Villa Ralfa Goes ‘On Tour’ Down Under - Part Two.....More Flights, and The Knotty Problem of Finding ‘Real’ LGBT Accommodation.

Having booked the main flights, and trains, for my gay travels down under, your intrepid traveller finds that there can be a problem booking exclusively LGBT accommodation, and that Greece is still a cheap place to stay!

A couple of my fans have mentioned that there are a couple more things which you should have to hand when doing this sort of thing, these are your passport as many airlines want your passport or ID card number when you book, and more importantly lots of ink and paper in your printer! The airlines must save a lot of money not having to provide you with an expensive multipart ticket these days, and do make sure that you actually print out your ‘e-ticket’ and not just the receipt for the booking!

Of course I am well aware how big Australia really is, as I lived there for a number of years, but having booked the train journey from Perth to Adelaide, and then on to Alice Springs where I pick up a two day bus tour to King’s Canyon and Ayer’s Rock, there is the problem of getting on to Melbourne to leave enough time there to see friends and my partner’s mother.

About the only airline that comes up on Google is Virgin Blue and at A$600 one way from Alice to Melbourne it is hardly cheap, (and takes forever because they fly via Sydney), as usual with these airlines everything seems to be an extra!

After a look at my favourite airline site Attitude Travel (http://www.attitudetravel.com/), I discover Tiger Airways. What starts out at A$47 for a one way flight soon turns into A$154 by the time I add my luggage, pay A$8 for a seat, and they add on a ‘Convenience Fee’ whatever that is!

And finally I have to get flights from Melbourne to Auckland, and from Wellington to Auckland to pick up my return flight to Singapore. Air New Zealand proved to be the cheapest choice for Melbourne to Auckland, Jetstar the cheapest and most convenient for Wellington to Auckland. It is amazing how trouble free things can be when you have a credit card that actually works!!

And then we come to accommodation....For much of my journey I am staying with friends and family which is the cheapest way!

But to be honest I also want to do a bit of a ‘consumer survey’ during my trip and see what other LGBT hotels have to offer and whether there is anything I can do better (or worse!). And there are a couple of places where I do not have friends (yet!), like Singapore, Adelaide, Alice Springs, and Auckland.

Now when I say LGBT, I mean LGBT owned and GLBT run, not one of the enormous international chains, or even a national chain, where you could actually be in any hotel in any city in the world and not know where, and where your money goes to head office wherever that is! Let’s face it we are gay and we want a proper gay establishment, not one where the staff have had special training as if we are people with ‘special needs’.

My priorities here are in this order,

1. LGBT owned and run
2. Location
3. Price.

As you know I can be a bit mean so it might seem odd to put price last, but many ‘gay’ hotels are very much boutique style which always tend to be more expensive, although I think some places still believe that there is a ‘pink’ dollar, or pound, or euro, so tend to be more pricey, (I don’t know why they think we have more money as recent surveys suggest that the 6% of the population that are ‘gay’ are responsible for 6% of spending, so they don’t spend any more or less than any other sector of the population).

As for location, there are some very nice GLBT places around but some of them are way out of town which is a bit inconvenient when the bars and local attractions are miles away, unless you have your own transport of course, which I don’t. And a couple of times I have to get up early to get to airports and railway stations!

Searching gay and lesbian directories, and the various sites dealing with ‘gay’ accommodation proved very disappointing for the locations where I wanted it most. For instance, Google produced only one result for Singapore, which on closer inspection looked like the rooms were for rent by the hour, and were sparsely furnished at that, although since then I have seen a review from somebody who stayed there and said it was fine......Fine if you like staying in a bathhouse that is, but when you get to a certain age you need somewhere with a few creature comforts!

Below are links to some of the sites that proved useful although I ended up in going to ‘gay friendly’ places which happened to be located just where I wanted them to be.

Australia proved to be the most difficult, and I don’t think anyone will be surprised when I say that Adelaide and Alice Springs proved to be the worst, New Zealand on the other hand proved very easy!

