Post by Irish Stu on Sept 5, 2006 9:20:39 GMT -6
Side, Turkey
August 2006
August 2006
I didn’t mean to poleaxe the security guy at the airport, but if someone is being searched with their arms at 45 degrees in the air and you dodge underneath just as your co-worker tells them to put them down again then you’re likely to get hit hard on the head. I’ve always said that. And anyway, I was kind enough to catch him as his knees buckled and stopped him ending up on the floor, so I actually think I was due a thank you rather that the accusing looks I received.
This was the start of our vacation to Turkey and we were enduring the nightmare lines and delays caused by the recently thwarted threat to blow up American passenger aircraft flying out of the UK. No carry on luggage was allowed on the plane, and to pass through security we were allowed only a clear plastic bag containing nothing more than a wallet, tissues or handkerchief, passport and essential travel documents.
We eventually arrived at Antalya Airport in Southern Turkey around 4am and after paying a Turkish official at passport control £10 each to be permitted to enter the country, 30 minutes or so later we were on a coach for the 50 minute ride to our destination, Kamelya World Resort on the outskirts of the ancient town of Side (pronounce SEE-DAY). A rep from the tour operator rode with us and told us all kinds of useful things we would need to know during our vacation, including, to our horror, that in some hotels the antiquated design of the Turkish plumbing systems meant that used toilet paper must be placed in a receptacle next to the toilet rather that being flushed away as we are used to. EWWWW!! Thankfully this turned out not to be the case at our resort, to our very great relief!!
One thing that I, and others, couldn’t help noticing during the ride was the incredible number of petrol (gas) stations along the highway. These were all big modern outlets owned by BP and various local brands we had not seen before, with shops and eateries and boasting a dozen or more pumps. You would pass two or three together and be able to see the next couple just up the road. It was like this all the way to the resort and I’d guess that we must have passed about 50 to 70 of these. I also noticed that the petrol wasn’t as cheap as I had expected, considering Turkey’s proximity to the middle east, working out at around £1 ($1.80) a gallon.
Kamelya World Resort
We got up late the next morning, after arriving at the resort at 5.30am, and set out to explore our surroundings. Kamelya World Resort is HUGE, comprising two large 9 storey hotels, the Selin and the Fulya, and the Kamalya World Village where we were staying which consisted of numerous two story blocks of rooms. There were three main swimming pool complexes, one with a swim-up bar with a permanent waterfall from the roof above it, bizarrely making it impossible to leave the bar area with your drink. Each hotel also had its own pool, there was an adults only ‘Relaxation Pool’ and the resort’s own water park featuring several waterslides. There were several bars, a bowling alley, sauna suites, gyms, a Turkish bath and five speciality restaurants. Everything was modern, built in a Turkish style and well maintained and spotlessly clean. There was a bar adjacent to every pool, as well as terrace bars with lots of seating to enjoy during the evenings, and all bars and eating areas had self-service soft drinks, soda, beer and wine stations so you were never far from your next drink. They also had a local drink called Ayran which tasted like milk that had been left in the sun all day then someone who had been eating asparagus had pissed in it for good measure.
There were even three immaculately maintained full-sized football (soccer) pitches. In Germany (not the UK though) the football season is suspended for a month in January due to the weather, so apparently some of the top teams from Germany’s Bundesliga (the equivalent of England’s Premier League) including Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund travel to Turkey to take over a couple of floors of the resort’s hotels, which are closed to the public from November to April, to put up players, their partners and children, and they train on the pitches. On that note it was interesting as a Brit that often when you got into conversation with Turkish men they would ask which English football team you follow and then they would tell you which team they follow, which usually seemed to be Liverpool or Newcastle United, at which point I would ask ‘But I thought all you Turkish guys follow Galatasaray?’ (Turkey’s biggest football club) to which they would usually say that they do but that they also follow English football because ‘it’s the best in the world’.
