Belly Dancing in Istanbul? Sure!

We landed in Istanbul for our whirlwind tour on Wednesday night, unsure of what to really expect. Technically, we landed on the Asian side of the Bosporus before the very long drive to our hostel, so I can cross that continent off.

When we got to our hostel, our reservation was nowhere to be found in their records. The clerk told us to just throw our stuff on five open beds they had - the ones we had actually reserved - and to hurry to the rooftop bar with him, where a belly dancer was preparing to perform and the whole hostel was having a big party. He told us to just pay him for the room whenever and ran upstairs. Though it was late and we were hungry, we followed him up for what we assumed would be a seductive introduction to Turkish culture.

So we were a little surprised by what actually unfolded. A belly dancer came out, wearing the requisite revealning clothing, and things got real weird real quick. As a quick aside: I have no problem with girls who are overweight, do not view weight as a particularly important barometer of a person's worth or attraction, and respect those who are comfortable with themselves no matter what. But belly dancing by its nature does require strong stomach muscles, and without going into detail its important to note that the dancer before us didn't have them; let's just say she didn't look like the girl pictured above. She did have large cleavage though, and the routine very quickly descended into her grabbing guys out of the crowd, accentuating that cleavage through particular hip gyrations (which rarely could be defined as belly dancing), and then demanding tip money (in no small amounts). I avoided the fate by pleading poverty, but most of my entourage was not so lucky. The whole scene was like some sort of Turkish mix of belly dancing, a bad strip club, and that part of prom in high school when everyone's just a little to tipsy: some very aggressive dancing and some very uncomfortable people.

Basically, we were the victims of a money-collecting scheme within an hour of our arrival. We walked out of the bar before she was finished, $15 poorer, confused about what had just happened, and (for some among us) a tad emotionally wounded. It was the kind of experience we never would have had in Western Europe, and I went to bed that night extremely satisfied that we had made the foray into the east.