Gap Hotel

I arrived in Gaziantep in the dark, hoping for a good nights sleep and an early rise to find a bus to the Syrian border in the morning. It was the first hotel I saw and it's slick exterior promised, well, something, slickness I suppose. But the electronic doors led to a quite bizarre, still unfathomable netherworld. 4 heavy built guys watching tv and talking in the front room. Shown up two flights to my room by an entirely charming extra from Nosferatu. The long corridor to my room was in darkness, the lights triggered after a few steps through the dark. I tried to see light under the room doors, listening for life, for the sound of a tv, for chatter, an argument, a crying child. Anything. But only silence and darkness lay behind the doors. I was getting nervy, In my room it was clear the investors had exhausted the budget on the electronic doors. The tv was pre-tuned to a channel you dont want your kids to see. The light switch in the bathroom had exposed wires. I decided to go out for a beer and some food. Trying to find my way downstairs I found myself on the floor below, in a variety of rooms with no connecting doors, evidently in the midst of refurbishment. Tools, equipment, and ultra violet lights were scattered around. some furniture under dust sheets. Once outside I found a wonderful kebab shop a few hundred metres along the main street where, for around £4 I had better food than I had for £200 on the waterfront in Istanbul two days earlier. The very friendly owner ate with me and tried to refuse payment. I left double on the counter and ran out. But no beer. In despair I asked at the hotel desk. Nosferatu was called, and he gestured to follow him. This time we went downstairs to a tiny basement room in bright flourescent light. There was what looked like cloakroom window, and a large wooden panel - the sort used to temporarily cover broken shop windows. There was noise. The door was opened and I arrived in a subterranean nightclub. The bar was a few steps ahead slightly to my left and I headed there to let my eyes refocus to the darkness and smoke and get a look at what was going on. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The large russian ignored me but spoke to the girl beside me, looked over my shoulder and gestured to a waiter who promptly tried to wrestle me away from the bar and into a seat. I resisted until he told me that only women were allowed to sit at the bar. I took a table. He brought my beer, and a small plate of unsolicited nuts. Unsolicited nuts I said. I asked how much and, over the din, he shouted £20. I stood up and, trying to be friendly, I told him no chance would I pay that. He then took back the nuts and said £10. The large men (some even with sunglasses!) and the girls in silver hot pants, silver platforms, silver eyeshadow, at the other tables were watching us. "Oh yes" they thought "that wee EU member is a about to get it, should have spent more time doing kung fu, less inventing the industrial revolution and banking fraud." As we stood together, held close like wrestlers so we could hear each other over the eurovision disco boom, I could feel his muscularity under his cheap shirt. I realised that the barman, the waiters, were also the muscle in this place. And why might they need such a concentration of muscle I wondered as he felt the lack of muscle through my shirt. I gambled on "ok, £10, but I pay £5 for the next ? He took the £10 and bid me sit back down with great solicitousness. There's that word again. As i sipped my beer, accepting that Id been burgled, a woman took to the stage for a live performance. The waiter returned with a handfull of confetti and started throwing it over me. Naturally i thought this meant we were to be married immediately with much pleasure awaiting upstairs with the exposed wiring. Oh yes was i relieved when he threw it over everyone else too. The eastern eurovision singing began, and, unsolicited, he brought me another beer. He refused payment. Eh? The beer relaxed me a little and I took in the room. Small, perhaps only 20 tables, half empty, plus a bar and small stage/ dancefloor. One table was all girls, about 5 or 6, all attired from the same erotic accessories supplier. I then noticed that the girl alone at the bar, and the two girls with large men at other tables were similarly clad. Two got up from the table, swayed slowly across the room toward me, navel jewellery glistening, turned left to brush past my table, both looking me in the eye. I wasn't sure what sort of facial expression was appropriate so I just let my facial muscles do their own thing. On they swayed, courtesans from a bad film directors imagined future. To the toilet. I needed too but was afraid to venture far from the exit door back to the( relative ) sanity of the real world upstairs. 2 minutes later the silver darlings swayed back , brushing the table, giving THE LOOK. Again I wondered what my face was doing. I couldn't control it. As the beer took effect I wondered how one might solicit an evening with a silver machine from the turkish future. I imagined how it might all go. I smile as they pass on their next toilet parade. They smile back, bump the table this time, apologise, smile more, they ask where I'm from, would I buy them a drink. They sit down. I smell their perfume. The waiter smells money. We leave together, climb the stairs through the silent hotel to the black corridor. How long would I be paying for that moment of insanity. Then I see the girls coming again, perhaps the same two, its hard to tell. they brush the table, the laser look, I'm careful not to move a muscle of my face. They pass. The waiter comes along, I stand up, smile offer the £5 again, he takes it and I make for the door head straight to my room and block a chair under the door handle. The same channel is actually on in my room. I repeat ON. The Hotel Gap is unique. A one off. A real once on a lifetime experience. I genuinely recommend it I really do. But decidedly not a nice family experience.