Istanbul Warning or Danger Tips by AcornMan

The area around the Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Suleyaniye Mosque, and Rustem Pasa Mosque can get very crowded and congested, especially in the narrow alleys and walkways. A tourist with a backpack or other easily accessible bag or purse is an easy target for pickpockets, and we narrowly avoided being victimized when my wife caught some guy blatantly unzipping her backpack and trying to reach inside. Imagine his surprise when my wife used her stern teacher voice to command him to leave her alone! Fortunately he backed off quickly and several locals asked whether we were OK, but from then on we became very vigilant about carrying bags through crowded areas of the city.

Leave a Comment

One of the first things you will notice when you walk around Istanbul, especially in the tourist-centered area of Sultanahmet, is the almost overwhelming horde of carpet salesmen, hawkers, and "tour guides" who will descend upon you. I put "tour guides" in quotes because most (if not all) of the men offering to give tours of the city seemed more interested in steering you to various shops instead of visiting the many cultural sights.

Not having encountered this volume of aggressive marketing before, it took me a couple days to get used to it. After a while I learned that the best way to deal with these folks is to just smile, say "no thank you," and keep right on walking without slowing down. Sometimes I just avoided making eye contact at all, which seemed unfriendly but necessary.

Leave a Comment

The first thing you'll notice about the Turkish Lira (TL) is that it has a lot of zeros on it. That's because inflation over many decades has caused it to be the lowest valued unit of currency in the entire world. So while you might be accustomed to dealing with dollars, pounds, euros, or lira from single digits up to perhaps hundreds at the most, in Turkey you'll rarely buy anything for less than 1,000,000 Turkish Lira. In fact the smallest bank note in Turkey, 250,000 TL, is almost never used for anything. The largest bank note is 20,000,000 TL, with several amounts in between. It is not uncommon to make purchases in the billions of lira, which means you have to pay close attention or you might use the wrong note for payment or receive the wrong one in change. Compounding this problem is the fact that the same image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk appears on all Turkish bank notes, and some of the notes are even the same color!

Relief is in sight, however. Effective January 1, 2005 the New Turkish Lira will go into circulation. A new One Lira note will be the same as a One Million Lira note (i.e. dropping six zeros). New coins will be issued as well. No doubt this change will make life MUCH easier for visitors, though the old currency will still be legal tender until January 1, 2006.

Leave a Comment

Although most modern areas of Istanbul have sit-down public toilets like those you would see all over the world, it is not uncommon to encounter older public toilets that you squat over rather than sit on. We encountered these older toilets on the boat during our Bosphorus cruise and also outside the Sulemaneya Mosque. If you think about it these are actually more sanitary because you never have to touch the toilet, but it can still be a bit unnerving at first. Just be sure everything in your pockets is secure!

Also keep in mind that you often have to pay to use public toilets, though it's not expensive (about 25 cents or so).

Leave a Comment