So, after a long pause in updating that has left all of you I'm sure hanging in suspense, I am back online to complete the tale of Uzbekistan.
We arrived in Khiva with a mix of different kinds of transport. We took a bus to Burani, a town north of Khiva, then took a shared taxi to Urgench, and then another shared taxi to Khiva. Transport plus waiting for taxis to fill up ended up being most of the afternoon, but we spent 7000 sum each instead of 20,000 each, which a non-shared taxi door-to-door would have cost from Nukus to Khiva. We opted for price rather than speed, since of course we were on vacation and were not in any rush.
Khiva is a beautifully preserved old city, complete with city walls, mosques, medressas, and minarets. Lonely Planet complains that all the life has been squeezed out of it as a result of all the restoration that has kept the old town looking as good as it did, but I think that it's just the opposite. Many locals live in the Old Town and go about their normal lives in among all the mosques, it was easy to imagine ancient days with the hustle and bustle of market day.
Immediately when we got out of our shared taxi, a man stepped out of another taxi and recommended a homestay to us. We didn't have any preference, and for $10 per person per day with breakfast, it sounded like a great deal. And it really was a wonderful guesthouse. We had a private Western bathroom, an air conditioner (that really didnät work) and our own balcony, and there was a rooftop terrace with an amazing view of all of Khiva. We had dinner in the guesthouse on the roof and watched the sun set over the old fortifications and the minarets.
It was quite hot, and we spent two days just wandering around. We didn't pay to go into any museums or mosques, because we'd already seen our fair share of souvenier-shop-filled old brick buildings. But even just walking around the Old Town there was a lot to see.
We spent our last day in Khiva not even in Khiva. We got a taxi for $40 to take us around to some old forts in the surrounding desert of Khiva, about 1.5 hours from the Old Town. The driver knew where to find the forts, which are spread around a large area of desert. Archaeologists believe that there may be 50 forts in the area, and it is therefore named Elliq Qala, which means, of course, 50 Forts. We went to three forts, 2 of which we could walk around. They were quite well preserved, and even though they are more or less just different shaped piles of packed dirt, part of the fun was imagining how different it looked in its prime. We also stopped at lake Ayaz, which is a salty lake right in the middle of the desert. We had wanted to swim, but when we got to the lake and saw that it was quite gross-looking, with deep stinking sand/slush and lots of flies, we decided to just dip our feet in. It was still strange to see a bunch of seagulls in the middle of vast expanses of sand!
We then took a bus to Bukhara, where we spent a few days when we were in Uzbekistan in winter, but at that time it was so cold that we really didn't see everything there was to see. We spent most time in our hotel room watching satellite Arabic girls dancing around trying to get men to call in. This time, I was determined to do more sightseeing, even though all the tourists we'd met said that Bukhara was the hottest place they'd been. We were directed to a hotel by our taxi driver, who of course wanted us to stay in his friend's hotel. It was quite a swanky one, with a great courtyard. Tourist season was over, so we got a double room that was normally $50 for $25 including breakfast, satellite TV (broken), an air conditioner (not broken!!) and a shower with HOT WATER. Not too bad. I did the bargaining myself too, which made me feel quite good considering I usually hate it and I'm pretty bad at it. Mike is the master at haggling. I'll just leave it up to him whenever I can.
The thing we spent most of our time doing was looking at antique pieces of Uzbek fabric. I had wanted to buy one in Khiva but didn't, and then it turned out that the pattern I had really liked was unpopular and most of the people I talked to in Bukhara had thrown out their fabric in that pattern because no tourists wanted to buy it. But I learned from different salespeople the exact description and origin of the pattern I wanted, so it was quite easy to go from stall to stall saying I wanted Urgutskie suzani, and it makes shopping so much easier when sellers don't try to interest you with this and that that you really don't want. It was in-and-out, and finally I was able to find exactly what I wanted, and get them for amazing prices. I was even congratulated by the owner of our hotel for getting them so cheap! He asked how much I paid and I said 15,000, and he said '50,000? Good price!' and I said 'No FIFTEEN' and he couldn't believe it. He said it was local price, and that tourist price is MUCH more. So Bukhara was a good place for my haggling :)
In Bukhara we found a nice restaurant that had the first good fried laghman since we left Bishkek, and we found the mauseleum where Somoni was buried, the man who the Tajik currency is named after. Both Bukhara and Samarkand are predominantly Tajik towns, so it's not surprising for him to be there. We also found yet more medressas that we hadn't seen the first time around. It was really hot, but not as bad as we'd been expecting after all the stories.
We took a night train to Tashkent, and it was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights I've ever had. The train was HOT, and it was a newer sleeping car so instead of windows that pulled down to open, the tilted out, so there was barely any breeze. A bunch of policemen took up the sitting room under our beds, so we had to lie in bed the whole time while they were all underneath drinking and doing crossword puzzles. When we arrived in Tashkent I was terribly sweaty, tired because I hadn't really slept, and super dehydrated. When we arrived in Tashkent the hotel we wanted had no double room, so then I really wanted to cry and not have to find another place. We decided to go to a Lonely Planet guesthouse that it said was hard to find, and we got a taxi driver who looked at the map and seemed to have some idea where he was going. He didn't of course, and didn't believe when I told him he was going the wrong way. Finally we just got out because he couldn't find it, and luckily we weren't too far from where we were supposed to be. We found a nice driver who knew the place exactly and dropped us off there for free. It was $15 per person per night, but it had air conditioning and breakfast and I was way too narky to want to find another place.
I took a nap and a MUCH needed shower, and then we wandered around Tashkent some more. We spent 6 days in Tashkent in total in winter and Mike really didn't want to have to go back, but I thought there were still some things we could see. It was the hottest it had been the whole trip so we didnt feel like doing much, but the best thing was Aqua Park, possibly Central Asia's only worthwhile waterpark. Lonely Planet said it was 3000 sum ($2), but the price had gone up to 15,000 sum for 3 hours. We paid it and dogeared the page as yet another complaint to write to Lonely Planet about, but really enjoyed a few different swimming pools and some much needed tanning time.
We repacked our bags and caught an early morning flight to Istanbul. I worried that I might have some problems at the airport, as I had a felt rug, 2 antique pieces of fabric and a bullet from the Tajik-Afghan border in my bag, but it turned out that Mike was the one with the problems.
In his words...'At the airport in Tashkent, I went through all various checks until I go to the Passport Control. The guy behind the desk looked at my passport for a split second before telling me in Russian that there was a 'problem.' My passport, apparently, didn't work and I needed to pay the guy some money to get through. I suddenly lost all ability to understand anything he said at the mention of money and played dumb. I knew my passport was fine, just as it has been for the last 10 years. The guy called his supervisor who then tried to tell me I didn't have a visa. I pointed it out to him. Then he told me that I didn't have the correct stamp. i pointed it out to him. Finally, he dragged me off in the direction of a third guy. This one spoke some English and then tried to tell me that the picture in the passport wasn't me. Usually, this is an understandable mistake. The picture was taken when I was 16, I have short hair and no beard. This time, though, I had shaved my beard off and had an haircut so for the first time in years I actually DID look like my passport picture! I explained how time works and that no man is left unaffected. This didn't deter them... now it was a challenge. I wasn't going to pay them a penny, but they couldn't put so much effort in for nothing. Their last trick was to claim my passport was fake. I stood my ground and told them I'd wait for them to verify. Finally, they gave in and threw my documents back at my with contempt. '
Thus ended almost one year in Central Asia. All in all, it was a great experience, but I can't say I'd recommending life in Bishkek to anyone.
