The rest of vacation

So to pick up where I left off, Mike and I arrived in Tashkent early in the morning on the 29th of December. We walked to Lonely Planet's budget hotel "pick", which said it was a great deal and also helped with travel arrangements. We needed to figure out how to get across the border to Kazakhstan since one border was closed AND it was near the holidays and we weren't sure when the other border would be open. However, the hotel was nothing like Lonely Planet made it sound. There was no one there who spoke English, it seemed pretty seedy because all the walls outside the building and in all the rooms were covered in mirrors. Our TV didn't work either. It was the worst place we stayed by far, so Lonely Planet definitely needs updating. We were semi-harrassed by drunk Uzbek men in the evening too. We asked the receptionist/creepy old man how much a car to the Kazakh border cost, and this drunk guy came into the hotel and said, basically, "A taxi will cost 15,000 sum, but I'll take you for 20,000 sum. Ok? Ok?" For breakfast we got one little fried egg. I'm glad we only had to deal with one night there.

But anyways, the first thing we had to do was get the money that my mom had Western Unioned to me, because, like idiots, we didn't bring enough moeny with us. We thought our trip would be a lot cheaper than it was! So my mom sent the money, and we just had to go to the bank and pick it up (or so we thought). BUT, it turned out that all the Western Unions at all the banks we went to were closed for the week. They told us we'd have to come back on the 5th of January. We needed the money that day or we couldn't even afford to get back to Kyrgyzstan, so we kept going to bank after bank hoping one would be open. Finally someone told us that Capital Bank had an open Western Union, so we found or way there, but it turned out that the building had moved from its original location, so we had to find the new building it was in. When we finally saw working Western Union people, we were so relieved! I got my money no problem, but we'd spent half a day being super stressed out and worrying we'd be stranded in Uzbekistan with no money.

No idea what else we did on this day...

The next day, we searched for the Central Asian Plov Center in the northern part of Tashkent, which Lonely Planet says is the best place in Central Asia to have plov, the wonderful wonderful dish made of rice, meat, and carrots, and in Uzbekistan, chick peas and grapes. However, it turns out the Plov Center is no longer in existence. Too bad for us. We found plov elsewhere, which was still really great. It was snowing a lot, so walking around wasn't very pleasant.

We took a night train to Turkistan in Kazakhstan in order to avoid problems with getting across the border. Not only didn't we know where the border actually was, but Thorn Tree said that it would cost about $80 apiece to get from Tashkent to Shymkent in shared taxis and including border bribes. The train bypassed the corrupt border, meant that no taxis were involved, AND meant that we could stay inside and be nice and warm across the borders because the police enter the train.

We got cheaper seats in platskartniy vagon, which aren't compartments but an open wagon of sleeping beds. The car was almost empty, so it was nice and cozy. The Uzbek/Kazakh border is said to be the most corrupt in Central Asia, but we paid no bribes. On the Uzbek side, a nice policeman sat and talked to us in English for a while. He'd learned English when he lived in Samarkand from American Peace Corps volunteers, so he seemed happy to be able to practice it. On the Kazakh side, we had a bit of a scare when the policeman tried to tell us that since we were on transit visas, we had to be travelling DIRECTLY from the border to the Kyrgyz border. We argued that that's impossible since no trains go from Tashkent to Bishkek, AND that a 5-day transit visa says NOTHING about direct travel, and he took our passports and went away for a while. We assumed we'd have to pay something when he came back, but we actually never saw him again. A woman came by and gave us our passports back, and there was nothing more said about our visas at all.

We got into Turkistan early in the morning, and took a cab to "downtown." Turkistan is a town of 400,000 people in the middle of the desert, so there's not much of a center. We could only find one hotel, so we took a room, even though the front desk guy was a wanker. We had to change money, but the first bank we went to was closed for New Year's! We went back to the hotel and there was a non-wanker front desk guy who called up another bank in town and made sure that they had a money change facility open. So we did get our money changed.

Turkistan was freezing cold, but there was a nice old mosque to look at (as if we hadn't seen enough mosques already) and the best part of the whole trip, WILD CAMELS!!!!!! They were just grazing in a field and it was awesome! I wanted to take one home with me, but alas, it wouldn't fit into my purse. Walking around the old walls of the city, we ran into 4 Kazakh girls who were so excited to see foreigners. They spoke to us for ages and gave us their phone numbers, invited us to their house, gave us a pocket calendar and a mirror so we'd always remember them, and took about 100 pictures of us. They spoke broken Russian, so it was amusing all of us trying to communicate in non-native Russian. It's quite strange that once you're out of Bishkek, most teenagers don't speak fluent Russian. Here in Bishkek, most teenagers speak Russian and if anything, they have non-native Kyrgyz. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, it was normal that students spoke Russian not at all or clearly as a second language, instead speaking Uzbek and Tajik together as native languages.

