At the pool - other adult behavior

[CousCousDefinitely]

I was at our local leisure centre today. It's a private hotel one, if it makes a difference, so it's users would be a combination of members, hotel guests and you can also pay for a day pass. I'm a member.
It was busy as it is normally on a Saturday afternoon. There were two guys I hadn't seen before in the lanes section (where you can do serious swimming, up one side and down the other). I wanted to do 50 or so lengths but it was tricky as it was me and them in the section and they were doing handstands, diving in (under the no diving sign) and generally getting in the way. I get this with children sometimes but not usually adults in their 30s or 40s.
Im laid back so I just sort of went around them as best I could. They were swimming under me and making me nervous. So after about 20 lengths I gave up.
I went into the steamroom and they arrived in about 10 minutes after and stared at me up and down in a pervy uncomfortable way.
So they it clicked that the pool annoyance was probably on purpose.
I left and was pissed off that it made me felt so uncomfortable.
I was pissed off that I couldn't do anything to stop them staring, that they'd intrrupted my swim and that I couldnt complain to the lifeguard while I was there as it would have been awkward, or as I was leaving as I didn't want to appear racist. The two guys were speaking Arabic to each other which is pretty uncommon in my town.
My dh went to the pool after I got home, for his turn at a bit of child free peace and I described them to him. He came back and said they were in the hot tub (this was 2 hours after me) so they'd probably got a day pass and stayed to piss off more people.
Was I unreasonable to just leave and say nothing and if so, what should I have done or said? Either to them or to the lifeguard. I feel like such a chicken.

always worth posting some Reza !

No idea why the need for this? No one was talking about female circumcision? Weird post there Ghost

god love you Vintage x x x x

everyone loves a trier

zzzz - great points as usual - I'm off to finish my Cosmo and drool over watch some more Reza xxx

Night all :) :) :) :) :) :)

Who trusts an American bit of propaganda Bastard yanks

good job he's Iranian then

night x

I didn't say he wasn't

Don't think it was daily mail I read about pool thing, it was some Facebook post

Yes, either the Atlantic or the pool. You know those short news snippets. Not sure why the happy face. I don't telly read the daily mail. I'm not in the UK.

I don't read, I meant.

Excellent excellent posts Ghosty and zzzzzz

Couscous you sounded racist whether you meant to or not. If not, then I suggest unconsious bias. You have an absolute right not to be harassed, and you should complain. I have also had a similar experience, but that was with a middle aged white man who clearly found himself alluring

People mucking about in the swimming lanes? Complain. Everything else is extraneous stuff. If you'd got them removed, gone about your swimming and left as planned then everything would be fine.
Be assertive and don't put up with shit.

Oh for goodness sake. I don't speak Chinese or Russian but I can still spot when people are ethnically Chinese or Russian and speaking in Chinese or Russian. Ditto Polish or Roma Gypsy or Indian or Italian or Somalian, Ethiopian any of the West African countries. People from certain regions have a certain distinctive look and even if you don't understand their language you can be familiar with the sound of it.

Some of the responses on this thread are utterly ridiculous.

The whiff of the Emperors New Clothes is bloody heavy on this thread

OP I'm really sorry this happened to you and I can understand why you felt so uncomfortable and also why you didn't report at the time; but do please contact them and report tomorrow. They will be able to check the CCTV and identify if these creatures were on day passes or are in fact new members you have simply had the good fortune not to come across before.

I have experienced the blatant leching you speak of and it's vile and bloody well not okay; I can't begin to imagine how uncomfortable you felt when they started swimming under you

Not massively impressed with those posters whose first responses were not vis what you had been subjected to but the words you used. If anyone has issues with the latter then of course raise it, but maybe that should have been after the first, and pretty fundamental, reality of 'we believe you'. Just a thought...

The language is Arabic the people are Arab. Not Arabians, not Arabics. Buzzard I am amazed you speak Arabic yet you don't know this.

Also the vast, vast majority of Arabs are Muslim, something like 90% I think.

Some very strange ideas about languages here. You do NOT need to be able to speak a language to recognise it by its sounds.

You do NOT need to be able to speak a language to recognise it by its sounds.

But you might have trouble distinguishing Russian from Ukrainian, or Chinese from Korean, or Arabic from Urdu. Especially if you don't hear the language you're 'identifying' regularly.

"you might have trouble distinguishing Russian from Ukrainian, or Chinese from Korean, or Arabic from Urdu. Especially if you don't hear the language you're 'identifying' regularly."

You might, but you might not. I'm not arguing that everyone can identify every language only the assertion made by a couple of people here that nobody can identify a language they don't speak, or know some words of.
I can't distinguish Arabic and Urdu writing, but the languages sound very different - Urdu has a lilt like some of its neighbouring languages.

I can't distinguish Arabic and Urdu writing, but the languages sound very different - Urdu has a lilt like some of its neighbouring languages.

I think so too, but then I hear Urdu almost every day, and I recognise some words in Arabic. I'm not so sure that the two are so easily distinguished by people who don't hear them a lot. I sometimes wonder whether people think they're hearing Arabic based on their (possibly false) assumptions about the speaker's ethnicity...

Adjustable, I don't hear Urdu very often, but the difference between Urdu and Arabic sounds and intonation is very obvious to me.

Arabic is a language spoken widely across a whole region of countries. There are dialects and accent differences but it's still easily recognizable as Arabic. It is irrelevant to say you probably couldn't distinguish Russian from Ukranian. The Op isn't saying she knows they were Egyptian or Algerian or Kuwaiti, she says she knows they were Arabs speaking Arabic.

I think the very fact that the OP is happy for this thread to have become an Islamophobic rant by many speaks volumns about the real nature of her problem.

*DixieNorma
I read it's one of the top 5 reasons Muslim men come to the UK

seriously?*

No of cause not Dixie. I was taking the piss, sorry I thought it was obvious

Not sure why Nona. It's not exactly something I can control. Not sure why you think I'm happy.
I was asking for some guidance on how to deal with it and trying to state the facts as I saw them,as much as I could.
Any goading or eye rolling no, etc, hasn't been me in this thread.
I am amazed at the interest in it though and some of the responses have been eye opening,in people's different attitudes to this.
I've said already, and just to reiterate, it's almost ironic that the very reason I didn't report was because I didn't want to come across as intolerant/racist. As if maybe they're behavior is defendable because they are not the conventional pool users.
Feel free to close thread or report Nona, if you think that it has because me Islamophobia. That wasn't my intention whatsoever.

Has become Islamophobic. It should say.