A Tale of two taxis (and a bonus bus ride)

For myriad reasons, I ended up taking a cab both Saturday morning and Sunday morning last week. And in keeping with the dual nature of Turkey/Istanbul/Fatih, they were diametrically opposite.
Saturday morning, I was headed out to meet up with a group to walk the shore on the Bosporus, so I grabbed a taxi out off the main road. As an aside, all foreigners are warned about taxi drivers looking to scam foreign tourists, but so far I've been lucky and have just had a few "taking the extremely long way" experiences.
As we're crossing the Galata Bridge, I glance at the meter to see: it's at nearly 14 lira, or twice what it should be. The meter's been tampered with. My driver has his phone wedged into the steering wheel, and is talking with his girlfriend on speakerphone while driving, but we get to Besiktas in short order, where I inform him that I have no intention of paying 24 lira for a 12 lira ride. After I haggle down to 20, I hand the driver my cash... and he switches it out.
A classic trick. Too bad I didn't notice til I got out, after handing over even more cash after my 50 lira bill magically became a 5 lira bill. Gah.

Sunday I was running a titch late for somewhere awkward to get to by public transportation, so I went out to the same main road and hailed another cab. Total 180-degree difference. The driver and I spent the whole trip chatting along about the economic crisis, unemployment, the cost of living here and his adorable 2-year-old daughter (he showed me photos at a red light). When we got to the intersection where I was getting out, he wouldn't let me pay the full fare, because he'd told me a slightly lower price en route.
Turkish hospitality at its best.

And another, as-long-as-I'm-writing-about-things-as-banal-as-taxi-rides story: Last Wednesday, I had by far my most exciting experience on an intracity bus. I was on my way home from work, earphones in, Lady Gaga blaring (don't judge), when the bus pulls over suddenly to the side of the road, between stops. I might not have noticed anything amiss at that point had the bus driver not gone tearing out the door and sprinting around to the back of the bus. At that point, the back of the bus starting rapidly filling with acrid smoke and the bus assistant opened all the doors for the passengers to skedaddle. As I wedged myself in the mass exodus, I glanced behind me to see 8-10 foot flames shooting out the back of the bus.

That's right, my bus Caught On Fire. Not simply smoke and burning smells, respectably sized flames and a busful of duly impressed passengers. Once we were all a safe gawking distance away, we watched the bus driver and his assistant dither before folks started hoofing it to the next bus stop to grab another bus. It was pretty clear our original one was not going to be resuming its route any time soon. I updated my Twitter as I walked, because I am that kind of adherent to modern technology.

Luckily, but far less interesting from a blogging perspective, all my transportation choices since those have been fairly commonplace.

One final note: Sorry for the dearth of posts recently; for some reason Blogger doesn't seem to be working in Turkey. Shockingly, this is a Google issue, not a the-government-banned-it issue. I'm working out options.

kendine iyi bak,