Back in a VERY hot Turkey –
temperatures late 40s and up to 50 (110 to 120 ish – or damned hot!) Still, our good old Çalış breeze is doing its
best to cool us down and there is always the pool – or a cold Efes.
Everything seems to have gone
smoothly while we were away. I came back
with a lovely British cold which has made me snuffle and sneeze my way through
the first through days but I seem to have got on top of the washing, the
paperwork and the bookings already – much better than I managed last time we
went away.
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| boys in Fletching, Sussex where I grew up |
Here are a few grumbles…! Hotels4u have acknowledged our May account
but not quite got round to paying it yet.
I thought it would be better this year as they are paying us directly in
the UK
rather than through the local agent here – but it seems my hopes were
misplaced! As this left me a bit short
of money, Cem transferred some from the bank here using internet banking. Is this not virtually instantaneous in the UK? Well, not between countries. He transferred it last Monday and when I checked
this morning – a full 8 days and 6 working days later it still hadn’t gone
through. We really need to chase it up -
he could have driven to the UK
with the money by now – but I’m sure the bank here will say they sent it and it
is the intermediary bank that is the problem.
I hate banks!
Back at the hotel, two things are
causing me stress and it appears there is nothing I can do about them. The first is the drains. Most people know that the drains in Turkey are a
bit temperamental but our pipes have always been pretty good and can handle
reasonable amounts of toilet paper.
However they cannot cope with wet wipes (virtually indestructible),
sanitary towels (made to absorb water and expand) or some of the other things
that people attempt to dispose of down the toilet. Before I left I put notices in all the
bathrooms explaining this but we had another – thankfully small – problem the
other day after somebody flushed a WHOLE toilet roll down the toilet. What can you do?
The other problem is the linen. We demoted a lot of towels and sheets this
year to the rag bin and I spent approx £500 on new linen. However a lot of this is already spoiled by
stains which do not come out. Some of
them are sun cream – I think it is mostly the all-day creams and particularly
P20 which leave ugly yellow stains on the sheets, pillow cases and towels. But someone had also used a brand new towel
the other day to mop up hair dye. I
wonder if they would appreciate being given a towel with dark brown stains all
over it?_ Of course not, but of course
they also don’t think like this.
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| a wet afternoon in Camden, London |
However I’m trying to stay chilled
after our lovely holiday. A lot of places are complaining that business is down
– my sister was even advised that she would get a good deal in Kalkan as the
hotels were so desperate for business – but we are pretty full and I have just
had to stop sales for the middle of September.
Now if we could just get paid….!
