Carpetblogger

A New Carpetblog Feature! Ask An Expat

Inspiration often comes from the unlikeliest sources. Carpetblog recently came across the NYT  India Ink blog's new "Agony Auntie"  feature, designed to help expats in India avoid embarrassment. We thought "How useful! We know lots of people who could benefit from something like that. Someone should do it for Turkey." 

So, we reached out to The Unaccompanied Lady. Because there are few expat issues on which Carpetblogger and Unaccompanied Lady do not have informed opinions and because we agree on nearly everything, this will be a joint venture. We plan to distinguish ourselves from India Ink's feature by making it clear from the outset that helping expats -- especially people we know -- avoid embarrassment is low on our list of objectives. Also, it won't be lame.

In the unlikely event we can't answer a question, or make up a sufficient response, we will outsource questions to our stable of experts with specialized knowledge of things, such as Borko or Red State Sibling, or other secret, surprise guests whom we have yet to identify (but we have ideas! If you'd like to be considered, send a detailed CV and salary requirements).

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions about this new feature:

What qualifies Carpetblogger for this role? It was our idea, stolen from elsewhere. Therefore, we're best qualified.

What topics will you address? A better question is what topics will we NOT address. The Carpetblog/Unaccompanied Lady areas of expertise include -- but are not limited to -- coping with bureaucracy, birth, breastfeeding and child rearing, primates, music, intercultural understanding, cooking, bribing, sex, dating and relationships, cattle, fashion, current affairs, fine dining, developing cultural sensitivity, ethics, importing pork and liquor, languages and Crapistan.

What topics will you not address? Boring topics. If you want travel advice for Turkey, there's this great new service called google. Try it today!

Will question-askers remain anonymous? Only if the benefit of revealing your identity outweighs your desire to not be humiliated.

Do questions have to be from/about Turkey or from Expats? Of course not! We welcome questions from around the world from all types of people.

How can we submit questions?  The world of social media is vast. You can send an SMS, use the contact Carpetblog email link on the blog (but sometimes we forget to check that one), talk to us in the ladies' room at a bar, use Facebook, @Carpetblogger1 or @Unaccompanylady on Twitter, leave it in the comments or use telepathy. It's up to you.

So beat the rush! Send your questions in today. We'll be choosing among the best ones this week!

 

An Open Letter to THY Regarding Your Pre-Flight Safety Video

Sayın THY!

Let us preface this post by pointing out that we criticize because we love. We hope this rant shall not be misinterpreted or in any way affect our imminent accession to the rarefied heights of Elite Plus status.

But, because we have spent that much time on THY flights, we have become initmately familiar with the Horrible Pre-Flight Safey Video featuring players from, informed sources have told us, the team Manchester United. Accordingly, we have opinions.

We recognize that making "clever" flight safety videos is now a "thing" that airlines to do try to get people to pay attention to important information that could save lives. We also acknowledge that people who are not middle-aged American women may be interested in what football players have to say about things. Perhaps we have been missing something important and lifesaving after we clamp down the noise cancelling headphones as soon as the cavorting begins.

 

As someone who frequently defends THY against charges that you sometimes land at the wrong airport, or can't figure out a way to seat a mother and her nine-month old spawn next to each other, or that many of your pilots don't speak English well enough to communicate with ATC, we find your approach to pre-flight safety, which juxtaposes a mildly retarded football player mucking around with a life preserver with a passenger assuming the crash position, a bit troubling.

Now, as a market research professional, we are willing to keep an open mind that your research has shown that your target audience is middle-aged Turkish or Arab men. If so, we believe that employing thinly-veiled homoeroticism to demonstrate the correct way to use an emergency slide borders on genius. We are huge fans of using research findings in counter-intuitive ways. Respect.

However, in our limited sample size, we have found that non-Turkish people can be concerned about the basic competence and quality of THY. Let me reiterate that we do mean "people who are not Carpetblogger." We always assure our friends that we choose THY over Delta or even PIA, on which we are close to achieving status, every time. We argue that THY is the thing that works best in Turkey.

Especially if they aren't up to speed on the latest advancements in Turknology, people sometimes wonder if THY is "safe." For an airline that aspires with the intensity of an 19th century arriviste to be seen as "Globally Yours," establishing passengers' confidence in its basic competence and commitment to safety might be a strategic priority -- more so, even, than cross-branding with famous football teams.

