You'd think they would have cherry given how much everyone loves it, but no. The blackberry is good, though. A nice distraction from the normal, boring Turkish food.
We thought we were clever at a bus station one morning by going to the little restaurant and ordering the cheapest pastry we could find and then using their toilet rather than paying to use the bus station toilet. This failed for two reasons: 1.) behind the door that said it was a toilet in the restaurant was only a sink and peeing in the sink just didn't seem like a good idea; and 2.) the restaurant charged us more for the pastry because we sat down rather than taking it to go. A brilliant move on our part. The pastry had a completely unidentifiable sticky goo all over it. Not unpleasant, but not great.
While climbing down a gorge in Cappadocia that Tara informed me wasn't a path, we discovered some wild grapes. Because Tara doesn't normally trust me when it comes to eating random plants on a hike, I had to eat a ton of them to convince her that they were safe to eat. Then she tried them and fell in love with them. We almost had to go back the next day to get her more. I hope to find more the next time I make her climb down a non-path.
Gazi Antep. The WORLD CAPITAL of Baklava. Self-proclaimed, maybe, but probably true. We had only one mission in Gazi Antep--to eat baklava until we were sick, but not quite vomiting. Tara succeeded more than I did by eating herself sick. I just felt full. About half the stores in Gazi Antep specialize in baklava, and it is clearly for the locals since we were the only tourists around. It exists in many forms, and we won't bore you with most of the pictures. Note the special green alien logs, though. They are filled with pistachio puree which Tara compares to marzipan. It isn't all that good, but looks nice.
On a five minute break from eating baklava, we found a man selling fresh-squeezed mandarin juice. The main appeal was that it was glow-in-the-dark orange color. It tasted really great, too. Incidentally, Tara referred to this picture as "the one where you have bedroom eyes over the juice." Now, I don't know exactly what she means, but I am fairly confident that I have never made this face in the bedroom.
Around the corner from our hotel, we found a fun juice shop where we could try juices for much less than in Istanbul. Note the one called Salgam on the sign. Do you know what it is? Neither did we, but it sure looks fun.
So, I ordered one. This probably shouldn't go under sweets, but it came from a juice store. As it turns out, for just 50 cents, you can have a glass of pickled beet/carrot/vegetable juice complete with your own pickled carrot. Absolutely amazing. So amazing that we felt bad taking more than two drinks for that price and decided we better give the rest back to the man. He laughed very hard at me and said something in Turkish that must translate as, "You should have known the stuff was terrible because it is half the price of anything else on the menu."
So, we made up for it by ordering an Atom, which is banana, milk, avocado, cherry syrup, honey, and tons of nuts all blended. The nuts are so thick that it is almost like added peanut butter. Very good.
Here is a view from the outside of one of the Baklava stores. The stuff in the lower left is sort of like baklava sausage and is called kadayif. It is shredded wheat with nuts inside and is fun to eat, but mostly just looks more fun than the rest. During our day in Gazi Antep, I think we ate about three pounds of baklava. Most of that was probably me.
But then in Sanliurfa, we discovered something new at a local baklava shop. A baklava eggroll! It is an eggroll filled with nuts, shredded wheat, and honey. Not bad, but very strange because the outside tastes just like any other eggroll. I am hoping to find more sweet eggrolls in China.
Doesn't a peanut covered cookie make everyone smile? The cookie was dry just like any Italian would love, but the peanuts on top made up for the dryness.
In the Sanliurfa bazaar, I found a kid selling slushies and proceeded to drink a few glasses while standing there. It had artificial sweetner, which wasn't great, but it was still good and as close as I have come to a Dairy Queen Mr. Misty (now lamely called an Arctic Rush) in about a year.
In many sweet shops, we had seen what is locally called Guzeltepe. No, I don't know how to pronounce it, either. But, it sounded and looked fun, so I bought some. It is a slightly grapey jelly like the inside of a jelly bean surrounding walnuts. Not much flavor, really. I'll go with the baklava next time.
Turkey has its own special ice cream called Turkish Ice Cream. Negative five points for lack of creative naming. The have mixed ice cream with bubble gum (or at least lots of gum arabic) to make a chewy ice cream. Yes, it is weird. And it doesn't really have that much flavor. We aren't huge fans, but this guy was happy to make Tara pose with him. He even had me take a second picture on his camera phone.
The sweets of Turkey are the only thing worth eating in Turkey. Sure, it's an extreme statement, but I think you'll be much happier if you only eat sweets while staying there. If I were to do it over again, I would throw out all the doner and bread and goat and stick to sweets, sweets, and more sweets. And maybe some pickled beet juice.