We had dinner at a hip Kazakh place, where there were lots of New Year's Eve partiers already dancing, even though it was 19:00. We bought some chocolate and alcohol and headed back to our hotel to celebrate New Year's. We walked through the center square where there were lots of people gathered. There was a big stage, people performing songs, and lots of children shooting of fireworks. I was trying to take a picture of Mike in front of the Xmas tree when two policemen came up to us and told us to return to our hotel, since it wasn't a safe place for foreigners since there were so many "hooligans" around.

We went back to the hotel and watched the Russian New Year's Eve show on TV. We fell asleep early and missed 00:00!! So it was a quite uneventful New Year's Eve, but no many people can say they spent in in the desert in Kazkahstan, so it was still nice.

Next morning, we headed to the bus station to see about buses to Almaty. Tickets were only about $10 for the 12-hour journey, but the bus didn't leave until evening. There wasn't anything else really to see in Turkistan, so we had lunch, played cards for a while, and then sat outside at the bus station for a few hours. The weather was sunny and pretty warm, so it was nice. There were tons of stray dogs at the station, so I had hours of fun petting the little puppies. Central Asians see dogs as dirty animals rather than pets, and so they would never dream of petting them. I got some strange looks! If anything, boys amuse themsevles by kicking the dogs, which I witnessed first-hand when a guy picked up one of the little puppies by the scruff of its neck and pretended to kick it. I think it was the expression on my face that made him stop.

The bus was horribly uncomfortable. There was less leg room than economy class on an airplane, and all night people were playing loud music on their cell phones. They did play the movie Rendition, which Mike and I followed quite well, even though it was in Russian. We were very glad when we finally got to Almaty, again early in the morning.

We got a cab to the one budget hotel in Lonely Planet that sounded decent. Well, we tried to get a cab. The driver didn't know where he was going, even though we gave him a street address AND a landmark. He didn't even drop us off at the Russian Embassy like we'd asked, so we had to walk around for a while in the freezing cold until we found the hotel, exatly at the address we told him in the first place. Idiot. He didn't even give us our 100 tenge change back from the cab fare, because it said that since he had to drive around extra it was "normal."

Once daylight came, we dressed warm and went on the walking tour of Almaty. It is a much bigger city than Bishkek and it has a more European feel, but it was SO expensive compared to Kyrgyzstan. We went to 5 restaurants before we found a place for lunch that we could afford. Prices are comparable with normal US restaurants. We saw 2 cathedrals, but were most interested in finding H&M and McDonald's, neither of which we ended up finding at all. We had dinner at a super super expensive Uzbek restaurant, where we paid about $9 for a plate of plov, which is usually about $1. It wasn't even better than cheap plov. Living in Almaty would be great if the salary was a lot more than our Bishkek salary, as it seems to be a much busier and more cosmopolitan city than any place in Kyrgyzstan.

The next morning, we went to the bus station to find a marshrutka to Bishkek. We found one easily and had no problems at the border. We got back home early afternoon on Saturday, we meant we had a day and a half to relax before having to start work.

Back in Bishkek, it was our friend Ben's last day before going home to England. He let us go through all the stuff in his room that he wasn't taking home, so Mike and I got a bunch of stuff from him. My room is now much homier and wonderful, and we got kitchen utensils, a tv stand, and lots of spices. We had a "last supper" at a Syrian restaurant, which has wondeful falafel and hummus.

Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are said to have much more police presence than Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan is actually called a Police State. We did see lots of policemen, but not once was there a bad experience. In fact, they were all super nice and friendly, and were interested to talk to us. It's the opposite in Bishkek. Our friends were were walking home from our favorite local restaurant just around the corner when they were stopped by policemen. They didn't have their passports on them since it's just down the road, and the police were really aggressive, threatening to deport them and trying to get bribes. The office staff from school had to go and help them argue their way out of it, but now I have to carry my passport on me at all times, and it puts a cloud of danger over our favorite cheap restaurant. If things keep getting worse here, it will be no fun in Bishkek at all!

Today it's back to teaching and the real world. It was great to have a 2-week vacation, and Mike and I are already planning April vacation.