Food and Drink
Each hotel, and the Kamelya Village, had their own restaurants. The rule was you could eat breakfast and lunch at any of these, but your evening meal must be taken at the dining room allocated to your accommodation, a rule that made good sense to allow the kitchens to prepare the right amount of food every evening. Food was buffet style and was of a high quality offering a mix of Turkish and European choices… the kitchens at Kamelya could teach Hedo a few things about catering for large numbers of people. That said, buffet is buffet, and by the end of two weeks we were struggling to fill our plates with food we actually wanted to eat. The dining rooms also offered a large selection of truly delicious cakes and pastries, as well as a good choice of fresh fruit. Children, and those with less adventurous tastes, were also well catered for with fries, burgers and pizza on offer every lunchtime and evening, as well as a good selection of ice cream for which there were always long lines. Food was plentiful and provided between mealtimes throughout the day in the form of morning and afternoon snacks at covered eating areas by the bars. These snacks might be burgers, hot dogs, pizza, kebabs, rolls and sandwiches, cakes and pastries etc.
There were also five speciality restaurants and we ate at the Turkish restaurant twice. The food was some of the best I’ve ever eaten and the lamb on the doner kebab was to die for. Flames were licking at the meat as it turned and every so often a staff member would step forward to slice off some of the cooked meat, letting it falling into a tray below, until he could bear the heat no longer. We guests, who had formed an orderly line, would then take it in turns to rush up to the tray and help ourselves until we could feel our eyebrows and hair starting to singe, at which point a hasty retreat was in order.
Unfortunately a few people we met during our stay had spent a couple of days suffering with doses of Dehli-belly, probably caused by the fruit being washed in the local water (drinks were rarely served with ice - often the cause of bad guts when travelling). Descriptions about their ailments usually contained references to being afraid to break wind for fear they might ‘follow through’ and reoccurring words such as ‘explosive’ ‘liquid’ and green’.
“swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into the queues.”
- Eric Idle, Monty Python Live at Drury Lane
- Eric Idle, Monty Python Live at Drury Lane
We learned on that first day that the majority of our fellow guests were Germans, I’d say around 70%, with a further 20% consisting of Russians, followed by around 5% Brits and the remainder drawn from the rest of Europe. Now we have nothing personal against Germans, Sam’s late grandmother, who is someone I had the deepest respect for, was German, which makes Sam and my children part German (and as I have mentioned on the board before, my daughter Victoria was born angry and German… and remains angry, blue eyed, blond haired and more German than most Germans) but these are NOT people you would chose to spend your vacation with. They may be fine when at home in Berlin and Dortmund, but en-mass on vacation they can be the rudest, most uncouth, ignorant people you could wish to not meet. It seems that when they leave Germany words such as ‘Please’, ‘Thank You’, ‘Excuse Me’, ‘Is That Seat Taken?’ ‘Where Is The Back Of The Line?’ etc are forcibly removed from their collective vocabulary. At first I thought it was just me being a little touchy and needing to chill a bit more, but then other Brits we spoke to said exactly the same things, as did the Turkish staff who were often quick to tell us that they do not particularly like them and told us that they always look forward to the end of the season when there seems to be more Brits at the resort… they like the way we actually take the trouble to thank them for performing services for us such as serving drinks or clearing our table at dinner.
Examples of Germanic rudeness included :
The woman at ‘snack time’ who discovered that the ketchup bottle was empty and barked at the staff member 6 feet away “HALLO!! KETCHUP!!”
The men who would appear next to you while you were waiting to be served at the bar and shouted their drinks order at the bar tender as he was serving someone else.
The times in the dining room when, empty handed, you would step aside to allow someone with a full plate of food to pass and then not receive so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a thank you.
The hands clutching plastic cups that would suddenly appear under the drinks dispenser from behind you or next to you just as you, after having waited for your own turn, were about to fill your glass.
The cutting into lines was breathtaking!! You would tap the offender on the shoulder and tell them that the back of the line was behind you but they would just look at you with contempt and ignore you. Sometimes, if there was something at ‘snack time’ that was not self service and required serving by a staff member, there would be people who were quite content to just stroll up to the front of the line of waiting people and stick their plate out to be served.
