Turkmenistan et al
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
May 2008
If Today is Friday, This Must be Ashgabat
Kayfalic!
I started this trip in a different manner from any trip before. I went into the emergency room the day before I left with pneumonia. While a new approach can always helpful, I have to say that I do not recommend starting an eight country, four continent, 16 day trip with pneumonia. It is not all it is coughed-up to be.
Seriously 10 years ago I would have had trouble identifying many of the cities and/or countries I visited. So, let’s start this with a quiz. Name the countries these cities are located in. Bonus points if you can name the two that aren’t capitols of their country. Here goes: Paris (Too easy, unless you blurted out “Texas”), Dubai, Al Khabar (not related to Al Kaline where they make batteries), Doha, Baku, Ashgabat, Istanbul, and Cairo. Names of the counties are at the end of this email.
On the laundry sheet in the hotel room in Al Khabar you can get the following cleaned under the men’s section: Shirts, undershirts, undershorts, t/shirt, socks, handkerchief, trousers, and pajamas. But it doesn’t stop there. Also on the list is: thobes, gutharas, caps, serwals, and bisht. (In addition to clean, you had better have your bisht together.) The women’s list only had abaya that I didn’t recognize. The only other thing really weird in Saudi was the duty-free shop in the airport. They couldn’t sell liquor like they do in every other duty-free airport shop in the world, but they sold Tide laundry detergent. They had a huge floor-to-ceiling stack of Tide boxes. I guess if you are in Saudi and can’t have liquor, you eat Tide powder for a buzz.
Although I have been to both Doha and Dubai twice before, I haven’t been to either in nearly eight years. Both appear to have more than doubled in size. In Dubai, my coworker went skiing. Snow Skiing. On real snow. If you flunked geography, Dubai is in the desert. They have a real indoor ski slope with a couple of runs in one of the malls in Dubai. Your two hour $50 lift ticket includes the rental of skis and an Arctic suit since most desert dwellers don’t own either. I was having a little medical relapse and had to pass on the opportunity.
Baku is still Baku. While Doha and Dubai have changed unbelievably, I think they still had the exact same little old women sweeping the Baku streets in the early morning as they did on my last visit in 2003. And the pollution in the Caspian is still unbelievable. I believe you could scoop seawater directly out of the Caspian and burn it in your Chevy. There have been so many oil spills in the Caspian, and it has such an oily sheen and so many unplugged open well bores, I think the Caspian Water is probably premium octane and could improve your mileage.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan is the weirdest place I have ever been. The main drag through town looks like Frank Lloyd Wright lived here during his time before rehab. OK, assume Mr. Wright had a drug or alcohol problem and continued to design massive government buildings while flying higher than his cousins, Wilbur and Orville. The buildings are immense and arty. But in a strange culture-crossing way. It is like some alien watched some movies and then tried to build a model city with buildings influenced by what he saw in Ben Hur, Star Wars, Citizen Kane, All the President’s Men, Casablanca, and PeeWee Herman’s Big Adventure. The buildings are huge and massive with columns, arches, and marble. And they all have soldiers walking post outside. And the soldiers do not let you to take pictures of the building. Or even attempt to walk on the side walk that leads up to the building. There was a gold statue of the president I was going to step over and look at and a guard came running yelling “NO! YOU! AMERICAN! NO!” All I was doing was turning to walk up the huge sidewalk that went up to the statue. I was not relieving myself on the grass or chanting slogans to overthrow the government. I asked if I could take a picture of the stature and I thought for a moment he was going to reach for his sidearm. Being the rebel I am, I snuck in a few pictures anyway, but there were so many soldiers guarding against the CMDs (Cameras of Mass Destruction) and the American invaders, I hate to admit that I finally gave up. I think that they may want to check the water supply for contaminants in Ashgabat! Oh, and I did make it back to the hotel before my mandatory alien visitor curfew.Violators are arrested and imprisoned. In the PeeWee Herman Memorial Penitentiary.
I flew from Ashgabat to Cairo with a six hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey. Rather than stay in the airport for six hours, I elected to contribute to the retirement fund of a deranged taxi driver. I went to the historic area of town in which the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and numerous historic structures are located and walked around for a couple of hours. The ride back was very eventful. The streets are so narrow that only one car can fit between the buildings. But the streets are not marked as one-way. And they are winding. So my suicidal driver would shoot down one of these streets at about 30-50 miles per hour. They are so narrow that twice he knocked his mirrors in from hitting buildings. About 4-5 times we encountered someone coming up the street from the other direction. There would then be this man-check in which both would wave frantically at each other and yell things through the windshield. It is very ritualistic. Finally the one who has a second, or in our opponent’s case, a second, third, forth, and fifth car come up behind him wins and the other (usually my driver), then has to back up about a half mile until he can squeeze his 4 foot wide car into a 4 foot 1 inch alleyway. At one time on my return trip to the airport, I think my driver was actually in the negative, having actually backed up more miles than he had driven forward in miles.
Finally, I write this from Cairo. I love Egypt. Yeah, it is dirty, corrupt, high in crime, but it has it’s good points – the history, the people, and the markets are all fascinating. Where else can you have a burger in the Hard Rock Café on the Nile River just a short distance from 5,000 year old pyramids?
I hope this finds you well and I also hope we see you soon!
Motzaloma!
Keith
PS: Here is the names of the countries for the geologically challenged: Paris, France; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Al Khabar, Saudi Arabia; Doha, Qatar; Baku, Azerbaijan; Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Istanbul, Turkey; Cairo, Egypt. Bonus round: Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE, Ankara is the capital of Turkey, and Riyadh is the capital of Saudit Arabia.