Getting Hustled for Coin in Istanbul

It seems Mr Erdoğan thinks I have gold in my veins and my clothes are wovens from banknotes, because what are these prices. Why are they charging Swiss prices for kebab bro, how is some good baklava cheaper in Poland. €24 to climb the Galata Tower, €37 for a pathetic ferry to the Maidens Tower, €38 for a big water tank, €25 for Hagia Sophia but you can’t touch the carpet. Most certainly budget in 2026 indeed (absolute arse). Even so, things can be found to do in this great city on a budget, just ignore the authoritarianism.

There are two airports in Istanbul: Istanbul International Airport on the European side and Sabiha Gökçen International Airport on the Asian side. Because I was LARPing as a poor on my travels, I arrived via the latter. The deep-pocketed can afford Turkish Airlines and I can’t.
First things first I need to get hustled for coin to buy an Istanbulkart to use the buses. This was very easy and convenient, since in the airport metro station there was a professional tourist hustler selling Istanbulkarts by their weight in gold. He even spoke English, making the hustling even more accessible. Despite this top-tier service, I ultimately had to decline the deals on account of a lack of coin to be hustled, and bought a regular, non-gold Istanbulkart, seemed to work just as well.
Using this new item I tagged onto the world’s loudest metro train to take me most of my way to the hostel across the Bosphorus. A lot of the people in the train were suspiciously bald it was really quite curious. Equipped with my incompetence and lack of understanding of Turkish I took the wrong ferry, extending my ETA and delaying my already very late arrival. The bus system is chaotic, one just stands in the road and all the buses arrive at once and you hope you got on the right one.

The dome of the Blue Mosque crisscrossed by wires for the lighting rig.

After a nights rest I walked to Sultanahmet Square to see the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and Blue Mosque. The plan was to go inside each wondrous structure and have a gander, but I wasn’t willing to sell my firstborn to look at Suleiman the Magnificent’s harem, on account of self-enforced povo-rationing. People have told me all about the rich and beautiful histories and interiors of the palace and I’ll take their word for it, but I’m not paying €50 to see it. Erdoğan will have to try harder to get my hard-earned money. The Blue Mosque was free, with a partition separating worshipers and heathens like myself. I hope it stays free, such grandeur should be accessible for all, regardless of background and faith. The Classical Ottoman styling which was so strongly influenced by Byzantium, imbuing the structure with incredible space. One thing I didn’t like was the rather aggressive and misleading proselytising going on just outside and inside the Mosque. No issue with if anyone is curious about Islam, but I don’t want to be approached and told lies about the invention of paper and compasses (both Chinese inventions, not Muslim). Indeed Islamic scholars are responsible for many scientific and mathematical discoveries during the Golden Age, such as al-gebra and al-gorithms, plenty enough to puff your chest out about there. Theoretically, Hagia Sophia was but a short walk away from the Blue Mosque, but at its purported location I instead found a big pile of scaffolding next to a ticket office.
Apart from the inexplicable concentration of bald tourists here, there were a lot of Russians around since Türkiye is one of few countries to maintain visa-free travel for Russians. I spoke to some hipster types, they highly recommended going to Nizhny-Novgorod when possible, but obvious that won’t be anytime soon.
Near this ensemble are the Yeni (New) Mosque and Spice Bazaar. It is obligatory to buy some Turkish delight when here, since that Cadbury trash is a crime again humanity (literally, FUCK Mondelez). It was at this point I got ear-blasted by the call to prayer and booted out of Yeni Mosque, which contrary to its name has not been new for some time. It’s quite the atmosphere listening the Adhan in the public square with seagulls flying overhead.
I wasn’t keen on getting hustled for coin in Sultanahmet, so maybe the hustle at Galata is a bit more palatable for my wallet. This was imminently false. Not only that, the queue to ascend the tower encircled the tower twice, and I’m not waiting in the rain for that long to see a view I can find in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (excellent video game, highly recommend).

