Aegean Coast 2024: Part Three - Turkey
Pythagorion-Kuşadası, 29th May 2024
I have an interminable wait for the ferry, made worse because Direct Ferries have emailed that it’s departing from Vathy and not Pythagorion, which would have been a short walk. I'm fuming. Other websites say a 17:30, not 18:00 departure. It could be a food allergy, but my nerves are torn to shreds once again. I scout the bus station (stop). Nothing is on time, it’s not clear which side of the road you should be on, the buses don’t say where they’re going in any language and the drivers don’t want to leave their seats to open the baggage locker. So I get a 25 euro taxi instead which is at least 3 more than it should be.
Miraculously, I do manage to get a boarding pass from a travel agent at the third attempt, the boat is leaving from Samos Town (not Vathy on the other side of the bay) at 18:00. The Greek approach to travel is, as Kostas puts it, ‘more relaxed’ than in the UK. The pass makes me feel better and I have a beer in the nearest bar which is quite aware of its position. Does that really say five euros for 200 ml of draft Heineken? Samos has really leeched money.
I meet a nice Irish couple in the long queue for the boat that leaves at 17:40. They warn me that Kuşadası is even more expensive than Samos. The town, which has grown 1500% since I was last here is sprawling and hilly and I’m guessing my pansiyon is atop. I’m pleasantly surprised to find a flat pedestrianised area that looks like Bromley with castles and… okay, there’s the hill.
The pansiyon is next to a mosque and around the corner from Bar Street, a tattoo parlour, a shot bar and a sex shop. The religious owner (possibly Kurdish?), surrounded by his family, speaks no English. The room can be best described as pokey. There’s a shared outside smoking area, flies, mosquitoes, no fridge and not even a toothbrush cup for my late night ouzo, but you get what you pay for. At least the aircon works.
I go for a sunset wander and am the only person not getting hassled to go into restaurants, all of which are showing football. I settle on a fast food joint called Ali Baba, part of a group of companies that also do a taxi service, real estate and dentistry. The food and views of the tourists are good and I’m out of there for a tenner after a lahmacun and litre of Efes. Early night I think.
Kuşadası/Ephesus, 30th May 2024
The mosque next door is deafening, there’s a super-sensitive light sensor outside my room that flashes like a disco, the water’s off periodically and the fuse blew spectacularly when I plugged in my universal charger, but quite I like this pansiyon. The owner’s very friendly and you can communicate via Google translate, although I don’t really trust it and I’m afraid of mortally offending him. Inclusive breakfast, which is very difficult not to have when staying in Türkiye, is very nice, and he’s just given me a free (I hope) coffee.
I spend breakfast chatting to a suave old Austrian guy who’s been to nearly every country in the world, lives in Sweden and gets the urge to go somewhere for a couple of months because he can. He tells me that the 10am mosque singalong isn’t a call to prayer but actually a community broadcast such as: ‘Mrs Ali has lost her cat. If anybody has seen it please get in touch. It has a fluffy tail.’ Actually, that may be disrespectful. They're usually announcing a death and the communication is necessary because Muslims get buried quick.
I’m back on the archaeology trail, hat ‘n’ all. I find the dolmuş station eventually because data roaming has gone completely, ask a guy if he’s going to Ephesus and he says yes, then there’s a tour of three water parks before we get to Selçuk an hour later, and then go back towards Kuşadası. He drops me and two Italian girls in the middle of nowhere and points. The sign says it’s 1km to Ephesus, but it’s at least three and one of these is a queue of tour buses from the ridiculously large cruise ships. Almost nobody travels solo to Ephesus anymore it seems.
It's 40 euros to get in! That’s twice as much as the Acropolis, Colosseum, Westminster Abbey, a day in Angkor Wat, the Louvre and Flambards, Helston! It's 62 Euros if you also want to go to the church where the Virgin Mary is supposed to be buried, which I don't.
I go to the Ephesus Experience Museum first because it has air-conditioning, a toilet and ashtrays, even though you’re not supposed to smoke anywhere. It’s a kind of animated son et lumière narrated by John Hurt and (possibly) Cate Blanchett. It’s not bad, probably best when you’re stoned. Outside there are processions of people in fancy dress, meant to be Antony and Cleopatra and their retinue, because they came here once.
