Not the first time
So, in late November 2024 I went to Turkey for about a week along with around tens of people from our company. It was for training that was held in Istanbul for couple of days. This was the first time I had an overseas training, but actually it wasn’t the first time I touched down in Turkey. Back in 2015 I had a layover in Istanbul Airport for about 6 hours.
As I told you it was the first time I had an overseas after working for about 7 years in a group of companies in my country. I am so glad and thankful that we had this opportunity, because we had been working so hard to keep the services that we had been working for running well. I had been working a lot more than in the previous company (although still in the same group), a lot of overtime, and much pressure as well. But I took that as learning process.
Istanbul is Awesome
After couple of days exploring Istanbul, I can say that I do enjoy the city. It was a beautiful city, and I believe it still is. There are so many historical places, buildings, etc. that our tour guide helped explaining to us about their culture, history and stuff during our travel throughout the city. They are so rich in history. Well you could imagine if Romans, and Muslims had conquered the city, a lot had been going on. So much acculturation and stuff, happened in the same geography.
As I had been around several places in Turkey, it was hardly any beggars I saw there. Unlike in some cities in Europe where the issues persist.
Istanbul is divided into two parts, one belongs to Asian continent, and the other one belongs to European continent. There are beautiful mosques spreaded around the city, and I think all of them are beautiful.
We also went for a cruise (Bosphorus tour) in the Golden Horn strait of Istanbul for about 2 hours. It was also fun that we could take the tour seeing Istanbul from the boat point of view.
The thing about Turkey
There’s a thing about this country that actually could become an issue for tourist, which is the currency. Turkey suffers from high inflation, as of November 2024, the rate was 47%. It means you lose almost half of your money value in less than a year. That’s a lot. In simple words: Everything is expensive!
That’s why the tour guide said that it used to be a lot of Indonesian tourists visited Turkey, but in the recent years the number has been declining. I feel sorry for that, that the impact of high inflation makes the tourism sector suffers too.
Bursa City
We didn’t visit many cities while we were there, but we were able to go to Bursa, which was located about 3 hours from Istanbul. The City is beautiful too, but since we had to get back in the afternoon, we couldn’t really explore much.
Overall I was so happy that I could have the training overseas, since it has been many years I didn’t go abroad. Thank you for the company and also any party that supported us for the agendas.
What about the food?
Some food felt tasty, some felt bland. But the thing I liked was that we were served som Mediterranian meals in the hotel in the breakfast, which is so healthy.
Others like their soup, was not that tasty unless we put some salt in it.
Anyway, aside from those main course, Turkey has a lot of sweet cakes as well, one of them is what we -the tourist know as Turkish Delight, eh also Baklava which tastes soo sweet. I do highly recommend it if you are a sweet tooth.
In the last evening before we got back to Indonesia, we had a dinner in a Mall in Istanbul, called Historia. The Mall was not that huge actually. We went to the foodcourt named Citir Usta. I just checked it on Google, the review was not that glowing, but the food taste for me was soo delicious. I think it was the most delicious meals I had.
Indonesian Language in Turkey
This was something that surprised me as well when in there, that quite a lot of people speak Bahasa Indonesia, especially in store. They speak Bahasa very fluently, that they explained and responded in Bahasa very well too. That’s a good strategy to get more sales from us.
Overall it was so good visiting Turkey, even though it was not for holiday. If I had a lot of money, I would be happy to bring my parents also family there.
