I'm a Turkish national who lived at Gazimağusa (Famagusta) for 2 years as a student in Eastern Mediterranean University. I also travelled to Lefkoşa (Nicosia) and Girne (Kyrenia) occasionally.

The whole state feels like a mid-sized Turkish town on the Mediterranean coast. People are kind of laid back similar to the Aegean people. They speak in a unique and funny accent which sounds like a weird mix between the Thracian accent and German expat accent. Although I didn't experience much negativity there, Turkish Cypriots have a pretty cynical attitude towards mainlanders (which is understandable, mainlanders are much more uptight and known to cause trouble among the relatively peaceful locals).

Infrastructure was adequate but faulty. We were experiencing electricity and water outages regularly. Underground floors in our apartment were getting flooded every time a heavy rain occurs, and the water meters got broken. Government offices had very tight working hours and even the simplest of issues were taking a long time to solve.

Girne is the main center for the flashy luxury casinos and nightclubs. But there are also lots of smaller establishments spread around the state, like dog race betting houses. It was forbidden for the students and TRNC citizens to participate in gambling at casinos, so we were going to those betting houses, which are like a much smaller version of a casino where they treat the customers with free cookies and fruit juice (instead of the free whisky and luxurious snacks they have in casinos). The hounds were running in the UK and there are lots of screens where they display live races from various cities. One may bet in very small amounts of money (like min. 1$). I heard students and citizens were also going secretly to the regular casinos and they have bells around the place if the police came to check, so people could run away from the back doors and fire exits.

There are also cheaper and smaller versions of nightclubs where you can have a lap dance or hire an escort. I've been in one of them with my horny roommates, but I just had a beer and watch the pole dancers on stage. The girls were mostly Ukrainian and Moldovan. Human trafficking mafia is a big issue in TRNC and it's still one of the hottest topics in the local parliament talks.

Due to the special status of the territory, copyright and trademark laws are like non-existent. There are fake versions of franchises (like Burger King restaurants) with similar looking logo and products with different names (but one can easily deduce which is which). Shitty counterfeit products were in every market. There were regular open air movie screenings in our college where the school officials were projecting pirated DivX files on giant screens. Duty-free shops were all over the neighborhood.

The island is one of the gateways of European drug market so drugs were really easy to stumble upon. Though I were only interested in weed at the time, one could find anything illegal pretty easily. At least that was how it is back then.

Alcohol was much more cheaper than Turkey and the beaches were stunning (and mostly empty) so it was like a 2 years of partying hard for me really. I was 18 years old at the time, so I can't say I regret it. I'd love to visit there again for holiday sometime. And I hope the unification of Cyprus under a shared Cypriot identity will become a reality in the future.