Showing posts with label Uzbekistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uzbekistan. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The rest of our trip- almost
So, I haven't written for a long long time. It's just because I'm lazy, but also because there isn't really much to say about the rest of our trip, especially compared to all that happened on the Pamir Highway.
Mike and I spent 3 days in Dushanbe, where there wasn't much to do. It was too hot to have done anything anyways, so we just sat around in some of the many leafy green parks and read books.
We took a shared taxi up to the northern Tajik city of Khojand. It was a tough mountain road to get over, but luckily for visitors to Tajikistan in the future, there is a tunnel being built as we speak by Chinese road crews. Our driver seemed like a good guy, almost too good- he offered to tow two cars up different stages of the mountain pass, so we wasted a lot of time starting and stopping as the rope connecting the car to our car snapped/came untied/who knows. In the end we didn't get the up the mountain, which isn't surprising considering the steepness and muddiness of the road.
We found a great hotel in Khojand- it was a modernish apartment bloc converted into a hotel, which meant we had a bedroom, an enclosed balcony, a living room, toilet, bathroom and a kitchen (all unfurnished but for 2 twin beds, a table, and a TV with no working channels) all for less than 10$ for the 2 of us. It was a needed break since we paid 15$ each in Dushanbe. We didn't do much in Khojand either- it was really really hot. We spent a few hours swimming in the Syr-Darya river, which was full of businessmen stripping down to their underwear and little children cooling off. If we floated all the way down the river, we'd have ended up in the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan! In an internet cafe, we met up with 2 Tajik guys, one who went to school in Prague and spoke good English, one who spoke very very little English, and they wanted to meet up later on to talk. They took us to a park that evening, where there were tons of people riding on Soviet rides, using paddle boats in the river, and generally just having a good time enjoying the evening coolness. We went up in the ferris wheel to see Khojand from above, ate some ice cream, and then Mike and I took a taxi back to the hotel. There are a lot of Soviet things still left in the city- a giant hammer and sickle statue, and a bust of Marx and Lenin on the side of an apartment bloc. There were many streetside cafes, where we spent most of the days just playing cards and drinking cold drinks.
We took a shared taxi to Penjikent, close to the Uzbek border. We stayed in a Lonely Planet-recommended homestay, but the owner of the homestay Nematov had let the "fame" of Lonely Planet get to his head, and he was sort of an ass. Lonely Planet said that it was full board, but he said that food wasn't included, but wouldn't give us a price as to how much meals would be. He said "whatever you think it's worth," which is never a good way to do business in my book. Lonely Planet also said that he arranges good reliable transport, but it seemed like he arranged very overpriced transport. We met up with 2 English girls at the homestay and wanted to arrange a day trip into the Fan Mountains to see a string of very beautiful turquoise lakes. We found our own taxi for much much cheaper than the Nematov had offered. He took us to the first 2 lakes in a string of 7 (the first one was meant to be the most beautiful), and the taxi driver gave us a few hours to walk around. The lakes were full of the bluest water I've ever seen. We wanted to swim, but the water was horrible cold. We had a picnic and walked a bit around the mountains, and then went back to Penjikent.
In the evening, we said goodbye to the English girls, who were heading to Dushanbe, and set out to find and explore ancient Penjikent, the ruins of the old city. A nice man offered to drive us there when we were asking around for directions, and he took us around the old city a little, telling us the history, and even drove us back to the homestay- all for free! It was the first real hospitality we'd seen in a long time, and after the jerk Nematov and a really not nice guy we met in a cafe, we'd started to think that Penjikent was just full of bad eggs. Luckily, it wasn't so. We also met a nice kid who loved speaking English and, though only 18, already worked as a translator for a tourist agency. He had great aspirations of how to improve Penjikent and make it a more international place, which is always good to see in young people in Central Asia.
The next morning, we got a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had planned on another day in Penjikent, but we got such a bad vibe from Nematov that we just wanted to get away. It's only 30 minutes to the Uzbek border, and from there only 40 minutes to Samarkand, so it didn't take long. We didn't have any problems at the border, but I was really worried because I had the bullet I picked up along the Afghan border in my purse and worried that might set off the metal detector. The Uzbek guard saw my jewelry box in the metal detector and I had to get it out from the very bottom of my backpack to show a few silver chains to him. He said I should have declared them on my customs form, and that if he were a jerk he could confiscate them and get me in big big trouble, but luckily for me he was in a good mood and just sent on our way, suggesting we buy a donkey since our bags were so heavy.
We got to Samarkand and immediately got a taxi to Shakhrisabz, Tamerlane's hometown. We checked out the Ak-Saray Palace, built by Tamerlane and at one point was more beautiful than all the sights in Samarkand. Now it's gone except for a few pieces of it, but it was nice to imagine how big the palace once had been. There was also a giant statue of Tamerlane. He had built a crypt for himself also here, but when he died the pass between Samarkand and Shakhrisabz was closed, so his body was buried in Samarkand instead. We spent 3 lazy days resting in cafes and in our homestay. The homestay was the best place I've stayed in Central Asia. The grandfather was wonderfully nice and hospitable, and just all around a super guy. He gave us 2 free meals even though they should have been 6$ each, and always had bottles of water to give to us and even gave me his granddaughter's Uzbek fan when I said I was interested in getting one. Instead of a plastic/wooden fan that you open, it's a wooden stick with a piece of fabric on it. You spin the fabric around on the stick and it creates a great breeze. The homestay also had a functional shower with warmish water (!!! the first GOOD shower since April in Bishkek!!!!) and a nice tapchan (tea bed) too that was usually in the shade. One night after tea and watermelon we even fell asleep under the stars. If you ever want to go somewhere just to relax, Shakhrisabz is the place for you!
We then took a taxi back to Samarkand, where we spent the day walking around and re-seeing all the sights we saw in winter. I'm so glad we saw it in winter, because it was a huge construction site this time around. All the main roads around the center were torn up and all the store fronts were being "beautified," so all the shops were closed. It took ages just to find somewhere selling cold drinks. At midnight we got a train to Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the westernmost region of Uzbekistan.
The people of Karakalpakstan are not Uzbek but Karakalpak. They speak their own language, which is Turkic, but more similar to Kazakh than to Uzbek. My rudimentary Kyrgyz translates Karakalpakstan as "the land of the black hats," but I'm not sure if that's really what it's supposed to mean. A kalpak is the Kyrgyz national black and white felt hat, but it might have some other meaning too...
The train wagon where our beds were was full of children who had just finished up a summer camp in Tashkent and were headed home to Nukus. All the kids (aged about 8-16) were very interested to talk to us, and one boy who spoke Russian acted as the translator between Mike and me and about 30 Karakalpak kids. They were all orphans, which was so sad since they were all so nice and polite! The Russian speaking kid, Vladimir, looked a lot like Freddie Highmore (Charlie from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie) and I would have adopted him in a second! He said he had a mother, so I don't know why he lived in an orphanage. All the boys on the train had a hobby of making animals with little folded pieces of silver paper, like gum wrappers, and they showed us some of the things they made. They were amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of little folded silver papers made a giant swan. They gave us a little swan and a snake they'd made, and even though they've fallen apart in my luggage since then, I really hope I can put them back together when I get to Istanbul because they are really pretty. After about 18 hours in the train driving through a very sandy desert for the entire day, we arrived in Nukus.
