In this episode of Sailing A B Sea a spur of the moment trip gets us involved in a hotel scam in Istanbul and we realise that in a city of 15 million people ...
Closed Captions (CC):
So the hotel that you can see behind us, scam - watch out for and we'll tell you
all about it
It's now 8:30 on Saturday morning, we
are on the coach that's gonna take us to
Dalaman Airport, it's going to take about
two hours on the coach and we'll spend
an hour on the airplane and then we'll
spend another two hours on the other
side getting to our destination. So 1/5
of our travel time is in the air 4/5
on road it's quite exciting, it's really exciting.
It took two hours to drive to Dalaman Airport
we've just checked in, we've got one hour before the flight boards and we're about to go through security
for a second time into the departure
lounges.
We're in Istanbul airport and the next
leg of the journey now getting to the
hotel which should take another two hours
so we've got to find a machine that sells
these little tickets - travel cards so we can
go on all sorts of travel methods and find our way to where we're going. Yeah.
Okay. Right Let's do it.
We made it to the bus station just
outside the airport and Baz is now just
about to get an Istanbul card which will
hopefully help us to get from A to B as many times as we want. So let's see how this goes. You can buy
Istanbul card from this menu
Please wait, insert only banknote. Your
request graded successfully loaded. 24 Lira on there now.
It was a great train. That was pretty good, it's very easy to follow, they even have instructions
written in English and spoken in English
and it's just very simple. Next I think
we're getting on Marmaray tram from
Asia to Europe
Two continents in one day oh! Let's go.
Can I help. No it's okay
Tesekkuler (thanks). You're welcome
This is why it pays to read reviews and
heed what the reviews say. Yeah, We'll tell you
all about it later.
Yeah we'll pull some of the reviews up
on the screen and we'll show them to you. Why we didn't see them or didn't pay
attention to them I don't know because
we normally do
So I'm now on the telephone to Expedia
to get them to organise a free
cancellation and a refund and then
contact the guys at the hotel Milano
and then we've got to go and find
somewhere else for three nights.
So the hotel you can see
behind us, scam. Watch out for it.
As we mentioned earlier we're normally quite cautious
when booking hotels and we always check
reviews and if the reviews are
outstandingly bad then we decide not to
go to that particular location however
in this case the trip to Istanbul was
thought up in a very short space of time
and booked in a very quick sequence of
time. It was only after we'd booked that we
found out that the hotel had very
scathing reviews. One person even calling
it a scam and describing the scam so we
actually were forewarned and forearmed
when we went to the hotel. We had our
fingers crossed that it wasn't a scam
but when we got there it turned out it
was because one of the brothers the two
Milano brothers that owned it, used the
exactly the same line on us as he'd used
on a previous guest - the fact that oh
we're very sorry there's a problem with
your room the the bathroom has had a
burst pipe and the whole room is flooded
and we've got no extra rooms. Now we
knew that because that's what one
previous reviewer had revealed, but then
surprisingly five minutes after that the
other Milano brother came up and said
yes there's been a problem, the whole
fifth floor is flooded, somebody left a
big window open and it rained very
heavily and all the rain blew in so the
whole floor is flooded. I wish they get
the stories straight. So how the scam
works is you book this particular hotel
which has some great pictures on the
internet and when you get there they
tell you that the room is not available
for whatever reason. They then try and
ring around to
friends hotels to get you into one of
those, of course let's just use imaginary
numbers here, let's say that the Milano
hotel is a hundred and fifty dollars a
night
they will then book you into a scummy
$70 a night hotel that one of their
friends owns in a very dodgy part of
town and very poor amenities, and of
course they split the difference. Another
thing they do is they try and say to you
well you can apply for a refund after
you get home just phone up the
company you booked through and they'll
supply a refund, at which point when a
refund is applied for the Milano Hotel
says sorry we have a no refunds policy
so you don't get your money back. We
decided that we weren't leaving the
hotel until we'd had a phone call to
Expedia who we booked through and
organised a complete refund. At first
they said that their telephones couldn't
do International dialling. I explained to
them that my Turkish sim couldn't do
international dialling either so they'd
have to find a phone somewhere that did
international dialling. Five minutes later
one of the Milano brothers wandered in
with a handset which he'd borrowed from
one of the neighboring businesses or
hotels, I don't know, handed it to me and
said you can dial internationally on
this one. I had a chat with the lady, very
nice lady at Expedia, explained the
situation and she said, just hold on a
second I'll call them. Now at this point
I am sitting literally ten metres away
from reception, their phone rings the
Milano brother picks it up
I hear him have a conversation in
English, at which he agrees to supply
of full refund and he puts the phone
down. The lady I'm on hold with comes
back on the line that says, thank you sir
we've organised that for you.
