Turkish Letters #14 -- -- Bodrum (Shiralee)

Bodrum was perhaps the biggest surprise of our trip. The friendly barkeeps from the bar around the corner in Sultanahmet were there waiting out the winter for the season to start in Bodrum. They were full of stories of late-night partying, of streets crammed with tourists packing cash, of mile after mile of British girl flesh. Mustafa and Shasha loved it. It sounded hideous.

So it was with a considerable degree of reluctance that we chose Bodrum to flee to in our attempt to escape the big chill. Our choice was based on a spur of the moment decision to go to the Greek islands (or at least one or two of them), and Bodrum was where we knew we could get a ferry.

Our original - albeit equally half-arsed - plan had been to fly to Marden, an ancient town in south-east Turkey and travel back via Shamlurfa and Antakya to catch another plane from Adana back to Istanbul. But now snow was piled high everywhere over the mountains and nothing was flying. Thousands of Anatolian villages were completely cut off. Marden airport was buried. Our weather luck had run out.

Perhaps the fact that we had woken to a blanket of snow on the orange tree outside our window in Selçuk should have warned us. The oranges had frozen hard. "They do not know snow in Efes", Yesim had told us. Locals had boasted that it had only snowed twice, and then just a sprinkling, in living memory. We should have known that things were bad all over if it had not only snowed but the snow had piled up in drifts in Selçuk.

Instead we had blithely #1 clambered into our (overfull) minibus and headed for the airport at Izmir. By nightfall we had spent the entire day zigzagging over the Meander plain (apt at least), interspersed with long periods of waiting around. We weren't feeling blithe at all by the time we were deposited at the otogar in Bodrum.

It was dark. We were tired and grumpy. We had no idea of where were going to stay. Our entire strategy had, in fact, rested on the notion that there would be hotel touts at the otogar who would mob us, eager for our custom. Being ignored by everyone came as a rude shock.

"Follow them", I suggested pointing at a couple with a pullcase who were heading purposefully off into the night. JB looked askance but obeyed. They sped up the hill. We followed. It got darker and there were fewer and fewer shops etc. Still we followed. They turned down a dark street. We were lagging but turned too. And that was when we lost them. They had completely disappeared. JB, who had never been fully committed to this plan of action, nobly refrained from 'I told you so-ing'. And then we caught sight of a hotel sign. A few moments later we were resident in one of the Otel Oya's completely overpriced rooms. We were the only guests in what, it transpired, was a large complex obviously designed for package tourists. This did not make the desk clerk any more helpful. Or friendly. Or pleasant in any way. We resolved to find better and move the next morning.

During our search for dinner we made enquiries at a couple of hotels we chanced upon and Otel Eden was the clear winner. It was cheaper, included breakfast, had a charming and helpful desk clerk and a restaurant full of Turks obviously enjoying their meals #2. The next day we moved in.

And a glorious day it was too. Ludicrously blue sky. Ludicrously blue sea. And Bodrum was all round ludicrously charming.

Most of the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts have been colonized by tourists -- the Teutonic grill -- and the Brits in particular have not been slow in buying up everything in sight in an attempt to live their holiday all year round. Property and the cost of living are still remarkably cheap by EU standards. Consequently large swathes of Turkey now resemble Outer Piddleton or Little Dripping. Housing developments so ugly that they set new standards of direness -- and this is even compared to the ubiquitous and truly awful Turkish apartment blocks -- blight every hill and sea view. They come with built-in Irish Karaoke Pubs and caffs offering full English breakfasts... including black pudding. Worse, they come with stereotypical Brits. Hell truly is other people.

Bodrum has, thanks to some remarkably prescient local planning laws, been spared the worst of this. Despite the fact that the population increases five-fold during the season, it still manages to retain its Aegean charm. At least when its population is just the locals.

This is an unusually scruffy little house -- but heaven obviously for the cats hanging out on its roof.

The old part of the town is still a gorgeous maze of narrow cobbled lanes, blindingly white-washed little cube houses with the cutest little cats-ear corners and high walls. Orange, lemon and olive groves peek out over walls draped in grapevines. Gümbets, traditional cylindrical water cisterns squat like downed flying saucers. The three Cs - chooks, children and cats - are everywhere despite the ever-present threat posed by scooters ridden at breakneck speeds.

A gümbet.

