Thursday 1st May.
We decided to go to Belek today. We’d been told that it was only a small town with not much to do or see so we felt that an afternoon visit would be enough.
We were in time for breakfast at the main restaurant this morning and if the one of yesterday was grand then this one was immense. The choice wasn’t that much different but there was just so much of it. I discovered the delights of scrambled egg with sultanas and after not being able to decide if I liked them or not the texture of the exploding fruit in the squidginess of the eggs finally got to me and I became a reluctant fan.
My leg was still really painful but nowhere near as bad as the day before and after a few minutes of walking on it the muscles released and allowed me to get on with my day. After breakfast Russ wanted to relax for awhile so we did the sun bed thing again...briefly. I tried to get into my book but the sun was just too strong and after five minutes I felt the first stirrings of a headache with straining my eyes against the intense brightness. I was happy for a few minutes’ people watching but soon became bored. We’d decided to stick around the complex until after lunch but I wanted to read in the sun and persuaded Russ to forego the amazing lunch on offer and set off for Belek earlier. It’s a damned good job we did too or we’d have missed Dinner as well, and probably supper and tomorrow’s breakfast!
The rep told us to avoid all public transport into Belek apart from the tractor because it was a rip off. Apparently the tractor and trailer that made the three mile journey all day was both economical and an experience. The transport was literally as crude as it sounds a huge open topped trailer kitted out with plastic seating was pulled by an old Fergusson. The return journey for both of us cost less than a pound and for that I’ll suffer third degree bruising to my boobs any day. I wore a pair of shorts, a bikini top and to show respect in the town I had a loose kaftan top over them. I had to hold onto my boobs every time we went over a bump and there were plenty of them. Large breasts and bouncing tractors aren’t a good combination. However soon my preoccupation with staying in my bikini was forgotten, we left the road where all the resorts are situated and for a mile or so travelled a long road of fairly dense vegetation. I went into instant snake watch mode and concentrated all my efforts into my first sighting of some Turkish reptilia. I was disappointed as far as snakes were concerned but this road led onto the outskirts of town and soon we passed the first arches. The locals call Belek ‘The City of a Thousand Arcs.’ In reality, there are only a hundred and fifty of them and although they look ancient and spectacular they are in fact local limestone and were erected in the year 2005AD. Turks are heavily influenced by anything remotely Roman. Turkey was ruled by the Romans for several centuries during several separate eras. Many of their ancient cities and coliseums still stand today and much of the Turkish architecture is borrowed from the Roman civilisation.
The arches may have been modern monstrosities that would have any historian throwing his hands up in despair but they were very striking and beautiful and they held me captivated as we passed entire streets were lined with them and the ‘Roman Gate’ giving entrance to the ‘city centre’ had a very opulent five arches. In roman culture only the richest city gates had five arches, most had only three. Oh little town of Belek had tickets on itself. For all of its pomp and build up the commercialised town centre comprised a car park, two small shopping streets and a mall. With the exception of a bank, something that may or may not have been a post office and a chemist every shop was an exact replica of the next. They all had exactly the same shite for sale and my hopes of making a start on pressies for home dwindled. I wanted to try and get some gifts, buy sunglasses and see if I could find a decent brand of cheap fags, not a massive list of things to do is it?
There were no other tourists in town that day. Very few people go to Belek through the week because there is nothing there until Saturday when one of the largest travelling markets in Turkey arrives. We couldn’t go on the Saturday because we had an all day trip booked. Only bored locals hovered around the streets. I instantly regretted not wearing jeans, I felt almost naked in shorts and see-through kaftan as people stared at me. I felt self-conscious and deeply embarrassed. They must have people from the hotels there all the time but the way they stared at me it was as though they’d never seen a woman in sun-clothes before in their lives. My body dysmorphia kicked in and Russ said that I did look a bit out of place in my bright clothes and not much of them compared to the people in jeans and shirts all around us, but he said that I didn’t look anywhere near as bad as I’d led myself to believe I did. I felt as though I was making a spectacle of myself ... just before I did.