We 3> you, THY. We love your convenient flights to shitty places. We love your new lounge at Ataturk more than our own home. We love how your flight attendants ask us with a straight face if we want Turkish or French wine and how we respond without giggling. We're like an old married couple like that.

But this safety video is really coming between us and making me question our relationship.

Hugs,

Carpetblogger

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carpetblogger Talks About Going Fox Hunting

Carpetblogger recently had the good fortune to spend a few days in rural England with our friends Oliver and Henry. Oliver and Henry live in a village of 300 people called Farthinghoe, which is not far from Hinton-in-the-Hedges. Their stone cottage, which was built around 1635, is called
Butts Close (insert obligatory giggle).  It is next door to Folly Cottage, a name we are going to appropriate for our own apartment.

Oliver and Henry love to foxhunt. Henry’s a barrister so it’s best to avoid a debate with him over the legal nuances of the sport. Brushes are scattered throughout the house and its décor could be described as hunt-chic. Many wine-fueled dinners in Istanbul with Oliver and Henry have concluded with show tunes and a commitment on our part go hunting with them.

It’s a little known fact that a substantial portion of Carpetblogger’s youth was devoted to the study of horsemanship as practiced in rural England, including the arcane practices of its foxhunts, via the British-founded Pony Club. In hindsight, this seems like an odd way to spend one’s teenage years, on par, in terms of context, structure and future usefulness for the average rural American with memorizing the Koran in a madrassah.

Perhaps devoting that time to learning math might have been a more productive use of scarce mental resources. That we can still tie a stock tie correctly (left over right, right over left then crossed) but not make change should be a burden carried by those responsible for our education.

Country social life revolves around the hunt. Accordingly, we ended up at a delightful dinner party in Hinton-in-the-Hedges, in a former parsonage with an underground passage that leads to the village church in one direction and, in the other, to the pub. The hosts and guests included members of the Bicester hunt, their teenaged daughters and the 70-ish year-old hunt announcer. Once we established our credentials as a “B-rated” Pony Clubber* who hunted in the mid-80s with Woodbrook Hunt Club, at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington, our place at the table seemed secure.

Aside from being cold, wet and muddy, the Bicester Hunt, which flows over the ditches and hedges of South Northamptonshire, has little in common with the Woodbrook Hunt, which ducks low-flying C-17s landing at McChord AFB. Still, horse-crazy 17 year old girls are the same everywhere. They like to ride fast over big fences without the respect for their physical integrity they will develop by the time they reach 43. Our lack of respect for our physical integrity at age 17 resulted, the last time we hunted, in a mud-covered visit to the Madigan Army Hospital emergency room. For us, calling up Pony Club-era esoterica from the depths of our DNA (so thorough is the indoctrination, that’s where it is stored) at a dinner party at Hinton-in-the-Hedges was absolutely delightful.

We did feel the need to lecture Oliver on Saturday morning as he prepared for the day’s meet by selecting his flask. “A saddle flask is better because you could break a rib if you fall with one in your jacket,” he explained, while brushing dust off the felt bowler hat Henry planned to wear hunting that day. That simply wouldn’t fly at Valley Green Pony Club (the bowler part. The flask-related safety insight and the dusting would have been embraced).

With an appropriate mount having been sourced, our visit concluded with an even firmer commitment to go hunting, possibly even before this season ends. We’ll to have to find boots, breeches, a jacket, a helmet and some muscles (also, possibly, some balls), before then, however.

Book a room at the Folly Cottage and alert the local equivalent of the Madigan Army Hospital. Carpetblogger's going hunting.

 

*We googled that and would have linked, but clearly the USPC rating system been dumbed down for the current, softer generation.

 

Happy Birthday to Carpetblog

Seven years ago, we woke up and said, "Do you know what we need? One of those new blog things." And unto us a Carpetblog was born. Crapistan rejoiced.

The early Azerbaijan years were stuffed with material, none of which we could write about without losing our job or getting kicked out of the country, so posts are lame. In hindsight, that was a mistake. We consider the Kyiv year Carpetblog's golden era, in which we established ourselves as the wikipedia of slutty dressing. The Istanbul years have had highlights (2008 was a good blogging year), but are characterized more by a long slow decline.

