PROS and CONS of TURKEY

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to my channel so in today's video I will be discussing the pros and cons of living in Turkey thanks to our subscriber Kadeem for giving me this video idea and if you are new to my channel my name is Lana and I've been traveling a full time for the past two years with my partner Carlos whilst working online and as of right now we're in Turkey due to all the current lockdowns so we've actually been here for about two months now which is a little bit longer than our intended stay I did make a video discussing our decision to stay longer in Turkey so if you wanted to hear more about that you can check it out in the travel update so I'll link the video above so before we get into the video I just wanted to say that all the opinions are based on my own experiences of being in Turkey for the past two months we don't live here permanently so this is just our experiences as travelers and yes so let's get into it first up I'll start off with the cons because I feel like I want to end the video on a positive note so we'll do the pros last so the first time that I have about turkey is actually more kind of about Istanbul and that is that Istanbul can be crowded and I think this is vastly to do with the population in Istanbul itself is 15.5 million and you can really feel it when you're in the city because when you catch buses or when you go to those popular attractions there's just so many people most days when we would catch the bus we'd have to stand and to get a seat would kind of be like a privilege and I think this is definitely a big part of the Istanbul experience it's the hustle and bustle all the street food Belling different articles of clothing and all that stuff that's the kind of experience that you want when you go to Istanbul so the second con that I have is smoking now this is something that as a tourist you definitely can't avoid because when we're walking on the streets there'll be someone in front of you usually having a cigarette and that smoke will all just blow in your face so if you are a non smoker like us it's a little bit less enjoyable but if you're a smoker a packet of cigarettes here is $2 60 USD whereas Becker I come from a New Zealanders 20 USD for a packet so it's definitely more socially acceptable here the statistics say that there's about 14.5 million people in Turkey who smoke and 252 thousand of them children so it just goes to show that it is a lot of people here they're smoked now my third con here is alcohol and this is not just a price comparison from what we've seen and other countries that we've traveled to it seems that Turkey is a little bit more expensive for alcohol here so for a 500 milliliter bottle of beer and Germany at the supermarket it is 60 cents and then at a supermarket here in Turkey for the same bottle of beer it's a dollar 60 USD so I think this isn't necessarily like a really bad thing because I don't think that everyone coming to Turkey is looking for really cheap alcohol I think they're coming here for the history and the attractions but if you are coming here don't expect it to be really cheap alcohol because that's just not what you're gonna find if you want cheap alcohol you probably go to Germany or you go to Bulgaria or other countries with it there's a bigger drinking culture there another con about Turkey again is more kind of Istanbul related from our experiences anyway and this was scams one of the things that happened to us a couple of times in Istanbul was when we would go to pay for our food that we had ordered they charged us a little bit extra as in what the price was meant to be and luckily for us we had heard about this online that they may try to overcharge you for your food and we had taken photos of the menu and the food that we ordered so that when we went to pay the bill they couldn't overcharge us and another thing that happens in Istanbul which is quite a common scam we actually the guy tried to do it to us twice while we were in Istanbul and that was the shoeshine scam which I think I even captured in one of my videos so I'll link that above for you guys it was kind of funny so what happens is they have this shoeshine brush and the guy will walk past and you'll Brittini doesn't see you and you'll drop the brush and then the good person that you are you'll pick up the brush and you'll want to give it back to him right they'll start shining your shoes off the brush and you'll feel obliged to give the men some money because of the shoeshine that he gave you and it will be some ridiculous amount of money and you'll have to pay for it and you won't be able to get out of the situation there's obviously scams like this everywhere around the world it's not just in Turkey you know we've found them in Bali Thailand Vietnam there's so many places where scams are so just make sure that before you come to Turkey you research the area specific scams for here okay so this is my last con for Turkey and that is English English is not so widely spoken in Turkey as a whole but of course there are areas where it's more widely spoken we noticed people in Istanbul spoke it if we went a tourist attractions but where we were staying in the Istanbul was quite local not many people there spoke English and if they did they didn't speak it so well