#6: Turkish hospitality
I decided to write a post earlier today, partly because I want to go to bed earlier and fight "jet lag blues". It has been more than 10 days since I am back and I have not adjusted back to the right time zone yet. Partly it is due to the numerous gatherings over the festive season, Boxing day party and New year's eve countdown.
I shall not digress and shall talk about Turkish hospitality. When I was doing my exchange, I met a couple who told me multiple stories about the warm Turkish hospitality. Since then, I have always painted a beautiful picture of the country and the people. Indeed, both did not disappoint. They are friendly and helpful and will go out of the way to help you. Twice we had problems finding our hotels and we were blessed to meet two groups of Turkish students who simply walked us all the way to our destinations. We could not communicate with each other since we did not speak Turkish and the people whom we approached for help did not speak fluent English as well. It is such experiences that make me always ready to offer help to tourists in Singapore be it for directions or to take pictures. You never know how you can make someone else's day.
Besides helping us with directions, they were also very friendly and easy to talk to. One of the things I enjoy doing while travelling is talking to the locals and finding out their way of life. No doubt the rise of the Internet has made acquiring information much easier but nothing beats hearing it from the locals themselves! I am pretty lucky as the Turkish people are open to sharing. One of the receptionists at a hotel in Bergama told us about mandatory military service in Turkey and this was something that really shocked me. I only know of a few countries in the world that still implements mandatory service e.g. Singapore, Taiwan, S.Korea, Israel. Turkey? Never on my mind. While in Ephesus, our tour guide also shared a lot about life in Turkey (besides all the stories about Esphesus) with us. You start to wonder, if people can survive on such basic necessities in life and be happy, why is it that us, who live in a more developed country and have way higher financial ability, have more yet are less happy.
Indeed, Turkey has loads of beautiful sights and if you like Roman architecture (I love them!), you definitely can see tons of them all over the country. However, the people whom I met along the way definitely added icing to the cake. :) If only many more of us could behave in a similar way, the world will definitely be a much better place to live in!
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