We found a hotel and spent a bit wandering around the city looking for food. Nukus is definitely nothing special- the only thing Lonely Planet lists is an art museum, which is meant to be the best in Central Asia. Since Mike and I don't like art, that wasn't anything for us. We found a Georgian restaurant and had some pretty good lagman.
The next day, we caught a bus going up to Moynaq, a fishing village that used to be on the shores of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest bodies of water. However, because of the Soviet desire to turn Central Asia's deserts into successful cotton producers, the Aral Sea was irrigated much too much, and the lake shrunk, creating one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Now, the sea split into two parts, and the fishing town of Moynaq is now hundreds of kilometers from the water's edge. We were going to see the former shoreline and rusting hulks of fishing boats that are now resting in the middle of the desert. It was terrible to see and hear about what life is now like in Moynaq. Our taxi driver talked about how the economy used to be back when there was water, and the welcome sign at the entrance of the town still has a fish on it. Now it's just a little desert village. We walked up a hill where we could look over where the water used to be. There were 6 fishing boats lined up, and 2 more a bit further away. They used to be located all around the city, but sometime recently they were all brought to this one place, to serve as a memorial (and maybe make it easier for tourists to find them). There were big posterboards showing arial pictures of the sea in the 1960s and the sea now, and articles explaining how the fishing and muskrat industry was great back then and now Moynaq has lost everything. It was definitely a depressing day. We caught an afternoon bus back to Nukus, and the next morning spent some hours getting to Khiva by bus and shared taxi.
I'll write about our time in Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent soon. Early tomorrow morning Mike and I are flying to Istanbul! We'll be there a week looking for a job and an apartment, exploring the city, and hopefully swimming a lot, and then we're going to Austria to meet up with my parents for 2 weeks. Yay!
Mike and I spent 3 days in Dushanbe, where there wasn't much to do. It was too hot to have done anything anyways, so we just sat around in some of the many leafy green parks and read books.
We took a shared taxi up to the northern Tajik city of Khojand. It was a tough mountain road to get over, but luckily for visitors to Tajikistan in the future, there is a tunnel being built as we speak by Chinese road crews. Our driver seemed like a good guy, almost too good- he offered to tow two cars up different stages of the mountain pass, so we wasted a lot of time starting and stopping as the rope connecting the car to our car snapped/came untied/who knows. In the end we didn't get the up the mountain, which isn't surprising considering the steepness and muddiness of the road.
We found a great hotel in Khojand- it was a modernish apartment bloc converted into a hotel, which meant we had a bedroom, an enclosed balcony, a living room, toilet, bathroom and a kitchen (all unfurnished but for 2 twin beds, a table, and a TV with no working channels) all for less than 10$ for the 2 of us. It was a needed break since we paid 15$ each in Dushanbe. We didn't do much in Khojand either- it was really really hot. We spent a few hours swimming in the Syr-Darya river, which was full of businessmen stripping down to their underwear and little children cooling off. If we floated all the way down the river, we'd have ended up in the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan! In an internet cafe, we met up with 2 Tajik guys, one who went to school in Prague and spoke good English, one who spoke very very little English, and they wanted to meet up later on to talk. They took us to a park that evening, where there were tons of people riding on Soviet rides, using paddle boats in the river, and generally just having a good time enjoying the evening coolness. We went up in the ferris wheel to see Khojand from above, ate some ice cream, and then Mike and I took a taxi back to the hotel. There are a lot of Soviet things still left in the city- a giant hammer and sickle statue, and a bust of Marx and Lenin on the side of an apartment bloc. There were many streetside cafes, where we spent most of the days just playing cards and drinking cold drinks.
We took a shared taxi to Penjikent, close to the Uzbek border. We stayed in a Lonely Planet-recommended homestay, but the owner of the homestay Nematov had let the "fame" of Lonely Planet get to his head, and he was sort of an ass. Lonely Planet said that it was full board, but he said that food wasn't included, but wouldn't give us a price as to how much meals would be. He said "whatever you think it's worth," which is never a good way to do business in my book. Lonely Planet also said that he arranges good reliable transport, but it seemed like he arranged very overpriced transport. We met up with 2 English girls at the homestay and wanted to arrange a day trip into the Fan Mountains to see a string of very beautiful turquoise lakes. We found our own taxi for much much cheaper than the Nematov had offered. He took us to the first 2 lakes in a string of 7 (the first one was meant to be the most beautiful), and the taxi driver gave us a few hours to walk around. The lakes were full of the bluest water I've ever seen. We wanted to swim, but the water was horrible cold. We had a picnic and walked a bit around the mountains, and then went back to Penjikent.
In the evening, we said goodbye to the English girls, who were heading to Dushanbe, and set out to find and explore ancient Penjikent, the ruins of the old city. A nice man offered to drive us there when we were asking around for directions, and he took us around the old city a little, telling us the history, and even drove us back to the homestay- all for free! It was the first real hospitality we'd seen in a long time, and after the jerk Nematov and a really not nice guy we met in a cafe, we'd started to think that Penjikent was just full of bad eggs. Luckily, it wasn't so. We also met a nice kid who loved speaking English and, though only 18, already worked as a translator for a tourist agency. He had great aspirations of how to improve Penjikent and make it a more international place, which is always good to see in young people in Central Asia.
The next morning, we got a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had planned on another day in Penjikent, but we got such a bad vibe from Nematov that we just wanted to get away. It's only 30 minutes to the Uzbek border, and from there only 40 minutes to Samarkand, so it didn't take long. We didn't have any problems at the border, but I was really worried because I had the bullet I picked up along the Afghan border in my purse and worried that might set off the metal detector. The Uzbek guard saw my jewelry box in the metal detector and I had to get it out from the very bottom of my backpack to show a few silver chains to him. He said I should have declared them on my customs form, and that if he were a jerk he could confiscate them and get me in big big trouble, but luckily for me he was in a good mood and just sent on our way, suggesting we buy a donkey since our bags were so heavy.
We got to Samarkand and immediately got a taxi to Shakhrisabz, Tamerlane's hometown. We checked out the Ak-Saray Palace, built by Tamerlane and at one point was more beautiful than all the sights in Samarkand. Now it's gone except for a few pieces of it, but it was nice to imagine how big the palace once had been. There was also a giant statue of Tamerlane. He had built a crypt for himself also here, but when he died the pass between Samarkand and Shakhrisabz was closed, so his body was buried in Samarkand instead. We spent 3 lazy days resting in cafes and in our homestay. The homestay was the best place I've stayed in Central Asia. The grandfather was wonderfully nice and hospitable, and just all around a super guy. He gave us 2 free meals even though they should have been 6$ each, and always had bottles of water to give to us and even gave me his granddaughter's Uzbek fan when I said I was interested in getting one. Instead of a plastic/wooden fan that you open, it's a wooden stick with a piece of fabric on it. You spin the fabric around on the stick and it creates a great breeze. The homestay also had a functional shower with warmish water (!!! the first GOOD shower since April in Bishkek!!!!) and a nice tapchan (tea bed) too that was usually in the shade. One night after tea and watermelon we even fell asleep under the stars. If you ever want to go somewhere just to relax, Shakhrisabz is the place for you!
We then took a taxi back to Samarkand, where we spent the day walking around and re-seeing all the sights we saw in winter. I'm so glad we saw it in winter, because it was a huge construction site this time around. All the main roads around the center were torn up and all the store fronts were being "beautified," so all the shops were closed. It took ages just to find somewhere selling cold drinks. At midnight we got a train to Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the westernmost region of Uzbekistan.
