One day when in Flushing, Queens, I felt the need to find a foot rub. Maybe Chinese reflexology. After all, I was in one of the largest Chinatowns in the world.
I looked at the map and there was a place nearby with a 5-star rating. I eventually found it in a high rise behind a bakery (to the left of the green awning in the photo).
The reflexologist was a gentle soul who bathed my feet first before working on my meridian lines. Luckily my Mandarin-speaking friend showed up so she could do some translating. Not that I remember very much as I was too busy feeling relaxed.
Ms. Annie Wong was a treasure. I wish I lived nearby. Because I was the first customer of the day, I got my 90-minute foot massage for around 50 bucks.
I highly recommend finding places like AW Spa when in Chinatown Flushing.
This is my first Ramazan (Ramadan) in Adana. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I recalled from Dhaka, that during Ramadan month, those observing Ramadan did not eat or drink during daylight hours. Every evening, the breaking of the fast, iftar, was a celebration. There were celebrations with family and gifts given. It was a festive time.
Ramadan follows the moon so this year is in the winter (February 18 to March 19). This year is the year 1447 in the muslim calendar.
So what is different her in Adana? Adana is a fairly open minded place. When I got to Adana, the locals told me that I should expect to see restaurants open during Ramazan and that people would also be drinking alcohol. This is so. Also, many restaurants closed for the first week of Ramadan but then opened up again.
Mini pide with mozzarella, potato, white cheese, sausage, and kale.
What was great interest to me was the food. Apparently eating “pide” is a Ramadan thing. It’s also an every day thing, but more so at this time. I noticed a different kind of mini pide and I have a feeling that these are only available during Ramadan. Today, March 14, is international pi/pie day (3.14) and pide is a kind of pie so quite appropriate.
Many bakeries are open around the clock so that was something to try out during this time. I discovered some lovely bakeries and almost all gave me samples, tried to serve me tea, and gave me freebies. Very hospitable.
Since you can’t take an Adana kebab as a souvenir, one has to (has to) find a magnet or mug as a souvenir. Recently, I was at the women’s cooperative, Adana Kadın kooperatifleri Birliği, for brunch and it turns out that they also have a shop (one is sitting surrounded by things to buy) so that is my recommendation for where to buy souvenirs.
Adana is famous for its clock tower, orange festival, Roman bridge, and the kebab. This shop, located conveniently in old Adana (just down from the clock tower, on the side of a park, Ziyapaşa Parkı), is a nice reprieve from the heat and bustle. Or cold and wet.
The orange festival is the biggest event of the year in Adana.
Aside from souvenirs like magnets, they also have handmade items and food for sale. And as I mentioned, you can eat there. The staff are very nice. It is hard to not buy a basket or hammer pants (which is the baggy style that many people wear here).
The other place I would recommend for souvenirs is Starbucks. Sounds odd? The Adana mug is adorable.
There are also other places to find souvenirs but one has to search. Or stick to the main touristy street.
When a cup of tea costs $20, then you might as well get as many brews out of it as possible. The tea tasting I did in New York seems a world away from Adana, and centuries ago.
One of the pours.
When I went to Chinatown Flushing in New York, I went on a tea tasting at Fang Gourmet Tea. After selecting two teas (at $20 each), the tea connoisseur explained the tea, washed the miniature cups in hot water, and brewed the tea. Five times for each tea. After each brew, we tasted the tea again.
The tea changed color with every brew.
I’ll admit that this may be too subtle for me. After a while, it just tasted like ‘tea’ to me. I could see the change in color, but I started to hallucinate that I was making up flavors and aromas just because I was supposed to be able to detect them… actually, what I found most interesting was the tea person. She had worked there for decades. She was calm and deliberate with all her movements. She really sensed every nuance in each brew… and I think she found our obtuseness a bit amusing.
The skein of a filter.
After the tasting, we could buy the teas. These are not cheap. Nothing below $45. The shop was filled with tea paraphernalia that we could buy.
Fast forward a few centuries and I live in Adana where tea is offered at every meal. And in between. But here the tea is the color of mahogany. (Turkiye has the highest per capita of tea drinking at three kilos per person, per year.)
With the tipping percentage near 25 percent in the United States, one might wonder how much to tip in Turkiye. It is definitely not 25 percent. Actually, you do not have to tip at all. If you do, then you can tip up to the round number or ten percent. But if you do not tip, no one will run after you and scold you for not tipping.