so it definitely depends where you are in Turkey and right now we're in Bodrum and everyone here speaks English because this is like a tourist hotspot usually okay now for the pros of Turkey now time for some positivity the first thing that we noticed about Turkey was that the people here are so hospitable they're very helpful and genuine and kind especially more so now during the quarantine period we've noticed so much kindness from people and they're just so willing to help us like the other day we were looking for face masks up the road at the pharmacy and we went to about three pharmacies because they're not really selling face masks as much anymore because the citizens are getting them for free I think so it's kind of harder for us as foreigners to find face masks right now anyway we went to the shop and the guy I asked for face masks and he said and no price no price and I thought what do you mean no price like you've got the face masks how much are they and then he said no price and he just gave them to me and I said oh no like we want to pay you it feels weird not to pay you and he just kept saying no price so yeah he gave us four face masks for free and that's just how the Turkish people are like they're just so kind like that fresh fruits and veggies here are so abundant they look so good when we go to the markets I swear to you the eggplants look so shiny you could probably see your reflection and then and the tomato is always so big and juicy I just love going fruit and veggie shopping here especially at the local markets there's so many options and it's always really good quality in Turkey so one of my favorite favorite things about Toki is the street pits as you can see here this is actually one of the cats that stops by every day and the pits here in Turkey are so well cared for and you can just see that when you walk through the streets because all of the cats are getting feared there's usually some water or cat food or even dog food being left outside of shops and on cold rainy days they'll usually let the pets into their homes or the stores and it's just really fishing deceive because I don't think we've seen any other country treat animals the way that turkey does and I think that speaks volumes for the country and of course turkey is beautiful there are so many different places to visit here from whack cities beaches historical attractions museums they've really got at all some of my favorite attractions in Turkey have been the Galata Tower the Grand Bazaar the Spice Bazaar all the different types of food we got to try even here in Bodrum which I haven't gotten the chance to film yet the beaches are stunning the food here in Turkey is super tasty like if I went on about the food the list will be probably very long but I'll just mention a few of my favorites quickly so a skin dirt which I did try and one of my videos which is thinly sliced Dino meat on top of pita bread and then they pour some like oil in tomato sauce over top of it and it's usually served with a little bit of butter and yogurt on the side and maybe even some cheese or a big blown-up pita bread and then another one of my favorites was coca rich which is lemon and histones wrapped around a thick skewer and they char grill it over a charcoal fire you can just taste all the char grilled flavors of course the Turkish pizza a la makan Peter cobalto the breakfasts are amazing they'd still be like a gigantic platter of every breakfast food you could imagine eggs minimun yogurt honey salads cheeses it's just endless really the options you could eat for breakfast here in Turkey how can I forget the yogurt they have yogurt with everything and I think I'm definitely gonna leave Turkey with a yogurt addiction because not only do they eat it with their food but they also drink it with their food and my last Pro for the video is public transport now this is more speaking from our experience again in Istanbul I know I said that it can get quite crowded on these buses but I do believe that there's a good reason for that and that is because they come so frequently and it's so widely available to catch you know any kind of transport you can get a bus a train or a subway or even a ferry like there's just so many options in Istanbul to catch public transport and I think that's always a pro for a major city like this so that was my pros and cons of Turkey again these are just my experiences from traveling Turkey of course everyone's will be different to ours if you had any similar or different experiences then make sure to leave them in the comments below and I'd love to hear what you think thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you guys in next week's video bye bye [Music]

Channel: Lana Tiare

Views: 78,219

Rating: 4.8429871 out of 5

Keywords: living in turkey pros and cons, pros and cons of living in turkey, foreigner in turkey, living in turkey, turkey opinion, travel to turkey, turkey, turkish lifestyle, turkish culture, istanbul turkey, turkish life, turkish, Türkiye, american living in turkey, what is it like to live in turkey, what is turkey like to live in, what is life in turkey like, what is turkey like, türkiye'de yabancı, türkiye yaşam, türkiyede yaşamak, istanbulda yaşam, türkiye artıları ve eksileri

Id: Uq2DUmFCE9s

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020