Arrived at Ankara trains station at 6.30am.

Outside the train station

It’s around 450km away and the overnight train took 8.5 hours. I prefer to take overnight train if possible because I can save a night of accommodation and time. For express train or bus, it will only take 5 hours.

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Everyone mentioned that there isn’t much to do in Ankara so I stored my luggage at the locker in the train station and planned to take an overnight bus to Cappadocia.
Walked to the park

across the train station and met some friendly security guards.

Walked around the city center

and got up to the old castle in Ankara.

Street View

Since Ankara is the capital of Turkey, I decided to visit Malaysian embassy to ask about visa issues for my next trip to Iran, maybe Iraq and Central Asia. Took a minibus (konakalle) and got off at the south part of the city.
Ankara southern suburb

Malaysian embassy

is located at Mahatma Gandhi street with many other embassies.

The ambassodor was not in and spent time chatting with some malaysians from the embassy (from left Mr. Suffran, Mr. Azrin and Mr. Jamil).

Like always, Malaysians are a friendly bunch and Suffran, a Colonel from the military working in the embassy bought me lunch.

Took bus 114 (bus 112 will go to the embassy row as well) back to the city. Walked around Kizilay which is a popular place to shop and hang out.

Kocatepe Mosque

Took a metro

to the bus station to enquire about bus schedule. Ankara is at the center of Anatolia so they have buses to almost every part of the country.

Went to An?tkabir, Kemal Atatürk’s mausoleum but it’s already close.
Went back to the train station to grab my bag.

I stored my bag for 11 hours and that cost my 7.5 TL.
Walked around the park across the train station at night. There were some very colorful lightings in the park.

Took the 1.30am bus (20TL) to Goreme (Cappadocia).

Turkey has nice buses and the seat is quite comfortable. The journey will take around 4 hours to Goreme.
People in Ankara are more formal and uptight. There are many people wearing suits, probably because there are many government officials. However, everyone is still quite helpful. The only problem is that people in Ankara don’t speak English. I have not met an Ankaran who can speak fluent english.

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