Asia Trip 7 Part I - Bucharest, Istanbul, Tbilisi, Batumi
Published March 24, 2024
GO! England to Romania
It started as Happy Birthday and evolved into a not-too-terrible but still pretty kack-handed rendition of My Heart Will Go On. Late night, LUTON! People tend to hate this airport, but I find nothing egregious here, except maybe for the fucking piano. Don't put a fucking piano in an airport. If you do, lock the lid at night, or at least electrify the keys.
There was no sleep to be had until the afternoon of the next day when I arrived at my hostel in Bucharest, which was actually a hotel but called itself a hostel. This was the beginning of Asia Trip 7, in Romania, a very non-asian country, but fuck you, I make the rules 🙂
The main goal of the trip was hitting my 20th new country of the year and 58th country overall. I had been deliberating, moving things this way and then that for months. As I packed and ran the bath, only hours before leaving for the airport, everything was still up in the air with each possible path featuring several big annoyances.
That was all until I got in the bath, relaxed into the hot water and finally found the perfect route. I conjured up a ridiculous £28 flight from Yerevan to Abu Dhabi out of thin air and laughed my arse off with glee.
I decided to throw away my booked flight from Bucharest to Abu Dhabi and head on through Türkiye and the Caucasus instead.
Romania, Türkiye, Georgia, Armenia, UAE, Oman, Malaysia, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines
I would be embarking on a sword slash across the planet Earth.
Bucharest wasn't what I was expecting. Bucharest, Romania, Eastern Europe. Another one of those.
The Bucharest in my mind was a mix between the Balkan countries I had visited in September and maybe Hungary. It turned out more like Paris. Beautiful. Different. Beautiful.
Bucharest wasn't a city of dazzling attractions, but walking the streets is often one of the more enjoyable ways to spend time and these streets had something to them.
I saw the main tourist attractions over two mornings and spent the rest of the time wandering.
The rain pelted the concrete as I stepped outside the door. I went back upstairs and grabbed my baseball cap. The amount of protection a simple cap offers you is something that needs to be studied.
I crunched the faded orange and yellow leaves underneath my running shoes. The weather was somewhere between bubbly warm and tickly cool.
I was walking to the parliament, one of only two landmarks I wanted to see. It was supposedly 'The heaviest building in the world'.
I saw it. And I also saw the shitty travelling fairground stuck in front of it.
I walked around and got the best videos and photos I could with this fairground bullshit.
It was a situation both Gay and homo-sexual, and not the positive kind of either.
3 outta ten, a DISGRACE!
Didn't even look that heavy.
Steam rose from manhole covers buried in the black streets. Trees, brown and green whispered kindness. Wet soggy asphalt. The hint of rain and hallmarks of fall held me close.
It was a nice Buchy, nice!
The next morning I went to visit the fake Arc de Triomphe, not as bad in person as it looks in the pictures. The best knock-off is still the one in Vientiane, Laos. It looks ancient and infected. The Romanian copy is a fading yellow.
As I walked back down the long avenue with the obligatory homeless for each bench, I quickened my pace.
I was running late for my flight to Istanbul.
But being me I refused to be running late for anything. So I slowed down and enjoyed the air, enjoyed the trees. It was beautiful here and it was a beautiful time of year
I decided to alter time to my favour, far better than the alternative of rushing about in a silly panic.
I left Romania with better thoughts of the place than its reputation suggested. Nice when that happens.
The first country of this global assault course, done.
Istanbul
I was having life-changing thoughts. Beauty was on tap here. And these bitches be drinking, these bitches be DRUNK.
Bitches be drinking
Bitches be drunk
Rows of red and white triangles, bunting of Ataturk hung across the windows of the train. It was Türkiye’s 100th birthday just days before.
I got to the end of the line, and jumped on the first boat that looked right. We crossed the Bosphorus in the late peaceful breaths of daylight.
I got on the wrong boat, but is there ever really a wrong boat?
Yes there is and it was the boat's fault.
I walked and walked for hours and twisted myself into a silly place.
The sky fell dark, the Instagram models came out to caress brick walls and my body had almost had enough. I listened, stopping and taking a moment to drink some water and stand still.
I had some crappy hostel booked somewhere on this heap.
Things were getting dangerous. I was dehydrated. I was near wrecked but not wrecked yet. It was time to head back to the airport, get WiFi, find a hotel and if I couldn't, the airport would be home until morning.
I made my way to the nearest ferry terminal and jumped aboard another boat. I returned to the Asian side of the city as night took over Istanbul. I rode the M4 line again from start to finish, or finish to start.
With 3% phone battery and no chargers in sight, I found a hotel that wasn't fully booked, 'Zoom Hotel' just one Metro stop away from the airport and committed.
The day over, another long day over, I fell into sleep.