Trying to book LGBT accommodations in Adelaide did have it’s amusing side, as after the Qguide site proved fruitless (the one place listed came back and said ‘We do not have accommodation’), I tried the old favourite ploy of sending messages to people on line on Gaydar. Out of six messages sent, two didn’t reply, one said ‘I do not know of such things as I am not gay’, (I didn’t understand that one either), two came up with logical suggestions, and the last sent me the following message, and I quote verbatim...... “Hey Tim! Thanks for your message. God! You poor bugger! Adelaide is a complete gay desert! An inbred cesspool of cheating 'happily married' queers and mental retards! Not a normal gay bloke to be found!”. Which probably explains the ‘I’m not gay’ response! In the end I chose a hotel listed as gay friendly, but just happening to be in a convenient place.

I did make contact with someone in Alice Springs who proved very helpful with advice about tours, but as both nights that I would be spending in The Alice were late to bed and early to rise days, I didn’t worry too much and just booked something convenient.

For Melbourne there were a number of listings on various web sites, strangely these proved to be gay-friendly only, when in fact Melbourne has a couple of quite good gay owned/run places the names of which I got from a friend who lives there.

And what about prices?

I deliberately avoided ‘budget’ accommodation as in many cases this is going to be youth hostels or back-packers accommodation, not that I have anything against backpackers, I have met some very nice ones in my time, so I took the lower end of mid-price accommodation. Strangely accommodation in Australia and New Zealand seemed to be the same price in both dollar currencies which for us Europeans means that New Zealand was the cheapest place! Working on this basis a room for two costs around $120 per night in both A$ and NZ$, and in Singapore, S$175 per night for two. As a rough guide NZ$120 is £60 or €70, A$120 is £80 or £90, and S$175 is £90 or €100 respectively. Note that these prices are for two, no reduction for single travellers like we do at Villa Ralfa, (and quite common in Greece and Europe generally!)

For more about where I stayed and what I got up to you will have to wait until I write up all my notes and do some more blogs, but for now I will give you the web sites I found most useful.

http://www.topgayhotels.com/, http://www.qguide.com.au/, http://www.gaystay.co.nz/, proved most useful for accommodation, the Gaystay NZ web site lists a lot of gay accommodation, probably more than there is in the UK, especially useful for those touring around. The Qguide web site is very strange as sometimes it is there and another time not. I didn’t look to see where it is hosted but there seems to be problems with web sites in Australia generally. When I was planning my trip I took this problem to be at my end, only when I got there did I realise this was not the case.

http://www.utopia-asia.com/, is an excellent site for things to do in Singapore and Asia generally, there was a bit of a shortage of accommodation in Singapore so I used http://www.rainbowtourism.com/ , which also gave me useful accommodation in Adelaide.

http://www.galta.com.au, is a generally useful site, it has many listings around Adelaide too but as these were not central and I had a train to catch they were generally too far away!

http://www.starobserver.com.au/ and http://blaze.gaynewsnetwork.com.au/ are both news sites, they are also the home of some free gay newspapers and mags which have a lot of info in them, plus there are some classifieds on the web site. Good for looking at current affairs and events.

http://www.pinkboard.com.au also provides some accurate information and maps on various locations in Australia, while http://www.outinperth.com/ provides information specifically on Perth WA.

This sounds just like the Oscars doesn’t it!!??

And finally my thanks to a long time friend in Melbourne who suggested I stay at The Laird in Melbourne, an Australian pub in the true tradition, http://www.lairdhotel.com/, and also to the fellow members of the Gay Travellers Network, who came up trumps with things to do in Singapore http://www.gaytravellersnetwork.com !!

Dear David, A Series of Letters to a Longtime Friend - The Background

I first published this popular series of letters on the gaylinkcontent.com web site last year 2008. Unfortunately before I could complete the series the web site was closed down by the new owners who are obviously more interested in making piles of dosh than providing a very useful service to the gay and lesbian population.

C'est la vie!

Firstly let me just answer one question that various people have asked me, 'Yes, David is a real person'!!

He is quite elderly these days, and was my first 'affair' as we called it then, what it is called these days I dread to think!

