Teşekkürler Turkey

Teşekkürler Turkey

Apologies for the delay in posting again but its been a busy couple of months. WE've actually been on holiday. I thought I would never go on another all-inclusive holiday, and I’d made that decision after a disastrous effort in the Dominican Republic back in 2006. Back then I felt trapped by the resort,  and it was  the hassle outside of the resort and in the markets, the street vendors was not something I'd experienced on previous travels because I'd not been to India or Asia. My wife thought it was hilarious, watching me haggle or trying to avoid eye contact. When they brought the market inside the resort I was literally hiding behind palm trees to get to the restaurant without being collared by the sellers. 

Roll on to 2022, post Covid and we found ourselves having a family holiday abroad for the first time in a very long time. Along with our close friends we found ourselves in Turkey.  All-Inclusive and back amongst the mass tourism market that I’d studied during my education. The impacts of mass tourism have been, and continue to be so destructive and it still fascinates me, so I did feel a little overwhelmed by our decision at first, considering I had my heart on bike packing around Brittany this year. But now I'm home and pretty stoked on our holiday, I wanted to write about a few things that caught my eye.

Firstly let me explain the things I dislike about travelling outside the UK. Let me start with my anxiety getting to, and at the airport. It just seems like such a race against time from the moment we leave home. A 3.5 hour drive to Bristol Airport hoping that there are no traffic issues. As time is being cut into those two hour preflight deadlines, finding a car park space that has been pre-booked can be the next obstacle and highly raised blood pressure and a little family stress time. Then you enter the actual building and here begins the overall feeling of being on a cattle drive to get into the departure lounge. The crowds, the banging of baggage, the people who don’t understand that sorting your bag out in the middle of a narrow walkway is just poor form. But, once I’ve dumped my baggage, and I'm through the security and passport control  I’m literally a different person. Even when you start paying for overpriced food and drink. £7.50 for your first holiday pint is a big hit, but we indulged, had some overpriced food and purchased some duty free last minute holiday socks,  and relaxed in a plastic seat waiting for a gate call. This is when my love of people watching begins, everyone does it I reckon, just watching the world go by,  watching our fellow holiday makers go about their business. 

The rush to get on the plane is hilarious too, like their seat is going to be given away. We got stung for another £24 just metres from the plane because one of our hand luggage bags was too big (I hadn't taken into account the wheels) when the overhead lockers are huge and the flight was not full in the slightest.  Herded onto the plane we sat back in our seats that have never been built for comfort, especially if you have longer legs like me, and I reckon they’ve cut the cost on plane construction by removing a layer of sound proofing to reduce the noise, or is that just me? Although now pretty relaxed into the flight there must be a knack to sleeping on a plane but in all the years I’ve only found one, and that was Jack Daniels when it was issued a freebie, but that little gem has gone too unless you're willing to pay £8.50 each. So I put my ear pods in and tuned into my favourite podcast ‘The Ride Companion’  and said my farewells to my family sitting next to me and ignored them for the next four hours! This flight alone will lead me to investing in some noise cancelling headphones to block out those passengers who just feel like they have to be heard. Lastly, is it now the norm that you can just wander around the plane having a chat, whilst the cabin crew squeeze past. I’m sure the Cabin Crew used to be a little more strict, like the old Sisters in a hospital. Anyway the flight was pleasant, and the pilot was given a round of applause for landing the plane safely and doing his job. As a mention the only time I’ve ever given the captain a round of applause is when we legitimately thought we were going to die after three attempted landings in the Austrian Alps and when he finally aborted and took us to another airport, we clapped based on that decision alone, not the fact that he landed a plane. 

When we finally reached our destination after a two hour transfer (hour 10 of our journey from home) our room was clean and tidy, but our ‘paid extra’ garden view was equipped with two industrial ventilation vans and a wall full of air source pumps. The noise was like being back at the airport walking out to the plane. But after a polite concern raised with the amazing reception staff we were gratefully moved to a room with a stunning sea and mountain view, for which I generously tipped the staff. 

