m1cksut
30-09-2010, 07:47 PM
gladly from tunisia.
what can i say about the place?
nothing good, and even though my mum once said "if you cant say anything good, say nothing!" i struggle to keep shtum about the worst place i have ever visited, and im including Luton AND Milton Keynes in this!
my initial thinking was , "cant go to dalyan, (thanks goldtrail!) at leat tunisia starts with the same two letters as turkey, so they might be similar."
how stupid can one man be with just one head?
a 2 1/2 hour flight seemed an attractive start, meaning ther holiday started about 2 hours earlier, (see, looking for the positives all the time) all it actually meant was that the hell started earlier.
we were dropped off by the transfer minibus on one side of a horrendously busy dual carriageway outside what appeared to be a siberian gulag, displaying all that was bad about soviet architecture in the 40s and 50s.
on questioning the aimer, errr, i mean "driver" of the minibus about the hotel, we were assured that it was indeed our hotel, and that the picture we had of it to help identify it was taken before all the alterations. i would say improvements, but that would be to assign a new, and incorrect, meaning to the word improvements.
anyway, after struggling across the road, dodging drivers that would be barred from demolition derbies for dangerous practices, we eventually managed to check in and were offered, kindly, by the only decent member of staff, a currency exchange facility.
as we just wanted to get cleaned up, go to toilet etc, we said we would change some in a few minutes when we came back down. (the tunisian dinar is a closed currency, you can only purchase it there).
so, we abluted, put clean clothes, emptied bladders etc and went down to the front desk to change some cash up.
sorry, said the (different) guy behind the counter, no change til 9am tomorrow.
but we have no currency, we said, just travellers cheques, and we needed to eat.
a gallic shrug of the shoulders and the lighting of a cigarette indicated that of all the problems in the world that bothered him, this was not one of them.
as it happened, it didnt really matter, as there wasnt a fit eating establishment in easy walking distance anyway.
luckily we werent terribly hungry, but had just wanted to do what we always do when we get to turkey, get changed freshen up and go out and get into the swing of whichever resort we were in.
hammam sousse, where we were staying, is about halfway between port el kantaoui, a purpose built resort, and sousse, an industrial wasteland, a city seemingly consisting of backstreets only, all of which were unsavoury.
the area around the hotel was largely a building site, with very few obvious eating establishments that a sensible tourist would go into.
the hotel, the sindbad centre, should any of you have a brain storm and decide to go to tunisia, had a restaurant attached to it which we did try to eat at on several occasions, sadly the (very) limited menu was further foreshortened by them having no spaghetti, no chicken, and no fish, despite these items being approximately half of the menu.
having tried their mixed grill and steak we wish that these, too, had been off the menu.
there is an irish bar close by which does, apparently serve a cooked breakfast, however it doesnt open till late morning, too late for breakfast, which again is quite common to restaurants there.
we walked in once, through the outdoor smoking area, and walked straight back out of the darkest smokiest gloomiest room i have ever seen, and never returned.
there was a small ice cream shop close by, which, incongruously, was the cleanest food establishment i have ever seen, i say incongruously, because tunisia is the dirtiest place i have ever see, making malta look like the mediterranean clean streets champion.
port el kantaoui, (hereafter known as PEK) a 45 minute walk away, is, as i said, a purpose built resort.
quite what the purpose was i couldnt quite figure out, but presume it was tourism.
if only they had told the locals, and the restaurant and shop staff in the area that tourism was its aim , it may have been a nicer experience.
tunisian people in general are very aggressive and rude, difficult to believe of a former french colony i know, but its true, especially true of those trying to lighten your wallet of its load.
incompetence is rife, for instance one night when i wasnt very hungry, i asked for a medium rare steak, with just chopped and fried onions and mushrooms, no garnish, no salad, no chips,no extras at all, i made the waiter repeat it, and it still took 3 attempts to get it nearly right, when i ended up with a (badly overcooked) steak and mushrooms, no onions, and this was in one of the better eating houses.