Below, we have selected some of our favorite, but lesser known, posts.

• An early exercise in crowdsourcing before crowdsourcing was cool, Azerisms
• The Shashlyk lifestyle
• Another insurmountable cultural obstacle presented by Turkish class.
• Does Camel Toe have two meanings?
• Deli Komsu and the Yabanci Militia

Do you have a favorite? Put it in the comments. We have no idea what posts people like.

Our new year's resolution is to maintain -- or improve -- our current practice of posting once a month, whether or not we have anything interesting to say.

 

Caretblog Recommends: Istanbul Eats Walking Tours

Frankly, it's not that hard to obtain the Carpetblog stamp of approval. We're not out to diminish our own brand or anything, but really, with a few exceptions taken on moral grounds, we'll shill for almost all of our friends.

Indeed, we have in the past shilled for Istanbul Eats, not just out of affection for its founders, but because it is the best guide to eating in this city. We use it all the time (IE recs got us to try current faves Datli Maya and Mohti) and recommend it to everyone.

We have also always recommended IE's culinary walking tours, even though we had never taken one, or, until very recently, known anyone who had. That's how important our credibility is.

But after dear friends visiting from San Francisco last month raved about the tour and promptly signed up to do a second one, we thought maybe we had been missing out on something important and fun. In fact, we were more than a little embarassed when walking around town with them, sharing all our greatest insights about the mysteries of the city such as the difference between dana and koyun işkembe, they said, "oh yes, our guide Angelis already told us that."

So when Carpetblog's Kosovo Korrespondent suggested we do a Festivus Day tour, led by that Greek Angelis Nannos who really made us look bad to our guests, we said, "well, ok."

Have you ever visited your friend in Istanbul and noticed that she doesn't really know anything about the city and seems to be making shit up, or takes you to the places closest to her apartment? Well, Angelis isn't like that. He's your cool friend in Istanbul who really does know good places in unlikely neighborhoods and loves to show them to you with great enthusiasm. Who knows? Maybe he can be your new friend in Istanbul. Other people seem to like him.

Would you travel across town for a doner? We sure as hell wouldn't, not before visting a hole-in-the-wall döner place in the back streets Küçükpazar (you don't even know where that is, do you?), where the dönerci marinates real lamb meat in onion juice overnight and alternates layers of meat and vegetables. Do you think a pide is just beyaz peynir and sucuk toasted on some dough? Try adding Black Sea magic village butter to the crust at a place in Fatıh that, to some skepticism, claims to be the first Pideci in Istanbul. Do you think Turkish Delight is gross? Well it is, but you might find some that's at least not made of rubber in the back streets of Eminönü. Have you tried kokoreç? After five years in Istanbul, we finally did and it's not as bad as we expected. That white matter at the tip of the knife in the photo? Suet. Yum.

This is just a long way of saying that Carpetblog stands by our endorsement of Istanbul Eats' Culinary Walking Tours and has forgiven Angelis for making us look dumb to our visitors. Also, we know from reliable sources that IE's Meghan gives excellent tours as well, even though we haven't been on hers.

And, as long as we're sharing love, we haven't shilled for Istanbul Personal Shopper in a long time. Like IE's food tours, Kathy takes visitors to parts of the Grand Bazaar people who have lived here for years don't know about. The best part? Your visitors will love the tour and you won't have to go to the Grand Bazaar. Everyone wins!

If we were in the FSU, we would pull out our stamp and stamp our approval on both.

Carpetblogger Ponders Advances in Soviet-Era Technology

While in Tbilisi for the annual post-Soviet Thanksgiving bacchanalia, we ran across something in a friend's apartment building that we have never seen before: a pay elevator.

We are the first to admit that, as a resident of a fourth-floor walk up, we have elevator envy. Envy became self-loathing as we carried 50 lbs of Georgian wine and pork up those stairs last night. We're always in the market for new ideas when it comes to mechanical ascension techniques.

The pay elevator, however, has some pros and cons. Borko, ever the Reagan-era free-marketeer, praised it as a market-oriented solution to the vexing problem of elevator maintenance in buildings where no one is obligated to pay for upkeep of common areas. We agree!