Naturally this was a long time ago, when I was still at senior school and up until a few months after my going to University. Then for various reasons it the relationship was ended, and soon after that my University career as well. The affair recommenced some time after and went on for another three years. The historians amongst you will realise that while homosexuality was legalised when I ws 15, it was only legal if both partners were over 21!

As this was a era when 'Brokeback Mountain' was a reality, it did not really cause a problem, because nobody was out to that extent, which I always felt was a good way to be! Of course after a few gins I can be at 'Out' as anybody else, but that never has been my style!

In the course of my Internet surfing looking for something completely different I found the following on the Wikipedia web site....

"Lord Arran, in an attempt to minimise criticisms that the legislation would lead to further public debate and visibility of issues relating to homosexual civil rights made the following qualification to this 'historic' milestone: "I ask those [homosexuals] to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity… any form of ostentatious behaviour now or in the future or any form of public flaunting would be utterly distasteful… [And] make the sponsors of this bill regret that they had done what they had done" (quoted during Royal Assent of the bill by The Times newspaper on 28 July 1967). The legal consequence of the legislation is often described as partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality as the act introduced a strict exemption from prosecution (distinct from a full decriminalisation) the implication of this being that outside this exemption, homosexuality continued to be a punishable offence in and of itself." (Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_1967)

I have highlighted the relevant text in blue, and at times I really feel that some people should really follow this advice! Sorry guys!

Anyway I digress, as I often do....The Dear David series was never published completed, although the notes were laid out and ready to go, I never found what I considered a suitable site for them, namely a web site devoted to gay and lesbian articles.

Finally the series is being republished on a different site, starting with the already published articles covering January to May 2008. Of course these articles where original aimed at gay and lesbian travel lers to Greece and the Greek Islands, specifically Crete. But they are appicable to others as well.

You can of course publish them on your web site provided you stick to the rules set out on the articlesbase.com web site. If you would like to publish an edited version then by all means contact me and I will be happy to do the re-write for you.

You can find the list of articles here http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/timo-mitselakis/272845.htm

So You Want to Buy A Property on Crete? Part 1 - The Motivation

Around this time of year, autumn and winter, we frequently get out of season visitors, from other parts of Europe, arriving on Crete to look at property of various types. This is not really a 'gay' subject, although some of them are, of course, gay or lesbian, and these blogs are designed to give a few hints and tips based on my experience.


As with any step like this it is a good idea to police our motivations as to why you are thinking of buying property on Crete, or indeed anywhere abroad!


We can broadly split the motivation into four headings -


- As an investment

- A holiday or rental property and maybe later a place to live

- A house to live in full time as you are going to move here permanently

- A business to run for yourself



Investment property would have to be very long term as although prices have risen on Crete over the last five years, the increase in value is nothing like the swingeing increases seen in the UK in previous years, for instance. You also need to thinking about who you might be selling to in the future, bear in mind that the Greeks own most of Greece and the chances are you have just bought a property from a Greek who doesn't want it, so your future market is unikely to be anyone Greek and is more likely to be someone like yourself, a foreigner who is buying here for the same reasons you are.


Holiday properties come in all shapes and sizes, but bear in mind that many people who buy holiday properties feel duty bound to come and use it once or twice a year, however there are a number of agents around Crete who will let it for you, at a price, or you can construct your own web site and do your own promotions on sites such as Gumtree or Hot Frog. It is a good idea to make it multilingual if you can, or at least put the Google 'Translate' Gadget on the site, it makes it friendlier for everyone!

Holiday rentals can be quite lucrative as you will be catering to the 'independent' traveller, who doesn't want the package deal and will pay that little bit more for somewhere nice and unusual.

In the main, many holiday properties are not really suitable for 'full time' living, so you need to go for the full size 'villa' type property if you intend moving to Crete full time at a later date. Although I do know of someone who bought two adjacant properties in the same complex and when they came to move here, knocked a doorway through!

Moving to Crete on a permanent basis can be a rewarding and enjoyable experience if you do your homework properly. The island is large, and there are many things to do and see when you are not working, add to this the Greek lifestyle, food, entertainment, and the generally good weather, and you have a place to stay where you can enjoy life to the full, with all its good bits and some of its frustrations and stressful moments as well.

