Inside the Bodrum Peninsula

Today we’re welcoming Jack Scott to the Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide.  He’s the author of “Perking the Pansies” the blog, and last month he published his first book, “Perking the Pansies”.  I’m glad he’s been able to add us to his Virtual Book Tour, because it’s a great opportunity to share an insider’s guide to the Bodrum Peninsula.

For those of you who follow my Roving Jay blog, you’ll have seen my Book Review in December, where I compare the book to the blog, but there are many other facets to Jack — he also guest blogs on a variety of different blogs, websites and forums.  My first encounter with him, was in March 2011 where he was encouraging visitors to the Bodrum Peninsula to get off the beaten track and discover the real flavour of the peninsular … a sentiment I applaud and support.

(Excepts from “Perking the Pansies – the Book”)

Roving Jay (RJ):  Welcome Jack!

Jack Scott (JS): Thanks for having me, Jay.

“The inside was sweltering and relieved only by a begrudging breeze…an eclectic mix of characters scrambled onto the bus, each adding an extra layer of colour: pink skinned day trippers..local likely lads in cheap jeans..beefy hillbillies in need of a bath…. and old dear’s haggard face was criss-crossed with deep-trenched furrows”

RJ:  No trip to the Bodrum Peninsula is complete without at least one bumpy, crazy ride on a dolmuş, or as you call them it “the Dolly”, and throughout your book you regale us with your Dolly ride exploits, do you have a favourite Dolly-memory?

JS: Just before Christmas, Liam flew off to Blighty to provide his folks with some TLC.  I was left to my own devices.  After days of scrubbing up the flabby grammar in the manuscript of my book, I needed emergency liquid respite and decided on an afternoon of toasts and tittle-tattle with friends in Gümbet.

I hailed the dolly on the Bodrum promenade, paid my fare and sat next to an elderly Turkish man.  He seemed to like the look of me and began an animated conversation.  I explained, I think, that my Turkish was appalling and I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.  A protracted period of smiles, pointing and waving ensued.  He was clearly determined to providing a running commentary on the sights and sounds of Bodrum and equally determined to share his love for the town with his new best friend.

As he wittered on and I eventually lost all sense of what he was saying, a gaggle of Turkish women at the front of the bus got the joke and started to laugh along with me. Various phrases were thrown my way; I smiled sweetly like the Queen Mother.  Not for the first time, I’d become an instant dolly celeb.

RJ:  Is it easy to get around the peninsular on the Dolmuş?

JS: During the summer months, getting around is a breeze, albeit a sweaty one.  Most dollies run right through to the small hours and more or less get their charges to their destination in one piece. Some even run 24 hours a day.

Most routes radiate from Bodrum so you may need to hop on and off at the bus station in town – for example, when travelling from Torba to Yalikavak.  Winter timetables are more limited, particularly when it comes to the more desolate corners of the peninsular.  The dollies start later, run less often and finish earlier. Some don’t run at all.

The spring and autumn timetables fall somewhere in between.  It’s not all fun in Dollywood.  Timetables seem to change from year to year and fares have been steadily rising.  Still, I love them.

RJ:  Me too!, but have you ever thought about buying a car?

JS: Never.  Driving in Turkey is not for the faint hearted, best only tried by the foolish or the suicidal.  Though much improved in recent years, many roads are still perilous with lunar potholes, boulder-sized loose chippings and chassis-shattering unmarked concrete speed bumps.

All these hazards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane driving of the locals.  Turks are impatient motorists and turn into Formula 1 wannabes as soon they get behind the wheel.

Besides, cars are expensive to buy, run and maintain, and different ownership rules apply to foreigners.  For us, it’s far too much of a faff.  Now we live in the centre of old Bodrum Town, everything’s on our doorstep so who needs a car?

“beaten-up VM Beetle rumbled towards us..Sophia..with a racy past..lived in Chelsea in the sixties..serendipitous meeting..dance feeds one’s soul, darlings, and your souls are very hungry”

RJ:  One of my favourite characters in the book was Sophia.  She offered you a ride into Yalikavak, and re-entered your lives after you’d moved to Bodrum.  What other random acts of kindness have you encountered in Turkey that didn’t make it into the book?

