My Mates in Turkey

Hi and my apologies for the delay in writing more frequent friend reviews. One thing that has become apparent in the digital landscape where blogs live, is that regular updates make for more readers and shit. The good thing about waiting this long is that there are a lot of mates to rate, which is why I would like to present the first Meet My Mates Exposé!

I'm turning back the clock to last week when I was in Turkey. Now despite having a pretty silly name for a country there were some great people to meet. I met and became mates with quite a few there but I'm just going to comment on a few stand outs now.

Gemma from Australia - Turkey 23/05/2013 - 29/05/2013  

Now Gemma is your typical Australian girl, she drinks heaps, has her own word for cunt (she just says it in another language) and she has been living in London for the last couple of years. 

On the first night of our 4 day sailing trip around the Med Sea, Gemma, her girlfriend Jo and myself were the last people up drinking vodka and beers we had smuggled on board, playing circle of death and basically being loud and cray!  Gemma pulled the fourth king and had a 3 parts beer 1 part vodka cocktail to get down, tried to get away with leaving some at the bottom of the cup too cheeky bugger!

Gemma also liked to take the piss out of Jo at every possible opportunity, this was pretty cool, I salute anyone that takes pride in hassling their mates and loved ones! Good on a ya Gem! 

MATE RATING: 

Gemma you displayed so many good qualities that are extremely important in mateship. You could have had a really good score but I do hold you responsible for taking us all to Wallabies Restaurant which led to me meeting Ali Baba. For this reason I can only muster a 8/10.

Ali Baba from Selçuk - Turkey 23/05/2013

This guy! I thought he was alright even though he owned a restaurant and guesthouse called Wallabies. The food his grumpy cook made in the restaurant was delicious. Ali decided he would come and have a drink with us while we were eating, he was already a bit tipsy and he advised us that he had been drinking since midday. As the dinner went on he started telling us all manner of slurred stories, his brother is in jail for firing a rifle from the roof of the restaurant (he had started his own mafia type gang in Selçuk, a town smaller than Hastings). He pulled me close at one stage and levelled with me, man to man "I am 42 years old, and I have fallen in love for the second time". I didn't know what to say to this so I told him that I was happy for him and the conversation seemed to die for a minute as he pondered his love he drunkenly muttered to himself and I could kind of make out that he was reassuring himself that things would be different this time. He piped up after that "Do you like music? I'll bring my laptop". He comes back out with his laptop and plays some R.E.M. on youtube. He went on to tell us that he used to own the hotel over the road and it was called All Blacks hotel, the mayor had made him change the name because people around town thought it a bit racist. 

After his fourth or fifth beer with us he stood up and announced to the whole table"I am 42 years old, and I have fallen in love for the second time!".

MATE RATING:

Ali Baba, you were very hospitable, however the fact you changed your restaurants name to the Wallabies and your half turkish half english mumbling was kind of creepy means I can only award you 4/10. 

Matilda (Tilly) & Ryan from Australia - Turkey 25/05/2013 - 29/05/2013

This is Tilly. I am writing down notes on the many survival techniques that she has such a vast knowledge of. As a young tyke her and her brothers would head out into the Australian bush and throw rocks at emus. These birds would then take exception to this behaviour, rightly so, and chase these young fullas. Her first survival tip was based on this very situation. When being attacked / chased by an emu the first thing you need to do is find a large rock to stand upon and raise your arm in the air making a sock puppet type head. The reasoning behind this is that if the emu is shorter than the sock puppet they become too scared to continue the fight. She had many other survival tips but as you know time is of the essence, so I have shared the most relevant and helpful one.

Now before I tell the tale of Ryan, I feel its important to paint a picture of what backpacking with your significant other is like. We stay in hostels 99% of the time to keep costs down. This does however make sexy time extremely rare. What is also difficult in a hostel is the alone time that all guys with arms long enough to reach their willys know about. Anyway I had managed this very type of alone time the day I met Ryan and & Tilly which probably helps their cause as they showed up to the boat an hour late, delaying our cruise. 

Now Ryan is a classic kiwi, except he comes from Australia, and has never been to New Zealnd. We had a ball. One night while there were only a few of us left on deck drinking, Ryan and I were fishing and yarning, we decided that we would give the fishing a miss and reeled in our lines. This bugger had caught a fish. I was jealous so I pulled the classic maori fishing trick... 

Thanks Tony for teaching me the fishing photo bomb technique. 

Anyway lets get to the rating.

MATE RATING:

Tilly, you are a bloody ripper. The knowledge you have on survival is immense! If there was ever a zombie apocalypse, you would be a vital member of my team. You have the skills to hack it with my mates back home and, truthfully, I can't fault you. It is my pleasure to award you with the first 10/10

Ryan, you were also a bloody good bloke. You have the stamina to party all night and yet the skills to sneak off phantom like when you have had enough. I'm sorry for pusshing you off the jetty, fully clothed, at the Turkish disco. You did however catch the only fish of the trip on my line and because of my own selfishness I cannot give you full marks. You are awarded a well earned 9/10

There were many others on this trip however I felt it best to write about the standouts.