However, this elevator charged 1 Tetri (about one penny) per ride. We're not very good at math, but if a six-floor building has 2-3 apartments on each floor, we're not convinced the economics of the idea work out. We also failed Reagan-era economics so maybe we're missing something.

Furthermore, nothing about the elevator suggested that its upkeep was anyone's priority. Maybe the proceeds from the box funded the upkeep of the elevator repairer's vodka supply.

Perhaps a pay box in the elevator acts as a potential barrier to entry to never-do-wells. But who is more likely to carry around a pocketful of 1 Tetri coins? A never-do-well or Carpetblogger? We would probably walk up four flights of stairs just as often as we do without any elevator at all, if using it was contingent on having a 1 Tetri coin in our pocket.

So, the debate on the pay elevator has yet to be settled. But when we saw it, we said, "finally, we're home." Gone from the FSU for too long.

 

 

Carpetblog Weighs in: Georgian Food in Istanbul at Cafe Euro

You've heard the old saying about dining in Istanbul -- "There's all kinds of cuisine here as long as it's Turkish." Perhaps you've argued that Istanbul is the biggest city in the world without a real Pakistani restaurant. People come to Istanbul for a lot of reasons -- many of them good -- but not for its selection of international food.

So, when we read a FB post by the writer of the lovely Delicious Istanbul blog about Cafe Euro's Georgian food, we got our hopes up, just a little. She appears to be of some FSU provenance -- not sure which, don't want to offend! -- so we viewed her as credible. And, that the restaurant is located in Aksaray -- which is known locally as Devushkastan --suggested that there is a built-in clientele who knows their satsivi from their tkemali.

Georgians are sort of like Soviet Mexicans. They moved around and set up restaurants all over the Soviet Union to serve their hungry workers needing a taste of home. Every FSU resident we've ever met craves the occasional Georgian meal, even if they've never been to Tbilisi. Georgian food, like Georgia, is unlike anything found anywhere else in the world. We have long moaned about the lack of the real thing in Istanbul. Georgia is so close! Why can't you get a Borjomi and a decent khingali here?

After reading DI's post, we put on our devushka boots and gathered up the famous but also charming Rutherford/Tomasetti Partners and plotted a route into the dark heart of Aksaray. Did you know there is a giant bus station right there in the middle of it that serves exclusively the Caucasus, Russia, Romania and Moldova? We had no idea. There must be a lot of workers coming to Turkey from those countries! What sort of work they do here do you think? Globalization is awesome.

And there it was, Cafe Euro, with Georgia's UFO-script and photos of khingali on the outside walls, conferring a legitimacy that could not be faked. We were so excited. We stepped down into its dark bowels and felt like we had stepped into a bus station in Batumi. Cheap cafe decor in Turkey is white molded plastic chairs. In Georgia, and Cafe Euro, it's rickety metal-backed chairs with pleather seats. It's also bleached hair, cigarettes and drunken dancing to Russian pop at 7 pm. We were home.

We have found that the only time we can speak Turkish is when we want to speak another language in which we know 50 words, like Russian. The waitress, who was Georgian, got excited by our efforts and, in violation of traditional food service norms in her homeland, became super friendly and helpful. Sadly, 7 pm is not the hour to go if you want lobio or khinghali. The only things available were khachapuri (yay!) and kebab (less yay). We speculate that if you want access to the full menu (keeping in mind there is no menu), you need to come when the buses are arriving or departing.

We ordered up some Adjarian (the kind with an egg, and not our favorite, but it will do if a Minghrelian is not available). It was fine but we really wanted khingali, particularly since we had talked it up to the RT Partners, who had never had Georgian before. And there was Efes, not Kazbegi. A real Russian speaker might have been able to rustle up some homemade wine or even some chacha, according to Istanbul Eats (which, consume at your own risk).

Our review: Hopes still high, we're going to go back at a different time. Georgian in Istanbul deserves all the support we can give it.

Cafe Euro is at the entrance to the heretofore unknown to Carpetblog giant bus station in Aksaray, on Kucuk Langa Cad.

