Well we’ve had quite an eventful week in terms of finalising a few projects that have been on the To Do List for quite some time.
Baz got stuck into fixing the swim ladder, got some new wheels made for the passerelle and mounted the three fire extinguishers in each of the cabins. He’s outline these and more in his blog and we’ve also got more visual details in this Saturday’s YouTube video.
It’s been great to see a dent made in the list, but even greater has been finalising the phone fiasco. You’ll remember that I wrote about how I damaged my phone (well two actually) in my Blog #49 – First Impressions of Turkey and also how I took it into a phone technician in Fethiye on the 21st of October.
Of the two phones, which both needed new screens, Barry’s was fixed the next day. My phone however, because it was a Samsung Galaxy Edge, meant the guy had to order in a curved screen from Istanbul. He expected it to take a couple of days so we returned 3 days later only to be told that it hadn’t arrived and would be another 2 days. We had to catch a good weather window as we were travelling onward to Kaş, and if we didn’t leave the next day, we’d be stuck in Fethiye for several days. We had paid the guy in advance for fixing the screen and decided to trust that all would be well, so we left the phone with him and gave him an extra 20TL to mail it to us when it was fixed.
Well, six weeks later and after sending him several emails, plus phoning with the help of a Turkish fellow, who said that his excuses were basically lies, we realised we weren’t going to get the phone any time soon and decided to take the bus to Fethiye ourselves and get the phone back. If you’d like to see what happened, we filmed our trip for this Saturday’s YouTube video.
It was a 2.5 hour trip to Fethiye (on a very nice bus), then once we arrived we had to walk quite a way into town to where the phone technician’s shop was. I was a bit taken aback that he wasn’t there but there was a whole different crew in the shop. They showed me that they’d replaced the screen but that the phone needed another part before they could fix it properly, as it was still flashing and unusable. They said they could get the part and fix it within a day, but Barry and I had basically had enough and with the help of Google Translate, I told the apologetic lady that it would be easier for me if I took it back to Kaş and had it repaired there, as I didn’t want to make another 5 hour round trip on the bus.
Disappointed but not entirely surprised, I walked out of the shop at least having achieved my objective, which was to retrieve my phone. That it didn’t work wasn’t such an issue any more as I had already faced my ‘bottom line’ that if it couldn’t be fixed or was never returned to me, that I would buy myself another Samsung Galaxy – but a flat phone, as the edge had issues going into a camera mount when I wanted to carry it around to take videos or photos for Instagram. I just couldn’t understand why they didn’t simply email me earlier with what needed to be done and we could have reached a workable solution a lot sooner.
Anyway, at 12.15pm, armed with my phone plus two packets of bacon and some English pork sausages, we stepped onto the bus home to Kaş. I’ll tell you more about our pork hunt in a moment. But first, let me share with you the end of the phone saga.
Back in Kaş that afternoon, Barry and I took my Samsung Edge into the Phone Hospital. The efficient fellow there confirmed that it did indeed need more work and after we discussed how much that would cost, I ended up purchasing a reconditioned Samsung Galaxy with a flat screen for pretty much the same price. This phone is like new and apparently had only been used for 3 months before being passed to the Phone Hospital for resale. I in turn sold my Edge to the phone fellow and after purchasing a Turkcell Sim, I am now reconnected with the world, and able to take good photos for Instagram once more. So after a couple of months of photo silence, you’ll see my recently uploaded pics here. And as an additional bonus, because my phone is Turkish, I don’t have to register it to enable me to use a Turkish sim.
So, now the phone saga has drawn to a close, I’m very happy.
Pork is a rarity in Turkey
Pork is a meat that is not easily purchased from the butchers in Turkey, packets of bacon in supermarkets can be expensive and our last stash from Greece ran out many weeks ago. While we haven’t had any ridiculous cravings for this tasty produce, Baz and I did decide that if we were in Fethiye we would make the extra trip and visit a shop 3Km outside of town that specialises in pork products.
So last Wednesday was the day and taking my flashing phone with us, we strode out of Fethiye on the road that we’d heard from friends was where the pork shop was located. Even with Google Maps this shop proved difficult to find but just as we were about to give up and go home, we eventually discovered it disguised as a little corner mini-market. Apparently because there’s been a downturn in Turkey’s economy, the owner had branched out into other items, as there wasn’t enough demand just for pork. She did however, have what we’d been looking for and we walked out of that shop with a much greater grin on our chops (no pun intended) than when we stepped out of the phone shop.
On the way home from Fethiye, we did manage to get some nice video footage through the window of the coastline and Kaş marina which you can also see in this week’s video.
Oh, guess what we had for breakfast the next morning? Yes, you guessed it, to use an English phrase – bacon butties! Yum!!
