*blogBawang*

Taking life day by day 

I live in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital city, for 3 weeks now. I found new things that I didn’t find in Indonesia (my country), especially in Jakarta (where I used to live).

Here are the 10 things list :

1. Traffic & Vehicles, yes! there’s no traffic jam at all, no motorcyles seen on the streets. There’s a lot of "white" cars, also old-square kind of cars produced by LADA. And they drive at the right side.

2. Buildings, are beautifully architectured, mostly new, accessorised with Turkmenistan’s flag at the top of them or with the president’s photograph.  They’re surrounded by parks (buildings are built separately from each other) with alot of lamps so at nite, you will see a city of lights. A lot of apartements, flats built here, and only a few live in houses.

3. People, here are not too friendly. Mostly talk in Russian or Turkmenistan language. But some people do smile back, and very kind person. You must act nice first.

4. Supermarket, sells a lot of Turkish or Russian products. Not as big as Carrefour but complete enough. It also sells cheaper than the traditional market, for certain products. I only know one big supermarket in Ashgabat, Yimpas.

5. Fashion. There’s no different on the man’s fashion. Only in the cold weather, sometimes they wear men’s complete suit. Woman’s fashion is devided into two catagories, modern and traditional. Modern Women wear jeans, trouser & stocking. Traditional women wear long dress (coloured in red, green, brown or black). They wear blazer or long coat on top of it in cold weather.They wear a thing like "sorban" on the hair but with nice colour (see pics).The Women like to wear high heels here

6. Food. I still don’t have the change to know what are the names of the food I’ve tasted here. But it taste not far from Indonesian food. There are several restaurants I’ve visited ; Turkish, Chinese, Italian (at Nissa Hotel), Turkmenistan at Yimpas, and a Pizza cafe. I love the turkish and the pizza cafe, they sells delicious and cheaper food. (Warning for moslem: check the meat first before ordering). It’s much cheaper to cook by yourself than buy it from the restaurant.

7. Television. The antenna is like a parabola. The TV Channels you’ll get is depending on the satellite you are subscribe to. There are 3 local channels (in Turkmenistan language) and there are hundreds of foreign channels including CNN, aljazeera, BBC world, DW-TV, MBC2 from Egypt, etc.

8. Weather. They said Turkmenistan has 4 seasons. On the first day I got here, it’s so cold, perhaps it’s 0-10 degrees. But now it’s getting warmer and we already turned off the heaters. I still can’t deal with the dry air, though. But the laundry got dried faster.

9. Public Transportation. There are bus and taxi. But every driver can act his vehicle into a taxi. You just need to raise your hand and someone will stop their car in front of you, if your negotiation is a deal then you’ll get your taxi.

10. Money. The currency here is in Manat. Officially $1 = 5200 Mnt. The biggest money you’ll find here is in 10.000 manat, so you have to bring alot of money in the pocket, since there are no ATM machines or credit card readers, here.

          

Well…there are still so many things that I should explore more, here in Turkmenistan. Wait for another 10 things