Hello all,
So just to conclude the story from yesterday the American guy went on for the better part of an hour about the whole thing mixing anger with gross hitting on the lady skills. He basically was vowing to track down this lady and her agency so they wouldn't scam anyone else. I don't know how far he'll get not that it really matters, I doubt there are any laws that say anywhere in the world that you have to leave your country to go live with another man in his country because he bought you a plane ticket before you met him and he turned out to be an ugly creep. So when we came out to the other room where they were having their conversation this guy almost jumped out of his chair and ran for the exit. The rest of that day I think we finished our recovery from the flu and decided to take some antibotics to plug up the leaking bum issues.
The next day we changed accomidation to a youth hostel across town that took all too long to get to. It was set in this courtyard that is the third courtyard within courtyards and the signs were all printed off from a computer so they aren't very big. Not the nicest hostel I've been in, but clean enough. The rest of this day we had a late lunch, found free internet and abused our time on it by being online for a couple of hours. Then we strolled down to see some more Orthadox churches. It was funny to see two churches about 100 meters apart facing each, one being green and the other being blue. Do you really need two churchs that close together? We don't know, but we decided that baby blue and baby green are the colors of very old tribes of Kiev that fought bitterly and would not go to church together. We're probably wrong but who knows?
Funny story.. in the evening after dinner we came back and were waiting for the reception guy to get done with the phone so we could get a recipe for the days we were staying when this 6' tall lady with long black hair, mini-skirt, and highheels comes trancing through the lobby with a short fat businessman complete with briefcase in tow. I didn't know this and maybe you didn't either Internation youth hostels now accomidate more than just cheap backpacking youth from around the world. Sara and myself made eye contact from across the lobby as they entered and I couldn't help but laughing right then and there. Ahh... what to say what to say....
Today we got up eventually and found some delicious cheese buns from breakfast. Was able to fax Ken the list of items in the box so that maybe it can leave the Edmonton Internation Airport. Hopefully... and then made our way to the train station. Our third line ended up being the right one, and after two people pushed infront of us, one who was buying a ticket all the way to Bishkek which took forever we bought tickets to Odessa. We didn't get the train we wanted as instead of leaving at 7pm and getting in at 8am we leave at 3pm and get in at 5am. And we're not sure what kind of berth we're in or anything... Guess we'll find out by either asking the lobby guy at the hostel but he may not know, so we'll find out on the 2nd.
Then we took the metro again, which has the coolest little tokens and walked through some of the main squares and up through some parks that overlooked the river. The parks are very nice to stroll through with their tall leafy trees. We didn't make it as far as I would have liked to, but Sara agreed that on her birthday we can do some sightseeing even. Near the end of our walk in one of the underground crosswalks was a bookstore. We tend to go in them looking for guidebooks, maps, or reading material. In this store we found the 7th Harry Potter and decided to purchase it. After that we hurried to get to the computer for 6pm for Sara to talk to her mom. We hurried and got to the area with time to spare, me rushing on the way to take photos of the cool buildings. It took us forever to find the place and ended up giving up, and started walking back to the hostel before we checked one last place... And here we are..
I apologize that time may sound sorta mumbo jumbo, it is just I find it hard to write with a ticker counting down my minutes above my head.
Tyson and Sara
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sorry Jen and Melissa but I've met Sara's real sisters
Today we woke up .. sort of.. Tyson actually was still sleeping when i got up hard to believe i know brace yourselves.. but after lying in bed for about 7 days straight my back just couldn't take it and i was lying restlessly wondering where this god awful music was playing from outside.. . Oh ok let me back up iv'e just been reminded by the documentry personage that i need to back up and start from the train ride from st.petersburg to Kiev. The train ride was well it was as good as you can think of being on a train and sick. We laid there, Tyson read (let me repharse that.. Tyson read my book the 6th harrypotter because he finished his.. but i didnt mind to much because i just slept). We barely ate on the train.. just some dried bagle or whatever it was and some juice. Tyson was mad that we didn't have boarder control in between russia and belarus. I was fine with it.. i didnt want the train to stop in case i had to go to the bathroom and then they lock the bathroom and well you get the picture. Anyways our two compartment mates where 2 men whos name were the same .. both Sergi. One was a medic... we think like paramedic or something but he didnt seem to care that we were ill, and the other a lawyer who talked an awful lot (he knew some english) however he drank too much and was very dramatic in his talk and loud. Not the best thing when you are sick and we really aren't the most sociable drinking type of train mates even in the best of times. So we entertained the Sergi's for awhile as he was asking questions about how can i be ukrainan when i dont even drink vodka or eat borsh or know the correst word for perogies because apparently they have no idea what the heck you are talking about when you mention perogies they look at me funny. I told them my grandmothers maidan name Yarsh and apparently that is polish and again they questioned me and i got a little scared that maybe i wasn't ukrainian. I said poland and Ukraine are close enough and i know that she was from Ukraine so beat it! They also wondered why Tyson had no religion .. i felt kind of awakward as he was really mad at this and we said it was no problem and that he just wasn't raised in a religious family. I was ok though because apparently catholics and orthadox are friends. He then made us listen to his orthadox heavey metal music .. which i can't understand either.. the orthadox priests scare me a little with there large hats and there long hair and beards. Finally after he kept telling us to take Vodka to heal our stomachs he let us to go sleep. Only to be awoken by asking "8miligrams of vodka... make you better.. want some.. i go get", we shook our heads saying NO THANKS! He was kind enough to bring us back juice boxes instead.. maybe they had vodka in them who knows. The rest of the train was uneventful.. the boarder guys came and stamped our belarus visa after checking it thoroughly and insepcting that it was real.. we were a little worried.. but none the less the stamp came out .. Then about 30 minutes on the other side into Ukraine they came and stamped us.. this was easy as no visa was required, and then a guy came and checked our bags and wasn't even concered or nothing.. just said clothes and we nodded our heads and he said ok. Nothing like the boarder crossing the train from kazakhstan to Russia that was some seriousness.
