Bucko's World

Beach Hawkers and other musings

They say there are a billion people in China, and I say this is patently bollocks, because is seems like every one of those fuckers is on Tsilivi beach offering to give me a massage.  There you are, face down on your sun-bed and trying to find a less than excruciating position to read your book in (is it one handed down to one side, or hugging the top of the sun-bed with the book held in two hands, as you try to read between the fabric and the frame?), and you're being asked "you want massagee?" Decline, and not five minutes later they're back asking you again.  I was asked 12 times in the first two hours on the beach if I wanted one.  If I'd accepted each invitation I would have looked like I'd been 10 rounds with Mike Tyson.  I'd have certainly needed a massage to get over it... Either way you try to be polite and at no point did I find the need to use a megaphone to help them on their way...

These ladies don't give up though.  One of them was even brave enough to offer Lisa a foot massage - something less likely to happen than David Walliams marrying a woman.  I can but imagine what would have happened to the Chinese girl's face if she'd actually succeeded in touching Lisa feet.

The other big thing is the African and Indian blokes with their Aladdin's cave of Rolex's, Rayban's and Beats headphones.  Oh and not forgetting the bloke with what would be about a hundred grand's worth of Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Michael Kors handbags if they were real.  Every five minutes (they form a queue with the Chinese girls...) it's "lovely, lovely, very nice price pretty lady" - which I'm not quite sure whether to take as a compliment or not - and then the next one is along.  We're told by one guy, when Lisa asks if the goods are stolen, that everything is made in a factory in India.  This means they're probably much better made than the real thing, which is why my teddy bear is the proud owner of a bright red pair of Bleats by Dr Dray headphones.

It would be remiss of me now not to mention the one, the ONLY Dennis the Menace - beach hawker par excellence.  When we first hear the cry of "Gorgeous, delicious doughnuts, fruit salad especiale" Lisa immediately said "that's the same bloke from 13 years ago"  Of course I rolled my eyes, and pointed out that every beach we've been on since then has has its own generic greek fruit seller, and she has just had too much sun to be thinking that, when he walked past us.  Well slap my ass and call me Shirley if she isn't right, because if there's one thing we remember from last time is that the fruit and doughnut man always wore a Dennis the Menace T-Shirt!  He looks well and is greeted heartily by many STBAs who regale him with tales of how many years they've been coming to the beach (17 in one case) and how they always enjoy seeing him.  Surprisingly, for people who say they've known him for 17 years, they still don't seem to have worked out that he doesn't actually speak English...

There is, however trouble on the horizon for out venerable Dennis.  Where once he strode unchallenged across the strand with his doughnuts and fruits salads held high, he now has a competitor.  This man with his, fruit salads with little greek flags in them, and sidekick carrying a tray of coconuts, we have at least a competion, if not a fruit salad war on our hands.  Dennis the Menace V The Interloper.  Wily old Heavy Weight Champion v The Young Challenger.  There's only one way to settle this...

FIGHT!

Despite these annoyances - they do become nothing more than part of the back ground hum of the place after a while - there is one big plus to being on this beach - better phone and wi-fi reception than Cornwall!  It works like this - you go into a bar and buy a frosty Mythos.  Ask for the Wi-fi password.  Hey presto!  Sit close enough to said bar and you can surf all day to your heart's content!  Next day, select a different bar and repeat.  They're all wise enough to know if they don't have Wi-fi they probably won't have any customers!  Also, the five bars Cosmote signal on the beach is five bars more than O2 could manage in Mevagissy - shows it's not that difficult after all!

Zante diary - 5 Brits abroad

Not having been on one of these beach type holidays for a while, there's been an interesting social experiment  (otherwise known as people watching) for me to perform here.  To whit, has the typical Englishman abroad stereotype been eradicated in this high tech, wifi enabled, super fast internet age?...

The short answer to this is a resounding no.  The long answer - fucking hell no!!  And so, your honour, we turn to example no1...

He sits down next to me at breakfast and we can start ticking all the boxes off - bulldog and Union Jack tattoo on left bicep, Liverpool club crest - apparently tattooed by a five year old with blunt crayons - on the right.  Proudly displayed on his right calf is, of course, the three lions England badge in all it's pudgy legged glory.  If this was slot machine in Vegas it would be vomiting coins like a pissed 18 year old on a stag do.  But there's more - he's northern and complaining the bacon isn't the same as at home.  Three strikes and you're out pal, and that has been considerably more!