i would say restaurants, but that would be doing a disservice to real restaurants, of which there seems to be only one in port el kantaoui, that being the Mediteranee, in the harbour, sadly we didnt find it until the tenth day of our holiday, by which time a soft boiled egg would have seemed like a gourmet delight to us, after the bland pap we had suffered in various places.
taste is something which is totally lacking in tunisian cooking, on a visit to the medina (like a bazaar in turkey) in sousse we passed many stalls selling all manner of herbs and spices, i can only presume that they use these flavourings as animal fodder because none of them find their way into the food on offer locally, in either the touristy type restaurants, nor the local "cagri" type cafes, (yes, we DID try the unsavoury looking ones and were equally disappointed with both the food and service available).
couscous, which is apparently the local specialty, generally needs to be ordered at least a day in advance, which is a little excessive to my mind, for a tasteless grainy mush, however it probably is tasty if you have it fresh, so they let it dry out in the sun for a day, just to spoil the experience for you, suffice it to say that after sampling it i have no opinion of it except to say that it neither offends nor pleases, and appears to be a fine substitute for sand in which to stub out cigarettes, albeit expensive.
to get to PEK from hammam sousse you have to cross a bridge over a "river".
River may be a little bit of a misnomer, as it is just an open sewer running into the sea, with all the associated smells, what samuel pepys would have called "bad humours", this was unavoidable whether on foot or in the local mobile suicide booths, errr, i mean taxis, and would serve to either put you off your forthcoming meal, or encourage the return of a meal now partaken of.
sadly, going the other way, to sousse, was no better, as a similar crossing was necessary, to get to, what was, in effect, a huge open sewer of a town.
now, i am no delicate flower, and know of areas in turkey that have this robust attitude to sewage, indeed there are even areas in britain that are the same, however, in this area of tunisia it is all permeating, there is no escape.
anyhow, back to the hotel.
the sindbad centre, remember?
it was advertised as having no animation team.
this was largely true, as the "entertainment" consisted of an aggressive, drunken local playing music as loudly as possible for 10 hours a day, to an audience of 5 of his, local, friends.
the main bar was full of aggressive locals and several russian prostitutes, and occasionally a resident or two, who wandered back from the fragrant locations locally, too stunned by the nasal assault to realise until it was too late that they were in the bar, surrounded by menacing locals.
going into the bar was largely a waste of time for a beer drinker anyway.
the local "beer", celtia, seemed to be a tasteless, bland (well it WAS tunisian), beer coloured liquid that i spent the whole of my first full day there drinking, with no other effect than to make me want to use the urinal with an astonishing frequency, to say that it was "making love in a canoe beer"*, would be unkind to water.
sometimes the bar did have becks and once even heineken, but these are obviously brewed for the local market as they seemed little better than celtia.
no supermarkets or little shops sold alcohol, there was one "beer shop" in PEK, a wholesaler open to the public, which all the hotels used as well.
many restaurants and cafes were dry also, a strange situation for a regular visitor to turkey to find himself in.
sousse was so depressing that my good lady wife, who DOES have a name,( i will remember it soon, im sure), burst into tears on our first visit there, however, undeterred, like the victorian explorers that opened up the dark continent a century and a half ago, we did return for a second visit, only to have our initial impressions confirmed, it was indeed a horrible, dark, depressing place, with no redeeming features, except the road out of town.
so, thats about it for our fortnight in a place that makes the idea of an eternity in hell, with satan and all his demons tormenting my soul, and sticking pitchforks into my nether regions, seem like an attractive alternative.
please believe me, if you ever consider having a change from dalyan, do not, under any circumstances consider this area as an alternative, you will regret it, and it will be one or two weeks of your life that was totally wasted, at some expense, too.
(*"making love in a canoe beer", its f***ing close to water.)