Crossing over the road we almost stepped on top of a dog lying in the gutter. I thought he was dead until he opened one eye to look up at us. I have never seen such suffering in a living animal’s eye before. I let out a cry and went to crouch down beside it. Russ pulled me back. “Jane do not touch that dog.” He rarely barks orders at me and the warning in his voice and his grip on my arm made me straighten up again. The dog had raised his head a couple of inches from the floor and was pleading for help with his eyes. He had no hair on his body. His skin was broken and infected. His blood was boiling with infection below the level of the skin and showed angry pink over his entire body. His eyes were weeping and matted and his state of mange was so severe that I’m sure he was only hours from death and wouldn’t last out the day in the intense heat.
I pulled away from Russ, “Don’t touch it, Jane, he growled, it’s diseased. What if it bites you? It might be rabid.”
“It’s got mange,” I replied kneeling down and pulling the poor animals head onto my knee. I stroked him and cooed at him. “Don’t just stand there, go and get him some water.” I yelled.
Men who were already outside their businesses in the hope of trade, or maybe just to stare at us were now grouped in little huddles pointing at me and laughing. To them my behaviour was madness, we’d been warned at the hotel about the stray dogs and to the locals it was akin to cuddling a sewer rat. They just leave them in the streets to die. I was almost in tears. I let him lick my hand which was one stupidity too much for Russ who stormed off saying, “I’m having nothing to do with this.”
Nobody moved to help me, nobody brought me water. I called Russ back but he kept on walking. I lay the dog’s head back into the gutter and ran after Russ. “Can we talk about this, please?”
“There’s nothing you can do for that animal, Jane. Just let it go.”
“Listen, we can take it to a vet. We can get it started on Anti-biotics.”
“Who’s going to pay for it?”
“I will.”
“And how much is that going to cost?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“And how are we going to get it to a vet? How are we going to find a vet?”
“Taxi.”
“Jane, you’ve seen how the people feel about animals, do you really think a taxi will let it in his car?”
“Yes, I’m sure they will if we offer them enough money.”
“This is madness. We’re supposed to be on holiday.”
“Please Russ, please. You know I’ll do it with or without your help, please support me on this, it’s important to me. Listen, let’s just get it to a vet and have the poor thing put out of its misery. Then we can just walk away.”
“It’s always what’s important to you, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be having a great time. I don’t want to deal with dying dogs. I want to just forget about it.”
“Can you do that?”
“Of course I can. Look there are probably ten thousand dogs in exactly the same state as that one is in this country, are we going to spend every second of every day rounding them up and doing the vet run? You’d better get used to it, Jane, we’re probably going to see more animals just like it.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
Russ rarely changes his mind once it’s made up. He sees things in black and white and no shades of grey and, I have to say, he can deal with things with very little emotion and won’t be swayed.” We’d continued to walk as we were talking; each step was taking me away from the dog and away from the problem. It would have been so easy to just continue walking, to leave the dog to finish dying on the street with his blood boiling pink through his flesh and his skin red raw and hanging off him from scratching. Going back meant ruining our day, spending my holiday money on a lost cause, having Russ annoyed with me.
If I hadn’t moved, if I’d still been sitting there with his head on my knee, his brown eyes begging me to help him and his hot tongue licking me for comfort, there’s no way on God’s earth that I’d have left without helping him. When I stood up and went to talk Russ around it never entered my head not to see it through and even if all I could offer was euthanasia then at least I was getting that poor animal some help. The dog was out of sight now. Men were calling us into their shops. Russ was nagging at me to find somewhere to wash. He wouldn’t come near me until I did.
