Today we're on a bus from Erzurum to Malatya, an 8 hour ride. We're becoming accustomed to the pace of the buses now, where they serve coffee/tea/cola every 4 hours, and let you out to use the toilet every 2 hours. At least once in every trip is a rest stop with a restaurant where you can buy hot food if you want to. We have been preparing for these trips, buying cookies and water ahead of time so we can keep our energy levels up - as the food in the rest stops is the same as in Canada, expensive and not very tasty.
Once we were in Malatya we decided to find a hotel with a good price, as the book said there was lots of competition among hotels. After wandering in the heat for a few minutes, we meet a guy on the street who says he is an English teacher. He happens to speak Russian too so he ends up talking to Leah most of the time - but he said that the father of one of his students owns a hotel and that he will bring us there. Little do we know that we end up walking about 20 minutes away from the cheap hotel district to a very fancy $150 a night hotel - does this guy think people with backpacks, going from hotel to hotel for good deals are going to go for a 5 star hotel? Nuts! So we walk back to the centre of town and walk into a cheap little pension, but the English teacher still won't leave us. We're sure he is hanging around to get a cut of whatever the hotel price is, but at this point we're exhausted, it is dark out and really the pension is nice enough.
"Day 15 - Malatya"
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