 

 

Carpetblogger Fails to Keep Simple Commitments

Not long ago, we entered a phase of serious soul-searching. We spent long hours considering the topic, viewing it from all angles and concluding that structural changes in our lifestyle were needed. We saw this as a real opportunity for personal growth.

The question: Why do we own so much crap?

A couple things forced us into this introspective phase: watching a 60 year old guy carrying 20 of our carpets on his back up four flights of stairs in 95 degree heat (he was a professional). Spending a day with the Red State Sibling allocating under-bed and under-couch space to carpets categorized thusly: really like, like and sort of like; and figuring out how to store other assorted crap in an apartment 2/3rds the size of the old one.

The conclusion: Stop. No More Textiles.

This commitment lasted approximately six weeks, buckling under the mildest pressure.

Last week, we took the scenic route back to Ubud from eastern Bali on our scooter, enjoying the sunrise and the fishing villages along a seaside road that washes out every monsoon. On the lee side of Mt. Agung, the area is scrubbly, overgrazed by Bali cattle and bumpy with black lava rock. Farmers grow coffee and boatmakers carve from tree trunks the solid but narrow hulls of jukung boats used for fishing. It’s not the Bali of rice terraces and coconut palms.  It’s very poor and not a lot goes on.

After rounding a curve, we screeched to a halt in front of a shiny new bungalow with a large sign. “The Karya Sary Warna Alam Weaving Cooperative of East Sarya.” Whhaaaaat?

A young woman bounded out of the side yard and unlocked the door to the shop. It was 7:15 am. The collection was small, but stock of good quality. Her English wasn’t great so we couldn’t tell where the cooperative gets the cotton, what the pieces are called or used for or who does the weaving, but the colors were natural and she suggested locally sourced. She also, obviously, couldn’t explain who the hell comes to her lovely little shop in the middle of nowhere.

We selected a few fairly priced items.

Then we remembered: We had no cash -- like, just barely enough for scooter petrol and breakfast. Credit cards were out of the question, as they usually are in rural areas. The nearest ATM was a 50km round trip and not an option.

Then we remembered that other thing: Our commitment.

“Nope, sorry. No cash. Can’t buy,” we told the obviously-disappointed shopgal. We patted ourselves on the back for keeping our commitment to self-discipline and restraint. We briefly wondered if we would regret not buying a rare textile from its source but did not dwell because we had no money.

So today, we decided to go for a walk, just to see what was going on at Threads of Life, our favorite Ubud textile NGO. The gals there are chatty and the shop smells like the spices used to keep bugs away from the threads. Maybe they would be offering another class soon. That would be fun!

Hey, what's that in the window? A sample from The Karya Sary Warna Alam Weaving Cooperative of East Sarya?  Shut up! It’s one of the cooperatives supported by Threads of Life. We explained that we had visited it and the TOL gals there were happy to tell us more about it and its pieces, which are called Rangrang (which means "space" in Balinese and refers, it seems, to a sort of slit weave used) and are used to hold up/cover boobs. They gave us an informative DVD with more information about the cooperative.

 

Yah, of course we bought one. Could we let this Rangrang be the only of the three unique types of textiles produced on Bali that we don’t own, simply because of some dumb decision made under duress? That would be silly and shortsighted, especially since it will look lovely on the Ikea bookshelf.

Carpetblogger Gets Shook Down by the Ubud Fuzz

Our primary form of transportation on Bali is a black and white honda called a Scoopy. Last week we rode it more than 100kms each way to the village of Amed on the east coast which was otherwise  inaccessible without your own car (or willingness to spent eight hours on small local transport vans known as bemos).  It is reliable and fun to drive.

At five dollars a day to rent, a scooter is the best transportation investment we've ever made. To obtain one, you go through the onerous paperwork process of giving some guy with five bikes parked in front of his house a $20 deposit, the name of your guesthouse and a vague timeline for when you might return it.

You should wear a helmet, because, well duh, and it's also the law.  But yesterday morning, our helmet was not where we had left it and, accordingly, was not on our head when we got stopped at Ubud's central intersection. Possibly, it had been stolen or borrowed. Because we hoped it was the latter and it would be returned soon, the full force of the law fell on our bare head.

"It is the law, you know, and we are here to enforce the law of Indonesia," the young Fuzz told me. We did not roll our eyes at this statement because we thought deference would get us out of this painlessly.