Tipping is primarily only done at restaurants that are sit down. Many places will have a tip jar (written in English) to make it clear to foreigners that they appreciate tips. Most places will be happy if you tip, but again, you do not need to. If you are at a restaurant and want to tip, make sure to put the tip (cash only) in the tip box or the folder that held the bill or check. Or hand straight to the person you want to tip. You cannot tip on a credit card.
Other places where one can tip is at other service places such as salons. I leave a small tip under the bottles for the water delivery person (20 Lira for carrying three 19-liter bottles which cost three dollars per bottle = 50 cent tip for carrying three 42-pound bottles). Most people do not tip the water guy. (I use an app to order water and I can use my credit card to pay for it.)
The water delivery guy.
I keep looking for a “service fee” being added to bills but I have not seen it yet, even when there were more than six of us at the table.
Meals in Adana have cost me between 340 to 2,600 Turkish Lira ($8 to $63) for one person. The average monthly salary in Turkiye per month is 35,000 TRY ($909).
While tipping might seem like an extra “thank you” for good service, but for some, it is their entire salary.
One day, I set out to find a well known “pilaf” eatery in old Adana. I had read that they were often sold out so one should go early. I got there at around ten thirty in the morning. They told me, “Come in, come in” but as there was no food, I said that I would come back after they opened at 11 am.
A quiet street in the inner warrens of Old Adana.
As I needed to find something to do for a half hour, I turned down an alley… in broad daylight, I generally do not feel apprehensive. The old streets of Adana are usually empty, sometimes foul smelling, worn down, and there is always a tea “shop” to be had. Today’s alleys were much the same but in one there was a man putting something in a grinder. It looked like green powder or grass powder. He looked annoyed at me so I did not stop to ask him what he was doing.
Wood stools.
Another thing I find fascinating is the variety of small stools. Today, I saw a saddle style that I had never seen before. In general, even if there is no tea shop or cafe, there will still be some stools and flat surface in or around every place of business. There are an innumerable tea boys and men running around delivering tea. Tea is a social habit, sort of like a handshake, in Adana.
Always tea.
While I was wandering around, I suddenly noticed raw meat on display, from lungs, stomach, testes, feet, and head. The heads were being blowtorched. Not sure how those heads were going to be prepared as one can get head soup, head sandwich, head cold cuts, and roast head. So many ways and apparently the cheek, tongue, and brain are the tasty bits. Am I right? (This makes me think of a “cute” street vendor in Istanbul who has been going viral because of his looks. He isn’t all that cute… anyway, there is a shop selling sheep head here in Adana that has employed that same marketing strategy. They have hired a cute “chef” who preps the sandwiches. Since they started featuring him, the views on their social media have increased exponentially.)
Sheep’s heads. And a woman.
As I walked through the meat market, sellers were calling out, “Welcome,” but I was not interested in buying any meat. I was also trying to make sure that I didn’t slip and fall on the slick tiles. Also, I noticed that there were only men shopping and only men working. I guess everywhere, butchery is a male dominated business. But, I was also in “the Egyptian Mall” and that could also be the reason that there were not many women around.
The meat market.
On the side streets of the meat market, there were lots of shops selling everything for grilling and cooking meat from knife stores to grinding equipment stores and some that sell everything but the meat. Aside from meat, there were the usual cell phone stores, sneaker stalls, cigarette stalls, and oddly, fake money stalls…
A grilling store.
In this warren of alleys, one could easily get lost, but not really because this area is only one city block. Eventually, one pops out on a “modern Adana” street again.
A street in the old town of Adana.
Another time, I’ll talk about the pilaf eatery and the dramatic stories of love, family, and money woes from some of the staff there.
Everyone loves decorations. All over Turkiye, you will see lights with stars and moons all over town.
At a gas station.
But, it is also easy to find Christmas decorations depicting Santa Claus or Christmas trees. Many Turks are tolerant and open minded and as they like to remind me, there is not a state religion in Turkiye.
I like Adana. I like living in Adana. And the flies in Adana like me. The moment I step outside, the fly is dive bombing straight at the corner of my mouth. (I now see why ladies of olden times wore gauze around their heads.) When we go out to eat if outdoors (and sometimes indoors), there will be a fly that will start to buzz around our food and our heads.
