Salamis Bay Conti Hotel

Turkish culture lack efficiency, organization

Salamis Bay Conti Resort Hotel is overpriced and overrated. However, the sea is very nice. I have swum many kilometers and enjoyed the undersea rocks and fish around the hotel. You can swim straight out into the sea about a half a kilometer, and the water is clear so you can see the rocks 5 or more meters below the surface. I've seen some sea turtles hanging out in the grasses on the rocks about 7 meters below the surface.

Typical of Turkish culture, while service may be good superficially there can at times be a lack of organization and efficiency at almost all levels. For example, at Salamis Bay Conti you may, like I did, run into a rude / surly taxi driver if you park your car in one of the parking lot spots. The hotel does not mark those spaces--one is somehow supposed to know. Typical Turkish mentality is top-down dictatorial, which can make systems inefficient when the person at the top is an idiot (not an uncommon characteristic in any culture).

As an American who has studied the Cyprus issue, it was obviously the Greek Cypriots who started the fight and are currently the main obstacle to reunification of Cyprus. Historically, it was particularly the Greek Cypriot terrorist organization ENOKA which was trying to unite Cyprus with Greece and disenfranchise the Turkish Cypriots. It was the Greek Cypriots who overthrew the pre-1974 bipartite (Greek & Turkish Cypriot) government. Furthermore, I have Turkish Cypriot friends who were rounded up, on the town football field, threatened with annihilation, only to be rescued because UN representatives told the Greeks that Turkish warplanes circling above would make them pay dearly. In short, Greek Cypriots have many stories to tell about Greek Cypriots murdering and terrorizing Turkish Cypriots. The Greeks were more powerful and there were massacres.