One night we were in the bar and a man and a child walked over to the table next to us. The woman who was sitting there stood up, presumably to leave with them... her legs were not yet even fully straight before a German man who had been prowling around looking for a chair sprinted across the room and grabbed her’s, if she had decided to sit back down again she would have ended up on the floor. She was left standing there in disbelief.
And their children!! The only way I can describe them is as unruly brats. They have no respect whatsoever for adults, they push past you, insult you in German when they know you are English… one day a girl, probably around 13 or so, pushed me in the back and said “SHOO!!” to get me to move out of her way. Another time Sam was at the bar waiting to be served and a boy walked up beside her and shouted “EIN COLA!!” at the bartender. He ignored him and served Sam, at which point the boy slammed his fist on the bar and shouted “OY!! EIN COLA!!”
The beach and water sports
The resort is set on a fantastic sandy beach which shelves gently into the sea and remains shallow for quite a distance. If you couldn’t get a lounger by one of the pools you could guarantee one on the beach, there must have been a couple of hundred, some out in the open but many under the numerous canopies provided to offer shade from the unforgiving sun. We ventured down there a couple of times to enjoy the water sports, but other than that we preferred to stay around one or other of the pools. I decided I would try the parasailing… hanging from a parachute being towed behind a speedboat isn’t my idea of fun but I have a terrible fear of heights and I saw this as a challenge and a personal accomplishment. I guessed, using the 9 storey Selin hotel right by the beach as a guide, that you ended up around 15 – 18 storeys in the air which was quite an adrenaline rush for me but I was pleased after 20 minutes or so to be back on the boat. I also took jet skis out several times, including a couple of times with my daughter Victoria who asked me beforehand to not go to fast, and a few minutes later was begging me to “go faster Daddy!!”
The Turkish bath experience
A couple of people we spoke to recommended the resort’s full Turkish bath experience, so we decided to go ahead and book it. The 70 minute experience included time spent in the hararet or Turkish bath itself, which was a large round marble steam room with large alcoves off it with marble tables and marble basins full of tepid water. After you enter you wash yourself with water then lie down and relax on the gobek tasi, a large marble slab in the middle of the room. After you’ve been in there for a while your tellak or masseur comes in and you lie on the tables in an alcove while they do a body scrub with coarse soapy mitts to remove grime and dead and peeling skin. This was so vigorous that the first thing I did when it was over was to check that my tattoos hadn't been rubbed off!! After that they made huge clouds of soap bubbles from an olive oil based soap which they kind of wafted around until it settled on us, before rinsing us off with cool water. We then retired to the relaxation area where we relaxed, draped in towels, on comfortable loungers with cups of hot apple tea, before being taken into the massage rooms for massages with scented oils. I felt wonderful afterwards, as relaxed as I have ever felt in my life, and I enjoyed the experience so much that I booked to go back for a deep tissue massage two days later… two weeks on and my shoulders still feel like they are floating.
Local transport
We ventured into Side a few times, the first time being early in our first week. We had the choice of getting there by taxi, or on one of the local buses known as a dolmus, which is Turkish for ‘filled up’ or ‘stuffed’. And that’s exactly what happens, the buses don’t run to a specific timetable, instead they run back and forth between specific places, such as our resort and Side with stops in between, and they will hang around at the bus stop until they are full… or stuffed. To pay your fare you simply pass your money to the person in front of you, who passes it to the person in front of them etc until it reaches the driver. Your ch-ch-change is returned to you in the same fashion. The dolmus may be cheap, but with two kids in tow we chose to use the taxis that waited outside the resort instead. We knew it was about 5 miles into Side, so on our first taxi ride there after we had been travelling for a good 15 minutes I was starting to get a bit concerned that the driver might actually be taking us to Iran or Syria instead. But all was well, and I assume that the 5 miles was the distance ‘as the crow flys’ and not by road. We even got to see an accident when a truck ploughed into a car that was broken down on the side of the road, and a near punch-up between our driver and another taxi driver who we met in a narrow street as we passed through a nearby market town when neither would allow the other to pass.