Vicky, thats it, no, wait, its Nicky, thats her name, i KNEW i would get it sooner or later.
what can i say about the place?
nothing good, and even though my mum once said "if you cant say anything good, say nothing!" i struggle to keep shtum about the worst place i have ever visited, and im including Luton AND Milton Keynes in this!
my initial thinking was , "cant go to dalyan, (thanks goldtrail!) at leat tunisia starts with the same two letters as turkey, so they might be similar."
how stupid can one man be with just one head?
a 2 1/2 hour flight seemed an attractive start, meaning ther holiday started about 2 hours earlier, (see, looking for the positives all the time) all it actually meant was that the hell started earlier.
we were dropped off by the transfer minibus on one side of a horrendously busy dual carriageway outside what appeared to be a siberian gulag, displaying all that was bad about soviet architecture in the 40s and 50s.
on questioning the aimer, errr, i mean "driver" of the minibus about the hotel, we were assured that it was indeed our hotel, and that the picture we had of it to help identify it was taken before all the alterations. i would say improvements, but that would be to assign a new, and incorrect, meaning to the word improvements.
anyway, after struggling across the road, dodging drivers that would be barred from demolition derbies for dangerous practices, we eventually managed to check in and were offered, kindly, by the only decent member of staff, a currency exchange facility.
as we just wanted to get cleaned up, go to toilet etc, we said we would change some in a few minutes when we came back down. (the tunisian dinar is a closed currency, you can only purchase it there).
so, we abluted, put clean clothes, emptied bladders etc and went down to the front desk to change some cash up.
sorry, said the (different) guy behind the counter, no change til 9am tomorrow.
but we have no currency, we said, just travellers cheques, and we needed to eat.
a gallic shrug of the shoulders and the lighting of a cigarette indicated that of all the problems in the world that bothered him, this was not one of them.
as it happened, it didnt really matter, as there wasnt a fit eating establishment in easy walking distance anyway.
luckily we werent terribly hungry, but had just wanted to do what we always do when we get to turkey, get changed freshen up and go out and get into the swing of whichever resort we were in.
hammam sousse, where we were staying, is about halfway between port el kantaoui, a purpose built resort, and sousse, an industrial wasteland, a city seemingly consisting of backstreets only, all of which were unsavoury.
the area around the hotel was largely a building site, with very few obvious eating establishments that a sensible tourist would go into.
the hotel, the sindbad centre, should any of you have a brain storm and decide to go to tunisia, had a restaurant attached to it which we did try to eat at on several occasions, sadly the (very) limited menu was further foreshortened by them having no spaghetti, no chicken, and no fish, despite these items being approximately half of the menu.
having tried their mixed grill and steak we wish that these, too, had been off the menu.
there is an irish bar close by which does, apparently serve a cooked breakfast, however it doesnt open till late morning, too late for breakfast, which again is quite common to restaurants there.
we walked in once, through the outdoor smoking area, and walked straight back out of the darkest smokiest gloomiest room i have ever seen, and never returned.
there was a small ice cream shop close by, which, incongruously, was the cleanest food establishment i have ever seen, i say incongruously, because tunisia is the dirtiest place i have ever see, making malta look like the mediterranean clean streets champion.
port el kantaoui, (hereafter known as PEK) a 45 minute walk away, is, as i said, a purpose built resort.
quite what the purpose was i couldnt quite figure out, but presume it was tourism.
if only they had told the locals, and the restaurant and shop staff in the area that tourism was its aim , it may have been a nicer experience.
tunisian people in general are very aggressive and rude, difficult to believe of a former french colony i know, but its true, especially true of those trying to lighten your wallet of its load.
incompetence is rife, for instance one night when i wasnt very hungry, i asked for a medium rare steak, with just chopped and fried onions and mushrooms, no garnish, no salad, no chips,no extras at all, i made the waiter repeat it, and it still took 3 attempts to get it nearly right, when i ended up with a (badly overcooked) steak and mushrooms, no onions, and this was in one of the better eating houses.
