In Turkey, I was traveling alone in Selcuk and staying at this quaint, beautifully decorated guesthouse that had been rated really highly by TripAdvisor. It was owned by a 40+ man and his girlfriend also worked there. In the evenings, there was a lovely terrace from which you could view the sunset.
One evening, I went up to the terrace to take pictures of the sunset and enjoy a cup of tea, when the owner and another worker came up to the rooftop. The owner seemed very pleasant. I had seen his collection of foreign currency from all over the world earlier in the day and thought it would be nice to contribute. So he said we should go down and look at it. I didn’t think anything of it, so we went to the ground floor and looked at his money collection when he suddenly wrapped his arms around me and started feeling me up from the behind. He then started to kiss me — my neck first. I froze — I literally didn’t know what to do, and I probably should have said something. After a few seconds, I pushed him away and ran up the stairs where there were more people.
That night, I slept with a chair and my suitcase up against the door in fear. I considered moving out of the guesthouse, but I was only supposed to stay there one more night, so I went out really early and came back late to avoid him at all costs. On the final day of my stay, during breakfast, he came over and had a gift for me and warned me to watch out for those ‘sleazy men in Istanbul’. I didn’t say anything, but gave the place an awful review on TripAdvisor.
He later sent me a message on TripAdvisor saying how he was “just trying to be friendly”, that he had “been in the business for 24 years” and he didn’t think he crossed any lines. He basically insinuated that it had all been in my head. He asked that I take down my bad review. For a split second, I began doubting whether or not I had overreacted. Since both times I was traveling alone and in an unfamiliar place, it meant there was no one to turn to in my immediate surroundings after these incidents happened. That made me doubt myself even more. Perhaps this was a different cultural context and I had interpreted something that was intended to be harmless as something else? But then I realised this is exactly how women tend to react to sexual assault.
My expectations of these places didn’t change after the incident — I still thought the area was great to explore and I didn’t judge the local people any more or less. But it was a big reminder of how I cannot take my gender for granted when I travel. I will never have the privilege of just getting up and going to a place, no matter how appealing it is. I’ll always have to research whether it’s safe for a woman to travel alone (or even for two women to travel together alone). That feels like a constraint of my freedom.
Though I knew this before, these incidents just made me more aware of it. And it was also necessary to be reminded that even in places that seem harmless, you may never know what’s coming your way — whether it’s broad daylight at a popular tourist attraction like Victoria Falls or in a guesthouse that has mostly positive reviews.
I only told a handful of people about the incident — not even my parents because I didn’t want them to worry about letting me travel. I selectively told only other women and I was disappointed and angered when one good friend insinuated that perhaps I had been too harsh to leave a negative review — it made my experience feel invalidated.
I was hesitant to tell people because I didn’t want them to worry and I didn’t want an experience so personal to be shared so widely — but I did want to warn other travelers, which is why I left the review on TripAdvisor. I think with the Turkey incident, I was also embarrassed that I didn’t take more action — to either stop him sooner or to leave the guesthouse.
Looking back, sometimes I wish I could have been “stronger” and taken more firm action by confronting the person involved. But now I tell myself that whatever I did in that instance didn’t come from being weak, but rather from living in a world that has not empowered women to even know how to react in such instances, or a world that tells women to temper their reaction for their own safety.
If I could give any advice to other female travelers who have had a similar experience, I would tell them that they should never doubt how they feel about an incident of assault. If they feel it crossed a boundary, it did cross a boundary and they didn’t imagine it or overreact.