The people of Karakalpakstan are not Uzbek but Karakalpak. They speak their own language, which is Turkic, but more similar to Kazakh than to Uzbek. My rudimentary Kyrgyz translates Karakalpakstan as "the land of the black hats," but I'm not sure if that's really what it's supposed to mean. A kalpak is the Kyrgyz national black and white felt hat, but it might have some other meaning too...
The train wagon where our beds were was full of children who had just finished up a summer camp in Tashkent and were headed home to Nukus. All the kids (aged about 8-16) were very interested to talk to us, and one boy who spoke Russian acted as the translator between Mike and me and about 30 Karakalpak kids. They were all orphans, which was so sad since they were all so nice and polite! The Russian speaking kid, Vladimir, looked a lot like Freddie Highmore (Charlie from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie) and I would have adopted him in a second! He said he had a mother, so I don't know why he lived in an orphanage. All the boys on the train had a hobby of making animals with little folded pieces of silver paper, like gum wrappers, and they showed us some of the things they made. They were amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of little folded silver papers made a giant swan. They gave us a little swan and a snake they'd made, and even though they've fallen apart in my luggage since then, I really hope I can put them back together when I get to Istanbul because they are really pretty. After about 18 hours in the train driving through a very sandy desert for the entire day, we arrived in Nukus.
We found a hotel and spent a bit wandering around the city looking for food. Nukus is definitely nothing special- the only thing Lonely Planet lists is an art museum, which is meant to be the best in Central Asia. Since Mike and I don't like art, that wasn't anything for us. We found a Georgian restaurant and had some pretty good lagman.
The next day, we caught a bus going up to Moynaq, a fishing village that used to be on the shores of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest bodies of water. However, because of the Soviet desire to turn Central Asia's deserts into successful cotton producers, the Aral Sea was irrigated much too much, and the lake shrunk, creating one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Now, the sea split into two parts, and the fishing town of Moynaq is now hundreds of kilometers from the water's edge. We were going to see the former shoreline and rusting hulks of fishing boats that are now resting in the middle of the desert. It was terrible to see and hear about what life is now like in Moynaq. Our taxi driver talked about how the economy used to be back when there was water, and the welcome sign at the entrance of the town still has a fish on it. Now it's just a little desert village. We walked up a hill where we could look over where the water used to be. There were 6 fishing boats lined up, and 2 more a bit further away. They used to be located all around the city, but sometime recently they were all brought to this one place, to serve as a memorial (and maybe make it easier for tourists to find them). There were big posterboards showing arial pictures of the sea in the 1960s and the sea now, and articles explaining how the fishing and muskrat industry was great back then and now Moynaq has lost everything. It was definitely a depressing day. We caught an afternoon bus back to Nukus, and the next morning spent some hours getting to Khiva by bus and shared taxi.
I'll write about our time in Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent soon. Early tomorrow morning Mike and I are flying to Istanbul! We'll be there a week looking for a job and an apartment, exploring the city, and hopefully swimming a lot, and then we're going to Austria to meet up with my parents for 2 weeks. Yay!
Monday, January 5, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Bukhara etc.
After my last post about how great Samarkand was, Mike and I headed back to our hotel to hang out until our train left at 1:43 am. Mike and I started an epic card game tournament. We've played about 50 games up to now and he's still ahead. But not for long. Anyways, a taxi came to pick us up at 00:30, and we caught the train to Bukhara. Katy and Josh had a cushy 4-person sleeper car, but we opted for cheap and got 4th class seats, "obshy vagon" in Russian. Tickets were 5500 sum instead of about 20,000 for a sleeper cabin, but it became clear why when we got there. It was a mostly open train car, with 9 benches in each section. We got on midway during the train journey (the train had started in Tashkent) so it was mostly full- there were people sitting and lying EVERYWHERE. It smelled horribly of B.O. and socks, and there were no lights on so we were wandering around in the dark, trying to find a place to squeeze in. We finally found a spot on the end of a bench. It was a semi-padded bench, but there was no backrest or anything, and we just had to stuff our bags and shoes on the floor in front of us. There was barely any place for anything, and I tried to find a place for the loaf of bread we'd bought from a babushka at the train station. I tried to put it behind me and under my legs, but it wasn't comfortable. The guy sitting across from me took it from me and just put it onto the table, which was already covered in loaves of bread.
Mike fell asleep quickly, and I was just looking around, amused by the fact that it was the middle of the night and we were in a crowded train, surrounded by Uzbeks going home for New Year's to be with their families. The boys across from me kept saying words quietly in English, so I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they tried talking to me. Finally one of the guys said, "Excuse me, are you from England?" and then a semi-awkward conversation started, where I had to answer the usual questions... my name, my age, if I'm married (and then I have to explain in detail WHY Mike and I aren't married and why we don't have children...), if I have any brothers or sisters, and what I think about Uzbekistan. His English was mediocre, but he wasn't afraid to try.
Pretty soon another man walked by and heard us speaking English, so he stopped to talk too. His English was really good because he worked for an international bank in Tashkent. The boy across from me asked him to translate something that he didn't know how to say in English, and he asked me why I'd tried to put the bread under my legs. Apparently this was a big faux pas because bread is very very important to Uzbek people, and I disprespected it by putting it under my legs. I got a lecture from the good English speaker about why this was bad to do, and how I shouldn't do it again. He actually said, "These men here think it's just INCREDIBLE that you would do something like that to bread." I remembered having read in Lonely Planet that you never should put bread on the ground or throw it away in public, but I didn't really think about it as I was trying to find a place to keep the bread. I apologized and the guys weren't angry as much as surprised that I didn't have the same respect for bread as they did. Sorry Central Asia, I didn't mean to be a stupid ignorant American tourist...
The man on our bunk eventually got off the train, so for a few hours Mike and I had a bench to ourselves and we were sort of able to sleep. When we got to Bukhara we met up again with our friends. The same English speaking man from the train asked where we were going to stay, and when I told him the hotel that the man in Samarkand had recommended to us, he found a taxi driver that knew exactly where the hotel was, and he bargained a cheap price for our taxi ride into town.
We got to the hotel and Mike and I immediately went to sleep since we'd only gotten a couple of hours on the train. The room had single beds, but a space heater that made the room absolutely toasty. We ventured out of the room around 13:00 to find lunch. We went to a horrificly tacky touristy restaurant near our hotel, which had good laghman made with egg and tomato sauce, but was decorated like a place where you'd have a cheap wedding reception. There were bright blue satin seat covers, pastel decorations on the walls, and big balloons. Our hotel was in the Old Town, and it was super touristy. There weren't that many tourists per se because it's off-season, but every other building was a hotel or a money exchange office, and there were souvenier kiosks set up everywhere. Since Bukhara is basically desert, it was really cold and windy. Mike and I walked around and saw that best sites, but couldn't handle the cold for very long and went back to the hotel by 16:00. We had satellite tv, so we spent hours just lying around watching Italian, Arabic, and German channels.
For dinner we went out with Katy and Josh to a cafe nearby, and we had AMAZING friend meat and French fries. It doesn't sound like much, but it was the best meat I've had since being in Central Asia, and the French fries weren't cold like they usually are. We went back to bed and fell asleep unreasonably early.
The next day we went to buy night train tickets for our trip back to Tashkent that night. We found a ticket office in the city so we didn't have to travel 12 km to get to the train station itself. Then we had plov for lunch with Katy and Josh, specially cooked just for us since it wasn't usually on the menu. After lunch Mike and I set off to do some more siteseeing, and saw the Ark, which was mostly ruins and an archeological site totally not worth the 4$ admission fee, and a mosque with 4 minarets, which was pretty cool. We found a little cafe, drank tea, and continued our card tournament. Mike won some more. Blah.