Example no2 and we're back on the beach.  With the school holidays back home over and done with, the time is ripe for couples, singles and and young families to benefit from the lower prices and take over the strand.  This means a lot of Yummy Mummies on the beach.  Of course when I call them Yummy it's because that's what they must say every time they see the dessert trolley - fat fucking cows!  Seriously there's muffin tops hanging knee deep over every pair of bikini bottoms, and arse cracks you could park a 4 be 4 in everywhere you turn to look.  And don't get me started on why someone who's had three children, and a diet mainly consisting of lard, needs to get their lils out in public.  Hello, do you know why your husband always turns the light out???  Oh, and the bad, bad, BAD tattoos these people are sporting - seriously don't get me started...

So, we have two examples - one for each gender - to show in evidence as the Stereotypical Brit Abroad(or STBA) is alive, well and clogging up the beaches of Greece.  And you may now be thinking I'm going to say "but there is hope..." and write a tale redeeming our battered STBA...

Not a fucking chance of it - and this is due to a man I shall refer to as Complete Nobhead Arsehole Man (Copyright 2014 Mrs R) a man who's an embarrassment for the rest of the UK.

Let's start with the fake poo...yes, a 50 something man thinks it the height of hilarity to put a fake poo at the by the end of his sunbed and try to get the beach staff to pick it up.  I didn't know when to start laughing.  He also had a fake dead rat on him, and a tarantula sized spider, and I'll leave it to you to picture the types of japery he got up to with this arsenal of comedy magic.  His little coterie seemed to find it funny, pissing themselves every time some unfortunate soul became a victim of his pranks. Our sunbed vendor said to us as we were paying for our beds "I know this man, he is big joker".  The subtext read "I know this man and he is a complete cunt"

He also has a tattoo.  It is the WORST I've ever seen.  It's across the top of his arse, which he likes to readily display, and it says - no word of a lie - Mind the Gap.  I can only assume it mean the one between his ears.

Have I forgotten to mention the megaphone?  How remiss of me!  Why have none of us thought to bring one to the beach with us and yell shit a people through it?  It's the most hilarious thing of all time.  Call a hawker over, examine all the goods and send him on his way without buying anything is probably fair enough.  Yelling at him through the megaphone afterwards, in an Indian accent that would not have been out of place in Mind your Language "velly, velly good price" is beyond the pale.  As it using it to tell a Chinese girl, not 3 feet away from him "no I don't want a fucking massage ..." while his sycophantic twats lap it up is just unbelievable.
   
It doesn't end there.  We have the great misfortune to sit near him and his fan club in a restaurant one night.  He is for some reason wearing a fake, white moustache.  And an Elvis wig, and has the megaphone with him.  The worshipers too have a variety of wigs, masks of the royal family and various celebs and are, rather noisily, driving the staff and other patrons to the edge of distraction. At least on the beach you could move away from this buffoon and find somewhere he isn't, but in a packed restaurant you're pretty much fucked!  And this is the impression the world gets of us.  For every generous tip, thank you for good service, and heartily returned "Yammas" from our lovely locals, it's his, and his groups idiocy that will be remembered.

But we're fighting back...

Zante Diary 4 - The Beach

If memory of 2001 serves correct, the beach here in Tsilivi was one of its main selling points.  Not too crowded and with plenty of sun beds and beach bars to keep you amused for a whole couple of weeks.  We were looking forward to getting down there and renewing old aquaintances.

So it's sad to report that the beach is not a patch on how it used to be.  Previously it was a 2 minute walk from our hotel, but following the road down we find the Boomerang beach bar has extended out across the beach - you can't get on to it that way anymore.  Well, unless you want to take a leap of faith of their terrace that is.

So we turn back and head for a ten minute walk to "new" road that leads to the beach.  When we get there, the first thing you notice is how crowded together the sun beds are.  This is because several of the beach bars have been allowed to extended out, cramming all the beds into a smaller area.  Seriously I spent my first day on the there with some wrinkly old bird's tits inches from my face - and I'm not Wayne Rooney I can tell you!

An effect of this is that a stroll along the beach means walking knee deep in the sea in places to get past all the bar extensions.  No biggy, but inconvenient, say, if you had small children and a pushchair with you (although possibly extremely amusing!)