God forgive me. I walked away and left an animal to die in the gutter. It was easier to walk away than to stand my ground and do what was right. We saw many of these stray dogs everywhere we went, but Russ was wrong, thankfully the majority of them, certainly the ones we saw, were in good health. Most of them were horribly dirty and in need of the first baths of their lives, but tourism scraps kept them well fed and in reasonable health. That one poor dog was the only animal we saw in desperate need of urgent help.
I walked behind Russ seething. I blamed him for me not having the courage of my convictions. How could he be so heartless? But he wasn’t heartless, he was just being sensible. He said that it was a social problem of that country and something that they had to address and deal with as a nation. I said that I’d rather see soldiers shooting the stray dogs down in the street rather than them having to lie for weeks with mange eating their flesh away until they were too riddled with infection to fight any longer. Do I think I did the right thing that day? No. I’m ashamed that I walked away.
The day was ruined for me. It took us almost an hour in one shop to buy a pair of sunglasses so that I could read my book. I wanted a cheap plastic pair for under a fiver. I didn’t want to try them on. I didn’t care how they looked I just wanted to be able to read in the sun. The man had been good enough to let me wash in his back room. The sink was clean and there was soap. I felt obligated to buy from him after his kindness but my patience soon wore thin with him. I’d explained what I wanted and he continued to show me thirty quid pairs of glasses. “Madam, madam iz best sunsglasses, iz Dolce and Gabana. Not copy eerigoonal.”
“Look, please...Sir, I’m not a young woman and my life is wasting away here. We have a tractor to catch, now do you have a pair of cheap sunglasses for sale or not?”
“Madam is hot... yes, my boy he bring you the erbal tea,” (they are like Americans they don’t pronounce the ‘H.’) “Iz good tea, iz makes you feel wery sexy iz pomegranate extract Madam, listen to mes, `erbal tea and wery cheap Wictoria Beckingham sunsglasses they makes you look wery sexy.”
I was still upset over the dog, I was frustrated and ready for snapping. I only wanted to buy a pair of sunglasses so that I could read in the sun. I finally got a pair, after a lot of haggling for about four pounds.
We had a look around the mall and I spent twenty pounds on a huge pot tortoise that I really liked and a big glass bong for Marty. I figured he’d appreciate that more than a ‘Kiss me quick’ hat. What kind of mother buys their sixteen year old son a bong ... well I do. I was pleased with my purchases; the man was pushy, but not suffocatingly so as the last one had been. We conducted our business within quarter of an hour and all parties were happy with the haggling. I know I could have got him down further but I just couldn’t be bothered.
Russ bought Tia a ‘Hello Kitty’ shorts and tee-shirt set that he paid well over the odds for leaving the shop keeper rubbing his hands in glee. I’d already told Russ to take whatever price they give, half it and half it again as a starting point. You should be looking at an end result price of as close to a third as possible but no more than half of the initial asking price. The man asked twenty-five, Russ immediately offered him twenty and the deal was done.
It was in the next shop where I really watched my life passing slowly before my eyes. We were walking past a man’s Persian rug shop. He asked us to come in and look. I told Russ not to stop walking and shouted over my shoulder that we didn’t need a rug, thank you.
We didn’t stop walking but the next thing we knew this little gnome of a man was walking alongside Russ with his arm linked through his. “No, no, I no show rug ... rugs for old ladies and the Germans. I show bitter bitter things.”
“No thank you, I said determinedly but the man had already steered, led and guided us into a shop three places up from the rug shop. “Iz my shop also. Sit. Sit.” Russ sat, I hovered. I remembered two things from Tunisia. You never sit when they ask you and you never accept a drink. Do either of these two things and they’ve got you slap bang where they want you. Not only did Russ sit on the proffered stool, but his eyes lit up when, ‘as if by magic,’ a second man brought out a tray with thimble glasses and a plate of Turkish sweets.