The hotel was pretty huge and as a people watcher, surrounded by people in a resort I got to watch a lot. This would not be an honest blog post if I did not mention this next bit because it was pretty shocking and it did seem to become part of my holiday memory.  I was genuinely taken back by the amount of people that are vastly overweight, many of them British, and it’s worrying. Personally I still have, and probably always will have a ‘family pack’ and admit I’ve been body conscious much of my life. I don’t go brown easily and mostly resemble a cooked lobster, and I’m often found seeking shade or more factor 50+, I generally come back off holiday looking like I’ve never been. When, like me, you look like an egg cup in a wetsuit, I’ve spent a lot of time pointlessly comparing myself to others, but in 2001 thanks to a lads surfing holiday to Costa Rica I stopped being so bothered. When nine lads of all shapes and sizes surf together it confirms that we are all different,  and we all have our issues, it just doesn’t matter. But I will never compare myself to others ever again. This certainly isn’t a dig at those people, or ‘weight shaming’, or any of that, this is a paragraph about what we all observed and what seemed to become part of my holiday. Is this the right place to comment on this , who knows, I’m sure I’ll find out if anyone reads this, but it’s clear to some that the messages of health and diet education, or advice for personal well-being are really not getting through, lifestyle changes are being ignored and sadly for some of these people they are a ticking health bomb, or it’s already counting down. This aside they were there to have fun as we were and fun they had. 

The hotel was great, the evening entertainment was fun, and with the help of free alcohol we let loose on the dance floor for a couple of nights. Our days were spent in the sea swimming, maybe it is because we all spend so much time in the ocean we opted to avoid the chlorinated swimming pool, and spent our days practising our death dives, the kids never left the water after unpacking their rubber rings we’d packed and brought with us! My only job each day was to put our towels on the loungers on the pontoon. Yes I was that person, I was that tourist down there in the dark at 6.45am gathering enough loungers for our two families, and set for the day by sunrise I was having my first swim in the calm waters before breakfast. 

We signed up for a full tourist boat trip around the coastline of Marmaris and it was stunning. We stopped at a local market town and haggled over genuine fake clothing, probably the most unethical purchases I’ve ever made, we swam and went snorkelling in crystal clear waters, we floated over an Octopus who seemed totally unbothered by another boat load of tourists and spotted a couple of amazing looking fish. 

The coastline is dramatic with mountainous peaks rising out of the Mediterranean providing a stunning backdrop to a day well spent cruising around on a boat run by some really friendly staff and owners. This landscape has also kept development to a minimum. The urban sprawl like that of Spain or Malta has not happened here to the extent seen in other resorts because It simply can’t; there is nowhere to go beyond a 1 mile radius from the coast in the bay except up a mountain. Marmaris felt contained by rock and I that is a good thing. There are no monstrous high rise hotels, but during the pick ups for our excursions I noticed that space is a premium in the town, residential apartments are in the shadow of tourism, and when we reached the foot of the hills, the last stand was nature itself, I can imagine it might feel a little claustrophobic as space diminished. 

I didn’t feel like I experienced the real Turkey to any real degree, how can you staying in an all-inclusive resort, and I know there are far better ways to visit a beautiful country like this. But we made the most of it. We tried a Turkish bath which was great fun, but this felt a little staged with the effort to extract more money from you for the photographs and foot massage amongst other extras, and this was always going to be part of the this experience, that’s how they make their living. Would I go back to Turkey? Probably. Did I enjoy the holiday? Absolutely.  Was it nice to go beyond the local Radius of West Cornwall? 100%

This trip gave me time to think of new creative ideas, to write, to rekindle old passions and topics I'd studied 30 years ago, it brought back memories of being on a university study trip to Malta and the taking students myslef to Spain studying tourism management, I looked at aspects of tourism with fresh eyes, and it made me look at a resort from the eyes of a mass tourist…Myself and I very much enjoyed it!

Teşekkürler Turkey
‘Thank You Turkey’