Article 15
Ankara & Buyuk AnadolU Hotel
Patricia was up early to finish her packing…I managed to sneak another thirty minutes before the need to pee drove me from the bed! A light breakfast of instant soup and toothpaste from cleaning teeth straight after and I was set to sail. Pat still packing. Off to reception to pay the bill. Not nearly as much as I thought and had budgeted for. Then the fun started.
I perused all the bar chits (mostly mine) and the charges for electricity and water and all was OK. Presented my Citibank Visa card and after six goes, the duty manager admitted that there was nothing wrong with my card but the circuit to the bank or the bank end machines/interface were not connecting. So…we try my NAB Visa card on the same machine and on another (I don’t understand it but they had about seven Credit card readers all with flashing lights, presumably active, sitting on the desk! NO GO! My NAB Visa card would’nt connect either.
Now flustered, the Duty Manager asked me if I knew (understood?) what time check-out was on a Saturday for us Time-Share people? I said anytime before and up to 1300, which threw him a bit. Then he stated that we would have to wait until 1300 if necessary or until the bank circuits worked.
By this time I was getting a little worked up…What if all those false billing attempts had in fact, gone through to my credit card account, like about three grands worth of false claims!…So then I told him an outright lie, “…We have a 1200 plane to catch and, if you delay us because your equipment does not work, then we will charge you for al our costs!...”
Panic written all over his face, he began frantically dialling someone on the internal phone. A Minute later a little reception lass with whom I had established a relationship about lighting fires (last night when it took four of them six tries to light the log fire Iin the Lounge and finally I asked if I could help…had it blazing in ten seconds flat! Their idea is to ‘artistically’ stack up logs and then light a bit of paper at the bottom of the pyramid so formed! With the help of a few bits of packing case, some torn-up cardboard cartons, small logs then larger...Whoomph! a contained forest fire was ignited!)
Oh yes, back to paying bills, the little Reception Lady, smiling to light up the sky, pushed the Duty Manager aside, and input a password or something into a totally different credit card input terminal. Bingo, instant action and we were out of there and on our way.
Non-eventful drive back to the outskirts of Ankara, where (our overnight hotel on the way in) is situated. We were flying blind, hoping that this hotel would have a room. For the first time in Turkey, we did not get lost, we both recognised the turnoff we had to take and we actually drove straight to the hotel…This has to be a first! Yes, the man did have a room and gave us a 50% discount because we were walk-in patrons and ‘repeat patrons’ having been there before. Better still, yes they had WI/FI but only in your room Sir…here is the password for free access! We spent most of the afternoon catching up on world news and the few emails received since yesterday.
This is a fascinating hotel, built out in the middle of nowhere, 260 odd rooms, huge convention halls (largest can seat 1800 people!) with smaller ones at 1200, 1000, 500 and right down to a VIP gest lounge for 5 – 20 pax! The atrium is stunning, built to a Sumerian Architectural design, and extends upwards from a sub-main floor level with a running stream, up to the roof…(have a look at the photos in Gallery 17!)
What stuns us is that this place has been purpose built to be a 5***** International Hotel but something has happened…the place was built, internally furnished, but the peripheral walkways and patios were never completed. Look out of our 4th floor balcony and those roof areas below us have broken tiles and rusting pieces of iron-work and general rubbish scattered all about. The back gardens, pool and water slides are badly in need of maintenance and water! The front gardens are superb but everywhere there is an air of neglect! Strange.
Food, the bane of my life when it is bad, is just as pallid and repetitive here as it has been all over Turkey. The hotel expects to seat about 500 in the dining room tonight; made up of three Tourist Promotion Groups, mostly Asian and, a group of European Medical Students plus some sporting organisation or another. The caterers simply started with about six basic salad platters, then by repetition and mixing two salads on the one platter, made it look like a spread of thirty or forty different salads. The main course was, as usual, lamb stew, chicken stew, steamed rice and a vegetable concoction mainly of mushrooms and eggplant. Soup of the day was Tomato (from lunch) with (the lunch pasta) blended with some rice and added to it!!! Walk-in price…$20/head buffet charge!
At least ,in the dining room I can buy a beer, otherwise I have to order it through room service at about AUD$7-10 a can...it varies each time I order some? The main bar as reported earlier, is closed for Ramadhan. Not good. I hope our hotel in Istanbul is more understanding of foreign infidels with a thirst!
We have a free breakfast tomorrow (in the room rate) then sometime before midday we will check out and drive the five klicks to the airport, return the car, complain about the non-working air-conditioning and then sit about the airport (domestic this time so no duty free, curses) until we are called to board around 1430.
So, unless anything happens overnight we will add our next story to the Journal either in Istanbul or KL. Cheers, Pat and Lynne.