I woke in a large hotel room, this room was for the plastic-chain gangsters, the titty-tit bitches, the bucket-vag hoes. I didn't hate it. I pulled open the curtain of the floor to ceiling wall to wall window. Istanbul, suburbs, everyday life.
That day I moved to a cute hotel near the port and the next day returned to Europe for the main sights of the city.
I was underwhelmed by the reality of them.
I didn't feel any peace or joy in The Blue Mosque. The building's exterior was majestic, but the inside left a lot to be desired. The very large crowd of tourists didn't help. I had the same feelings for all of these Istanbul landmarks. From the outside these were hardcore beauty, but the insides were not.
…but the insides still attracted hardcore beauty numbers.
The city itself was where that hardcore beauty lay.
Istanbul skyline = hardcore beauty
Istanbul streets = hardcore beauty.
Hardcore beauty.
The position on the bosphorus and what the Turks have done with that position is a massive advantage over other cities. It's a very interesting location. The fact that it sits half in Europe, half in Asia adds to that even more. Istanbul is underrated among the great metropolises of the world and it shouldn't be.
I returned to Zoom Hotel for my last night in Istanbul. I had one of the wrap-around rooms, and with it, the long wrap-around window wall. I spent a long time watching the people. All these Turkish people. This was a country, these were a people. Countries are funny things, people even funnier.
...to Batumi!
In the morning I woke to a text from Pegasus Airlines. My flight to Batumi was cancelled because of weather at the airport. So I rebooked the flight to Tbilisi from the same airport at the same time. Funny that. Fucking disgusting that. Weather. Lick my arsehole.
Lick. My. Arsehole.
I landed in Tbilisi that night knowing I would get the train to Batumi early the next day.
I flicked away a pesty taxi driver, took some cash out of an ATM and boarded the bus to the rail station.
The sun was setting and an interesting girl sat across from me. We faced each other on the elevated platform at the back of the bus.
I had a full view of the sunset. She turned her body to capture it with her phone. The side of her face struck my eyes. Some people are beyond description. They're not really, but I'll keep it in.
She was a new kind of lovely. Jam-stuck slender fingers, nubile pianist. Paint and dust. A timeless Georgian landscape, donut glazed sperm-lipped frame.
It was night when I got off the bus at the station. My accommodation wasn't far. A few long streets and then I had my bed.
My room was small, the size of a medium-sized closet with a bunk bed and not much else. I always enjoy these kinds of places. Small, cheap, effective.
The next morning I woke early, took a big ole shit, brushed my beautiful teeth, and headed out the door into the chilly dark of Tbilisi, back towards the central railway station.
The high speed train looked the part, but barely got up over 30mph.
It was very slow.
The Georgia I saw through the window was a broken land. That's what happens when you stop fighting. You become a hollowed-out shell. That's what has become of Georgia. Maybe Ukraine, if it too stops fighting - when the money from America and Europe runs dry - will soon meet that same sad fate.
I left the train excited for the city I had been thinking about for months. Another secret. One just for me! A Fukuoka! A Dulan! I cut the suitcase pulling crowd off to the side and headed for a concrete vantage point with a view over the ocean.
As I caught sight of the skyline of Batumi in the distance, I felt an unmistakable disappointment. I knew then, this wouldn't be the place I thought it could have been.
I strolled past the chirping taxi drivers and onto the long concrete path along the sea. I walked the few kilometres to downtown, disappointed, and then hot and disappointed.
Everything just had a 'meh' to it all.
bataumeh, not BatamE 🙁
The weirdo skyscrapers were much more anaemic and shit than the photos of them suggested. The beach stones, boring stones, crap stones. The sea, just a little blue black sea. It was a place of sadness doing its best at a coverup. I stared at the abandoned ferris wheel embedded in one of the landmark skyscrapers and sighed. I didn't need to go up and experience that, even if it was open and worked.
It wasn't all a disappointment. The streets themselves in many ways were exactly what I wanted, the painted red sidewalks and the long residential boulevards lined with gorgeous pines. This was what I knew Batumi could be, sadly these tender patches couldn't make up for the hollow whole.
On the last full day in the city it rained an awkward cold hot rain. I hit my leg hard on the bed, I was already recovering from a hit to the head on the slanted ceiling from the day before and half a dozen bites from tiny vicious bastard mosquitos as I slept.
The next morning I woke early after five hours of sleep, stuffed everything in my bag and headed out the door. The streets were dark and empty. When I made it to the highway overpass looking over the city I felt a mix of emotions.
What a miss of a city. I'm glad I went, I'm glad I know. I'm glad after the cancelled flight, it was not a 'what if?' ...
As the cars sped past under the dark sky, and the ships in the harbour were fed supplies, I recorded my thoughts to camera and then continued on to Batumi Central to get the slow high speed train the fuck out of Batumi.