i would say restaurants, but that would be doing a disservice to real restaurants, of which there seems to be only one in port el kantaoui, that being the Mediteranee, in the harbour, sadly we didnt find it until the tenth day of our holiday, by which time a soft boiled egg would have seemed like a gourmet delight to us, after the bland pap we had suffered in various places.
taste is something which is totally lacking in tunisian cooking, on a visit to the medina (like a bazaar in turkey) in sousse we passed many stalls selling all manner of herbs and spices, i can only presume that they use these flavourings as animal fodder because none of them find their way into the food on offer locally, in either the touristy type restaurants, nor the local "cagri" type cafes, (yes, we DID try the unsavoury looking ones and were equally disappointed with both the food and service available).
couscous, which is apparently the local specialty, generally needs to be ordered at least a day in advance, which is a little excessive to my mind, for a tasteless grainy mush, however it probably is tasty if you have it fresh, so they let it dry out in the sun for a day, just to spoil the experience for you, suffice it to say that after sampling it i have no opinion of it except to say that it neither offends nor pleases, and appears to be a fine substitute for sand in which to stub out cigarettes, albeit expensive.
to get to PEK from hammam sousse you have to cross a bridge over a "river".
River may be a little bit of a misnomer, as it is just an open sewer running into the sea, with all the associated smells, what samuel pepys would have called "bad humours", this was unavoidable whether on foot or in the local mobile suicide booths, errr, i mean taxis, and would serve to either put you off your forthcoming meal, or encourage the return of a meal now partaken of.
sadly, going the other way, to sousse, was no better, as a similar crossing was necessary, to get to, what was, in effect, a huge open sewer of a town.
now, i am no delicate flower, and know of areas in turkey that have this robust attitude to sewage, indeed there are even areas in britain that are the same, however, in this area of tunisia it is all permeating, there is no escape.
anyhow, back to the hotel.
the sindbad centre, remember?
it was advertised as having no animation team.
this was largely true, as the "entertainment" consisted of an aggressive, drunken local playing music as loudly as possible for 10 hours a day, to an audience of 5 of his, local, friends.
the main bar was full of aggressive locals and several russian prostitutes, and occasionally a resident or two, who wandered back from the fragrant locations locally, too stunned by the nasal assault to realise until it was too late that they were in the bar, surrounded by menacing locals.
going into the bar was largely a waste of time for a beer drinker anyway.
the local "beer", celtia, seemed to be a tasteless, bland (well it WAS tunisian), beer coloured liquid that i spent the whole of my first full day there drinking, with no other effect than to make me want to use the urinal with an astonishing frequency, to say that it was "making love in a canoe beer"*, would be unkind to water.
sometimes the bar did have becks and once even heineken, but these are obviously brewed for the local market as they seemed little better than celtia.
no supermarkets or little shops sold alcohol, there was one "beer shop" in PEK, a wholesaler open to the public, which all the hotels used as well.
many restaurants and cafes were dry also, a strange situation for a regular visitor to turkey to find himself in.
sousse was so depressing that my good lady wife, who DOES have a name,( i will remember it soon, im sure), burst into tears on our first visit there, however, undeterred, like the victorian explorers that opened up the dark continent a century and a half ago, we did return for a second visit, only to have our initial impressions confirmed, it was indeed a horrible, dark, depressing place, with no redeeming features, except the road out of town.
so, thats about it for our fortnight in a place that makes the idea of an eternity in hell, with satan and all his demons tormenting my soul, and sticking pitchforks into my nether regions, seem like an attractive alternative.
please believe me, if you ever consider having a change from dalyan, do not, under any circumstances consider this area as an alternative, you will regret it, and it will be one or two weeks of your life that was totally wasted, at some expense, too.
(*"making love in a canoe beer", its f***ing close to water.)
Vicky, thats it, no, wait, its Nicky, thats her name, i KNEW i would get it sooner or later.