Of course we walked for miles crisscrossing through it, on the lookout for my favourite things to photograph - crumbling architecture and spontaneous junk collages. I was sadly disappointed on that score. Bodrum is far too prosperous, and property is now far too valuable, to let it run to ruin. And its community aesthetics are so rigorous that there seems little room for personal expression - or sloppiness - beyond the precise shade of blue or green shutters and doors are painted. We had to be content with admiring it.

Civic pride is further demonstrated by it having more public art than any other place I've ever been. Of course it's all bad. #3

The area around the waterfront is, predictably, totally devoted to tourists. An endless succession of clothes shops (including all the major chains and 'name' brands), bars, souvenir shops, bars, hairdressers, bars, eateries and bars. On the eastern bay these are built right down to the sand. It must be vile in summer time. In wintertime it means that you can drink a coffee (or a beer) sitting on proper chairs and tables on the beach watching the wildlife #4 as the sun slips behind the hills on the other side of the bay. The crusader castle, another Knights Hospitaller special, casts its long silhouetted shadow onto the glassy indigo sea. Heaven.

The castle houses the Museum of Underwater Archaeology #5 as well as having displays specific to its own history. The English Tower sells glasses of wine to punters in an 'authentic knights of yore' environment that includes some of the prettiest graffiti around - bored crusaders on sentry duty will be boys...

The dungeon, complete with medieval inscription warning 'God does not live here', has a recreated cell with atmospheric flashing lights and one of those 'special' mannequins strung up as a tortured prisoner. Ooooh spooky.

One tower had a WTF 'Conference of Amphorae'. If only it hadn't shocked us so much that we forgot to photograph it. Another had casts of fat snakes basking in the sun. It was called Serpent Tower. I don't know why.

The castle also has a great range of pictographic signs.

No patting the flowers!	You'll be surprised if you fall off the castle walls.

And marble coats of arms everywhere. Of course many of the displays were closed until the summer. Or possibly just until they felt like opening them. Which would probably be 5 minutes be after we left.

The rest of historical/archaeological bits and bobs - such as they are - are in the western bay. One of the 'seven wonders of the world' was once here - the Mausoleum - but is now a slightly ordered display of rocks around a hole. Much of the rest of it has been built into the castle. The rest was nicked by the Brits. All bar two of the surviving bas relief panels, which depict the Greeks fighting the Amazons (who used to live near to Selçuk), are now in the British Museum. The Bodrum site has plaster replicas of the missing panels and those manly Greek warriors really look as though they're enjoying sticking it to those uppity Amazon chicks.

The western bay is also filled with boats - everything from little fishing boats and yachts, to elegant gülets to ocean-going rich people's toys. A dockside mosque serves those who need to duck in for a quick pray. And even in this most cosmopolitan of small towns, there were obviously a lot of them.

Over the last decade or so the Bodrum Peninsula has been re-colonised by the Brits and even Gümüslük, purportedly the most 'unspoiled' of the seaside villages is overlooked by a housing development straight out of the lego catalogue. As far as unspoiled goes.. that was hard to find too. Although we did see some very pretty hobbled cows in an orange grove, and the cats were very friendly. But on the whole, the village seemed to consist of hotels and waterside eateries. We did spend a rather pleasant couple of hours there, eating prawns and walking on the otherwise deserted beach. Its big tourist drawcard is Rabbit Island, which you can wade out to and feed the bunnies. Really.

All things considered, we had pretty much exhausted Bodrum's cultural possibilities by the time our ferry to Cos left. But we were infinitely rested and recreated.

#1 Actually we were not at all blithe - rather we were disgruntled and snappy due to yet another day without a shower. This time because there was no COLD water. Therefore glad to leave Selçuk. Especially after I had clumsily smashed a glass table at the hotel. The usual chaos at Izmir Airport did nothing to improve our moods.

#2 It was wonderful to have a restaurant on site, even if the menu was rather restricted. Having to stomp off into the night in search of nutrition starts to get tired after a month or two.

#3 We did, finally, find a sculpture of Ataturk in his stumbling over the Anatolian plains and chewing his nails pose that wasn't sited at a military installation and, therefore, illegal to photograph. Predictably, however, we glimpsed it as we rushed past it in a dolmus on our last day and it was too far out of town to walk back to to photograph. We had to make do with the 2D light-up rendition on top of the shopping mall.

#4 A mixture of families, young couples and cats and dogs promenading.

#5 After seeing the museum we concluded mostly that there were an incredible number of amphora lost in the sea. Maybe someone had it in for them. Certainly the warning signs made it clear that it was unwise to even point at them.