We got our bags from the hotel and went to the train station, where, for the 12 hour train trip back to Tashkent, we "splurged" and got a 4-person sleeper car with Katy and Josh. I slept really well all night, and we arrived early early yesterday morning to Tashkent.
It's time for us to catch our train to Kazakhstan, so I'm off! More later... we'll likely be spending New Year's 00:00 in a night train from Turkestan to Almaty, so there won't be much going on with me then. Happy New Year's to all and have a great start to 2009!
Mike fell asleep quickly, and I was just looking around, amused by the fact that it was the middle of the night and we were in a crowded train, surrounded by Uzbeks going home for New Year's to be with their families. The boys across from me kept saying words quietly in English, so I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they tried talking to me. Finally one of the guys said, "Excuse me, are you from England?" and then a semi-awkward conversation started, where I had to answer the usual questions... my name, my age, if I'm married (and then I have to explain in detail WHY Mike and I aren't married and why we don't have children...), if I have any brothers or sisters, and what I think about Uzbekistan. His English was mediocre, but he wasn't afraid to try.
Pretty soon another man walked by and heard us speaking English, so he stopped to talk too. His English was really good because he worked for an international bank in Tashkent. The boy across from me asked him to translate something that he didn't know how to say in English, and he asked me why I'd tried to put the bread under my legs. Apparently this was a big faux pas because bread is very very important to Uzbek people, and I disprespected it by putting it under my legs. I got a lecture from the good English speaker about why this was bad to do, and how I shouldn't do it again. He actually said, "These men here think it's just INCREDIBLE that you would do something like that to bread." I remembered having read in Lonely Planet that you never should put bread on the ground or throw it away in public, but I didn't really think about it as I was trying to find a place to keep the bread. I apologized and the guys weren't angry as much as surprised that I didn't have the same respect for bread as they did. Sorry Central Asia, I didn't mean to be a stupid ignorant American tourist...
The man on our bunk eventually got off the train, so for a few hours Mike and I had a bench to ourselves and we were sort of able to sleep. When we got to Bukhara we met up again with our friends. The same English speaking man from the train asked where we were going to stay, and when I told him the hotel that the man in Samarkand had recommended to us, he found a taxi driver that knew exactly where the hotel was, and he bargained a cheap price for our taxi ride into town.
We got to the hotel and Mike and I immediately went to sleep since we'd only gotten a couple of hours on the train. The room had single beds, but a space heater that made the room absolutely toasty. We ventured out of the room around 13:00 to find lunch. We went to a horrificly tacky touristy restaurant near our hotel, which had good laghman made with egg and tomato sauce, but was decorated like a place where you'd have a cheap wedding reception. There were bright blue satin seat covers, pastel decorations on the walls, and big balloons. Our hotel was in the Old Town, and it was super touristy. There weren't that many tourists per se because it's off-season, but every other building was a hotel or a money exchange office, and there were souvenier kiosks set up everywhere. Since Bukhara is basically desert, it was really cold and windy. Mike and I walked around and saw that best sites, but couldn't handle the cold for very long and went back to the hotel by 16:00. We had satellite tv, so we spent hours just lying around watching Italian, Arabic, and German channels.
For dinner we went out with Katy and Josh to a cafe nearby, and we had AMAZING friend meat and French fries. It doesn't sound like much, but it was the best meat I've had since being in Central Asia, and the French fries weren't cold like they usually are. We went back to bed and fell asleep unreasonably early.
The next day we went to buy night train tickets for our trip back to Tashkent that night. We found a ticket office in the city so we didn't have to travel 12 km to get to the train station itself. Then we had plov for lunch with Katy and Josh, specially cooked just for us since it wasn't usually on the menu. After lunch Mike and I set off to do some more siteseeing, and saw the Ark, which was mostly ruins and an archeological site totally not worth the 4$ admission fee, and a mosque with 4 minarets, which was pretty cool. We found a little cafe, drank tea, and continued our card tournament. Mike won some more. Blah.
We got our bags from the hotel and went to the train station, where, for the 12 hour train trip back to Tashkent, we "splurged" and got a 4-person sleeper car with Katy and Josh. I slept really well all night, and we arrived early early yesterday morning to Tashkent.
It's time for us to catch our train to Kazakhstan, so I'm off! More later... we'll likely be spending New Year's 00:00 in a night train from Turkestan to Almaty, so there won't be much going on with me then. Happy New Year's to all and have a great start to 2009!
Friday, December 26, 2008
There are not enough superlatives in any language to describe Samarkand.
Amazing. Marvelous. Beautiful. Magnificent. Mahtava. Ihana. Klassno. Krasivyi. Wunderschoen. Abdan Jakshy. Etc... but they still don't even scrape the surface of how amazing everything is here in Samarkand.
To backtrack... our second day in Tashkent was great. The weather was better and the roads weren't as wet. We looked into getting train tickets, but we couldn't until we had our passports, so we had to wait until evening. We ran into a really nice guy in line who gave us his business card and told us to call him if we had any problems at all in Uzbekistan. The people here are unbelievably friendly. We took a streetcar to the old part of town, and wandered around the bazaar. It was bigger and much better organized than bazaars in Kyrgystan- the different sections are labelled, so you know where to find what you want, rather than having to wander around aimlessly, hoping to happen upon an aisle that has what you want. There was a domed room full of spices, and all the sellers were really friendly and interested in foreigners. People tend to stare at us because it is definitely not tourist season, but they are mostly friendly stares. Children talk to us, and many people say "Hello!" when we walk by. After the market, we walked north of the Old Town to Khast Imom, a mosque. As we walked down the winding streets of the Old Town, there was an open door into a courtyard, which just happened to be a cafe. It wasn't labelled at all, and we never would have found it if the door wouldn't have been open at that moment. We ate great shashlyk and then went to the mosque, which was really beautiful, even though it was sort of overcast.
We then needed to catch a cab to get to the Kazakh Embassy by 17:00 to get our visas. A cab stopped without even being flagged down, but quoted us too high a price. It's great in UZ that all cars are cabs, even if they aren't licensed cabs. So as soon as the first car drove away, the next car pulled up and asked us where we wanted to go. All wanted too much money, so we walked out to the main street and haggled one regular person (not a cab) down to a price we wanted. He drove us to the wrong place at first, only one block from where we wanted to be, but instead of just letting us get out and walk a few minutes, he turned around and brought us right to the door of the Embassy. We had to wait a while for the doors to open, but we picked up our transit visas and paid our $20, no problems. Our transit visas are actually for 1 month, rather than 5 days like I'd been told. Too bad we have to get back to work on January 5th!! We walked back to the train station to buy our tickets. We first had to register in the immigation office, and then we bought tickets to Samarkand, and Evan to Nukus, in the Western part of UZ and close-ish to the Aral Sea. We bought some bread from a babushka in the station, and then got on the train. Mike and I had a 4 person sleeper room, which we had to ourselves for most of the time, except maybe 20 minutes when a nice guy from Karakalpakstan, the western region of UZ, came in and talked to us in Russian. It's incredible how friendly the people are in UZ!
And now about Samarkand...