The big stone theatre (shame about the crane), restored façade of a Roman library and marble promenade are impressive, but otherwise it’s rubble like all other archaeological sites in these parts. It's not even that big, I’ve been twice before and it's not important in my next book. Charging this much for an archaeological site you should be actively encouraging foreigners to visit is borderline criminal. I paid because I've come all this way and I'm pretending to be a historical fiction writer and the tour bus people have it inclusive in their package, but what of the poor student backpackers on a tight budget? The world is not as accessible as it once was, it would seem.
It's hot as hell. On the way back I notice a bus stop besieged by coaches and decide to take the next dolmuş, wherever it goes. That’s Selçuk and from there I go back to Kuşadası via the water parks.
An evening stroll along the seafront, where bars and restaurants charge double those inland, suggests Kuşadası isn’t the worst place you could go on holiday. Getting out of here may be an issue, however.
They cancelled my archaeological tour to Priene, Miletus and Didim which I booked months ago. I knew they would as they hadn't been in touch. I doubt that most tourists in Kuşadası have even heard of these places. Or Ephesus, might I add. Fuck ‘em, I’ve got a Turkish SIM card now, I’m going anyway.
It starts badly then gets much worse. I can’t find the roundabout where I got the dolmuş yesterday. Eventually there’s a mini bus to Söke. I don’t even know how to pronounce it - Soak? Zokay? Socky? It’s Sir Kay apparently.
Half an hour later everyone gets off the bus so I do too. I'm by the side of busy street, just a couple of stops with no information and burning unsheltered sun. GM tells me it’s a 40 minute wait for a bus to Melit, but I spy a bus going to Didim so I get on.
The aircon is on full and the next hour and a half is very relaxing, so much that I snooze off and miss the town where I’m meant to change bus. The driver is probably asking me where I’m getting off but I just wait until we can go no further, passing through Didim, which is huge, to a place called Altinkum, which I’ve heard of before. The bus costs £1.50.
Ha! Take that Minister Tours! I made it to Didim.
Altinkum has a nice beach and is full of British tourists, none of whom have ever taken a Turkish bus before. I don’t hang around long and head for Miletus. I take a bus back to Didim and wait half an hour by a stop repeating ‘Melit 273’ in my head. No such bus arrives so I jump on one to Sir Kay.
I’m tempted to get off at Akkoy, just 5 km from Miletus, but it looks dead and I’m concerned about my temporary separation from my dirty washing. It’s not about the sights anyway, I’m here to soak up the atmosphere and landscape, which I can report is flattish with a few hills and surrounded by mountains. The cities used to be on the sea but the river Meander silted up. But it’s hard to think about Alcibiades when you’re in the smog hole that is Sir Kay, or staring at the Kuşadası Projects, possibly the ugliest tourist developments I've ever seen.
So that was my day. A seven hour round trip in hot crowded mini-buses to have a terrible overpriced coffee in Altinkum. I’ve never been so glad to get back to somewhere I’m not particularly fond of.
Kuşadası-Pamukkale, 1st June 2024
Friedrich the Austrian is the pansiyon’s long term resident, a bit like the Major in Fawlty Towers except that Gunther’s Basil to owner Mohammad’s Manuel. Friedrich has decided to mentor Mohammad in the practice of being a more successful manager which involves teaching him pidgin English and pandering to the guests’ every whim. So when I say I’ll be taking a train Friedrich tells Ali to look up the times. ‘After breakfast.’ ‘No, do it now.’ When I say I’d like a taxi to Selçuk because I’m travelling with my friend Sean the now 20kg suitcase and it's going to be a scorcher, Ali says ‘too expensive.’ ‘Make a deal,’ orders Friedrich and Mohammad is amazed that he can. Only 500tl (£12.50).
Selçuk’s busy because there’s a Saturday market, but it’s much nicer than Kuşadası with lots of nesting storks. I buy a ticket for the 12:10 (not the 12:47, the time Mohammad gave me, which doesn’t exist) and I’m off to Denizli. It’s my first and last Turkish train. The only resemblance to the bullet train is it’s ample leg room. The seats are extremely uncomfortable, the toilet’s broken and the catering is a guy who wanders down the aisle with a carrier bag of pretzels, yoghurt and water. It takes over four hours because the train’s forty minutes late, the last 15km taking over an hour.
Alight at Denizli in Central Western Anatolia - who turned the heating up to 35c?! Cross a motorway to the neighbouring bus station and plot my escape and buy a bus ticket to Marmaris in three days time. The guy writes down the times of the buses and I choose the 13:30. Hang on, why does it take 5 hours to get there?