JS: Liam and I were having a long leisurely lunch in Yalikavak one early summer.  We paid our bill and Liam placed his wallet into a leather man bag which he then draped across the back of a chair.  It was such a beautiful day, we continued supping for a while longer, finishing off a second bottle of red before we got up to leave.

We rode the dolly back home and settled down to watch BBC No Entertainment.  An hour later, Liam answered an impatient knock at the door.  One of the dishy young itinerant waiters from the restaurant had come to return Liam’s bag – he’d found one of our business cards and was sent over by the café owner.  The poor boy probably walked.  The contents of the bag were intact – Liam’s wallet containing a few hundred lira and the plastic, our passports, residency permits and a pair of designer shades. Nothing had been touched.

RJ:  Are you a believer in serendipity?  What I mean is, do you think your future happens to you, or do you have to take some ownership and create the openings to give it direction?

JS: The jury’s out on that one.  It’s certainly true that we enjoyed a remarkable run of luck once we’d made the fateful decision to jump off the treadmill and find our place in the sun.  All the pieces fell implausibly into place with little intervention from us.  Sometimes, happenstance can stalk you.  Other times though, you need to grab fate by the throat and make things happen for yourself.

RJ:  Let’s go back to Sophia.  I get the impression she’s one of those people with an ethereal soul who breezes in and out of people’s lives, but has a long lasting impact.  How would you sum her up?

JS: She’s certainly a rare character – once met, never forgotten.  She’s eccentric, theatrical and self-absorbed.  Her life has been one long epic drama and she’s been the director.  Like the marvellous Norma Desmond, Sophia spends much of her time reliving the glory days of her distant youth. She’s always ready for that close up, despite the dodgy facelift.

RJ:  Have you met any other locals or expats that have had a memorable impact on you, either positive or negative?

JS: The book is choc-a-block full of our cut-and-thrust encounters with expats and locals – the mad, the glad, the bad and the sad.  We spent the first year getting to know people and the second trying to forget most of them. We’ve now cultivated a small crowd here in Bodrum: the Bodrum Belles (Bodrum beaus are thin on the ground).

Generally, the Belles are women of a certain age who have lived here for a decade or two, speak the lingo and have a remarkably fresh and honest insight into their lot.  We live in a distinctly Turkish neighbourhood and our immediate neighbours are a delightful couple from Ankara – unmarried, arty liberal types.  Despite (or perhaps because) of the language barrier we get along like an ev on fire.

“Muttering in Turklish, pointing at random things…shouting out the Turkish equivalent like an excitable child on a field trip”

RJ:  I get the sense that Liam has taken to learning Turkish like a fish to water – but you seem to be a little reticent about diving in?

JS: Liam has a more natural ear for languages.  I’m hopeless.  I can’t even speak English properly.  Though rhythmic and poetic on the ear, Turkish is not an easy language for Europeans to assimilate as it’s thought to belong to the Altaic language family and is distantly related to Mongolian, Korean and other inscrutable Asiatic tongues.

Despite Atatürk’s valiant 1928 adoption of the Latin alphabet and the fact that the language is phonetic and mostly regular, the word order, agglutinations and the absence of familiar sounds all conspire to make learning Turkish a very daunting prospect.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

RJ:  Each time Red and I visit Turkey, we expand our vocabulary. I’d say one of the most important words we learnt was Su (water) – very important for those hot summer Bodrum days.  Is there a Turkish word you use all the time?

JS: Two words – şarap and şerefe (wine and cheers in that order).

“Hastle and Bustle of Bodrum…High Noon…Scurried about the cracked tarmac like random ants…bursting with life”

RJ:  On our first trip to the peninsula we discovered a local fisherman’s cafe that was great for an early morning Turkish coffee, and perfect for watching Bodrum gradually wake up — it started with the fisherman, then the school kids, then business owners and locals and finally the tourists. I love that tranquillity in the morning, kind of the calm before the storm.  Bodrum is crazy busy in the summer, what do you do to find some calm?  Or don’t you?