Mike and I arrived on the night train at about 1:45 am 2 days ago, after a 5 hour ride from Tashkent. We left Evan on the train. We were approached but a cute/creepy old lady at the train station who offered us a homestay for 12000 som for the night, which was super cheap, but we decided against it because in Uzbekistan, you need to register with immigration for every night you spend, and hotels do it for you, but this woman couldn't. So we turned her down and caught a cab to a hotel listed in Lonely Planet, Hotel Registan. The write-up was pretty negative, but it seemed like a pretty standard Soviet hotel. It wasn't as bad as Lonely Planet made it sound, that's for sure. The next morning we walked into town to find a new hotel. We chose Antica, which was Lonely Planet's pick for the best hotel. And it was amazing. It's located in an old part of town, with cobblestone alleys and courtyards. I imagine that in summer, when all the fruit trees are in bloom, that it's absolutely amazing. We got a cute room with a view of one of the many blue-tiled mausoleums, breakfast included, a double bed, and a really modern private bathroom with a great shower. It was $40 for the 2 of us, but totally worth it. We had tea at the hotel and then set off to wander around Samarkand.
You can't look anywhere without seeing at least one blue cupola/dome from one of the many mosques or minarets. We went first to the Registan, which is probably what Samarkand is most known-for. It's a group of three Medressas, built between the 15th and 17th centuries. Entrace was 6500 sum ($5), so we decided to just check it out from the outside, and save going in for the next day. We then wandered down to some other mosques and the bazaar. We saw Bibi-Khanym Mosque, which it's said was built by one of Timur's wives as a surprise for him, but the architect fell in love with her and refused to finish building the mosque unless she gave him a kiss. The kiss left a mark on her face, and Timur saw it when it got home and had the architect executed. From that point forward, he decreed that women must where headscarves to avoid tempting men. Who knows if it's true, but it's a good story anyways. Again we didn't go inside, because it doesn't seem like there was really much to see other than a courtyard. We then went to Shah-i-Zinda, which is said to be one of the most moving sites in all of Central Asia, and a place that Muslim pilgrims visit because the cousin and good friend of the Prophet Mohammed is buried there. It's just a bunch of mauseleums, but there is great tile-work and a huge cemetery to walk through. We ran into our friends Katy and Josh from Bishkek! We knew they were spending vacation in UZ also, but had no idea what their plans were. Even crazier was that they were staying at the same hotel as us, in the next room! They had also been approache by the creepy/cute old lady in the middle of the night at the train station, and they actually stayed with her! They said she lived in a really scary part of town near the train station, and that when they said that they weren't married to each other, she started talking super religious and even got out a Bible and read them the Ten Commandments! So I'm very glad that Mike and I didn't stay there.
After we parted ways with them, Mike and I wandered around the cemetery for ages, reading gravestones and looking at the pictures of the deceased that are lasered onto many of the stones. Some plots were really intricate, with roofs and lots of decoration. There was even one man who had a life-sized statue of him on his grave! We grabbed schwarmas for dinner and went back to the hotel. There's a big New Year's tree set up in a square near the hotel, and many people just were hanging out there, talking to their friends and setting off little fireworks. The people here just are so much friendlier and not nearly as aggressive or intimidating as Kyrgyz people.
This morning, we got up at 9 and had breakfast at the hotel with Katy and Josh. We wandered around the mausoleum housing the tomb of Timur and checked out the Timur statue, and then we set off to the train station to buy tickets for the night train to Bukhara. Since it's close to New Years, the trains are likely to be full. We got a bit confused and I thought the ticket man told us we had to come back at 1 am to buy tickets for the 1:45 am train, but it turned out he meant 1 pm. We didn't figure this out until we'd gotten into a marshrutka to head back to the center of town, but we got off and walked back to the train station. It was amazing weather today- sunny, complete blue skies, and warm enough that I had my coat off for most of the time. We bought cheap cheap seats and then caught a marshrutka back to the Registan (we'd decided that it would be worth it to pay the 6500 sum entrance fee). As we were taking panorama pictures, a policeman approached us and offered to let us into a locked part of Ulugbek's medressa to walk to the top of one of the minarets. Lonely Planet said that this would happen, and Katy and Josh said they were approached too, and they did it for 10,000 sum (talked the cop down from 20,000) and that it was amazing, and totally worth it. We weren't going to pay that much, so we declined and walked to another part. I left Mike alone for a few minutes to check out a different room, and when I saw him again, he was surrounded by 6 Uzbek children. It turns out they were an English primary school class with their English teacher, hanging out at the Registan hoping to find some tourists to practice English with. Mike and I sat down with them for about an hour, just asking and answering simple questions. They were all about 15, and had only elementary English skills. But their teacher was young and had great English, and was fun to talk to.
Then we learned all about Uzbek textiles from a nice seller, who tried to get us to buy some fabric from him, which of course we didn't do. As we went out to the center of the 3 medressas, yet another cop approached us, offering us entrance to the minaret for 2000 sum apiece. Still not wanting to spend more money, since we're going to run out anyways and we have to get money western unioned to us, we declined again. The first cop came to us again and said that I could go up for free since I was so beautiful. We left the medressa, but the cops kept whistling after us, trying to get us to go up the minaret. The cop was hilarious- he asked if we were married, and then said that if we went up the minaret, maybe we'd get married. He asked how many girlfriends Mike had, and when he said 1, the cop said that after going up the minaret maybe he could get more. He asked if we had any children, and then said if we went up the minaret, I'd probably be pregnant. It was great to joke around with policemen. We went back in and bargained to get up the minaret- I'd get in free, Mike would pay 2000 sum ($1.50), and I would have to kiss each of the policemen on the cheek. That was too good a bargain to pass up, so we went back in and up the minaret. We climbed lots of scary stair to the top, and the view was beautiful. Mike and I still aren't married, we have no children, and he still (unfortunately?) only has one girlfriend, but it was great. The cop walked part of the way with us, making sure we were careful stepping on the crumbling, unrenovated steps. He gave us his phone number, and said that when we come back in June we should call him up. I did kiss him on the cheek as promised, and got a picture of me doing it. It's not everyday I get to kiss a policeman, especially in a "Police State" country with supposedly scary policemen. The other policeman came up and got his kiss too, and then gave me his address and asked me to send him the picture. He also said that when we come back in summer, we should ask for him at the Registan and that we can stay in his house instead of a hotel. The Registan had closed by this point, but a friend of the cops took us into his souvenier and gave us information about getting a cheap hotel in Bukhara. He wrote down the address, told us how to get there, and even called ahead to make sure that we could get a double room with hot water, breakfast, and a tv for $20 for the 2 of us, rather than $40! I wanted to buy a postcard from him, but he gave it to me for free! It was amazing. One of the cops stood with us while we took night pictures of the medressas, and told us more information about the history of the medressas.
Samarkand is just AMAZING! I wish we could just stay forever, joke with salesmen and policemen, visit mosque after mosque, and eat glorious plov. I'm glad Mike and I will be coming back through Uzbekistan at the start of our land journey to Turkey next summer.
We set off to Bukhara tonight, and it will be beautiful there as well! Happy Boxing Day to all.