"And I support rule of law. But my helmet was stolen and I was on my way to get it replaced." (Both of these statements were actually true).

"Well, this is a warning then."

"I feel warned. Thank you." I started to get up.

He smiled. "But you should show me you international drivers' license."

This not being our first time at this rodeo, we said something to the effect of "o no you dint just ask for that." Of course we didn't have this document. No one does.

"O you don't have this?" he said with mock surprise.  "I have no choice but to fine you 500,000 Rupiah (about $60) for your second violation."

"Well, I don't want to pay that."

"How much do you want to pay?"

"How about I pay you 100,000 (about $12)?"

"Ok, that will be fine. It will be justice."

"Can I have a receipt for that?"

"No, you cannot."

"So, you just shook me down. Is this what you're saying?"

"Yes."

Our helmet magically reappeared today. Rule of law still pending.

 

 

The Carpetblog Swine Files

Last time we visited Bali, we reported on the local delicacy called Babi Guling, or the ceremonial stuffed young pig. We tried hard to like it, sampling versions from different vendors. Despite our general love for the pig, we did not find this dish delicious. Too many uncomfortable colors, shapes textures -- gristly, gelatinous, crispy, orange, spheroid -- detracted from the taste, which was pretty run-of-the-mill pig with some fancy spices.

 

So far, we have opted against another platter-full. However, we did watch some guys preparing the babi guling before a ceremony in a village above Manggis, in East Bali. We felt uncomfortable.

 

 

We also admired pigs leading a more satisfying life on the beach at Amed. They had shade and ample slop. Beach Pigs on a Leash. Typically, we would walk quickly past a guesthouse that was next door to a pig farm on a beach, but maybe because of the fresh breezes, or the sand, they didn't smell at all. And, after we ordered a swine dish for dinner and saw the owner walk down the alley toward the pig farm, we knew dinner would be fresh.

 

 

Hey, Unaccompanied Lady -- That's Carpetblog Territory!

Someone is moving in on our territory!

The Unaccompanied Lady tells you what to wear.

 

Pocari Sweat! It's a Thing

If you've ever flown a Gulf airline  -- Etihad or Emirates, in our experience -- you might have seen a loop of ads for "Pocari Sweat" a Japanese sports drink, done in that semi-ironic Tawainese-style animation that's becoming so popular.

You, like us, might have concluded "Those crazy Japanese are fucking with the Arabs! POCARI SWEAT can't possibly be a thing. Unless it's harvested from teenage girls and sold in vending machines in the Tokyo subway. That could be a thing. Gulf Arabs would eat that shit right up."

Well, it may be harvested from teenaged girls, sold in Tokyo subway vending machines and marketed to Gulf Arabs, but it's also sold in the Delta Dewata in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The label, which is written in that super square font with too much space between each letter often seen on cheap Chinese plastic products, describes it as an "ion supply drink."

Knowing that you'd want to know, we tasted it. It reminds of that stuff we had to drink after lying on the bathroom floor for two days in Bukhara. Who wouldn't want to remember that? Or drink something called sweat? This product has a lot of potential.

The Unaccompanied Lady Wastes Time in Islamabad

People like to ask the Unaccompanied Lady, "what do you do with your unaccompanied self when you're in Islamabad for two weeks?" Since the answer "fuck-all" rarely satisfies anyone, and the Unaccompanied Lady cannot spend all her non-working hours in sitting in the guesthouse under the AC, we have come up with a few suggestions for time-wasting in a city where there is very little to actually "do."

Shalwar shopping: As you know, to avoid drawing attention to herself or being mistaken for a frumpy missionary, the Unaccompanied Lady "goes native" in Pakistan. Shalwar shopping in Islamabad is fun because the shops are staffed by men yet women are the only customers. Ladies freely give the shop guys the what-for, treating them with the haughty disdain they deserve. Feel extra sloppy as groups of young Pakistani women, draped in the kind colorful, cute shalwar that you can never find, glide in and out of the shops like pretty birds, never dropping their dupatta (the long scarfy thing that covers your shoulders) in the dust or tripping over it. Perhaps next time you can ask them to show you how they wear such an annoying, yet potentially attractive, garment with style and dignity.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends: the cheap and cheerful shalwar shops in Jinnah Market, near Pizza Hut.

