Notes On Contrasts Between Da Nang, Vietnam; Istanbul, Turkey And Philadelphia, USA Part 2: CULTURE, ATMOSPHERE And APPEARANCES

• In Vietnam, the most common atmospheric sounds were the honking of motorbikes. Here in Turkey, it’s the beautiful, 5x daily Muslim Call to Prayer and the sounds of cawing seagulls flying overhead.
• Speaking of those honking motorbikes in Vietnam, nearly everyone there gets around by way of a motorbike, which is in stark contrast to America where automobiles are king. Here in Istanbul, Turkey, traffic congestion indicates a strong reliance on cars and motorbikes for some, but for the masses, public transportation and walking is their (and our) only means of getting around. Thankfully, Istanbul has a fantastic public transportation system that’s fast, clean and affordable and includes subway trains, buses, gondolas and ferry boats. But rarely will you ever see a bicyclist in Istanbul’s city center. The traffic conditions are much too dangerous, and nearly all the roads are much too hilly!
• Music buskers exist the world-over, but in the Philadelphia area, it would be very strange if someone busked outside of your apartment window. In Vietnam, we were occasionally woken before 07:00 in the morning, by the impossible-to-tune-out sounds of someone with a huge karaoke speaker, singing at full decibel level into a microphone to promote the plush toys or housewares they were selling. Extra fun was when they would also be wearing a Pokemon costume with an enormous head. Here in Istanbul, we frequently encounter music buskers: orchestral musicians in the subways, singers along popular streets, and even the occasional strolling accordion player (as captured here in this video from our balcony)…just below our apartment window. We absolutely love it.
• Roving food sellers in Turkey such as this simit bread seller are even louder than the bánh bao sellers in Vietnam, and in the case of the simit guy, he was relying only on his natural voice, not the looped pre-recorded broadcasts used in Vietnam. Quite an impressive vocal feat! The only food we’d hear announced from our homes in America was the ice cream truck by way of its “jingle“, which often caused us to stop whatever we were doing and run out of the house to chase it down.
• Smoking is alarmingly prevalent here in Istanbul, among all ages and genders. Whether we’re walking the streets, dining at a restaurant or simply have the windows of our apartment open, we’re constantly plagued by second-hand smoke. We noticed in Vietnam that smoking was more common than in America (at least these days, since the public shaming of smokers began a few decades ago the tax hikes on cigarettes that followed), but we’ve never seen anything akin to the cigarette consumption here in Istanbul.
• Women in Istanbul are quite polarized in the way they dress. Those who are conservative Muslims cover their hair with a hijab and wear beautiful flowy clothing that fully covers their body. However many other more contemporary women flaunt their tall, lithe frames by wearing cropped shirts that show off their midriff, paired with skinny jeans and comfy walking sneakers. It also seems as though that everyone under the age of 50 who isn’t covered up in conservative clothing has visible tattoos. Knowing we’d moved to a much more conservative country than America or Vietnam, all of this came as quite a surprise, even in a more contemporary, global city like Istanbul.
• Many Turks have have naturally curly hair. We and our American friends envied our Vietnamese friends’ thick black hair. Anyone appreciating voluminous curls would be jealous of Turkish hair. And hair stays more manageable here in Istanbul, as year-round the weather is much cooler and less humid than in Vietnam.
• Turkish men and women are on average, taller than Vietnamese. As you’ll see from the chart below, at 150 cm (4’ 11”) Robin was categorized as short in America, felt completely normal in Vietnam, but alas, is once again struggling to reach things now that we’re in Turkey.
• Average heights:
  U.S. Men: 178.2 cm (5’ 10”) | Women: 164.1 cm (5’ 5″)
  Turkish Men: 173.74 cm (5’ 8”) | Women: 161.4 cm (5’ 4″)
  Vietnamese Men: 167 cm (5’ 6”) | Women: 156 cm (5’ 1”)
• Clothing printed with English language sayings are almost as popular here in Istanbul as they were in Vietnam, but the main difference here is that the sayings are coherent, unlike in Vietnam where a lot of the text was written in sometimes confusing but always entertaining English as a second language.
• The Turkish language has been infinitely easier for us to pick up than Vietnamese. Tiếng Việt is a tonal language with accents that vary widely across the country, and is very difficult for native English speakers to master. Whereas after just a few weeks of Turkish classes, Robin was astounded to discover that she was consistently understood when speaking her beginner-level Turkish. And it’s a good thing too, because unlike in Vietnam, where we given so much leeway because we visually stood out as foreigners who were unlikely to speak Vietnamese, here in Turkey, we receive no such passes. Every day we feel embarrassed by our need to apologize (multiple times a day) for our still-limited language abilities.
• “Stray” cats in Istanbul are treasured and communally cared for. As a result, they’re completely without fear of people, sleeping in surprising places such as the middle of busy sidewalks and subway stairs, and welcoming of an ear scratch from any and every stranger as illustrated in this video snapped one evening. We recommend the documentary Kedi which beautifully illustrates the city’s love for its cats. Dogs without permanent homes are also kindly cared for through programs which provide them vaccinations, neutering/spaying, and release with an identifying ear tag. We hope someday to see the same care for animals in Vietnam, where wonderful organizations like Paws for Compassion are working to increase appreciation for and treatment of companion animals.
• Grocery shopping in America was something we’d do in bulk, maybe at most, once a week, using a car to visit multiple stores and haul large quantities of goods. In Vietnam, when our means of transportation shrunk to a motorbike, our shopping trips grew more frequent, because on each trip we were limited to what we could creatively (and safely) carry home. Now in Istanbul, we shop every other day, picking up limited loads that we can manage carrying in a backpack up our neighborhood’s hills. The benefit has been a great deal more exercise, which means we can, without guilt, add a lot more cheese and desserts into those shopping bags. Good stuff! We haven’t yet adopted the style of grocery bag carrying we’ve noticed others practicing here in Turkey, which is for each partner to hold one handle of the bag and carry it between them, sharing the weight. Some people don’t bother going to the stores at all. And why would they, when they can receive deliveries directly to a basket they dangle out their upper floor apartment window (as in this video we captured)?
• Our much-too-expensive mobile data plans in America meant we were never without wifi on our smartphones, so it would never have occurred to us to ask for a cafe or restaurant’s wifi password. When we streamlined to more affordable pay-as-you-go plans in Vietnam, we quickly came to depend on publicly available wifi. And no matter how tiny of a shop or streetside food stall, they likely offered free wifi. We grew so accustomed to this that we were sorely disappointed when we discovered that here in Istanbul, Turkey, complimentary wifi is much less prevalent in cafes and restaurants and even when it is available, it’s not printed anywhere customers can access it. It has to be specially requested.
• America was founded in 1776, and as such, its architecture is still relatively “new” in comparison to world history. But in Vietnam and Turkey, ancient buildings intermingle with modern design. These contrasts are most notable in Vietnam in Hoi An and Hanoi, and startlingly so in Istanbul where the 1,500 year old Hagia Sophia and 1,650+ year old Roman-built Valens Aqueduct still stand in full grandeur. And many streets in Istanbul feel as if they are from an older era, paved in ornately patterned cobblestones.

What hasn’t been different between the US, Vietnam and Turkey is that every day, we meet wonderful people and are treated with kindness, patience and good humor as we navigate living as foreigners across this amazing world.