Akbel

Because I was flying Pegasus from Dalaman to Istanbul, and then the following day to Istanbul, I was ticketed through to Sofia on the flight out. So I said goodbye to my case at Dalaman and got boarding cards for the Istanbul flight and the Sofia flight. Great! No need to check in. On the return trip, however, only my luggage was ticketed through. I had to get a visa stamp at Istanbul and then a boarding card for the Istanbul-Dalaman leg. This meant that I arrived at the domestic terminal at Dalaman while my bag went to the international terminal. The Suzuki parked yesterday outside Can’s restaurant at Akbel.The trip over to the international terminal to get my bag meant that I missed the Havaş shuttle bus to Fethiye. So I took a dolmuş from Dalaman bus station to Fethiye and got there around 10am. Where do you want to go to? a bloke asked. The village, I said. He pointed to the Bati Antalya bus and said, you need to take that one, it leaves in half an hour. The Bati Antalya bus is a local bus that diverts off the main road to visit all the villages. It takes two hours to get to the village. Just then the big Pamukkale bus to Kaş arrived from Istanbul. It sticks to the main road and does the trip to the village in an hour or so. And it’s cheaper. A nice blue bike parked outside Can’s restaurant.I went over to the bus to get on. No, the Pamukkale man said, you can’t use this bus, you have to use the Bati Antalya bus. But yours is quicker, I said, and it’s more comfortable, and it’s leaving earlier. We can’t pick you up here, he said. The Bati Antalya people cause trouble for us. But if you go outside the bus station we’ll pick you up across the road from Carrefour. So I went outside, and five minutes later I was on the big bus to Kaş. Typically Turkish. If someone is doing better than you, and people prefer their bus to yours, you don’t improve your service, or put on quicker and bigger buses. No. You stop your competitors from taking custom which you think is rightfully yours. In Turkey, the customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is sometimes completely wrong, and has to be directed to make the right choice. I don’t know what was happening with the blue bike. The bloke got it off it, switched to a red bike, went off, came back and switched back to the blue bike.Sunday lunch at Akbel is a semi-regular event. A few teas, a few beers, lunch, a chat, a trip to the market and generally just watching the world go by. I’ll miss it. Another biker leaves.The man selling the chain saws wasn’t getting much business. But someone stopped for a chat.Then he had some lunch.By the time I came to leave another Suzuki was parked next to mine.