“Ooh, lovely,” said Russ, “thank you, I’m ready for a drink.” We were doomed. Russ drank pomegranate tea, he drank cherry tea, he drank alpine tea made from `erbs from the slopes of the Taurus mountains, (iz wery good for de bonky bonky) It’d have to be, because after the afternoon I was having Russy boy was never going to get bonky bonky again. He was given a bracelet for Tia and one for his mother, and a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary for luck and to make de beautiful babies. Huh! After oozing tea from every pore and being laden down with so many generous ‘free’ gifts, how could Russ possibly side swipe the sales pitch when after forty five minutes it finally came. Together Russ and his new best friend threw unbreakable plates around the room. I warned Russ that the plates might not break but the delicate glassware just behind him just might when he threw those plates around the place. They threw buzzy things backward and forwards to each other. He showed us a hundred products and novelties all containing ‘The Evil Eye’. It’s said that any home displaying The Evil Eye will be protected from harm and will always be happy, rich and healthy. I think at that point Russ was all too familiar with the feeling the force of The Evil Eye. He showed us the famous Big Dickie, a statue of fertility throughout Turkey. The man was smutty and very sleazy as he asked Russ about the size of his credentials and he wasn’t talking about his credit card.
The man, blatantly homosexual had taken quite a shine to Russ. He asked him if he had a wife at home. “No, but this is my Girlfriend.”
“You geelfriend? You geelfriend? No, iz mother, yes. Iz nice mama.”
Charming.
“No, this is Jane and we live together in England.”
“But you so young, you so pretty boy. Iz sorry madam, no offence taken. You have de pretty boy, yes”
You speak for yourself matey, no offence taken indeed. Well don’t mind me, you two just carry on and have your little bonding session. He’d turned his full attention back to Russ now. “You iz hot, hot, hot, yes.” He looked at me and it was blatantly obvious that I was cold, cold, cold.
We had been in that bloody shop almost three hours and I was pissed off beyond belief and my good manners and polite British way were about to walk out of the back door at any second.
“Russ, please, can you just decide what you’re buying and can we go now, I’ve had enough and want to get back to the hotel.
“Jane, Jane pleeze, Akshaw not hungry for to take your money. Akshaw interested in making the talk with the Eenglish. Friendship yes. You and Russ you my new friends. I come and wisit you in the Oxford in Eengland.” After this heartfelt speech another tray of tea was produced. By this time even Russ had tired of the games and Akshaw was getting increasingly touchy feely with him which Russ had finally realised had more to do with lust than selling a ‘Big Dickie’. The only dick this bloke was interested in selling was his own. During one of his silly jokes he had reached out to touch Russ’s genitals pretending to be a British terrier.
“Hey,” yelled Russ backing away.
“No offence taken, Russ. I just joking with you.”
“Akshaw, thank you so much for your hospitality but I really am going to leave now. We’d like to buy these items, we don’t need anything else thank you, could you give me the price please.”
“Sit, sit, tea, tea.”
“No Akshaw, thank you again but it’s going to take too long and we really do have to get the bus. We are leaving now and haven’t got time to talk about the price.”
I put the goods, which were little more than rubbish down on the table and tried to leave the shop literally dragging Russ behind me. We had been in there over three hours and I was completely enervated.
“Forty Euros madam,” I noticed we were back to ‘Madam’ again. No thank you, I’m not prepared to talk in Euros. I will only trade in Turkish Lira.”
“Okay you tough madam. One hundred and thirty lira.” This combined with the language barrier that made getting any point across difficult, though I swear he was putting most of his ‘stupidity’ on. After another ten minutes we agreed on fifteen lira for the few necklaces and a bag of pomegranate tea. I gave him a fifty and he only gave me twenty change. He’d charged me thirty lira not fifteen. By this point I’d lost the will to live and just wanted to get the hell out of that shop. Trying to get my money back would have taken God knows how much longer and I’d literally had enough. I was more than happy to pay thirty lira just to get the hell out of there.