Another effect is that where no beach bar or hotel is along a stretch of the beach, this is where all the pebbles and seaweed and general detritus accumulate (and Germans...) making the walk rather unpleasant.  This whole situation has lead to there being only one really nice stretch of beach with sun beds on it, and as you can imagine, that's where everybody wants to sit.  Such a shame, but I suppose that's progress for you, but it might well make us think twice before choosing this otherwise excellent resort again.

Slight update - we turned the other way onto the beach today, and found it was a bit quieter - except for some inexplicably shouting Russians - so this improved the feelings somewhat, but it's still not what is was!

There is one final thing that means the beach seems even more crowded that it should be.  It's the fact that the beach faces north-ish, so the sun is behind you all day if your sun lounger is facing the sea.  This leads to everyone spending the day turning their beds to face the sun, and the gaps between them on the beach disappear.  Nightmare, particularly as it gets later, because then your head is pointing down the beach towards the sea, and after ten minutes you have a bloody headache.  I call the "back to front beach syndrome" but I can't see it catching on...

Anyway, we've still managed to get sun beds and spend pretty much 10.30 to 17.00 on the beach each day (with a couple of hours for lunch of course) so it can't be that bad.  Let's see how it pans out over the next few days...

The first full day - the facilities

I'm glad to report that despite some reservations when booking, the hotel Contessina is as lovely as we remember, If also a bit different.  It's had a full refurb since we were last here, including extending the bar out into the pool area (100 brownie points to whoever came up with that one), and building a new kitchen and dining area, which means you can now get a full hot breakfast everyday if you so desire.  This is good.  The breakfast provided last time was, quite frankly, pants, and we ended up going to the next door bar most days to get something edible.  But it's all good now, with the hotel even providing proper PG Tips and COLD milk to get your day set up right.  Major brownie points for that one too.  Oh, and the sausages, omelettes and bacon are quite good as well to be fair...

But this isn't the best thing about the refurb (ok, I can hear you shouting now "NO!!!  Nothing can be better than a pool bar!"). This best thing about it is all the rooms, and, more importantly, their plumbing, has been updated. This means we are in lovely, new, air conditioned room with a proper bathroom.  The first time we came to Greece I can remember crying when I saw the facilities.  We had a wet room, about four foot square.  You could actually have a shit and a shower at the same time.  And woe betide you if you forgot to put the toilet roll outside the room first...

But this is great.  It's a good sized room and for the first time ever the shower is in its own proper enclosure!  Dry bog roll and towels is a distinct possibility now, as is being able to take a dump without your arse being washed at the same time.  Two thumbs up.

There are, of course, one or two problems. Whoever fitted the shower head pretty much screwed it against the wrong wall.  You stand in the enclosure with it spraying the opposite wall, with you staying perfectly dry at your end of the tray.  Move so you can get wet, and you will burn your bollocks on the taps feeding in to the hose.  Twist the shower head to face you and it will blast out your sinuses before going on to spray the ceiling.  But to be fair it's a great improvement over what we've had before, even if, when you finally step out of the shower, you find the tray isn't actually attached to the floor, and all the water runs into the middle drain hole as per...oh well...

As is the toilet.  At long last a Greek bog you can flush toilet paper away in, rather than having to put it in a little bin hidden down to the side (something so gross it used to make me vom.). Now like at home you just use and flush away.  Civilisation in the Ionian at last.  Although Lisa has pointed out that it is rather likely that the sign telling you not to flush the bog roll has simply gone missing...either way, a big improvement.

And last time, although our room was air conditioned, they hadn't run the drain for it outside, and it dripped onto the marbles floor tiles.  This made each night a bout of either unbearable sweat soaked sleeplessness, or cool, calculated, Chinese water torture.  Now the aircon is brilliant, they just made it so fucking noisy you'd rather boil to death in your own juices than put it on.  Once again though, an improvement.

So, you can now sleep and shower in comfort, have a decent cup of tea and a hearty breakfast, and then swill mojitos to your heart's content while cooling your piggies in the wonderful pool.  Seriously, what's not to like?

First evening

Greece was, for many years always our first choice destination for holidays.  Great food, great weather and great people kept us coming back time and time again.  Oh, and of course great value.  When the Drachma was still king, you virtually couldn't give away your money here.  And then the EU and the Euro came and fucked it all up. The adoption of the Euro and a corresponding drop in the pound left the Eurozone, and notably Greece far more expensive for us Brits than before.  A 3€ beer which had been £2 was suddenly £3.20, and to hire sun beds on the beach went from £3 a day to £10.  It was madness and the Brits left in droves for the likes of Turkey, or in our case, Florida.