Dolmuş to Pamukkale is fine except the driver drops me in the middle of nowhere and points. After getting lost, I find the hotel after a 1 km walk in the burning heat. At first glance the room seems nice except my first floor balcony does not have a view of the magnificent bright white calcite rocks but the swimming pool, which I can’t look at because there’s an eyeline view of elderly Turkish women in their bathing costumes, so I have to turn and look at the car park, laundry area and rubbish dump. Sounds like a river below my shower, there’s no fridge and wi-fi is pitiful.
This is a problem because I’ve learned that the ticket I’ve bought re-traces my journey to Sir Kay and does not go the direct route across the beautiful mountains. I don’t mind losing a tenner to save over two hours on a bus so try to book the 11:00. An hour later I’m still waiting for the transaction to process and, eventually RBS ask for a verification code. Except I’ve got a sodding Turkish SIM now and they haven’t even given me a small pin to change it back.
I’m not going to get stressed I say to the (only) guy at the hotel who speaks passable English and who has reluctantly accepted the challenge of my laundry. So I hit town. I came here in 1986 and it was buzzing with backpackers and bars. Now, of course, most tourists come on day trips and the few foreigners are mainly Japanese, Korean and French, unlike Kuşadası where they all seemed to be Irish or Russian.
It’s dead, but I eventually find a quiet strip of bars and restaurants. I persuade the owner to show the Champions League final later as he's never heard of it, unlike Kuşadası where they’re showing it everywhere.
I’m not saying I’m sick of Greek and Turkish food (actually, I am) but one of the things I’m looking forward to are some oriental restaurants. The pan-Asian cafe is surprisingly expensive, each dish costing over a tenner, but that’s ‘cause they each feed four and, hungry as I am, the Xinjiang big plate noodles, which is surprisingly authentic with its bony chicken, defeats me. It’s so spicy I’m sweating buckets because that’s obviously what I need right now.
The bill's too high. I argue with the waiter who doesn't speak English. I didn’t order extra noodles and they added a 10% service charge which I haven’t had to pay anywhere else. Via Google Translate he tells me that big plate noodles doesn't come with noodles. I argue with the Vietnamese owner on the phone, they take the extra noodles off the bill.
There's five of us watching the football. The sound is turned right down. Three nights here. Oh no, what have I done?
Pamukkale, 2nd-3rd 2024
I’ve been travelling or going on failed excursions for four days, so I decided not to see Pamukkale yesterday. Well, obviously I can see it, I mean not pay money to walk around it. After a ridiculously large breakfast (see below) I venture into the village and find it’s actually quite nice with a lot more shops, bars and restaurants than I noticed the night before. Still completely empty though.
In 1986 there was this cocky kid at a pansiyon in Cappadocia who couldn’t have been more than fifteen who claimed he had a girlfriend from Guildford. He said he’d stayed with her there. ‘Really,’ I said. ‘I’m from Guildford. Where were you living?’ You could see he couldn’t believe his dumb luck in choosing the one random British town where someone he might meet comes from. ‘East,’ he mumbled. ‘Ah, East Guildford. Near the statue of Mickey Mouse?’ ‘Yes.’
So, I don’t know what it is about Guildford, but here I meet another ex-resident of that great city. He happens to be touting for business outside a restaurant. When, in answer to his question, I tell him I’m from London he says ‘You’re a cockney, innit?’ and that he lived in London for 20 years. Apparently, he studied at the University of Guildford. Could it be the same guy?
There is no University of Guildford, by the way. It's called the University of Surrey.
Seems I was hysterical about my ticket to Marmaris, because a travel agent sorts it by ringing someone up and crossing out the 13:30 departure time and writing 11:00 instead.
It feels like the inside of a tumble dryer, but I don’t want to use the pool as there are six loud, drunk, burly Russians on the side facing my balcony, who look as if they’re on R&R from Ukraine. I have an unintentionally vegan bibimbap for dinner in a gloomy room with dismal air-conditioning. Not a problem, I’ve been backed up since Samos.
Today the plan’s to wake up at 6:30, watch some balloons and paragliders, have a ridiculous breakfast at 7:00 and go to Pamukkale for 8:00 when it opens. I want to make the climb in a relatively cool 28c, come down before it gets to the mid-thirties and hide from the cleaners in my room before it gets to 40c, because it has the only fully-functioning aircon I’ve had since Bangkok. Getting up isn’t a problem as the mosque alarm goes off at 4:45, followed by the dog alarm, sheep alarm and cockerel alarm.
