Beware The Tourist Trap

I like to think of myself as a savvy traveller, someone not easily scammed or lured into uneasy situations. But sometimes, you let your guard down for a moment and you unexpectedly find yourself in a tourist trap.

For example, we had just visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and were looking for somewhere to eat when a friendly looking local in suit-pants and a crisp white shirt waved at us and said hello. He reminded us that he worked at our hotel and told us he had just finished his shift and was on his way home. I told him we were looking for a restaurant and asked if he had any recommendations. He said he knew just the place and I started following him down the street. This was when the girls finally got my attention by making the cutting hand at the neck gesture. It turns out he wasn’t from our hotel. The staff at our hotel weren’t dressed that nice and he was most likely an organ harvester or serial killer. Or he just couldn’t tell us whiteys apart. Either way, I was this close to falling into another tourist trap.

In Athens we were a little obsessed with finding a restaurant where we could smash plates. There’s something cathartic about smashing some porcelain. I mean, I accidentally smash glasses when I’m drunk all the time, but it’s just not the same. We googled it, and apparently it is now illegal to smash plates  in Greece because flying shards of glass and porcelain are somehow considered “dangerous.”

We were walking under the shadow of the Acropolis and we passed a restaurant advertising plate smashing and live music. This place had tourist trap written all over it but I was enthralled. We went back to our apartment and did some research. The restaurant I had fallen in love with just because of their willingness to let tourists break the law, was ranked the 1,404^th best restaurant in Athens on TripAdvisor. Some of the review titles included “Don’t even think about eating here,” “The WORST restaurant I have EVER been to,” “Avoid this place” and “The WORST restaurant in Athens.” Well screw you TripAdvisor, I thought, we want to smash some plates.

So we disregarded the advice of the internet and fell into a blatant tourist trap, and it was such a cash-cow. For example, we were charged 8 euro for 'complimentary' bread. Our waiter ignored us and instead of taking our order he aggressively flirted with the pre-pubescent girls at the table next to us, trying to convince them to go clubbing with him. When my salad did come, it was literally just a bowl of rocket leaves with a sprinkle of cheese. Worst of all, the wait staff kept floating around handing plates to everyone else to smash but gave none to us. Eventually we asked to do some smashing and he told us it would cost one euro per plate. We were wriggling in the trap, but dammit we wanted to destroy some porcelain, so we ordered a plate each and it felt amazing. 

Maybe the reason we fell into a tourist trap was because we went looking for an outdated cultural stereotype? When we landed in Turkey, we were very keen to experience a traditional Turkish bath, but I wondered if we were about to fall into another tourist trap. Our hotel, which was already looking pretty dodgy, suggested we go to Cemberlitas Hamami just up the road. The bath was populated by a lot of locals, which indicated that this place wasn't just another tourist trap. However, it wasn't very tourist friendly in that we had no idea what was going on and no one was going to help explain it for us. The baths were gender separated so I said goodbye to the girls and was left to figure things out on my own.

Firstly, I was given a tea towel and led towards a changing room with a very see-through glass door that looked out on the reception/waiting area. Why is it that all my holidays end up with me unleashing the kraken on the unsuspecting locals? I then walked through the waiting area in my tea-towel and found myself in a circular room with a marble slab in the middle. I walked around for a bit, trying to see what everyone else was doing but they were just lounging around pouring water over themselves. Eventually, after working up a bit of sweat, an old Turkish guy came up to me and laid me down on the marble slab and started scrubbing my entire body. Initially, I was worried that this experience would be too … erotic … and that something would - how should I say this - unexpectedly come up. But as soon as he started sandpapering my skin off, I knew that I would be spared any unnecessary penile embarrassment. Dude was rough. 

Cemberlitas Hamami

After violently scrubbing off my new tan he tipped a few buckets of cold water over my body, flipped me over on the marble, and started working up a soapy lather. It was not relaxing. He stretched my arms up so with nothing to lean my head on, I tried to levitate my face off of the marble but his strong hands kept slamming me down face-first. I thought he was going to break my nose. Then he flipped me over again and started elbowing my stomach and I seriously regretted coming to the baths after dinner. He then dumped a few more buckets of water over my body and left the room without saying anything, leaving me to feel like an abandoned lover. 

Eventually he came back and lead me to an area outside of the circular room where a bunch of guys in tea-towels were standing around talking in Turkish.  He sat me down near a tap in the wall and left me alone again. He came back with a bottle of shampoo, squeezed a huge amount onto the top of my head and attempted to wash my hair. I was the only man in that hamam without a number two buzz-cut. Long hair for guys must be rare in Turkey because as he was washing my glorious mane, the people standing around me were pissing themselves laughing. I must’ve looked hilarious because he let my soapy fringe fall all the way down to my chin and I could barely breath through the curtain of hair and shampoo. He then started throwing alternating buckets of hot and cold water into my face. It felt a bit like he was trying to get me to tell him state secrets. Getting water-boarded in Istanbul was never on my bucket list but I can tick it off anyway. I pried the hair away from my mouth and nostrils, took a deep breath, and saw the bunch of guys near the door give me a thumbs up. I had become a Turkish hero, a thing of legend: The Boy With The Lady Hair. 

Finally, my favourite type of tourist trap is the kind where they dress you up in costumes and take semi-offensive, culturally-ignorant souvenir photographs. In Santorini, I became a Spartan warrior adored by two beautiful Grecian Goddesses. This one was pretty tourist-trappy because the photographer was drinking a beer, shooting from a hideously low angle, and seemed obsessed with phallic imagery. The Sultan photo shoot in Istanbul, however, was fantastic. Although I was a bit perturbed that the subtext of the photo implies I am wed to both my sister and my cousin.

Nicole (left) and Nicki Minaj (right)

I love a good harem 

OK, I have to admit it: I love tourist traps. Sometimes it's nice to be a tourist and overpay for food and wear silly costumes that stink of other people's BO. Tourist traps make travel interesting. It is lucky that I have come to this realisation, because Nicole and I have arrived in New York and have already been scammed by some savvy locals, but more on that later. For now, I would like to thank Europe for hosting me for two months and for providing me with a lot of laughs, a few hangovers, thousands of photos, and a greater knowledge of thigh-chafing.