nano encounters

Here we are in Kemer in Southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea with few clothes left to wear.  So, what is the laundry plan? Well, the hotel provides a service, but it is about €5 per t-shirt, €8 per pair of pants, and so on.  Our total laundry bill could be about €100, which sounds like a waste of money.  We can afford to pay it, but we would rather spend the Euros on something else.

An idea pops into my friend’s head and he says, “Why don’t we find a laundromat? It must be a cheaper alternative to the hotel.”

Great idea!  But, we are in a small town and there aren’t many shops or services around for miles.  Let’s find the nearest shop and start out by asking if anyone knows what a laundromat is.

We walked outside the hotel and toward the few touristy shops selling clothes.  Five young men stood on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes.  As neither of us speaks Turkish, we used sign language and some key English words to describe what we needed.  How did we do that?

When no one understood the words, ‘Laundry’ nor ‘Washing Machine,’ I took the corner of my jacket and rubbed it in my hands and repeated, “Wash, clean, soap, wash machine?”

The young men laughed at my animated gestures, and pointed us to a street.  They indicated with their arms that we should walk straight ahead. We thanked them and set on our way down the slightly slopping street.

After about 5 minutes of walking, we found a clothing store on a street corner and stopped to ask about the laundromat again.  The shopkeeper told us, ‘Keeping walking down the street.  But you should forget washing.  Come and buy some new clothes from my shop.  I have original Levi’s jeans, 3 for $60!”

My friend and I were tempted, but we smiled, nodded, and promised that we would stop by on the way back.

Another 10 minutes of walking and still no visual on the laundromat.  Now we were in another town and a large road sign read, “Welcome to Goynuk!”

Okay, so we have walked for about 15 minutes and gone from one town to another, and now we began to suspect if a laundromat really existed.  Perhaps the Turkish people we questioned along the way were pulling our leg, us being tourists in their small town and all?

One more stop to triple check.  I spotted a convenience store and asked the owner the same thing with my hand gestures and words.  He came outside his store and pointed to a place at the end of the street in a cul-de-sac.

Sure enough, we had walked for over 15 minutes straight down a street right to the end where stood a small shop.  A sign in Turkish read, “Tailor” and the owner stepped outside to greet us.

It was a small shop with an ironing table, a sewing machine, some clothes hanging on racks, some clothes in baskets, a laptop, and just one washing machine along the back wall.  I turned to my friend and expressed my thoughts out loud, “This is a laundromat?  He has only one washing machine?”

My friend explained to the owner what we needed.  Not speaking a word of English, he replied in sign language, that it would cost us €10 for one wash load and that he would have our clothes washed and dried in 24 hours.  It sounded like a good plan to us.

Tired after our long walk, and one can call those 15 minutes long, we sat down on the couch in front of the shop. The owner waved a cup of tea at us, to ask if we wanted some.  We nodded and he came back out in a few minutes with two cups of hot tea and sugar lumps in a bowl.

Alone, I walked down the same path the next day with our clothes in two large plastic bags, making a few stops to set down my heavy load.  When I reached the ‘laundromat’ I was greeted by a smiling owner, as if he recognized a friend.  He introduced me to his wife who was busy at the sewing machine, and to his son who was playing video games on the laptop. 

I went over to the washing machine and said with animation, “Set to warm.  No hot.  Okay?  Warm is good.”

They nodded in agreement and I motioned that I would return the following day.  On my way out the door, I saw that the little boy had hit the Grand Score on the video game we was playing.  I congratulated him and clapped.  He didn’t understand me, but his parents translated something which sounded like they understood me.

My friend and I were busy in downtown Kemer the next day, but we returned the day after to Goynuk.  To our pleasant surprise, all our clothes had not only been washed and dried, but neatly folded.  I paid €12 instead of the €10 asking price, because they had done a great job and had been very hospitable. 

Another cup of tea followed and the exchange of nods and smiles, in appreciation of their kindness.  So, if you ever visit the small town of Goynuk, be sure to look up the friendly couple and their one machine laundromat which sits in a cul-de-sac close to the mosque in the photograph above.