Thirty euros entry fee! That’s scandalous!
The 25-minute barefoot climb over the gleaming white rocks is very pleasant as there’s only me, a German couple and a random dog, but we hit a coachload of excited Chinese tourists at the top, who’ve legged it from the upper coach entrance.
There’s a large shaded park so it’s easy to find space and marvel at the view, but it’s not how I remember it. Where are the cascades of water that bathers used to lie in (see picture below from 1986)? Where are the deep blue pools within the travertine? It’s dry as hell. Okay, so before it was early October, but you’d still expect some running water, there’s plenty below in the village. I can’t help but think that global warming has some part to play here. That and the large swimming lakes they’ve created below.
However, Hierapolis is magnificent. It’s a huge archaeological site stretching almost 3km with well-preserved temples, baths and a huge theatre which in my view is better than the one in Ephesus. It’s pretty empty too as most of the tourists just want to look at the rocks. The city has no relevance at all to my book as it dates from the Hellenistic Age and I only planned to come here as a stop-off from visiting ancient Sardis in the middle of nowhere, which of course I bottled.
Three hours in the heat is all I can bear so I descend from the coach entrance as the rocks can be a bit cutty. A 45-minute walk according to google maps, in 34c sun and no shade. Oh well, I have water and a hat, although the leaky sunscreen I found at the back of my home bathroom cabinet is not to be relied on. It’s irrelevant anyway as within 5 minutes a guy in a van stops and gives me a lift to the village.
The Russian soldiers turn out to be Czech bikers on a ‘mototor’ of Türkiye and they’re lovely chaps. I’m not saying there are no Russians here, there are thousands of them. Just not them.
It’s 40c! Nothing I can do but have a nap and wander out for some food and a beer in the evening. Try and fail to avoid guy from Guildford. Menu looks boring and expensive, I tell him I want to eat Korean food: 'Oh, we also do Korean food!' Of course, but I make my excuses.
I'm starving, haven't eaten since my paired-down ridiculous breakfast where I rejected 90% of the food they tried to put on my table. One place looks promising, but they want 200tl for a beer, so I go to the Indian restaurant next door. I wait ten minutes but a party of 15 Russians has walked in and they're ordering cocktails, so I walk out as I'm not going to get served anytime soon. The owner of the previous place I'd rejected rushes out hysterically: '125tl for beer!' It's the first time I've haggled over a beer. But it's warm, he's just bought it from the mini-mart next door, the restaurant's empty and the waiter's desperately fawning for a tip. They promise a discount on the expensive and very ordinary tourist-rubbish food, which they forget about when it's time to pay.
Pamukkale. Worth stopping by for a few hours if you happen to be passing this way and don't mind being fleeced. Not a place to go if you happen to be travelling down the Aegean Coast.
Pamukkale-Datca, 4th June 2024
The driver of the town bus nods when I ask if he’s going to Denizli Otogar. There’s a clear sky, it’s a pleasant 29c at 9:00 and all the other passengers are smiling. Things are going well.
The bus stops within 300m of the bus station twice, which I deem to be not close enough. Then it goes 3km south before I accept that it's not going to do a loop and come back. I get off, find a taxi driver whose seat is almost horizontal and drives with a glass of çay in his left hand. The otogar has a baggage scan on one side of it only. The 11:00 that has caused so much grief is cancelled. I get a refund because there’s a direct bus that doesn’t go via bleeding Sir Kay and I wait four hours at the bus station. Seething and shaking, somebody has to help me carry a saucer and glass of çay.
But the bus is great. They have very comfy seats, internet, USB charging, English language films, an eclectic mix of nineties and noughties badly-catalogued indie music and free hot and cold drinks, snacks and ice cream. There’s a staff of three: two drivers, because the bus set off from Ankara at 7:00, and a boy. We go up and down mountains and across lush fertile plains. We’re only 15 minutes late into Marmaris and that’s because the police boarded and checked our IDs twice.
But I’m not staying in Marmaris because over the years I’ve built up an unfounded prejudice against it. I luck out because as we park in the otogar there’s a bus next to us bound for Datça. I’ve no time to buy a ticket so the smiling driver just waves me on. The drive along the long, thin, mountainous peninsular is beyond spectacular - one of the best I’ve ever seen since the last time I saw it in 1988. I try to take photos but you can’t from a moving bus, or at least I can’t. The boy on the bus is a girl with very short hair.
