Day 26 - Kusadasi -> Pammukale and Hierapolis

Today was rather a relaxing day. We started the day off going to the leather shop. Unlike the carpet shop where they gave us a tour on how the carpet was made, the leather shop started off with a live fashion show. The 2 male models and the 2 female models were quite attractive, and they modeled various leather jackets, and if you were interested in some of them you could mark the numbers on a sheet of paper they provide. In the middle of the show, one of the kiwi girls, Cheryl, and I were picked from our group to do a bit of modeling on our own. We first ran down the runway with a model, and afterwards, we both went down together, doing some twirls and dances along the way. It was quite fun.

Leather jacket fashion show

They said that these jackets are made here in Turkey, and gets shipped to Europe where all the expensive name brands put their label on and sell it with a huge mark up. If I knew anything about leather, or if I had any kind of fashion sense, I would have bought a jacket but since I don't know much about these, I didn't buy anything.

Next up was the ancient city of Hierapolis, the city with the hot springs. Many people came here thinking that the hot springs provided healing for the various diseases. Even Cleopatra and Marc Antony was said to have came here for their honeymoon.

Part of the Agora of Hierapolis

Vast mounds of white calcium carbonate

One of these pools was where Cleopatra and Marc Antony bathed in (not this one though. The "real" one cost 32 lyras to jump in).

Pics with the two awesome kiwi girls (Cheryl and Chantal)

Next two days will be in Cappadocia, in central Turkey. One of their famous tourist attraction is the hot air balloon ride. The tour guide has told us that it would be 160 EUR per person, and that we should go through him to book it with this company, which are the best in the area, with 25 years of experience, having safe pilots and equipment, blah blah. He did warn us that if we decide to go with a different company, that we'd have to sign some waiver form. 

Which was all fine, but when Cheryl (one of the girls in my tour group) researched the prices online, she was able to get a great discount for us (113 EUR) from the same company that our guide was referring us to. When we told our guide about this, he became very surprised and very upset, and said that he'd talk to the company on our behalf, because what they did was very unethical and shameful, and said he has never been so embarrassed in his life. I was able to piece together why it was shameful: because it makes our guide look bad in advertising high prices for us, when in fact there were much lower if you just looked on the internet.

After dinner, our tour guide came to us and said that he had it all worked out, and that the reason for this price discrepancy was that it wasn't the same company giving us the discount, it was a sister company. Which really didn't make sense, because all the email correspondence with them were from the main company, not the sister company. When the guide was gone, our group talked about it, and the general consensus was that the tour guide would have gotten a commission, but since we tried to book it without him, he would have been denied the commission, and the whole "sister company" explanation was just a way to save face.

Also, the guide's enthusiasm today was almost non-existent, and he seemed annoyed in some cases. Plus, I thought he didn't give us enough time to explore the city on our own (only 1 hour and 40 minutes). We were planning to go to the museum but didn't have the time. Maybe he just doesn't care anymore, knowing that this is his last tour. It's kind of sad, but also makes me feel uncomfortable being in the tour with him. Who knows, maybe things will improve.