Tag: asia

Cappadocia has been in our travel bucket list for so long. We finally had the chance to visit this year. It took 10 hours of driving from our previous destination, Selcuk Izmir. We Arrived a bit late at night around 10 pm so we couldn’t see much at that time. We checked in at the Hotel called Alp Stone Concept Hotel, located in Avanos Cappadocia. Originally, we wanted to stay at the cave hotel in Goreme but we needed to follow the other participants so we stayed in there instead. The hotel was okay, had a lot of cave-like features and was located not too far from the main attractions we were about to visit so we were happy with that.

We didn’t have it in our budget to ride a hot air balloon. Our budget was going to be used for accommodation and food for another week in Turkey. We can always visit again in the future so skipping the hot air balloon for now was fine for us. Ayu is afraid of heights anyway and wasn’t easy to convince her to ride it hahaha. Even though we weren’t going to ride it, we planned to wake up in the morning to catch up with the magical view when the balloons started to fly. So at 6 am in the morning we, and two other friends, called the Taxi from the hotel to take us to Goreme, it took only 5 minutes to get there. We only needed to pay TL 75 for the taxi and the driver also waited for us for around 45 minutes. It was a pretty good deal.

As you can imagine, the view was beautiful. Hundreds of hot air balloons were flying. We might not be able to show you the best pictures for now since we weren’t taking pictures from up above but we were still able to take beautiful pictures. 😊

In the afternoon, the itinerary was to visited Pigeon Valley and Uchisar Castle and later, before going back to the hotel, we visited the Underground City. In just about 10 minutes from our hotel, we arrived at Pigeon Valley. It earned its name from the countless man made dovecotes (Pigeon Houses) that have been carved into the soft volcanic tuff. The valley is located between Goreme and Uchisar. There was a little souvenir shop if you wanted to buy small gifts to bring home.

After a couple of shots in Pigeon Valley, we continued our journey to the next stop, Uchisar. Uçhisar, which is situated on the edge of Goreme National Park, is dominated by a 60-metre-high castle mountain. It is visible over a wide distance and has the form of a large cylindrical tower. The top of the Uchisar Castle provides a magnificent panorama of the surrounding area. It served as residential areas in Byzantine times. Originally, around 1,000 people lived in the castle but it is no longer inhabited today. The landscape is also marked by the fairy chimney scattered through it. The fairy chimneys of Uchisar were hollowed out and used as graves during the Roman period.

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After spending time in Uchisar, we drove to the Underground City. Built to protect the ancient inhabitants, the underground cities allowed thousands of people to live their lives in total secrecy. It is believed that the underground cities were initially built by the Phrygians during the 8^th through 7^th centuries BC, who carved their living spaces into the region’s soft volcanic rock. Later on, during the Roman era and the replacement of the Phrygian language with Greek, then Christian inhabitants continued to work on the underground cities adding their own cultural and religious necessities such as chapels and Greek inscriptions. They continued to protect their citizens around 14^th century when Christians needed a protection from the threat of the Mongolians during the assaults, and once again during the Ottoman era. Even during the 20^th century, the caves allowed for people to save themselves from the Ottoman Empire until about 1923. The underground cities were completely abandoned and then not rediscovered until 1963, when a resident found a strange room behind a wall inside his house.

There are 36 underground cities in Cappadocia and the biggest ones that you can visit are Kaymakkali and Derinkuyu, but during the pandemic, many underground cities are temporarily closed to the public. So we could only visit a smaller one that only had three floors. It contained stables at the first floor, the second floor was for the churches and the baptism area. The third floor contained most of the storage and resources in the underground compound and also held other important things such as wine or oil presses, and kitchens. At the exit gate of the city, there was a small shop that sold gifts and souvenirs.

Once we were done exploring the underground city, we went back to the hotel to rest so we could continue our journey on the next day visiting the ceramic factory and Ankara before we finally departed to Istanbul.

To be continued..

Traveling during the pandemic? It sounds crazy, but that’s what we did, despite the fact that there are many possibilities that we could get sick. Thankfully, everything went so smooth from making the plan until going back home. All we did was protect our selves by wearing masks, drink vitamin, tried to avoid the crowd if we can and the last was praying.