To backtrack... our second day in Tashkent was great. The weather was better and the roads weren't as wet. We looked into getting train tickets, but we couldn't until we had our passports, so we had to wait until evening. We ran into a really nice guy in line who gave us his business card and told us to call him if we had any problems at all in Uzbekistan. The people here are unbelievably friendly. We took a streetcar to the old part of town, and wandered around the bazaar. It was bigger and much better organized than bazaars in Kyrgystan- the different sections are labelled, so you know where to find what you want, rather than having to wander around aimlessly, hoping to happen upon an aisle that has what you want. There was a domed room full of spices, and all the sellers were really friendly and interested in foreigners. People tend to stare at us because it is definitely not tourist season, but they are mostly friendly stares. Children talk to us, and many people say "Hello!" when we walk by. After the market, we walked north of the Old Town to Khast Imom, a mosque. As we walked down the winding streets of the Old Town, there was an open door into a courtyard, which just happened to be a cafe. It wasn't labelled at all, and we never would have found it if the door wouldn't have been open at that moment. We ate great shashlyk and then went to the mosque, which was really beautiful, even though it was sort of overcast.
We then needed to catch a cab to get to the Kazakh Embassy by 17:00 to get our visas. A cab stopped without even being flagged down, but quoted us too high a price. It's great in UZ that all cars are cabs, even if they aren't licensed cabs. So as soon as the first car drove away, the next car pulled up and asked us where we wanted to go. All wanted too much money, so we walked out to the main street and haggled one regular person (not a cab) down to a price we wanted. He drove us to the wrong place at first, only one block from where we wanted to be, but instead of just letting us get out and walk a few minutes, he turned around and brought us right to the door of the Embassy. We had to wait a while for the doors to open, but we picked up our transit visas and paid our $20, no problems. Our transit visas are actually for 1 month, rather than 5 days like I'd been told. Too bad we have to get back to work on January 5th!! We walked back to the train station to buy our tickets. We first had to register in the immigation office, and then we bought tickets to Samarkand, and Evan to Nukus, in the Western part of UZ and close-ish to the Aral Sea. We bought some bread from a babushka in the station, and then got on the train. Mike and I had a 4 person sleeper room, which we had to ourselves for most of the time, except maybe 20 minutes when a nice guy from Karakalpakstan, the western region of UZ, came in and talked to us in Russian. It's incredible how friendly the people are in UZ!
And now about Samarkand...
Mike and I arrived on the night train at about 1:45 am 2 days ago, after a 5 hour ride from Tashkent. We left Evan on the train. We were approached but a cute/creepy old lady at the train station who offered us a homestay for 12000 som for the night, which was super cheap, but we decided against it because in Uzbekistan, you need to register with immigration for every night you spend, and hotels do it for you, but this woman couldn't. So we turned her down and caught a cab to a hotel listed in Lonely Planet, Hotel Registan. The write-up was pretty negative, but it seemed like a pretty standard Soviet hotel. It wasn't as bad as Lonely Planet made it sound, that's for sure. The next morning we walked into town to find a new hotel. We chose Antica, which was Lonely Planet's pick for the best hotel. And it was amazing. It's located in an old part of town, with cobblestone alleys and courtyards. I imagine that in summer, when all the fruit trees are in bloom, that it's absolutely amazing. We got a cute room with a view of one of the many blue-tiled mausoleums, breakfast included, a double bed, and a really modern private bathroom with a great shower. It was $40 for the 2 of us, but totally worth it. We had tea at the hotel and then set off to wander around Samarkand.
You can't look anywhere without seeing at least one blue cupola/dome from one of the many mosques or minarets. We went first to the Registan, which is probably what Samarkand is most known-for. It's a group of three Medressas, built between the 15th and 17th centuries. Entrace was 6500 sum ($5), so we decided to just check it out from the outside, and save going in for the next day. We then wandered down to some other mosques and the bazaar. We saw Bibi-Khanym Mosque, which it's said was built by one of Timur's wives as a surprise for him, but the architect fell in love with her and refused to finish building the mosque unless she gave him a kiss. The kiss left a mark on her face, and Timur saw it when it got home and had the architect executed. From that point forward, he decreed that women must where headscarves to avoid tempting men. Who knows if it's true, but it's a good story anyways. Again we didn't go inside, because it doesn't seem like there was really much to see other than a courtyard. We then went to Shah-i-Zinda, which is said to be one of the most moving sites in all of Central Asia, and a place that Muslim pilgrims visit because the cousin and good friend of the Prophet Mohammed is buried there. It's just a bunch of mauseleums, but there is great tile-work and a huge cemetery to walk through. We ran into our friends Katy and Josh from Bishkek! We knew they were spending vacation in UZ also, but had no idea what their plans were. Even crazier was that they were staying at the same hotel as us, in the next room! They had also been approache by the creepy/cute old lady in the middle of the night at the train station, and they actually stayed with her! They said she lived in a really scary part of town near the train station, and that when they said that they weren't married to each other, she started talking super religious and even got out a Bible and read them the Ten Commandments! So I'm very glad that Mike and I didn't stay there.
After we parted ways with them, Mike and I wandered around the cemetery for ages, reading gravestones and looking at the pictures of the deceased that are lasered onto many of the stones. Some plots were really intricate, with roofs and lots of decoration. There was even one man who had a life-sized statue of him on his grave! We grabbed schwarmas for dinner and went back to the hotel. There's a big New Year's tree set up in a square near the hotel, and many people just were hanging out there, talking to their friends and setting off little fireworks. The people here just are so much friendlier and not nearly as aggressive or intimidating as Kyrgyz people.
This morning, we got up at 9 and had breakfast at the hotel with Katy and Josh. We wandered around the mausoleum housing the tomb of Timur and checked out the Timur statue, and then we set off to the train station to buy tickets for the night train to Bukhara. Since it's close to New Years, the trains are likely to be full. We got a bit confused and I thought the ticket man told us we had to come back at 1 am to buy tickets for the 1:45 am train, but it turned out he meant 1 pm. We didn't figure this out until we'd gotten into a marshrutka to head back to the center of town, but we got off and walked back to the train station. It was amazing weather today- sunny, complete blue skies, and warm enough that I had my coat off for most of the time. We bought cheap cheap seats and then caught a marshrutka back to the Registan (we'd decided that it would be worth it to pay the 6500 sum entrance fee). As we were taking panorama pictures, a policeman approached us and offered to let us into a locked part of Ulugbek's medressa to walk to the top of one of the minarets. Lonely Planet said that this would happen, and Katy and Josh said they were approached too, and they did it for 10,000 sum (talked the cop down from 20,000) and that it was amazing, and totally worth it. We weren't going to pay that much, so we declined and walked to another part. I left Mike alone for a few minutes to check out a different room, and when I saw him again, he was surrounded by 6 Uzbek children. It turns out they were an English primary school class with their English teacher, hanging out at the Registan hoping to find some tourists to practice English with. Mike and I sat down with them for about an hour, just asking and answering simple questions. They were all about 15, and had only elementary English skills. But their teacher was young and had great English, and was fun to talk to.