A lot of the other famous stuff to do in Istanbul is also quite expensive, and I’m not keen on getting extorted. But, like anywhere else in the world, there are things to do here for a low price or even free if you just look harder. While perusing Google Maps I found an enormous burnt-out wooden building on one of the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara. The ferry was cheap, none of that “oooooo, you gotta pay me €37 to go a swimmable distance” bollocks, and soon enough I had landed on the island of Büyükada. This place was like a Greek Island but much cheaper and much less overtouristed. Sure the upkeep isn’t nearly as good as Hydra or Santorini, but the slow, peaceful life between the sea and the hilly interior was preserved in full. The most famous figure to live on the island was Mr. Trotsky, who staying in quite a bourgeois dwelling before moving on to get his head caved in with an ice-pick. The aforementioned enormous burnt-out building sits atop Jesus Hill and there are three transport options: e-bus, phaeton, or foot. The bus wouldn’t arrive for some time, I can’t afford a phaeton, so foot it is. It’s not a long walk, but it is quite steep. With a 12kg bag full of camera equipment it was a bit strenuous I must admit. All that exercise seemed to work more than my leg and lungs, and unfortunately there was no toilet at the top.
The land the big burnt-out husk sits on is now used for grazing by a local shepherd who smokes fat spliffs. It was rather overequipped in terms of security, razor wire on top, barbed wire on the bottom, double gates at the entry points, security cams everywhere. I didn’t know sheep rustlers also break into Chinese embassies for a living. Since I’m not equipped to break into the Chinese Embassy I could only observe the ruins from a distance and it was a pain in my assholes to photograph, I even felt out of a tree into some nettles. It was designed by a French-Ottoman geezer as a luxury hotel and casino, like an 1890s Bellagio where the well-to-do aristocrat could squander his family fortune. For obvious reasons the long-faced Sultan wasn’t too keen on opening a Bellagio in his backyard pool, forcing the sale of the property to some Greeks, who converted the Bellagio into an Orthodox orphanage where kids learnt about the ills of going to the Bellagio. It was named the Bellagio Prinkipo Greek Orphanage and would raise ~5700 children from 1903 until 1964, when Cypriot things happened. In 1980 a fire severely damaged the orphanage, leaving it in its dilapidated state today inhabited only by crows. Looking upon it carried a heavy, ominous aura, its abandonment parallels the plight of the Greek population in Türkiye. When I stood looking through the wires at the wreck I did think that would be the end of it for this storied building, but in June this year the Turks and Greeks finally agreed to settle their differences, and attempt a restoration of one of the largest wooden buildings in the world.

The midsection of Prinkipo Orphanage.

The allure is too strong! I had to get hustled in order to see the inside of Hagia Sophia and man, I got hustled hard. Recently after 85 years Mr. Erdoğan deconverted Hagia Sophia from a museum back to a mosque, to the delight of the muslim nationalists and to the chagrin of everybody else (Atatürk is spinning in his grave). Non-muslims were summarily banned from the ground floor lest they deposit filth on the carpet and were confined to the gallery. Not only was most of the Sophia off-limits, what little could be seen was obstructed by the biggest scaffold in the world (it really is just a big pile of scaffolding). I couldn’t see the dome, the plaques, the calligraphy, the glass, nothing. I cannot sincerely recommend visiting Hagia Sophia unless you’re muslim because nobody should be paying out their arse to look at huge scaffolds. It was late by then and the rain had ceased, perfect conditions for night photography.

Because I’m an idiot, I went to the Spice Bazaar and thought it was the Grand Bazaar, I even thought to myself that this bazaar was a bit too small to be called grand. The morning before I was to leave I went to the hustle hotspot, in hopes of buying some trinkets for my loved ones.
I think grand is a bit of an understatement because this market is labyrinthine. I got lost in the endless passages of metalworks, jewelery, confectionery, clothes, and bald geezers. It really was the bargain hunters wet dream, just be aware you may end up with basement quality. The decorations on the arched roof of the bazaar are also quite alluring, complementing the artistic goods on sale.

So concluded my travels in Istanbul, it’s fair to say its days as a Mecca for budget tourism are over, and seeing how much the prices have been jacked up year on year I have little hope those days will return. But for individuals who don’t mind getting fleeced end-to-end there are a great many things to do in this historic city.