Magic In Istanbul

Yesterday, I was in Istanbul, Turkey. I went on a short outing with some of the cabin crew. Four of us in total. The outing was quite good as nothing much
happened, because there were many tales of crew being conned or cheated during
their stay in Istanbul.

However, while sharing a cab back from The Great Bazaar and The Blue Mosque, we clocked up a hefty 39 Lira taxi fare. However, that aside, we actually had a
skilled magician as the driver!

We passed the driver three pieces of 10 Lira and one piece of 5 Lira notes making
a grand total of 35 Liras. However, the magician driver (while all of us were trying to dig out another 4 Liras to pay him) performed Street Magic (or more
like Taxi Magic) and lo and behold! He passed us back one piece of 5 Liras, one piece of 10 Liras and 2 pieces of 1 Lira!!!

Woo hoo! A free magic show in Istanbul! Didn't expect it! However, we were all puzzled at that time and insisted to the master magician taxi driver that we did
not possess any 1 Lira notes at all. The sorcerer then threw a tantrum and told
us forget it and don't pay anything and returned us the money!

Being civilised Singaporeans, we decided that magicians in the land of the East
and West are too dangerous to take on, in case they switch us around and we end
up being shrinked in size (hence not being able to fly back to Dubai the next morning) and left the taxi but not taking the money back.

34 Liras became 17 Liras in a blink of an eye! Wonderful Istanbul magic!





Well, the next time we pay any driver or any seller of anything, I'll be counting the notes in front of him/her and then passing it over to him/her. That way, no amount of magic can be performed to any effect! ;)





PS: Believe in retribution..because just as
we were nearing our hotel, his magic taxi mysteriously broke down and could
not be restarted...but that was just before he performed his miracle on us...