If you recall, I carried mosquito rackets with me in Dhaka. While I have yet to see a mosquito here in Adana, I decided that I needed a fly racket to defend myself and my khavalti (Turkish breakfast) from the flies. I bought an electrified fly racket at Koctas (like Home Depot), the home goods store. It didn’t seem to work. Maybe because it was too small and cute. I bought another.
But, more than that, I had seen that one of the bakeries used a table fly fan to keep the flies off their baked goods. I went hunting for it. The electronic stores did not have it. The home goods store did not have it. No one had it. I had to buy it on Trendyol, an online shopping site, and when I got it, I went on another adventures to find D3 batteries. It turns out that one can use two AA batteries instead. I was in the store and when the employees helped me with finding the batteries that worked, they seemed a bit disappointed for me that the fan was not going fast. I used Google translate to explain that this was not a fan to keep me cool but a fan to keep the flies off my food.
I don’t think they believed me.
A note about online shopping. The first couple of items that I bought online, the delivery person called to get the verification code, then hunted me down to hand deliver to me. A third item required me to go to the post office for retrieval. Now, Trendyol is growing accustomed to me and they just hand the items to my doorman. I am not endorsing Trendyol but if you use them through the internet, the site will get translated and that makes shopping easier. If you don’t speak Turkish.
Some people do load up their bikes when they shop.
Grocery shopping in Adana can be done at Groseri, a large chain. Easy to remember. Bu that is not the only place to shop. There are different levels of fanciness in grocery chains and the level of foreign food products also depends on how expensive and fancy the chain is… Here they are from highest in price to lowest.
Macrocenter and Kiosks is the fanciest and has the most Whole Foods or fancier vibe. There is one main store and lots of smaller kiosks. I find the kiosks are more like liquor stores with drunk food and drink. Owned by Migros.
Macrocenter has a Dean § DeLuca feel.
Metro is a Costco type store for restauranteurs. They have all that you need to open a sushi and maki place. Sushi is the rage in Turkiye. You have to sign up for a membership but it’s free and fairly easy to get the first time you go to the store. The store is a cavernous warehouse like most Costcos and you can buy glasses, furniture, etc. plus food.
Metro Center has a warehouse feel.
Groseri is probably my favorite chain. They have some interesting imported items, they make fresh food at the deli, and often there is a lady making fresh cig kofte which are vegetarian meat “balls”.
Carrefour is a French chain. The store in the M1 mall is huge while most of the neighborhood stores are average size. Imports from France include butter and other items that the Turks enjoy.
Migros is your average grocery store. They are a Swiss chain.
BIM is the largest retail grocery store chain in Turkiye. The stores are not always huge but they are like Aldi or Lidl in style. The middle aisle can have treasures or an air fryer.
BIM and most other places sell unmentionables.
A101 is a discount grocery store chain often found along with BIM in mixed income regions of town.
Migros Jet is also owned by Migros and is a discount chain.
Şok is also owned by Migros and is even more discount.
There are also open air markets and street vendors if you want to avoid grocery stores.
Every meal will end in tea, or “çay” (chai). It might even start with tea, if it’s breakfast, but it will always end with tea. Turkiye is the highest consumer of tea. It is customary to offer tea — always.
You can try to say no, but you will still get it. It’s like water in the United States. I have already grown accustomed to it. I still can’t hold the cup which is HOT. But, I do like the tea. I take it with one cube of sugar.
Tea is a serious shopping item.As is sugar…
There is an art to tea. I’ll write more about that later as I learn more. But what I have learned is not to drink it straight up. Dilute with the hot water which is always part of the tea setup. I didn’t know this and was drinking tea that was darker than American coffee…
Turkiye is famous for its cotton towels. Some places sell these for 30 or more dollars or British pounds. Some are small and made for wrapping around the waist. Others are for using as blankets, beach towels, tablecloths, etc. I found a place where the small ones cost 100 Turkish Lira ($2.39) and the large ones cost 300 TL ($7.17). Should I have bargained?
200 Lira per tablecloth/beach towel/throw.100 for these small ones.
The owners name is Serkan (There was someone else who worked there too but he seemed a bit giggly at the notion of a foreigner in the shop). Serkan spoke no English but was friendly and helpful. The store is located in old Adana city. It is not on Google maps. It is across the street from a shop called, “Demir organizasyon adana” which sells wedding stuff.
Serkan in front of the store.
I inadvertently bought quite a few things. I do not know if they take credit cards. I paid cash.