Once out of the shop I wanted to buy some cheap fags and smoke one immediately to see what they were like. If they’d been okay I was going to buy a thousand of them to bring home. I walked into the shop and asked the price. The man motioned to another lad and told him to bring tea. “I give you good price madam.”
“You know what,” I said, “don’t bother thank you,” and walked out of the shop fagless.
I noticed on the way back to the car park Russ was steering me determinedly down a different street to the one with the sick dog. I was suddenly very tired. I love the hot weather but I do find that my patience is at a premium and I soon tire. Russ wanted to stop off at a restaurant to get something to eat and drink but I was at the point where I didn’t want to stop anywhere because laddy in the restaurant would phone cousin Mustafa and before we knew it we’d have somebody at our elbows hassling us to go and see his special shop. One thing that did strike me as odd in Belek was that there were no women. Well when I say none, I mean that we saw very few. They don’t work the shops and we only saw a couple all day in passing.
I wanted to get back and sit by the pool in my new sunglasses reading my book that I’d been trying to get into for three days... but by the time we got back it was half past six. Russ was starving and wanted something to eat. We only had an hour to wait until dinner service began but no, he heard that they were serving sandwiches at the top pools. We followed the directions and found three more swimming pools that we didn’t know about. These were fed by beach bars and one even had the very eighties style coconut thatch bar right in the centre of the pool. The resort was massive.
Russ had beer and a sandwich, I had fruit juice and very soon it was time to go and get showered and ready for the evening.
Despite plenty of factor fifteen we were both quite seriously burned. There was no way that I could face underwear against my skin so I wore a pair of dressy brown silk shorts, stilettos and a gold halter top. I slathered my legs in baby lotion and tried to convince myself that they looked brown infused with subtle shades of rose rather than lobster red.
The restaurant was a bulimic’s dream, three soup of the day, six pizza toppings and calzone a full outdoor barbecue, twenty five different main course choices. Salad bars, fruit bars, fish bars, and the dessert aisle was out of this world. The restaurant was set with intricate statues all hand sculpted from chocolate. Hundreds of fresh flower displays were brought in daily. You could eat beef, veal, venison, wild boar. Each day there were half a dozen different pasta dish choices. It really was exceptional and I spent a week in salad heaven.
I am going to have a bit of a whinge now, everything about our holiday was amazing ...except... after eating and drinking, there was very little to do in the evenings. The animation team put on a show at ten o’clock every night. We decided to go to the amphitheatre to have a look at that. It was okay, the theme tonight was traditional Turkish dance. The boys and girls of the team were all good looking cuties and provided plenty of eye candy but the choreography was amateur and the skill and execution of the dance was shoddy. The costumes looked as if they’d been stitched thirty years ago and were less than flattering on the men but it was something to do for an hour and the ‘silly’ audience participation dances at the end at least got the frozen bones moving again. By the end of a week most people had a new talent, they could sing ‘Give Me Hope Johanna’ in Turkish. The amphitheatre is open to the elements and once the sun had gone down a nasty breeze blew in from the sea. It was bloody freezing sitting on the cold stone steps of the ‘Roman’ amphitheatre. I doubted that I’d ever feel warm again and even the burn from my sunburn didn’t help. I was having serious fantasies about a warm duvet and a big comfy bed.
As we filed out of the theatre there was a surprise waiting for us, we were handed a large glass mug of Irish Coffee. Gorgeous, hot rich coffee, laced with smooth whiskey and topped with at least half a mug of thick cream, the bonus was the four cherries at the bottom of the mug. It was hot and so, so welcome. I really enjoyed it. We took ours up to the smoking bar with us.
I knew that Russ wanted to go to the night club. I really didn’t. I was freezing cold, badly burned and I felt horribly tired. I just wanted to go to bed. Eventually we agreed that I’d go back to the room and he’d go down to the club when it opened at midnight on his own. He wasn’t happy with me, but although I didn’t feel ill as such I didn’t feel good and the last thing I wanted was to be out until three or four o’clock in the morning.