Then we learned all about Uzbek textiles from a nice seller, who tried to get us to buy some fabric from him, which of course we didn't do. As we went out to the center of the 3 medressas, yet another cop approached us, offering us entrance to the minaret for 2000 sum apiece. Still not wanting to spend more money, since we're going to run out anyways and we have to get money western unioned to us, we declined again. The first cop came to us again and said that I could go up for free since I was so beautiful. We left the medressa, but the cops kept whistling after us, trying to get us to go up the minaret. The cop was hilarious- he asked if we were married, and then said that if we went up the minaret, maybe we'd get married. He asked how many girlfriends Mike had, and when he said 1, the cop said that after going up the minaret maybe he could get more. He asked if we had any children, and then said if we went up the minaret, I'd probably be pregnant. It was great to joke around with policemen. We went back in and bargained to get up the minaret- I'd get in free, Mike would pay 2000 sum ($1.50), and I would have to kiss each of the policemen on the cheek. That was too good a bargain to pass up, so we went back in and up the minaret. We climbed lots of scary stair to the top, and the view was beautiful. Mike and I still aren't married, we have no children, and he still (unfortunately?) only has one girlfriend, but it was great. The cop walked part of the way with us, making sure we were careful stepping on the crumbling, unrenovated steps. He gave us his phone number, and said that when we come back in June we should call him up. I did kiss him on the cheek as promised, and got a picture of me doing it. It's not everyday I get to kiss a policeman, especially in a "Police State" country with supposedly scary policemen. The other policeman came up and got his kiss too, and then gave me his address and asked me to send him the picture. He also said that when we come back in summer, we should ask for him at the Registan and that we can stay in his house instead of a hotel. The Registan had closed by this point, but a friend of the cops took us into his souvenier and gave us information about getting a cheap hotel in Bukhara. He wrote down the address, told us how to get there, and even called ahead to make sure that we could get a double room with hot water, breakfast, and a tv for $20 for the 2 of us, rather than $40! I wanted to buy a postcard from him, but he gave it to me for free! It was amazing. One of the cops stood with us while we took night pictures of the medressas, and told us more information about the history of the medressas.
Samarkand is just AMAZING! I wish we could just stay forever, joke with salesmen and policemen, visit mosque after mosque, and eat glorious plov. I'm glad Mike and I will be coming back through Uzbekistan at the start of our land journey to Turkey next summer.
We set off to Bukhara tonight, and it will be beautiful there as well! Happy Boxing Day to all.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Tashkent
We made it to Tashkent without any more dead bodies. The staff at the Osh Guesthouse arranged a taxi to take us all the way to Tashkent, so we didn't have anything to organize ourselves. The border crossing took about an hour, and we didn't have to pay any bribes. We stopped for lunch at an Uzbek restaurant, and ate some wonderful plov. I chipped off a big hunk of one of my molars, but I didn't expose a nerve, so thankfully I hopefully won't have to pay a Kyrgyz dentist a visit. Uzbek currency is ridiculous- 1$ is about 1500 sum, and the largest bill is a 1000 sum note. So we changed 50$, got 74,000 sum, all in 1000 sum bills. We are all carrying around giant wads of cash. It's comical.
We stopped at a car repair shop, and sat around for more than 30 minutes while our driver had something under the hood checked out- we think he was getting his lights changed (?). We just sat around in the car slowly freezing.
There was another mountain pass we had to get through, and it was blizzarding horribly for most of the pass. We had to drive slowly, and at one point the road in the other direction actually closed down. There were a few bulldozers plowing the road in the other direction, and quite a few dump trucks full of dirt, with men in the back shoveling onto the road. There were many cars that had 2 or 3 people perched on the hood or trunk of the car, covered in snow because of the blizzard. We weren't sure if they were just hitchhikers, or if they were picked up from cars that got stuck in the snow. There were also some lonely-looking donkeys wandering down the road, covered in snow. Mike made up a song about them. It was cute. We had a Daewoo just like most of the rest of the drivers in Uzbekistan, but miraculously we made it up and down the mountain without getting stuck.
We got to Tashkent around 20:00 and went to a hotel at the train station that Lonely Planet recommended. Rooms were 10,000 sum (about 8 dollars), and I was in a woman's dorm and Mike and Evan in a man's dorm. It turns out that we both had the rooms to ourselves, but we couldn't just stay in one room in case others came in during the night. Since it's close to the train station, locals seem to appear if they have hours to kill between trains. There were no other tourists there at all. There was a great housekeeper who spoke English and helped us out. We had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant.
This morning we set out pretty early because we wanted to go to the Kazakh Embassy to apply for our transit visas. We did, and the process was painless and quick- we just needed to get copies of our passports. We have to go back tomorrow evening to pick them up. We got 5-day transit visas, so Mike and I will have time to stop in Turkistan and Almaty like we'd been hoping. The Kazakh Embassy in Bishkek is a nightmare, so I'm really glad we waited until we got to Uzbekistan.
The weather was terrible today- dismal, cloudy, cold, and wet. It turns out that both pairs of shoes that I brought leak, so I've had to suffer with wet feet the entire duration of our trip thus far, and for the next 10 days too, unless I buy new shoes at a bazaar somewhere. Blah.
Today we just wandered around. We had lunch at an amazing Turkish restaurant, where I had the best Iskender Kebab I've ever had. We then found the statute of Amir Timur (Tamerlane) and went to the Uzbekistan History Museum, which was fairly interesting and actually had captions in English! We're staying at the same hotel tonight, Tomorrow we're going to check out the Bazaar and the Old Town,and if all goes well with our Kazakh visas, we'll pick them up at 5 pm and then Mike and I will take the train to Samarkand, where we'll spend Christmas Day and then head to Bukhara.
Merry Christmas! I miss you all and I'm glad that you read my blog and are interested in my life here in Central Asia!
We stopped at a car repair shop, and sat around for more than 30 minutes while our driver had something under the hood checked out- we think he was getting his lights changed (?). We just sat around in the car slowly freezing.
There was another mountain pass we had to get through, and it was blizzarding horribly for most of the pass. We had to drive slowly, and at one point the road in the other direction actually closed down. There were a few bulldozers plowing the road in the other direction, and quite a few dump trucks full of dirt, with men in the back shoveling onto the road. There were many cars that had 2 or 3 people perched on the hood or trunk of the car, covered in snow because of the blizzard. We weren't sure if they were just hitchhikers, or if they were picked up from cars that got stuck in the snow. There were also some lonely-looking donkeys wandering down the road, covered in snow. Mike made up a song about them. It was cute. We had a Daewoo just like most of the rest of the drivers in Uzbekistan, but miraculously we made it up and down the mountain without getting stuck.
We got to Tashkent around 20:00 and went to a hotel at the train station that Lonely Planet recommended. Rooms were 10,000 sum (about 8 dollars), and I was in a woman's dorm and Mike and Evan in a man's dorm. It turns out that we both had the rooms to ourselves, but we couldn't just stay in one room in case others came in during the night. Since it's close to the train station, locals seem to appear if they have hours to kill between trains. There were no other tourists there at all. There was a great housekeeper who spoke English and helped us out. We had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant.
This morning we set out pretty early because we wanted to go to the Kazakh Embassy to apply for our transit visas. We did, and the process was painless and quick- we just needed to get copies of our passports. We have to go back tomorrow evening to pick them up. We got 5-day transit visas, so Mike and I will have time to stop in Turkistan and Almaty like we'd been hoping. The Kazakh Embassy in Bishkek is a nightmare, so I'm really glad we waited until we got to Uzbekistan.
The weather was terrible today- dismal, cloudy, cold, and wet. It turns out that both pairs of shoes that I brought leak, so I've had to suffer with wet feet the entire duration of our trip thus far, and for the next 10 days too, unless I buy new shoes at a bazaar somewhere. Blah.
Today we just wandered around. We had lunch at an amazing Turkish restaurant, where I had the best Iskender Kebab I've ever had. We then found the statute of Amir Timur (Tamerlane) and went to the Uzbekistan History Museum, which was fairly interesting and actually had captions in English! We're staying at the same hotel tonight, Tomorrow we're going to check out the Bazaar and the Old Town,and if all goes well with our Kazakh visas, we'll pick them up at 5 pm and then Mike and I will take the train to Samarkand, where we'll spend Christmas Day and then head to Bukhara.
Merry Christmas! I miss you all and I'm glad that you read my blog and are interested in my life here in Central Asia!
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