When we heard that Turkey was finally reopened for many countries except for American and Indonesian, we were really stressed. Originally we were going to reunite in April 2020, Jake was about to go to Bali, spend the holiday about a month, but due to Covid-19 spreading out and becoming a pandemic, almost all countries had closed their borders and we needed to wait again. When Turkey was reopened, of course we were so excited but there was a hoax that was spread out too. There was news that American, Indonesian and some other nationalities are banned from coming to Turkey! Gosh, we were crying and asking why the situation has to be so hard? Finally, after doing some research and asking around here and there, we knew that it was just a hoax! Yay! 😆 We didn’t really know what the situation was out there, so we decided to join the tour group from Indonesia and Jake was able to join the group in Istanbul airport. The cost from Indonesia was about $ 1,200/pax all included (accommodation for 7 nights (4 stars hotels), full board, transportation, flights, guide fee and PCR test) that is so affordable!

Since the only airport that was operating for International flight at the moment was Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Ayu needed to book a flight from Bali to Jakarta and meet the group at the departure gate in terminal 3. We had to prepare our tickets and keep our distance with everyone in the airport and they also checked our rapid test (blood test is required for domestic flight). The boarding time was at 9.30 pm and the flight took 12 hours to reach Istanbul with Turkish airlines. Meanwhile, Jake had already arrived after it took hours of flights from North Carolina to Amsterdam and finally landed in Istanbul the night before. He spent the night in a nearby hotel before he met with the group at 5 am in the morning.

The flight wasn’t so bad. After the tiring 12 hours, we finally had landed in Istanbul. Phew! The airport was new, big and clean and had just finished constructed in October 2018, so all you see are fresh and new stuff. Anyway, for Indonesian travelers, it’s better to have your rupiahs exchanged into USD/Euro and exchange it into Turkish lira when you arrive in Turkey rather than having rupiahs exchanged into Turkish lira there because the rupiahs rate is bad in Turkey. The money exchange counter can be found at the arrival gate after the immigration. It’s actually not that much different between exchanging your money in the airport or in the city. If you don’t like that idea, you could just get the money from ATM machines instead. Of course your credit card is usable in Turkey but sometimes you need to have cash to buy souvenirs or snacks in small shop, so it’s better to prepare in advance.

We finally reunited! After almost a year of waiting since Covid-19 announced as a global pandemic and made almost all countries close their borders, we met again! Can’t believe it’s finally happened. 🙂

Ok, so.. after some hugs and laughs with tears, we started our journey with the group by Bus (there were only 15 people including us, the guide, tour leader and the driver. It was a small group. The tour leader told me in a normal situation, the participants were more than 20 persons each batch. In the global pandemic, not everyone could afford it and some are still concerned about the health conditions, the unknown situation out there and many other reasons so there were not that many people who wanted to join.

The first place is Bursa City. From Istanbul airport to Bursa it took about 2 hours to get there. Bursa city was the first capital of Ottoman Empire.

Just before we arrived at Bursa, we had brunch in a nearby restaurant and then we visited a souvenir shop called Munira. They were selling a lot of stuff from honey, Turkish soap, praying matt, saffron and, of course, Turkish delight. The price was quite expensive compared to other souvenir shops in Istanbul but the quality of their products were good. The shopkeeper also gave us explanations of some products that were mainly about honey, saffron and Turkish delights.

The next stop was Grand Mosque Bursa, or in Turkish they call it Ulu Camii (which means great mosque). Grand mosque is the largest mosque in Bursa city. It was built in 1399 by the order of Sultan Beyazid I. It is well known for it’s decorative calligraphy and is even called a calligraphy museum.

Not too far from Grand Mosque there was Green Mosque, or Yesil Camii in Turkish. Green Mosque was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is Ayu’s favorite spot. The mosque vibes here were so peaceful with the outside area looking so neat and the architecture of Green Mosque being as impressive as it was. It was commissioned in 1412 by Sultan Mehmed I Celebi. Next to the mosque there is mausoleum called Green Tomb where Sultan Mehmed I was buried.

Bursa was one of the cities that were traversed by the silk route, which was why there were some shops selling silk nearby. If you don’t wanna buy anything, we recommend taking some instagrammable pictures instead since it gave us some options for cute picture-taking spots 🙂

Once everyone gathered back together, we continued our trip to Izmir, which was also where we spent our first night in Turkey. So.. to get there we rode another 4 hours on the bus 😂 Yeah, we know, that was a bit tiring but we had a lot of fun together. We were so excited for our second day in Turkey to spend time to explore in the Ephesus Ancient City and Pamukkale, the Cotton Castle. 🙂

To be continued..