I said yes I was listening to your
conversation, and we got a full refund. We
then asked the Milano brothers if they'd
be courteous enough to allow us to plug
into their electricity to recharge our
phone and plug in our laptop while we
did an online search using their
internet connection to book another
hotel. Now here's where a bit of
stupidity on my behalf comes in. I found
a hotel with in the same price bracket
only two kilometres walk away which
wasn't too far and it was in this part
of town that we wanted to be in for
seeing the sites that we wanted to see
so I booked the dates got the
confirmation number and we packed up
everything and exited
the Milano hotel and begun our two
kilometre trek across Istanbul. When we
got to the newly booked hotel I gave
them the reference number and they
looked and looked and looked and
couldn't find a booking at all. It was
only after about ten minutes and a
couple of managers getting involved that
somebody eagle-eyed spotted the fact
that I've made a mistake of booking it
for next month. Now this weekend happened
to be a very busy weekend in Istanbul it
was a national holiday weekend and
pretty much all of the hotels were fully
booked.
Once again we plugged in our phones to
recharge, brought out our trusty laptop
and looked again for another hotel. This
time I didn't book it online, I phoned
reception. I said I see that you have one
double room left, the guy on the end of
the phone said yes we do. I said
right hold that room, we'll be there in
20 minutes.
This place was only a kilometer and a
half walk away. When we wandered into
his reception he said hello, I said I was
on the telephone to you 20 minutes ago,
you said he had one double room left. Yes
he said. I said great can we have it? He said, do you have a reservation? I said no I
talked to you on the phone about this. Oh
in that case we're fully booked, and then
gave me an attitude that says, not my
problem, I don't care. At this point we
decided that booking online was wasting
a lot of time, night was beginning to
fall outside and we just wanted to get a
hotel. As we'd been criss crossing our
way through Istanbul we had spotted that
there are pretty much hotels every five
paces, so we decided to just wander into
receptions and ask. The first two
places we tried - fully booked and on the
third attempt we wandered into the
reception area of a very nice hotel
called Darkhill and it was in the
perfect location for where we wanted to
visit all the sights. The nice manager of
the reception said normally we're fully
booked but I keep two rooms available
for nice people and you look like nice
people, how long do you want the room for?
We said three nights and paid the man
quite happily.
Oh this is lovely. I'll have the small bed ... she said sitting on the large bed
Uh-huh. Oh boy.
Nice shower, nice bathroom, complimentary
toiletries, this is what we look like
after walking all over Istanbul
for four hours.
We've seen a lot of it already, we can just stay in the hotel! We've walked past most of it at least twice! Yep
Oh boy we thought we
weren't going to get anywhere there for a while didn't we? We certainly did
So what have we learned from all this?
Well always read reviews on anything
you're booking whether it's a theme park
or restaurant or hotel and take heed of
the bad ones
don't just rely that there are 70% good
ones. We learned that persistence finally
pays off and we've also learned that
there's always a mixed bag of nice
people and not so nice people in any big
city. But we really did enjoy our time in
Istanbul
After a great night's sleep
we left the hotel in search of somewhere
to have breakfast before exploring Istanbul.
Right we've got full bellies. We had pide - it was so fresh and so fluffy it was yummy wasn't it?
Beautiful. So one of the things we're
going to get when we get to the first
place is a 70 lira per person, valid for
one year, Museum Pass and because they
charge you to go into each different
place you buy this pass if you get
into every place for a total of 70 lira. So that's good. You
have to have a resident's card to qualify
for it or be a Turkish citizen. Here we
are at the Hagia Sophia (Topkapi Palace) and it's
probably close to lunchtime now and if
you look behind me you can see the queue
to purchase tickets and one of the
tickets that we want to acquire is
bought at the same place. So we've looked
at the queue and we estimated based on
the number of ticket sales booths that
were open, that we probably be in the
queue for over an hour and then there's
a queue to get into the building itself
So we've had a rethink. We can buy this
card for an annual pass for all the
museums at any one of the museum's so we
need to find one that's got a small
queue, buy the card and then we can just
wander in to each one as we please, but
right now on our search for one of those
empty kiosks, we're going to have a
wander down to the Bosporus.
Just a little bit of current running
through there would you say? That thing
over there is the Galata Tower and we're
going to cross this bridge by foot
and go up there and take a look. It's
just after midday and the ferries just
keep coming and going.
Just a small queue
We're not going up today. No way Manuel!
Do join us next week as we explore the
fascinating city of Istanbul and visit
some of its exotic and ancient
attractions.
We are currently anchored in
a bay on the Greek island of Samos in a
town called Pythagoria and if you went
to school you will probably know about
the famous guy called Pythagoras who was
born in Samos. He was and we're gonna be
here for quite some time editing some
videos together because we really do
need to do some work because we are
backlogged at the moment and we need to buy some time
It's strange making videos. But what we'd
like to do right now is say a big hello
and a big thank you to our brand new
patrons, Mark Bonnington. He has a 43 foot Bavaria which is
Marseille. Nice and from now on Mark
Bonnington will be known as Bonno.
Yep and also Flemming Sorenson yes
and Trevor Bench and SV Daisy. Thank you
so much for becoming patrons it's really
appreciated in making this journey of
ours sustainable. Welcome aboard thank you. So if
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See you next time. Bye