........ I went straight to have a chat with our Rep who I found cowering behind her company signboard and demanded to be moved to Side immediately!
She said that she would telephone headquarters in London but warned that any such move would cost more than the original holiday and take at least four days to accomplish.
So we reluctantly agreed to stay and ventured out to sunbathe on the beach.
First though we had to cross the main Istanbul to Basra Highway which ran along the coast and was full of massive trucks loosely laden with every conceivable variety of cargo, reaching up to a height about four times more than would be allowed in Britain and then piled high on top of that with humans !
Beside the highway and convenient for beach-users were ice cream vendors, their ice cream and cornets covered in a thick mat of diesel soot!
The beach itself was smothered in beach umbrellas and sunbeds belonging to the terraces of cafes that laid claim to all but a cafe wide slice of sand.
Refusing to pay, we eventually put our towels down in front of the one empty cafe and lay there feeling fairly uncomfortable as groups of three or four local men, all holding hands, stopped in front of us devouring both of our bodies with their eyes whilst speaking incomprehensibly about what they would like to do with us!
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| I KNEW AND THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING! |
I decided to leave Shirley safely on her own for half an hour and wander along to the paragliding kiosk and ask the price, stopping on the way back to buy her a kerb-side cornet as a treat!
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| RETURNING WITH A CORNET JUST IN TIME TO SAVE SHIRLEY FROM A HUNK! |
I couldn't walk barefoot on the sand as it really was burning hot and took just long enough, walking through the surf for my back to get wrecked by the sun.
A helpful boatman, seeing my plight and hoping to get a fare came over and suggested that Shirley should smear my back with yogurt, which she did once I'd crossed the road to the nearest mini-market to buy some. This resulted in my lying on my front, in the shade, with the terrible heat from the hot sand now grilling my stomach even through my towel and my back stinking of hot fly-covered and curdling yogurt !
Then the owners of the empty bar turned up and ordered us off "Their" beach and as they were heavily armed soldiers we left !
We sat in our room wondering how we could fly straight home.But first it was evening and time to find a restaurant. The temperature was still too high to walk any great distance so we settled for the busiest looking one which also happened to front the endlessly noisy and fume-filled highway.
Sunburn had dulled my appetite and so I ordered a small pizza which turned out to be smaller than a teaplate!
Shirley ordered chicken kebabs chips and a salad.
As, on her first bite, blood squirted out of the still raw chicken I asked the harassed waiter to return the meal to the chef and kindly request him to cook it properly. And so did another couple at the same time.
Twenty minutes later Shirley took her slighty impatient second bite just before I said, "Shirley! That is not your dinner! The chips and salad are arranged differently!"
The waiter realised that as well and rushing over pulled the kebab skewer with the bitten chicken out of her hand, re-arranged it on the plate and charged over to the other table , re-enacting the same scene before returning with the correct plate now with a half-eaten chicken chunk hanging off the end.
We'd totally given up on the country by now and so Shirley ate on in silence.
By way of an apology the manager sent over a lovely looking desert, consisting of a sundae dish full of a blue liquor with tiny cocktail umbrellas and lit sparklers dancing in it. Decoratively arranged around the saucer on which the dish was standing were several worn out slices of air-browned apple skewered on hopefully unused toothpicks.
He watched as we nibbled the foul apple and came running as I was about to drain the liquor, shouting,"NoNoNo Senor, iz Parafeen! Only for looky!"
We went to bed intending to plan an escape campaign and let sleep dull the day's memories but it was too hot and there was no air-conditioning and Shirley had to have the main door open to get some kind of cooling draught going.
She could only find some comfort by lying uncovered, on her back and naked the wrong way round; that is with her feet on the pillow beside my head and her head as close as possible to the door, only to be woken in the early hours by the proprietor standing there demanding to know what was going on and why the door was open in contravention of the fire regulations!
He hissed something about " Stewpeed Ingleesh" and stomped out slamming the door behind him.
He stared angrily at us for the following six days as we ate our breakfasts!
We survived somehow, hating everything about the place and the people and their insistent ways of touching you and forcing you to take glasses of tea in their shops!
There were child beggars everywhere and I finally softened on the last evening and gave a fat boy of about eight the equivalent of ten pence as he sat looking forlorn on a piece of wasteland.
No sooner had I left than his "Pimp" emerged from the surrounding bushes, holding out his hand for the boy to give him the coin!
We flew home but Turkey hadn't finished with us as we both went down with such bad food poisoning that I eventually crawled to my doctor's for help.
He gave me a sample pot and a form to hand back to reception.
On the form was written the unforgettable line; " Food poisoning. Suspect Turkey. The country not the bird ! "
Some weeks later and several stone lighter we decided never to go abroad again.
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