Turkey Leftovers

Well, I'm taking over the story in Gazi Antep, the baklava capital of the world, but this isn't the food post, so I won't mention the amazing baklava. Instead, let us turn our attention to more interesting subjects.

In the fight for Turkish independence after World War I, Gazi Antep got hammered. They asked Ataturk to send them help and he basically replied that they weren't important enough and that they would have to fend for themselves. After the war ended, Ataturk felt sort of bad, so he added the name "Gazi" to the city Antep, which means "Veteran" for their valor. This apparently satisfied them because now the citadel is a museum that is mostly devoted to singing the praises of Ataturk. It also has some nice bronzes of the people who kept fighting in very miserable circumstances.
That seems to be the only non-baklava picture we have from Gazi Antep. Next stop: Sanliurfa. That has some weird Turkish characters in it, but I won't use them for fear that they won't show up on many computers. Sanliurfa is most famous as the site where both Abraham and Job spent time. Apparently, while trying to destroy pagan gods, Abraham angered Nimrod, the local king. So, Nimrod settled their differences like any good king and ordered Abraham burned at the stake. Unfortunately for Nimrod, God objected to this plan and turned the fire to water and coals to fish. The sudden change propelled Abraham off a massive cliff into a bed of roses below, which, of course, broke his fall. This mosque is located by one of the two pools that is symbolic of the water and fish. The fish are sacred, so everyone feeds them. Yet, no one seemed happy when I jumped in to play with the fish.
From Sanliurfa, we took a side trip to Harran, which turned out to be a bit less exciting than expected. Possibly the most exciting part was seeing them make yogurt in this goat skin. Yum!
This is what remains of one of the world's oldest universities in Harran. Or at least this part has been reconstructed most recently. The tower was an observatory once.
The most famous part of Harran is the beehive houses. However, modern innovations like electricity mean that no one lives in them anymore. Just a few remain for tourists. They do look neat.
For those who don't know the story of Job, he angered God by living during the Old Testament years when God was angry with everyone. God smite Job by killing his whole family and giving Job terrible diseases. So, Job ran away to a cave--this cave--to pray for seven years. Eventually, God let Job come out of the corner and gave him some magical water to make his diseases go away and to find a new, hotter wife. These people are either praying for the patience of Job or for God to give them a new, hotter wife, too.
Purple is the color of choice in Sanliurfa. Both men and women normally wear purple head coverings if they are religious. Sorry that we couldn't get a better picture, but spy shots are hard to take.
Here I am drinking the same magic water that cured Job. Not literally the same water, but from the same well. It hasn't made me sick yet, so that's a good start.
After getting us just a bit lost, but not really so lost, we came out at the highest point in the city and had great views of the city. Good job, me.
A shot of the holy carp by day. That's a lot of gefilte fish just waiting to be made.
After Sanliurfa, our next destination was Mount Nimrut and its surroundings. This mountain was built by a local king, who wanted to be like the Egyptians 1000 years before, but didn't have the know-how. He built some massive statues of himself and his god relatives and then ordered stones piled up to make a fake mountain peak. That's right--no pyramid, just a pile of rubble.
This one is of the king's uncle, Sam the Eagle.
The heads have all fallen off the statues in earthquakes. It's always the earthquakes. My monumental building will be built somewhere with no many earthquakes.
Is this a gnome or a king? You decide.
Near the mountain is one of the oldest Roman bridges around. Built in the 2nd century, the four columns were meant to honor the emperor, his wife, and the two kids. One of the kids died, so they tore down the column. By this logic, it seems that they all should have been torn down by now since I am fairly certain that none of them are still alive.
Who is scarier: the lion or me? No need to answer. I know it's me.
And one last picture. The Grand Bazaar in Turkey is sort of how I would have pictured a bazaar if Las Vegas created it. Clean, shiny, covered from the rain, and lots of expensive stores and stalls. This picture is the nicest part, but the whole massive bazaar is much fancier than any we have been to.
That finishes Turkey. We enjoyed Cappadocia the most, but the entire country was nice. Now, however, we are ready to move on to a dirtier, cheaper place like India!