In there somewhere you have found a hint of other things other than the good!

Firstly, and this is purely your choice and depends on your personal circumstances, I mentioned work! A dirty word indeed.

However, in general, very few of the migrant population here on Crete, lead a life of idle pleasures, many arrive, and after settling in doing nothing suddenly realise that during the summer there is no one to talk to because everyone else is working. Not surprisingly there are also financial considerations here, you may have taken early retirement and have a good pension, but inflation takes its toll everywhere, and that index linking may not be as good in the future as you thought. Not everyone works in the tourist industry, tourism only accounts for 13% of the GNI, but it is a good place to start while you are learning to speak Greek, and you will won't you?

Working will also help you integrate into the local population (foreign as well as Greek!), and you came to LIVE on Crete didn't you?

Frustrations and stressful moments will also, without fail, appear and like anywhere else you will have to deal with them as they arise. Parking tickets, unpaid bills that you didn't receive, land disputes (more of these later!), illness, death, taxation, pregnancy, household repairs, plumbers, banks, and lawyers. All of these will become part of your daily life as they do anywhere else, very few people manage to sail through life without experiencing any of them!

You will need to commit whole-heartedly if you are going to live here, for every few hundred that move here, many move back, often for the strangest, and sometimes the most predictable of reasons. Take the mid-30's couple who went to all the trouble of building a house and furnishing it, and promptly put it up for sale without living in it because the wife became pregnant! Not an unlikely occurance is it? The reason for not having the baby here? Not really specified but I guess the committment was not there. After all we do have doctors and hospitals here, the University Hospital in Heraklion is one of the best in Europe and Greece. (We have people from Germany come here just to be ill!)

Others, myself included, have had to undergo the death of a partner, and although our English friends and relatives expected an instant return to 'home', we have not done so. Speaking for myself I cannot think of a nicer place to be bereaved.

You will hear often from certain sectors of the migrant population who live here 'part-time', how expensive it is here. Of course this is not true, with one of the lowest per capita incomes in Europe how can it be? But these are people who come for maybe one month or two at a time, and who should by now, know where the cheapest places to eat are, but still insist on using the most expensive restaurants that there are! From information I have to hand Spain has equivalent prices, and in France, ONE person can easily spend €100 on a meal out!

Businesses in Greece are always for sale or rent. Sounds like a sweeping statement but it is often true. Many businesses are being sold by foreigners, but often business premises are up for rent or sale from Greek sellers as well, especially after a not very good year.

On the whole I would advise against buying any business here, but then that applies most places for various reasons. The seller will tell you it is a 'very good business', if this is the case why are they selling it? You will find it virtually impossible to see a set of books for any business you are buying, there might be figures that are put it into the tax office, and there might be figures that the current owner has kept, but they will rarely agree.

I have a Greek friend who told me once that he had had three good businesses. Foolishly I asked what happened to them, and was told completely without embarrassment that they all went bankrupt!

If the existing owner is Greek, there is a fair chance that he or his family own the property, and therefore do not pay any rent, but you will have to. And with rents up to €1200 per month for twelve months of the year when you are only open for six of them can make life difficult. There are often occasions as well, when the premises are unlicensed, this is usually due to the fact that the building should not even be there in the first place.

The same applies to staff. All those people that work in that bar, or that cafe, are probably relations and are not on salaries, and probaly do not get their IKA (social security) paid either.

You will also come across the situation where you go to change the utility bills into you own name and find you cannot because none of them have been paid for the last year, or in the case of water bills for the last 14 years. Not paying bills is an excellent way of increasing profits.

But having said that, if you have a really good idea for something completely new and original by all means start up a business, you will probably get a good year first time round before three others places open up doing exactly the same thing within 500 metres of you. (Ever noticed ow many bars and restaurants there are here right next to each other, and yet the number of tourists falls each year?)

Have I put you off yet? Good, I didn't think I would........

