Place : Istanbul 1

I'm back ! 

I'm quite excited to type down all the things that I've experience so I can get it all out. So I'll write in category : the event, the weather, money, people, places, transportations, little stories, and such. Until I've had enough of talking about Istanbul. 

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About the Event :

It started when my mom received a call from Balai Seni Visual Negara during Eid. She was invited to participate in Malaysia Cultural Week in Istanbul for a week, fully sponsored; food, transportation, accommodation. She was asked to do demonstrations on Batik and teach Batik DIY to people. It was a great opportunity, so we told her that she should go. On one condition that she wanted one of us to go with her. 

On rational mind, I think spending around RM2,700 for a return flight ticket is a bit too much for me. But seeing that :

1) I was the only one with flexible time because I've never used my annual leaves.

2) I was the only one with personal travel fund i.e : money saved for traveling purposes.

3) My mom said she won't go alone - even if it was fully sponsored =.='

4) I only need to pay for the flight ticket. 

So I decided to go.

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Other than helping my mom with the preparation and booth, I taught people how to colour Batik. They were given 10 x 10 inch of fabric with waxed designs. We brought 100 pieces of Batik DIY, and brought back home only 1 piece. So you can imagine the crowd we had on those event days.

Among other participants : kain tenun, wau, potret, water colour paintings, teh tarik & roti canai, anyaman, manik Sarawak, tarian and other local specialties. 

There were people from all over the world; Kuwait, Ukraine, Turkey, China, Indonesia, Singapore, etc. English was not so useful though. Most of people that came by to our booth can't even speak English, teaching only by one obvious word per time and sign language. Kids were really easy to teach, adults can be really challenging. I should do this often.

There was also volunteers from Malaysian students in Istanbul that came to help us during our event. So most of the translations were done by them :D

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On our final day of the event, there was a protest by the local people around our event. I've never seen any live riots before. Things got bad when polices came to control the crowd, we were asked to stay in our booth, protected by the wire fence and security :F Things were hectic afterwards. Helicopters, police fired tear gases and people were running. We packed our things as soon as we can.

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The event was a success, we got overwhelming crowd and response, launching night was colourful and exciting, many new friends. Exhausting - but totally worth it. 

Read the news from Bernama and watch a short video I found on Youtube.