JS: Get out of Bodrum.  Fortunately, we have a select group of out-of-town friends with handsome houses and pools with a view.  We never decline an invite to slide into the warm waters on a hot, hazy day, glass in hand.  I never spill a drop.  It’s a welcome antidote to the hassle and bustle of Bodrum in high season.

Occasionally we’ll take the dolly to Torba, find a lazy waterside watering hole, gossip over a slow lunch and take replenishing dips in the bay from the bathing platforms that jut out to sea.

“…carried our hangovers across the wobby gang plank…ill fitting snorkel that left him coughing and spluttering every time he submerged…storm in Nancy’s D cup…battered and pebble-dashed by the wind and salt”

RJ:  Sounds like you’ve had your fair share of memorable boat trips.  Would you recommend a boat trip to the peninsular?

JS: My vision of hell is being squeezed onto a commercial party boat like the Victoria Line during the rush hour with a bunch of orange-faced holidaying strangers and brats in baseball caps.  We select our boat trips carefully – usually with a handful of hand-picked gals and pals.

My advice is get your own group together, find a smaller craft and talk to the captain about what floats your boat.  Most owners are amenable to any reasonable request and open to negotiation on the price.  We’ve cruised from Yalikavak, Bitez and Bodrum. Another great way to get away from the madding crowd.

“Tosca wailing on the castle ramparts serenaded us…a choreographic feast of doomed love, vengeance, murder and remorse…somewhere between the Bolshoi and village hall am-dram”

RJ:  In Perking the Pansies, you recounted an evening of culture with Sophia at Bodrum Castle, have you joined the social circuit of Marina events now that you’re living in Bodrum?

JS: Actually no.  We do dabble in some of the ‘cultural’ events in and around town, but have steered clear of the swarming well-heeled.  Also, we’ve had to cut our cloth substantially to live here.  We were men of means in Blighty. These days the cloth is distinctly threadbare.  Of course, it costs nothing to promenade, but we avoid the flashy Marina venues with the stratospheric prices to match.

Our social life is centred around a few more reasonable venues.  In Turkey, loyalty and respect for local restaurants is often repaid – a reduction in the bill, a complimentary Yolluk (one for the road) and the occasional lift home. It’s all part of the service.

RJ: Now that you’ve completed your book, what events would you like to do more of in 2012?

JS: The summer of 2011 flew past.  What kind of mad masochist tries to write a book in 40 plus heat?  What kind of fool loses a glorious summer to the written word unless it’s Driving Over Lemons around a cool pool with a G&T, ice and a slice?  That fool was me.

Even now, the literary treadmill continues. I spend most of my days on book promotion and this will continue a while yet. When it’s finally done and dusted, we’re hoping to put our feet up and watch the pansies grow.  I need a rest.  After all, that’s why we came here.

RJ: Well I think you’ve earned it!  Thanks for dropping into the BPTG hot seat Jack.  I hope you’ll have enough energy left after your publicity tour, to put your feet up and pour yourself a well deserved G&T!

JS: Me too!

Perking the Pansies – the Book

Whether you’ve visited the Bodrum Peninsula in the past; plan to visit it in the future; or have no intention of visiting it at all .. it doesn’t really matter – you’ll still enjoy reading “Perking the Pansies” – it’s a slice of life book about Jack and Liam’s move to Turkey, that’ll take you on an adventure, from the comfort of your own living room.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and know I’ll be reading it again before the year’s out!

Perking the Pansies is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in a Paperback or Kindle version, and if you head on over to Jack’s blog, and follow one of his Amazon links, you can help fund his next G&T —  Now that’s what I call “Supporting the Arts”!

Where can you get more Jack?

• Read Jack’s “Perking the Pansies” Blog
• Visit his official “Jack Scott” website
• Follow Jack on Twitter
• Like Jack’s “Perking the Pansies” Facebook Page

 

Read Jack’s 2011 Top 5 for the Bodrum Peninsula

Read Jack’s 2012 Top 5 for the Bodrum Peninsula

 

 

 

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