In Part Two I will deal with types of property and location

Take Advantage of Cheap Winter Flights for The Winter Weekend House Party at Villa Ralfa

At Villa Ralfa, the original gay guesthouse and lodging on Crete Greece, we are well known for our Winter Weekend House Parties, accommodating a maximum of four guests for an nearly all inclusive weekend.

This year we are offering the same deal and you can read all about it on our web site at http://www.villaralfa.com/gother.html

But how to get here? Well amazingly enough air fares to and from Athens from various countries around Europe are at the lowest they have been for some time, in some cases cheaper than they were last year in fact. And our local carrier Aegean Airlines has fares from Athens to Crete from €2 return plus taxes making a total of €55 return Athens to Crete on various dates from December through until March.

Reseach today reveals €169 return fares from Berlin to Athens with Easyjet, or Milan to Athens for €89 return also with Easyjet.

Or how about a weekend trip from Bucharest to slightly warmer weather, Aegean Airlines have very reasonable flight to Athens, and choose the right dates and you can enjoy a winter weekend on Crete as well taking advantage of the €55 Aegean return from Athens to Crete!

Or how about Paris Orly to Athens for €82 return in February which includes you 20kg baggage allowance and taxes, again you can find onward flights to Crete for €55 return......And with prices for eating out on Crete much lower that you can expect in France (according to information I have been given!), you can still get a bargain!

Below are some useful links to find and book some of these fares....

http://www.easyjet.com
http://www.aegeanair.com
http://www.attitudetravel.com
http://www.villaralfa.com/glink.html

To Link or Not To Link? - That Is The Question, A Mini Blog

Why do we have Links pages on web sites?

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought they were there to provide visitors with useful sites that they might wish to visit for further information.

You might wonder why I am even talking about links pages, but you see I realised some time ago that the links and banners pages on my web site are possibly the least visited pages that I have.

Of course SEO specialists will tell you that you need to get lots of links into your site to get its rankings up with the search engines, which is probably why no one visits them these days, because as you will probably know, the 'link system' is reciprocal. A 'You show me yours and I'll show you mine' type of thing. So some web site owners and SEO's go all out for getting lots of links from totally irrelevant sites and these days our wiley surfers know this, so they don't bother to visit the 'Links' page that someone, in this case, me has constructed.

Naurally my links page is based on the same idea, but with one BIG exception, my links and banners are relevant to the rest of my site.

In case you didn't know already, my site is there to publicise the fact that I have a gay-owned and run guesthouse for independent , (those that have wisely organised there own holiday without using an agent), gay and lesbian, travellers to Crete, Greece. So you see the links on my pages are to gay resources, inside and outside of Greece, and other useful information, and many of them are one ended links.

That is, there are no reciprocal links.

Sounds altruistic doesn't it? Well maybe it is, but on the other hand it puts information that my visitors might find useful, in front of them with the click of a mouse, in a new window so that they can book a flight with EasyJet or Monarch, or indeed that doyen of flight information sites for Budget and Low Cost airlines across Europe, Attitude Travel.

Interestingly, 90% of links into my site actually link to my 'Home' page (we will not discuss why I have an Index page and a Home page, it's historical), which is also my preferred landing page, and yet less than 1% of reciprocal links or banners are on that page.

Regular and casual visitors to my site will notice that there are some banners and links spread across other pages, these are the more important ones and are placed there because they are sites that give me more visitors so they deserve a more visible position, rather than being consigned to a page that no one looks at!

In a way I wish that more people would look at my 'Links' pages, because they would find a lot of useful stuff there! Virtually all of them are gay or lesbian orientated, some are our favourite dating and social networking sites, some are bars that we like, and some are accommodation for gay and lesbian folk. But all are useful, and where there is a 'Gay Travel' site we have weeded out the ones that only link to 5 star, all inclusive, hotels designed for straight people, and charging €300 a night!

Of course the other place to look for useful information on the Villa Ralfa web site is the 'Recently Added' page. From here you can share our content on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and see our latest blog post!

So next time you visit our web site, take a look at the links and banners pages, you will even find links to local dive centres and stables!