Cushy Kusadasi

Kusadasi (the “Kus” pronounced “Koosh”) lived up to its namesake as it proved to be our cushy home for a week-long veg out session. Heading to this highly recommended seaside town we knew we wanted to settle in for a few days, maybe a week. The pressure for me to find a job was mounting to slight anxiety and Deb had been on the move for quite some time. We had nothing but time and we were told that this was the place to stop and just be. Yep, turned out to be exactly that. Nice find.

A couple of long-ass but very efficient bus rides and we end up in town after dark, excited to see what looks like a potential vacation hotspot. Dropping bags and getting a quick orientation, we head out looking for apartment options and to check out what’s what in this southern seaside location. Not only did we quickly find a great little apartment, we found a town bursting of neon-lit, cobblestone-laid, souvenir and trinket lined streets buzzing with European holidayers gulping local beer and guffawing at the suave entrepreneurial lures attracting them into shops and restaurants. Oh this is gonna be SUCH good fun!

The next morning we moved into our new hotel apartment run by a charming Eugene Levy look alike and his equally kind family. Our apartment’s balcony over-looked one of the main streets in town where the lives of locals and tourists regularly passed by and festival-sized markets set up on Wednesdays and Fridays closing down all traffic for the day. Perfect, perfect, perfect! Bags emptied upside down, well-worn travel clothes washed in a full sized bathtub, shelves and closets filled with products freed from ziplock bags and travel cases, and we properly settled in. *sigh* Press pause and just breathe.

My priority… a job. Offers had come in and I had choices to make. After the disappointing and extremely expensive Ghana travesty, I was wary and worried. Country choices, salary differences, quality of life, contract stipulations… gulp! This isn’t fun anymore but time is running out and I needed to commit to something NOW. So Deb saves my life, once again. She walks me through the pros and cons of this one and that one. We look at the cities, the contracts, the offers, and what my daily life may or may not consist of. She’s patient with my hysteria, fills in my panicky gaps with information that she researched online, and allows me to become a falling apart mess for as long as it takes for me to make a decision. Throw me in the middle of someone else’s crisis and arms wide open I’ll take it all on. Tell me I have to make a decision that may settle me down for a period longer than a week and I’m in full-on meltdown mode. Deb! Choose for me. Sigh, Jan, I can’t choose for you, but you can do this. No, no, no! I can’t! Just choose for me! I promise, I won’t get mad or blame you if it goes wrong, or second guess your choice. Relax Janice, just break it down and think about it. *sob!* I need a glass of wine. Okay Jan, let’s have some wine.

And this is how it went for a couple of days. Deadline day arrived. I chose, they accepted, and a paid for plane ticket was emailed in my name. I HAVE A NEW JOB! I accepted a teaching position with a language school in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. Big, busy city and I’ve been warned that it’s a typical crowded, polluted, loud, somewhat unattractive Asian city but the beaches are short bus rides away, a nearby active volcano hike makes for an excellent weekend excursion, and hello! It’s Indonesia! A 20 minute flight to Bali and more short jaunts to some of THE best diving spots in the world. There are loads of details in the contract but I’ll share those after I’ve actually had a chance to see if they come to be. They seem organized, I’ve already heard from one of the teachers there (who seems LOVELY!), and I’m set to arrive on July 7th, starting to teach on July 11th. Gulp! That’s soon, soon, soon but the head teacher already sent me words of encouragement; telling me the first week is laid back and easy breezy and that I’ll be just fine. Wow. This is really going to happen. From Africa to the Middle East to Asia. It has been one wild year and a half.

We spent our week lounging. Wandering nearby market streets, checking out local beaches, and watching the fabulously funny, mostly British and Russian holidayers having a drunken good time was full time entertainment. There was so much more that maybe we could or should have seen as we were there for a good, long while but life was pretty easy there and we took full advantage of chill out mode. That being said, Deb & I can usually manage to find some small bits of trouble to stir up, completely by accident of course! Oh let me tell you…

