Sizzling Bodrum

Old Bodrum Town has hit the season running. In the heat of the day people slowly amble along the promenade, gorge on gossip in the cafés, browse and graze in the posh shops or relax under cooling shade of a tall palm tree. By night the prom sizzles to the heavy beat of Turkopop and a madding crowd of the weird, the wonderful and the well-to-do. This is my rapid round up of what’s hot and what’s not along Bodrum’s celebrated promenade.

Is there anywhere the world without a Starbucks?

The Yacht Club - A cool place with cool music

Tango - So so steaks, stratospheric wine prices, arrogant waiters

Marina Vista - A pretty hotel in a great location. Pity about the surly service

Sungar Pizza - A Bodrum stalwark. Great food. Try and get a table on the roof terrace

Marks and Spencer - The older Turkish yachting fraternity just love their Blue Harbour range

Hong Kong Restaurant - Cross the street to avoid the relentless hassle from the annoying waiters

Musto's - Great food, great host, reasonable wine prices

Rest you bones in the heat under the trees

Play and pray

Fink - You'll need a second mortgage to drink here

Helva - I spy a lady of the night

Kahve Dunyasi - The best coffee in town and a chocolate spoon with every cup

 

More on Perking the Pansies

Be Careful What You Wish For

Election fever has gripped the nation ahead of the national vote on June 12th. Democracy is a serious and sometimes deadly business in Turkey judging by the recent bomb attack in Istanbul. Thankfully, no-one was killed this time.

The view from our balcony provides a visual treat of meandering misplaced tourists, lunatic drivers in a rush and colourful electioneering travelling vans blazoned with party political slogans crowned with giant loudspeakers. We’re serenaded by an ear-piercing mix of Turkopop and Soviet-era patriotic marching tunes. It’s all very jolly.

The current government incumbents, the AK Party is flying high in the polls and victory seems assured. It’s the margin of success that interests me. A strong opposition is essential for a healthy democracy anywhere but the Opposition here appears fractured and ineffective. The AK Party may secure a sufficient majority in Parliament to revise the Turkish Constitution without recourse to a referendum.  If Turkey continues to slip towards religious conservatism, we may reconsider our place in the sun.

More on Perking the Pansies

Thank the Madonna for Virgin Mobile

We foolishly mislaid our Turkish mobile phone a few weeks ago and replaced it with a little second hand number. It looked quite nice in the display cabinet but this turned out to be just an illusion. The bloody thing started to fall apart the minute we got it home, and after a few days it became impossible to see the screen after dark. Like the rest of the World, Turks have begun an enduring love affair with mobile telephony though it’s difficult to imagine how most people can afford it since even a modest phone costs the average weekly wage. There are three main phone operators in Turkey - Turkcell (by far the biggest), AVEA and good old British Vodafone. I thought it quite reasonable to expect a little healthy competition. Not a bit of it. As far as I can see the whole market works as a cartel. So, on our last trip to London we bought a new phone. It cost a fiver. Thank the Madonna for Virgin Mobile.

It turns out you can’t just buy a phone willy-nilly and swap the SIM card over. Oh, no. All phones must be registered with the State. Apparently it's an anti-terrorist measure. It probably facilitates phone tapping which I read is surprisingly commonplace. Off we trotted to the main Turkcell shop in Bodrum to discharge our legal obligations. We were processed by a cheery young woman with forearms hairier than mine. She sorted us out in no time with a registration form in triplicate with two official stamps on each copy and countless photocopies of my British passport and Turkish residency permit. There are now enough copies of my official identity in circulation to supply the Israeli Secret Service for years.

The phone we bought in Britain was blocked by Virgin Mobile. We visited a back street phone shop in search of solution. I was ushered into a tiny antechamber to negotiate the transaction with a seedy looking gangster type in cheap jeans surrounded by untidy piles of disassembled hand sets and spare parts. For a small consideration, the swarthy chap entered the magic sequence of numbers. I felt like I had just visited my drug dealer. The phone for a fiver now works like a dream.

More on Perking the Pansies

My Shattered Chassis

As retired hedonistas my partner and I fancied a bit of wanton decadence and set our sights on Izmir. After all, it is Turkey’s third largest metropolis with a laid back, laissez faire reputation.

Driving is not for the faint hearted, best only tried by the foolish or the suicidal. Though much improved in recent years, roads can still be perilous with lunar potholes, boulder-sized loose chippings and chassis-shattering unmarked concrete speed bumps. All these hazards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane driving of the locals. The basic rules of the unofficial Turkish Highway Code are straightforward enough – drive fast, jump lights, never indicate, overtake on blind bends, tailgate dangerously and sound the car horn loudly and often. It is also the ‘law’ to ignore pedestrian crossings (purely for street decoration and EU compliance inspectors), bounce a new born baby on your lap when weaving in and out of the traffic and yell down the mobile phone that has been surgically grafted to your ear. The rules are observed religiously. Obligingly, local municipalities even provide traffic lights that count down to green to encourage boy racers to champ at the bit to be first out of the traps. We quickly learned that unsuspecting foreigners must keep their wits about them to preserve life and limb.

Despite our genuine fear of death or permanent disability, we left for Izmir at first light, driving due east to Milas, the next sizeable town from Bodrum. From the outskirts, Milas has little to commend it; a nondescript minor provincial town of concrete awfulness. We swung north inland. Ascending into the hills (well, mountains by British standards) we swept past Lake Bafa, a stunning expanse of calm, mirrored water that reflects the cradling highlands. It reminded me of the Italian lakes. The winter rains have had a remarkable effect on the landscape, transforming the tinderbox hue of pale green and ochre to a lush iridescence.

We descended to the bountiful basin made fertile by the rich silt deposited by the snaking Meander River over innumerable centuries. We hurried through shabby jobbing agro-villages, slowly swerving around family laden tractors and head-scarfed grannies on dawdling donkeys. Onwards towards Izmir, we left the Third World behind and hit the 21st century toll motorway near Aydin which came as something of an unforeseen relief. Neat, newly constructed and four lanes wide, it wouldn’t look out of place in Germany. Descending towards the coast, Izmir’s urban sprawl stretched out impressively before us.

Driving through Izmir was the most traumatic driving experience of our lives. The city is dissected by crumbling dual carriageways and getting off the bloody things is nigh on impossible. We spent hours driving from one side of the city to the other, then back again, trying to find the right exit, any exit. Eventually, after an unscheduled two hour excursion we found the seafront boulevard where our hotel was located.

We tried to park outside a café in the only available space as far as the eye could see. The owner was having none of it and began gesticulating aggressively to move us on. We’ve heard that it is not unusual for business owners to trash any unsolicited car parked outside their premises, so we thought we best not risk it. Off we drove on yet another distressing circuit of the city centre. Then, miracle upon miracles, we were delivered a space right outside the hotel entrance. The moral of this story? Get the bus.

More on Perking the Pansies