Mango Eating: The Unaccompanied Lady can only handle so much Pakistani BBQ before she breaks out in the greasy ghee meat sweats. Besides Islamic extremists, Pakistan excels most in the production of mangoes. Lucky for us it's June, which means it's the season. Can an Unaccompanied Lady survive on mangoes, and their slimy, but equally delicious little friends, lychees, for two weeks? Stay tuned.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends getting your mangoes from any old vendor, but get the biggest ones. They're the best.

Food Shopping: Islamabad's small supermarkets serve as another reminder that the globalization of cuisine has completely passed Turkey by. You can buy every imaginable American junk food (pop tarts! doritos! cake mix -- though even we don't buy that shit any more after reading this), sauce, canned good or spice mix, at reasonable prices. Not only that, there must be Chinese and other Asian people in Islamabad (those Chinese are everywhere these days!) because there are things Chinese and other Asian people like to eat: lime leaves, lemon grass, fish sauce, wasabi, seaweed and miso soup mix, none of which are available in Istanbul, a city approximately 14 times the size of Islamabad. We are no longer embarrassed to say, "yes, we import food from Islamabad to Istanbul."

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends the shops in Khosar Market.

The Nirvana Spa: One of the best parts about working in shitty places is there are very often excellent reasonably-priced spas offering innovative treatments you're unlikely to find anywhere else. The Nirvana spa falls into that category. In fact, it is so awesome that we will go multiple times for all kinds of cheap delights like pedicures, massages and sessions with the "vibrating de-fatting apparatus, which utilizes vibration to soften and break-up excessive fat build-up in specific parts of the body." Waxing is so cheap maybe we'll go Muslim and wax our whole body. It's cheaper and less effort than shaving.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends the Hot Stone Massage at Nirvana.

Culture: The Unaccompanied Lady typically recommends cultural activities because culture is important. Sadly, we visited the Lak Virsa Ethnological Museum only to find out that, while technically open, it had no electricity. Because Islamabad enjoys an uninterrupted supply of electricity for about 15 minutes a day, we suspect this is not a state affairs that will have improved if we "come back tomorrow," as suggested. As we poked inside the door to see whether a dark ethnological museum might still be worth the $2 entry fee, the guards described the interior as "like midnight." They were not wrong.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends going shopping instead of to the Lak Virsa Ethnological Musuem.

Carpet College: There is a wealth of knowledge idly sitting around, waiting for customers in the Jinnah and Super Markets, wasting time, just like you. What are you waiting for? Go bug them! Make them unfold and refold 172 carpets in 105 degree heat! They like it!

The Unaccompanied Lady spends hours talking to Pashtun carpet dealers (most of them are Afghans) about everything related to carpets. They are not predatory jerks like in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar and some of them actually know what they're talking about. Drink tea and talk about patterns, geopolitics, sheep breeds, Pashtun tribes, cotton prices and trade transit routes until the generators kick in and it's time for Unaccompanied Ladies to go home. Have them show you their most expensive pieces and, after you have a heart attack because they are so beautiful and you can't afford them, make the guy tell you why that one is more expensive than this one. Feel your mind get larger and your understanding of the world broader by earning a Masters in Warp and Weft at Carpet College.*

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends Niqash Carpet, near Mr. Books in Super Market, and Herat Shop in Jinnah Market.

 *The Carpetblog Carpetbuying Manifesto is coming. It's not ripe yet. Please stand by.

 

Do you like Twitter? Do you like Carpetblog?

Then go right ahead and follow @Carpetblogger1 on Twitter. You may think you're already following us on Twitter, and you may be. For strategic reasons, we've decided to divorce our personal twitter feed (@cequirk) from Carpetblog, so as to not dilute the trusted and highly profitable Carpetblog brand. Social media is so confusing!

Trust that we're not going to fill up your feed with what we had for lunch, or sports, or whatever. There will be the bitchiness, devushkas and shiny suits, Istanbul Cliche-Watch and weird things from Turkey and the FSU that you've come to depend on @carpetblogger1 (don't forget the "1," ok? Some juicebox is squatting). Follow @cequirk for geeky stuff about Pakistan, US politics, Turkey politics, Islamism and cheap pollster trash talk. We know you can't get enough of that.

