Pamukkale

We went to Aphrodesius in the morning with about two-thirds of the group. On the way we encountered traffic police in the middle of the road pulling everyone over - there were two or three other vehicles on the shoulder. Apparently a bus this size is equipped with a speed recorder that keeps track of how fast you’ve gone at points throughout your trip, so they can give you a speeding ticket for three hours ago even though they weren’t there. Our speed recorder took a long time to print its report, and when it finished they decided it wasn’t working properly, so they were going to give us a ticket. Our driver offered them a bribe instead, which they accepted - this is apparently the way things normally work. The entire purpose of the stop was to collect the bribe - they’ll pull you over for no reason, and find some reason to give you a ticket. You’re expected to bribe them, but it’s okay if you don’t - they’ll just give you the ticket. So he paid them (we don’t know how much) and we got back on the road to Aphrodesius. It was pretty much the same as all the other ruins we’ve seen, with the exception of the stadium. It was used for races and is at least twice the size of the 25,000-seat theater at Ephesus. The other unique thing about the Aphrodisius site is that it also contains the gravesite of Professor Kenan T. Erim, who led the entire excavation and renovation process from the 1960s until his death in 1990. He’s probably the only person buried on an archeological site anywhere in the world - it’s really unusual, I’ve never heard of that kind of thing before. Lunch was a lot of fun. There was enteratainment provided by a guitarist (it wasn’t really a guitar, but I don’t know what local instrument it is) and a beautifully colored parrot named Tango. The parrot sang and danced, and collected the tips - he stood on the edge of a tall drum, and if you handed him a bill folded in half (unfolded he couldn’t wield it, and folded more than once it was too big for his beak) he’d drop it into the drum, sometimes waving it about before getting it in. I got to hold him for several minutes, and he bounced up and down on my finger. We also ate with farm animals - the table was right next to the wall and I was on the end, but two kids (goats, not people) and a lamb managed to cram themselves between the table and the wall and fell asleep on top of each other. I was playing with the bird while my girlfriend was paying the bill so I don’t know if lunch was reasonably priced, but the food was good and I had a lot of fun. my girlfriend agreed this was probably the best place we’ve been for lunch the whole trip. We only had half an hour at the hotel before leaving again for the calcium deposits of Pamukkale. There wasn’t much to see; we took off our shoes and walked on the calcium a bit. All the walking by tourists isn’t good for the deposits, so they block off most of it and try to apply rules to the rest - but nobody pays any attention, and the area’s not supervised. I wrote some more postcards back at the hotel, and after dinner we went to the pool again. I needed to wash my hair, so we planned to take a shower - but it turned out that the knob you pull up to switch to shower was stuck, so I ended up taking a bath instead.