As we indulged in our regular peering over the balcony sessions watching the world float by underneath, we noticed an establishment just next door to us that appeared to be a regular nighttime hot spot. But an unusual one in that we would see loads of men coming and going but no women. Hmmm… A darkened den with blue neon lights and music, oh whatever could it be? We absolutely knew EXACTLY what it was but we wanted to see the show for ourselves. So one night, early evening of course, we strolled in to find several heavily made up, scantily clad, hard looking Eastern European and Turkish girls seated at various tables ready for business. Deb and I confidently marched over and plopped our curious selves down at one of the tables alongside the wall, excellent view of the entire room, and smiled at the gawking and shocked faces all turned in our direction. The manager hurried over and asked us what we wanted, why are you here? we replied that we wanted a drink, he just stood there. Can we have a drink? Maybe a couple of Cokes? Again, blink, blink, blink. You? Drinks? Yes, please. He looks around, helplessly, shrugs his shoulders, and brings us our drinks. Hee.Hee. This is fun.

Initially there were only a few icky, lecherous men hanging around the outsides of the room peering at their potential prey and sizing up their targets for the night while Deb and I took in the whole scene. Some experienced girls very confident in their ultra high heels and outfits that left little to the imagination and some brand new barbies, one of whom was escorted into the bathroom by one of the more experienced entertainers shortly after she arrived to change her modest dress and faint makeup to a more appropriate street worthy image. *sigh* Such a shame.

More men slinked and slimed their way in the door while Deb and I continued to get confused and curious glances from the girls and the men alike as the bar staff nervously flitted nearby. Some of the girls smiled and waved at us, some scowled, I guess thinking that maybe we would get in the way of their money making for the evening (highly unlikely as we showed up in our shorts and ratty flipflops). Anyway, a short while into our sex for sale evening, several large men burst in through the doors and shouted, bringing the music to a screeching halt and freezing everyone to the spot. Deb, former police officer for 27 odd years, immediately recognizes this as a “RAID!” I, as the retarded thinks everything is funny people watcher doesn’t see anything but humor in the whole weird scene. As the panicked girls start to dig through their bags, the staff I’m watching try to make themselves invisible, and the large men start gallomping through the room demanding ID from each girl, I’m laughing. Loudly. Deb is shooting me “shut-up!” looks which I naturally don’t pick up on nor do I hear the head of the police pack shouting in our direction. Deb notices him getting increasingly angry at me not picking up on the seriousness of the situation and then HE shouts at me to “SHUT UP!” (I didn’t hear this either, Deb had to finally tell me.) Yep, I’m a moron.

We watch as each shaky girl has her ID confiscated and a couple of them look over to us, giving us a thumbs up or mouthing “it’s okay, it’s okay” trying to reassure us. The angry head of the raid guy stomps over to our table and I’m now a bit nervous so even more giggly. He looks at us, looks at the manager, back at us, then sticks his hand out “PASSPORT!” Deb and I smile sweetly, tell him that we are living next door and just came over for a drink. We have no ID on us. Again he looks over at the manager, they both shrug their shoulders, and angry grumpy raid guy stomps off. Whew. I think it was pretty obvious that we weren’t involved in the evening activities just by looking at us. Oh. My. Goodness.

As each girl was eventually given back her ID, sighs of relief, claps of joy, and squeals of thanks were heard around the room. Poor things. Police leave, music starts back up again and then… in walks the madam. A frumpy, miserable, in-charge looking woman who scared the girls a million times more than the police raid. As she made her rounds, checking out what the girls were wearing and what they were up to, the girls were ordered to scatter to the drooling, greasy maggots sitting around the edges of the room and start conducting their business. The easy smiles and casual comfort as they hung around each other switched to seductive sashaying and teasing touching in efforts to bring in the money demanded by the bitch in charge. Heart breaking. We took our leave shortly after this.

Not sure the owner of our hotel was too happy to see where we were returning from but we thought it was pretty funny. Canadian girls… sheesh!

Getting out of Kusadasi and towards our next destination proved to be equally as frustrating as each bus company claimed to either be full or confused or simply didn’t want to help us. What the HELL is going on here?! “Tourist agencies” and “bus companies” but no one knew how to get us from one major city to the next nor were they interested in selling to us. Grrrr! We finally found one very nice man who sorted out two tickets for us but wowsers, it took some serious effort. For a country high on the list of European travel destinations, this country isn’t proving to be very tourist friendly. Whatever. We had a good week in a fun place, reams of relaxation, a little trouble stirred up, and yippee do dah… new job for me! Everything else is gravy on this travel train. Yee-haw! We’re off to Pamukkale.