Go ahead, follow both. Or neither. We don't care what you do.

 

Ask Carpetblogger: How do I Buy a Carpet in Istanbul?

Short answer: Don't.*

*Obviously, this advice is targeted at the casual carpetbuyer. Of course, if you know something about carpets and you are wealthy, you know where to go.  There are plenty of reputable dealers in Istanbul who carry lovely and very expensive antique and new pieces. We're talking to people who visit Istanbul, who are not rich, don't know much about carpets and want a nice souvenir of their visit.

Go ahead, keep whining.

I want to buy a carpet when I visit Istanbul and don't want to get ripped off. Help meeeee.

Sigh.

OK, do it if you must, but there are some things to keep in mind.

You need to know what you're not buying. Very, very little that you will see in the Eighth Circle of Hell (known locally as the Grand Bazaar) is actually made in Turkey (the same goes for practically everything else in the GB). Labor is simply too expensive here to mass produce cheap carpets and kilims, so most of them come from Pakistan (nearly all cheap carpets are Baloch), Iran and, it may surprise you, China.

A dealer in Islamabad recently explained this China angle to us and a Turkish kilim designer confirmed it.  The only thing Turkish about those carpets are the design. The wool comes from New Zealand or Australia and the dyes are probably some combination of melamine and spit. Apparently they are made in huge factories on looms lined up side-by-side with a foreman who calls out rhythmic weaving instructions, like the master on a slave ship (that is the analogy he used!). We would like to go to China to see this.

Mossmaniac and Carpetblogger spent the better part of the last two days in the Grand Bazaar (Carpet College!), in the belly of the beast as it were, trying to understand where all this crap comes from and how to identify it. We were lucky to find a dealer who was so clueless about his own stock and our poorly concealed mocking of it to not notice we were only looking at it so we could understand the nature of the odd colors and strange patterns that don't typically appear in Anatolian weaving and scritchy textures that feel like astroturf. China!

The rest of his stuff was cheap crap that's produced by the ton in Pakistan, with which we have more than a passing familiarity. That information had to be drug out of him. This experience discouraged us and made us hate the Grand Bazaar more than usual. Ask if the carpet you like is made in Pakistan or China or Iran. If you like it, you shoudn't care. But!

How can I tell if a carpetseller is lying? His lips are moving.

Do you have a dealer in Istanbul you recomnend? No.* Contrary to everything written above, it is possible to find older genuinely Turkish carpets or kilims in the greater Grand Bazaar area, if that's your bag. We suggest finding an older guy sitting in his shop drinking tea (most young touts have no idea what they're selling) and ask him to show you "something special." He'll take you into a back room, or open up a cupboard and you will feel like you found the Holy Grail. Your heart will beat faster, and you will feel faint. You will feel that the last six hours of hazing -- of listening to some maganda tell you that if the fringe is braided, it means a virigin wove the carpet and that cremesicle orange is a natural dye --  were simply the price of admission to carpet heaven. You will believe again in the zen of harmonious colors, tribal patterns and handspun wool.

Then the guy tells you that beautiful 70 year old yahyali is $6000 and you will laugh. You will say, "I heart Pakistan."

*But a Carpetblog recommendation be bought. Have you met us?

This is why Carpetblogger does not carpetshop in Istanbul. Cheap carpets are crappy and nice carpets are stupid expensive. We prefer to buy both in Islamabad these days.

"But Carpetblogger!" you plea, "I want to buy a carpet in Istanbul, not Islamabad." Ok, fine. What do we know about you and your taste? Don't listen to us. Do it. Buy something you like that reminds you of your nice visit here and makes you happy when you look at it on your bedroom floor. Don't believe one word you're told about its origin or quality, unless you're told "it was made by a Chinese slave in Guangzhou using spit and melamine dye," because that would be awesome and probably true. Don't pay a lot of money for it and bargain like, uh, a person who doesn't like to be ripped off by skeezy carpetdealers in the Grand Bazaar (you probably won't get better than 20% off, though). Be happy with your new carpetfriend and don't worry that you got ripped off because you totally did.

Coming soon! The Metaphysics of Textile Purchases: A Carpetblog Manifesto.