With Greece having suffered a bigger than average financial breakdown, and relying so heavily on tourism, something had to give.  And put simply, they had to become competitive on price again.  Fortunately, they seemed to get the message and when people started reporting that it had become more affordable again, if not a bit a bargain, we decided it was high time to give it a go once more.

From our first drinks at the hotel bar, we weren't let down.  Two glasses of wine came to 4.20€, down from about 3€ each when we were in Cyprus recently - a nice surprise!  We then headed out for food to the Menir Taverna, one of our old faves, and the prices were great.  3 to 4€ for a starter (which, by the way, were fucking huge and could easily have been shared) and 8 to 12€ for a main (which were equally big).  We had two half litre carafes of wine and the final bill came to £13 a head.  We regularly spent £25 a head in Cyprus so this was good.  It was then, of course, that we saw they had made a mistake, and only charged us for one carafe of wine at 6€.  Being the good souls that we are, we pointed this out and the waiter said "no, this is right.  You had 1 litre of wine, which is 6€..."  We're going back there very soon.

Still feeling tired and emotional after our flight we head to our favourite bar from last time Sunset Boulevard for a quick drink.  Four glasses of wine a two large beers later we are handed a bill for 12€.  They have definitely got their pricing right so far as I'm concerned!  Oh, along with the fact they only played 80s music which meant lots of drunken singing from people of a certain vintage...

So far so good then.  The weather is good, the food and people still great, and the price is right again.  Let's see what our first day on the beach shall bring...

Zante Diary - travelling

For our first visit to Zante since 2001, when we were both young, slim and beautiful, popular and rich, we decided to go back to the same hotel (Contessina) in The same resort (Tsilivi) as back in those halcyon days.  Did we do this  to relive former glories?  Or perhaps because the resort is so fabulous?  Maybe it was because we were too lazy to trawl through hundreds of brochures and websites to find somewhere else to go?  You decide...

Knowing the hotel and area quite well, we decided to book direct, which meant taking our chances with Sleazy Jet, and all the commotion that can come with that.  And hey presto, as we are checking in we are told that the flight is already delayed by 15 minutes, and this is BEFORE the bastard Italian ATC goes on strike - joy of joys...

As we now have so much time to,kill we head off for something to eat at Jamie's Italian - where I order squid to start.  Yes, I'm off to Greece and I order a portion of their national dish for eight times the price before we get there - I really don't know what goes on in my head sometimes...We do of course make sure we get some beers in, as the delay to our departure grows by another half an hour, a nice drop of Pinot Grigio can usually see off any heartache!

With only an hour's delay and having the surprise of finding we have V.I.P. boarding because we're in the front row, we get called to the gate and are soon queuing air bridge having been allowed through before all the passengers have been let of the incoming flight.  There is also a wheelchair bound customer who the ground is causing the ground staff great consternation.  Not only is he al large man, which means it takes 3 burly men to wrestle him from his own wheelchair into an aircraft friendly one before he can board, but a argument the ensues as to whether the dry batteries for his own electric wheels will be allowed on the plane "in case they explode". Good grief...

We do eventually get underway and it's at least a nice new aircraft (Airbus 320 for any fellow plane nerds out there) and sitting at the front we can stretch our legs out (well, not so far for Lisa obvs) and watch every single passenger on the plane as they go for a pee.

Much entertainment is provided for me by an extremely fit and attractive blond girl who decides to stand right next to me and wriggle about inches from my face.  The fact that she is wearing a pair a pink denim shorts so tight you can tell her religion (ahem...) is not lost on me and the constant thrusting of her crotch towards my face is, to be honest, far from unpleasant.  I'm very intrigued to see, disappearing up the inside of her thigh and into her shorts, the beginnings of a tattoo.  The rest of the flight passes in blur, contemplating how far up the tattoo goes and where it may eventually finish.  Some of the contemplation is done in the plane toilet...  

And then amazing things happen.  The captain, having no doubt turned the turbos up, get us in only 40 minutes behind schedule.  Then, as we are the front row, we are off the plane and in the terminal before some on the flight have got there bags from the overhead lockers.  Before we can believe it, we have our bags, have got to the head of the taxi queue, and are on our way!  Within 30 minutes of landing we are at the hotel, being shown to our room, and in touching distance of our first Mythos of the holiday. What a touch!