Ancient Side
Arriving in Side was like stepping into another world. One minute you are driving along a road past shops and bars, the next thing you know you have come around a bend and you are in the remains of an ancient city long since abandoned due to earthquakes, Christian zealots and Arab raids. Colonnades line the road, as do the remains of many homes and shops with some walls surviving to a height of 8 to 10 feet. Other buildings are part preserved, some two or three storeys high, and an ancient road goes off, again lined with colonnades, towards the Roman bath house that is now Side’s museum, and the Arab slave market. Looming ahead of us was the 15,000 seater Roman amphitheatre which is still used to this day to hold concerts, and the gateway to the city through which all traffic must past. We spent a couple of hours exploring this area, walking through the doorways of shops and houses just like their owners and customers had done over 2000 years ago, and admiring the intricacy of some of the surviving mosaics on the sidewalks outside. We took a leisurely stroll down the ancient street, and as we needed to drink copious amounts of water to keep us hydrated and help us endure the heat we gained some idea of how harsh life must once have been here with no air conditioning or electricity to power fans by.
Modern Side
Finally we walked through the gateway, past the amphitheatre and into ‘modern’ Side. The contrast could not have been more stark as we found ourselves in narrow streets lined with shops selling all manner of ‘genuine’ counterfeit brand label items as well as handcrafted embroidery, lace table cloths and serviettes, carpets, rugs, leather goods and gold and silver jewellery. The store owners continually hassle you to come in see what they have to offer. They could be very forceful and it took a lot of determination to keep walking on by and ignore their calls of “Hey!! You English? Come in… see what I have… you don’t have to buy anything… just look…” We did buy some ‘Diesel’ and ‘D&G’ shirts for me, ‘Victoria Beckham’ tops for Sam and ‘Nike’ and ‘Puma’ items for the girls. Oh and my fake Rolex. We eventually found our way down to the small harbour, once a thriving trading centre when Side was the trysting place of Anthony and Cleopatra, and now home to excursion and leisure craft. Just along from the harbour are the remains of the Temple of Apollo, part of which has been re-erected and forms one of the areas best known landmarks.
We ended up enjoying a couple of beers at the Liman Bar and Restaurant in the harbour, and after Liman himself joined us to chat we decided to book to go back for dinner on Saturday night. Liman even offered to send a car to the resort to pick us up, which seemed like a good idea right up until 7.00pm on Saturday when a 25 year old Fiat Supermirafiori came tearing down the street in a cloud of dust and screeched to a halt in front of us. But our driver was friendly and drove carefully with us in the car and we got to the restaurant in one piece and had a wonderful meal of that day’s catch of lobster and shrimp as the sun set over the harbour.
We ventured into Side a couple more times to shop and eat but spent most of the rest of the vacation enjoying the pools at the resort, the company of other Brits that we met, and watching the Germans doing a strange dance after every EC organised event.
Click HERE to see silly Europeans dancing.
The main pool
The resort’s water park
The swim-up bar by day
And at night
Sunset over the Turkish restaurant
Proof for Drmryder that the Midnight Buffet doesn’t always have to start at midnight!!
The beach bar
Inside the beach bar
One of the bars at night
The local supermarket
The perilously hot doner kebab. The picture doesn’t really capture the flames very well or just how hot it actually was.
Dinner at The Liman Bar and Restaurant, joined by Liman.
Peacocks and Carlsberg in Turkey… whatever next!!
Can anyone spot what is wrong with this picture?
On the way into Side. Whilst many of the buildings in the area are fairly modern, most land that has not been developed is uncultivated wasteland.
The market at nearby Manavgat on the way into Side.
Ancient Side
The amphitheatre
The ancient road to the Roman bath house
Side town
Side harbour
The Temple of Apollo
Tex, I hope you like my t-shirt!!
Simon
