At last I’m ready to describe our first trip abroad from our home country, Ukraine. We took our first step into this insanely beautiful and vast world in May 2016, and in this article I’ll describe how we stayed in our first hotel abroad, outside Ukraine.
Never having been outside our own country as adults, we chose Turkey, the standard choice for travellers. Tez Tour put together a selection of hotels for us, and we chose the CLUB HOTEL BELPINAR, which is what I’ll tell you about.
It’s very hard to describe my feelings now — a lot of time has passed, and the fear of travelling to other countries has gone and become routine. We were very worried that people wouldn’t understand us in another country. We were afraid of being cheated, of having our documents stolen, of having our money stolen (of which we had barely enough back then). We were afraid of everything we now couldn’t care less about, because now we know much more than we did in 2016.
So, having landed in Turkey, we went through the standard checks, collected our luggage and got on the bus taking us to the hotel, and… then came the (now) standard situation: the hotel guides scaring the tourists. Until you meet the hotel guide, don’t leave the hotel — you’ll be kidnapped, killed, raped and so on. Only if you buy our excursions from our guides will nothing happen to you, and the insurance only covers our excursions. Only our guides have the best excursions in your language. Only our guides can give you everything.
Our meeting with the hotel guide was scheduled for the day after we checked in. Yes, we were afraid of everything, especially after the guide’s massive onslaught on the bus, BUT!!! I love beer 🙂 Beer loves me. I always wanted to try beer in another country and compare how different it is from ours, and I didn’t want to compare it with hotel beer, which is most likely watered down. So from the balcony of our room we spotted some little shops near the hotel and plucked up the courage to go down and see what they had and at what prices. Next to one of these shops there was also a local travel agency where Telman worked. A huge thank-you to him for everything! But let’s take things in order. After we bought a can of local beer, Telman lured us into his travel agency for a cup of tea. We chatted with him, got a booklet of excursions, drank some Turkish tea and returned to the “safety” of the hotel. The next day we went to the meeting with the hotel guide, already knowing Telman’s prices. The meeting lasted about 2 hours: for the first hour and a half we listened to how dangerous it is to leave the hotel and how very dangerous it is to go into street travel agencies — they’re sure to cheat you there, only criminals work there, well, you get the idea, I’ve already written about it above. In the remaining half hour we quickly heard which excursions they offered and the prices, which turned out to be 2.5–3 times higher than Telman’s. Given that our budget was very limited, we decided to take a chance on Telman’s excursions. Jumping ahead, the very thing the hotel guide described did happen to us: they forgot to pick us up. But unlike in the hotel guide’s version, Telman was there within 10 minutes of our Viber message, found and paid for a car himself, which took us to our bus and put us on it with the other tourists. On the bus we realised that people had booked with different guides: some were from a Tez Tour hotel guide, paying three times what we did; others were from another operator’s hotel guide, paying twice as much; and the rest were from local guides, paying about the same as us… All in all, the hotel guide’s horror stories were erased from our heads and never came back on any later trip. I’ll tell you more about the excursions we went on in another article. Oh yes, I almost forgot: we also went on the hotel guide’s (free) shopping excursion. I’ll describe that excursion in one sentence: a spring jacket for 1,600+ euros. I think you get the picture.
Now, back to the hotel itself.
The hotel markets its meal plan as Ultra All Inclusive. That’s not true!
- Imported alcohol costs extra.
- The à la carte restaurants cost extra.
- The minibar, which has almost nothing in it, costs extra.
- Every service beyond ordinary All Inclusive costs extra.
The food at the hotel was varied: there were new meat and fish dishes every day, and once there was a special themed dinner. You could always find something to your taste without repeating yourself every day. What impressed me was that in the main restaurant chefs stood at the entrances and exits and watched. If someone didn’t finish their food, they were genuinely upset and thought the guests hadn’t liked the dish. And when you ate everything and went back for more, they were very happy.
Important: if you want to go somewhere early in the morning, don’t count on the hotel’s packed lunch — it contains a slice of cucumber, a slice of tomato, a slice of bread, a slice of sausage and cheese, one olive and a sweet…
The entertainment at the hotel was probably the best of all my trips so far. Every day there were various contests and activities: morning exercises, aqua aerobics, archery, darts, team sports and much more. Every evening there was a new programme and a disco. The entertainers, by the way, were girls from Ukraine — cheerful, energetic and always responsive to all requests and wishes.
The staff at the hotel are attentive, and everyone everywhere cleans quickly and without problems. Since the hotel has 2 parts (one with the accommodation buildings and a quiet pool, and the other across the road with the big pool, the dining room and the beach, where all the activities take place), there’s an underpass near the spa, not far from the hotel’s main entrance. And on this little patch there was a wonderful man, Nurik! I’m not 100% sure, but most likely he’s an administrator at the hotel. He always greeted us with a sincere smile, morning and evening, and tried to learn Ukrainian. He tried to please us in everything and give us advice. In short, a person you can turn to with any question, and he’ll gladly show you, help you and tell you! Thank you to him. In the evenings we also walked along the embankment and got to know a security guard — a cheerful, kind little man who’s very bored and looks for any excuse to talk to anyone at all. He knows English about as badly as I do, so there were no problems 🙂 The downside among the staff was the waiters — maybe not all of them, but there were conflicts. For example, during a rain shower we took a cocktail each and sat down in the area of the à la carte restaurant. Unfortunately, we knocked a cocktail with a hand and spilled a little. We quickly wiped everything up ourselves with napkins. When we came back for another cocktail, they were rude to us. We also didn’t much like the spa staff. We paid for 1 massage and a hammam with an attendant, and while we drank tea after the treatments, they spent about 40 minutes trying to talk us into a course of massages, which we kept declining. In the end they went from an initial price of 120 dollars down to 40, but, fortunately or unfortunately, we refused, since our budget on this trip was strictly limited and planned almost to the cent. Also, the jacuzzi and hammam at the spa are free, but they don’t tell you that and push paid services on you from the very first step.
The rooms at the hotel are spacious — I’d even say big. A standard room: a bed, a wardrobe, a bathroom, a balcony overlooking the quiet pool, a desk and bedside tables. The room was cleaned well; we had and have no complaints. The electricity is switched on with the key card that opens the room door, so take 2 if you want power in the room when you’re not there. We didn’t know this, and our minibar was always warm and our gadgets always flat; only on later trips did we learn this life hack. The soundproofing in the room isn’t great: even with the balcony door and all the windows closed, the call to prayer at 5 a.m. came through loud and clear, and I wanted to shoot myself.
The hotel grounds aren’t very large, but they’re spacious, beautiful and well kept. There are pretty statuettes, bushes trimmed into various shapes and a clean lawn. A road divides the grounds into 2 parts: the first with 3 buildings and a small pool in the middle, plus reception, the main entrance and the aforementioned spa. The second part is across the road (there’s an underpass). There you’ll find 2 à la carte restaurants, the main restaurant, the disco area where the evening shows are held, the big pool, a relaxation area, the beach and a children’s area. Since there were few people, the children’s area was closed.
The beach has fine pebbles and sunshades, and there’s a pontoon. At the beginning of May the water was cold, so we only swam in the sea a few times. There’s no bar on the beach.
The hotel’s location: right at the start of the village of Beldibi; there are no restaurants or the like right next to the hotel. Nearby there’s a mini-market and the local travel agency with Telman. Not very far away, judging by the sound, there’s a local mosque with calls to prayer. On the plus side, you’ll most likely be the first to get off the bus after Antalya when you arrive in Turkey.
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