Shots of jelly Viagra, 80p pints and fairground flashing – welcome to Bulgaria’s Sunny Beach, dubbed ‘Blackpool abroad’
TWO young women whip off their tops to cash in on a saucy promotion for a free fairground ride.
In a nearby bar, a lad strips totally naked before passing out during a drinking game, while couples snog and grope each other on the dancefloor.
Elsewhere cops are helping a pensioner so drunk he has no clue where his hotel is — which turns out to be adjacent to their station.
Welcome to Bulgaria’s Sunny Beach — nicknamed Blackpool abroad — where Brit holiday reps are just as wild as the hordes of young tourists from the UK.
As Lanzarote discourages Brits, Amsterdam warns it will jail rowdy visitors and Magaluf tries to clean up its act, Bulgaria is welcoming UK visitors — and their money.
The Balkan town of Bankso, in the south west, is already overrun with raucous Brits after earning a reputation for cheap booze, parties and affordable ski trips.
Three hundred miles east at Sunny Beach the scene is just as lively.
Every year around 100,000 Brits cause bedlam at the hedonistic resort which has been the cheapest in Europe for the past five years.
Tourists are drawn by 80p pints, bars that sell Viagra jellies, and all-you-can-drink nights for just 30 euros (£26) — about the same cost as a hotel room. Revellers can be seen inhaling laughing gas from balloons on the street, as the over-inebriated vomit on pavements.
The resort is now the subject of new E4 docu-series Emergency On Sunny Beach, which over six hour-long episodes from Wednesday will follow local firefighters and medical centre staff trying to cope with the holidaymakers’ crazy antics.
Laughing gas balloons
Viewers will see two Edinburgh fun-seekers, caretaker Demi and student Holly, both 20, take advantage of a fairground slingshot ride which is free to women who go topless.
Demi’s face is covered in cuts and bruises and she has lost half her front tooth after a drunken fall.
Holly tells the camera crew: “It’s Blackpool but abroad.”
Pointing at her face, Demi adds: “We’ve only done it to get f***ed up and this is what happens.
“Lesson learnt: Don’t give anyone a piggyback when you’re drunk, and don’t run when you’re doing it because you’ll have to pay a lot of money. Oh, and take out insurance.”
Both girls are seen sucking laughing gas from balloons and getting tattoos.
Demi gets the words “Smoke weed every day” inked in Arabic across her thigh, while Holly gets a butterfly on her tricep.
Demi says: “I can’t speak Arabic but it’s started a few conversations by the pool.
“If my family asks, then I’ll just say it says, ‘Live, laugh, love’.”
The destination is so riotous that 40 cops are drafted in each summer from other parts of Bulgaria to try to keep a lid on things, while 130 lifeguards patrol the 5km-long beach. The fire service attend ten times as many blazes in summer.
Club Viking is the biggest venue in town and holds hook-up nights for singletons.
Owner Tsvetan Florov, 30, tells the TV documentary: “The young British lads are like wild animals. People try to have sex in the club. Someone’s going to be lucky — that’s why we also give away condoms so they can practise safe sex.”
Mason, 21, from Essex, on his first lads’ holiday away, has a supply of 20 condoms for ten days. He is seen on bar crawls, downing shots half-naked and licking booze off a Bulgarian girl’s breasts. He takes her back to his room but fails to get lucky when her pals burst in and take her home.
He admits: “I’m a bit optimistic on the condoms but you never know . . . I want to shag a milf and shag a load of foreign birds because I love foreign birds.
“I’m 21, a young buck, I’ve got a lot of goals. I’m going to make Sunny Beach my oyster.” Identical twins Oscar and Harvey, 20, from Southampton, are caught on camera peeing on the balcony of their hotel room, flashing their bums in a nightclub, inhaling laughing gas and electrocuting each other with what looks like a stun gun.
Oscar says: “I expect Mum to call me every hour just to make sure I’m still alive — 500 messages a day.”
Jess and Carmel, care workers from Essex, enjoy a party on a booze-cruise boat trip from Sunny Beach, and trying to hook up with strangers in the street. Carmel, who accident-ally flashes her boob during a pole dance, says: “What happens in Bulgaria stays in Bulgaria.”
Dillan, 19, from Hampshire, blew a grand in a strip club on his first night and he and pal Ollie say they have “no ambitions other than to come home in one piece”.
But Ollie, also 19, has lost his tooth after he asked Dillan to throw a shot glass at his mouth.
Another holidaymaker, Ruby, 18, of Herts, says: “I don’t think you can come to Sunny Beach with a boyfriend. If you do, you’re going home without one.”
It’s not just the young who are having a ball, though.
Colin, 67, wastes six hours of police time trying to find his room while drunk. He is finally reunited with his wife — who is fast asleep and had no idea he was missing — after police call the travel operator and find he is staying just across the street from their station.
But holiday reps have quite the reputation, too. Ex-trucker Harry, 29, a tour guide for five years, tells the camera: “You need to try the Viagra jellies — I had the mango one. It did f***ing work.
Fellow rep Liam, 23, an ex-roofer, from Blackpool, says the resort has “helped me find myself a lot” but admits he spent his first season, in 2019, drunk for 12 weeks straight.
His pal Jacob, 22, also a rep and from Blackpool, says: “Sunny Beach is like paradise. Girls everywhere, bar crawls, boat parties, it’s sick!
“Sunny Beach is the best place to go for a party — boat parties, bar crawls, you’ll make memories and mates for life.”
In the main, the locals are happy for Brits to splash the cash at Sunny Beach. Taxi drivers love the trade while restaurants sell a three-course meal with wine for £20. You can sober up on coffee for 60p. But local cop Desislava Goranova warns it is not all fun in the sun.
She tells TV viewers: “Sunny Beach is a resort of two extremes.
“You have beautiful nature and a stunning beach, but also places with criminals, drunk people, people on drugs.
“During the day the resort is so colourful — people having fun and enjoying the beach.
“At night the central part of the resort goes through a change, the clubs open, it’s full of people with loose morals, a lot of drugs and booze. In my view the usual British tourist looks like this — fair skin, a bit chubby and wearing as little clothing as possible, always very loud and covered in tattoos.
“Compared to other nationalities the British tourists are always very loud and jolly.
“They love having lively conversations.”
Her colleague Emil Tonchev adds: “The British people cause the most problems because they can’t drink.
“Bulgarians have brandy, the Brits drink beer. We get sober by drinking beer. People come on holiday and lose their senses.”
But taxi driver Ilea says the resort would be nothing without the tourists. He tells viewers: “Tourists are crazy at night now compared to years ago, especially the young people. They party hard.
“I grew up in Sunny Beach, the tourists become friends.
“The British tourists are a must here because, without them, Sunny Beach is not the same.
“We’ve had two years of Covid without British tourists and Sunny Beach was boring. British tourists are usually nice and polite, they say thank you. I like that.”
- Emergency On Sunny Beach starts on Wednesday at 9pm on E4, and is available on All4.