I offer to pay the driver. He wants 350 TL, nearly a tenner for an hour’s drive, almost as much as I paid from Denizli to Marmaris, a 3.5 hour drive. The old crook settles on 250 TL, none of which will find its way back to the Pamukkale bus company. I get a taxi because I’m in no state to walk 20 minutes in the 35c heat. Reception is a hut.
The previous time I was here I shared a room with a scouser called Pete who had a brief affair with a German woman who had to go home, which didn’t surprise me. Back then we found it a bit rich and yachty - we saw Simon and Yasmine Le Bon get off a boat. I think my huge if sparse apartment is near where we stayed then and the view is fantastic.
Actually, Datça is lovely. It’s super relaxed, not at all expensive or hassly and you’re not being ripped off all the time like in Pamukkale. I ask a guy where to buy ferry tickets and he walks me half a km, because he used to live in Hackney, innit. But I’m too tired to eat out after my 10 hour trip so I find the furthest supermarket from my apartment and lug back 10kg of provisions. At some point tonight I will have a decent omelette, washed down by a fine Turkish chianti. Mmmmm.
Datça/Knidos - Bodrum, 5th-6th June 2024
Yesterday I awoke late after an early hour laundry and raki party and determine to do nothing until my 16:30 tour which I booked months ago. By 2pm I’ve heard nothing so I call. She has no record of the booking. Perhaps hearing the silent choke of despondency in my throat, she asks if I’d like to do it at 10:00 the next day.
Julia is outside the apartment at 9:45, a stout blonde smiley Swedish woman. She immediately solves my problem of what to do with Sean the 22kg suitcase and how to get to the ferry port later: ‘put it in the car and I’ll drive you there,’ for which I could have kissed her. We set off on my private tour which she’s making no money from.
She takes me to see Eski Datça (the remains of a few old wine jars), an Ancient Greek inscription that gives hints on where to find treasure, several view points and wherever I want to go. In 1988 Knidos, at the Western tip of the Datça peninsular, was only reachable in a 4x4 and I couldn’t afford to get there. They only built the road 20 years ago and it’s still not great. Julia tells me that they recently had a free classical concert in Knidos theatre which they expected 500 people for, and 5,000 turned up. She left half-way through because the single-lane track would have been impossible otherwise.
Most tourists only go to Knidos for the sunset and the Russians (who Julia claims all live in Türkiye now) to hike to the lighthouse, so Julia’s happy or not that I have an interest in the ruins, which are quite good. It’s the point where the Aegean joins the Mediterranean and the remoteness effects the atmosphere of a lost world.
I only took the first photo above. The rest are from some tourist brochure which Julia WhatsApped to me.
Julia is lovely and we don't stop talking. She moved to Türkiye five years ago because of her rheumatism, improved by the low humidity, to work as a guide. She met her husband in Datça, who she says has 20 siblings and 600 nieces and nephews, which may be an exaggeration. Nobody in her village spoke to her for two years and now she’s lots of friends and is busy every night with henna parties.
She wasn’t sure when the city of Knidos moved from its old location at Datça to the end of the peninsular so she takes me to see an archaeologist friend who’s not busy restoring a Greek church. His (translated) answer is ‘if I told you I could go to jail.’ That’s Türkiye. What he means is there’s an ongoing excavation and he can’t reveal anything until it’s published and for some reason I have him as a WhatsApp contact and he’ll be in touch as soon as he can tell me. What he doesn’t know is that Knidos, if it’s in my book at all, will be wherever I want to put it.
Two and a half hours to waste. It’s 35c and very windy so I have a couple of beers and a salad which takes forever because they’ve run out of Caesars. Julia drops me off for the 18:00 feribot to Bodrum. It’s too hot inside and too windy outside. The kid on deck making clucking noises secures my decision.
The feribot reaches Bodrum and squeezes in between two yachts and there’s a 25-minute walk to the hotel along nice pavements where the male Turks stand their ground. Yup… there’s the hill.
I’m sweating profusely and in no mood to have the worst accommodation of my trip so far, especially as it’s costing me 55 euros a night. The disinterested receptionist who's on his mobile the entire time hands me a huge form to fill in and then lugs Sean up and down stairs into an unsigned block with broken landing lights before giving me the wrong internet password and leaving me in a small dark room. The plaster’s falling off the bathroom ceiling, there are no hooks for the towels, plugs are taped up, the handle of the patio door is broken and I step in brown goo on the tiny balcony.
I photograph and film the evidence and return to reception. He doesn't quibble, he knows he's given me the shittest room imaginable, but I have to wait till tomorrow to change because it's nine o'clock. I go for a beer and lahmacun on the seafront. Yup, I said to Julia earlier I would regret going to Bodrum.
Bodrum, 7th-8th June 2024
I have to wait until midday and I’m given the room above, where the goo presumably originated. I don’t have to worry about putting my foot through the floor now, but the broken plaster’s replaced by mould and the patio door is also broken. At least I have a slight view of the sea rather than the car park.
In 1988 I came to Bodrum and stayed in a worker’s dormitory as it was all I could afford. I met this girl in a bar who I really liked. She was called Helen and something was going to happen that night. Then her best friend Wendy, who up to then had only talked about her Welsh prop-forward boyfriend, decided to put her tongue down my throat, presumably to save her friend’s honour, and I went with the flow. We spent the night on the beach. This continued the next night, only marred by a local drunk mafiosi-type constantly threatening to kill me. I absconded the next morning for the general good.
I try to find the bar and the beach, but instead there’s two km of water-front bars, coffee shops and restaurants, followed by 1 km of shopping alleys and then another two km of water-front bars, coffee houses and restaurants, and that’s just the bits I’ve seen. The population has increased tenfold since I was last here.
In 1986 Fishface had walked off in a huff in Bergama and I was left with Hannah We went to Kuşadası, which we didn't like much, and then Bodrum, which we were also unimpressed by. It was here that Hannah tried to seduce me but for some reason I declined. It wasn't because she was unattractive - she was very beautiful, but I hadn't forgotten her attitude in Gallipoli, nor the fact that she knobbed off with the Danish guy and left me with Fishface, and her hair and sunglasses reminded me of Slash from Guns 'n' Roses. She forgave me eventually. Or perhaps not as she used to pay waiters to ask me 'are you gay?'
So perhaps there's something about Bodrum - perhaps it's where you can find true love? Nobody need worry.
I do my archaeological chore by hiking up to the Mausoleum, named after Mausolus, a pre-Hellenistic king of Caria. It used to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Now, only the steps remain intact and the rest of the site consists of randomly scattered columns they’ve found in the region, because the Knights Hospitaller nicked the stones to build their castle and we added the statues to our Institute of International Theft, otherwise known as the British Museum.
I can cope with 35c heat, but now there’s 60% humidity. The only other people at the site are Russians who, like me, wonder why they’ve come to Bodrum. I mean to go to the ancient theatre but it’s further up the hill and they’ve built an impassable motorway in front of it, and I’ve seen at least a trillion ancient theatres anyway. As Julia said, the Turks don’t really like the Greek remains, unless they can make a ton of money from them like at Ephesus and Hierapolis.
I watch England’s woeful performance against Iceland. The owner tries to put on the Scotland game instead as it's on a free channel, but I point out that the name of his bar is 'the English Pub.' I'm the only one there.
The next morning, I go to the port to learn tomorrow’s ferry now leaves at 9am rather than 10am and, in the afternoon, through gritted teeth, I pay 23 euros to visit the castle. But the best thing about having no expectations whatsoever is that you’re often pleasantly surprised. Bodrum Castle is quite good actually, despite the rip-off entry fee. It’s nicely laid out, has good views, shady gardens, white peacocks and in ever nook, cranny and turret there’s an air conditioning unit… sorry, I mean archaeological exhibition. Mainly undecorated amphorae from different age shipwrecks, but all the same. The grounds are littered with random Greek and Random columns that belong elsewhere but are here for safekeeping.
By the way, the best places to eat in Türkiye are always the scummiest looking ones in the back streets, usually close to the bus station and always full of old men. Have an utterly delicious onion-marinated kofte, fresh bread and salad at a lokantasi that costs 150tl, the price of a beer.
If your idea of a holiday is to sit drinking beer all day in ferocious heat with your top off watching old people promenade in skimpy swimming costumes, then Bodrum is the place for you. Alternatively, if you like fake luxury goods, over-priced tourist food, being short-changed and really bad Turkish drum and bass into the early hours, then you’ll love it here. Personally, I can’t see the appeal, but that’s just me.
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