So the Orthadox heavey metal lover lawyer Sergi kindly helped us get a taxi because we didn't have a map yet or anything. So to our hotel we went. We had one night already pre booked from Canada and once we got to the hotel we had pasta and watched some bbc and went to bed. Still not feeling 100%.
The next day we had some things to do.. well not really just looking for some atm's and interent and such ... and then still not feeling well so read and watched tv in the hotel and had more pasta and then bed. Funny thing was that just after we'd settled down to use the internet a guy from the southern states came in and started talking to the business center lady about making phone calls back home and such. He couldn't see us, or rather didn't turn around to see us and I think that he felt he was alone with this young lady, because he breaks into this long sob story that I had to stop myself from laughing out loud over a number of times. It goes something like this. This poor man is home in the US and is searching the internet for a companion you know someone he can love and share his life with, with requirements of being young (under 30) as he was into his 40's for sure and hot. Well over 250 women emailed him in return, no word of a lie, from Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Prague etc. Well he settles on this one through an agency, so he knew that he wasn't being screwed around. They wrote emails and she said that she loved him and really looked forward to seeing him. Well this went on for a while until he decided that this was the girl for him. At this point she informed him that for her to come back to the US with him she needed to get a bunch of paperwork done, very believable story for being in this part of the world. So he sent her some money, but not all her papers were in order so he sent some more money. Next when that was arranged she needed money to buy a plane ticket and to get her hair done. So this money was sent to her. Then this poor chap flew over to Kiev to meet her. So the night before he's waiting in the lobby, and she's a little late. And when she finally does show up she is nothing like she said she was going to look like, and she didn't seem to happy in him either. Any way you look at it, she was not into him and I'm pretty sure she left him standing there. What makes the story funny is that while this is going on the guy is hitting on the lady at the business center by saying "you won't do something mean like that, you are pretty and I can tell you are a nice girl." Kinda creep. But this guy was mad that he had been ripped off by this girl as he said, "you shouldn't just say you love someone or that you want to see them, not right away anyways." The whole thing boils down to the guy had called the FBI in the US who said they had much more important things to deal with, and was currently trying to track down other local and international law agencies to help track this scam artist down and bring her to justice as this sorta thing would not fly in the great US of A.
We're being removed from the internet, so more tomorrow.
On the title, I've seen a number of girls here that look very similar to Sara hence the title.
Sara and Tyson
So the Orthadox heavey metal lover lawyer Sergi kindly helped us get a taxi because we didn't have a map yet or anything. So to our hotel we went. We had one night already pre booked from Canada and once we got to the hotel we had pasta and watched some bbc and went to bed. Still not feeling 100%.
The next day we had some things to do.. well not really just looking for some atm's and interent and such ... and then still not feeling well so read and watched tv in the hotel and had more pasta and then bed. Funny thing was that just after we'd settled down to use the internet a guy from the southern states came in and started talking to the business center lady about making phone calls back home and such. He couldn't see us, or rather didn't turn around to see us and I think that he felt he was alone with this young lady, because he breaks into this long sob story that I had to stop myself from laughing out loud over a number of times. It goes something like this. This poor man is home in the US and is searching the internet for a companion you know someone he can love and share his life with, with requirements of being young (under 30) as he was into his 40's for sure and hot. Well over 250 women emailed him in return, no word of a lie, from Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Prague etc. Well he settles on this one through an agency, so he knew that he wasn't being screwed around. They wrote emails and she said that she loved him and really looked forward to seeing him. Well this went on for a while until he decided that this was the girl for him. At this point she informed him that for her to come back to the US with him she needed to get a bunch of paperwork done, very believable story for being in this part of the world. So he sent her some money, but not all her papers were in order so he sent some more money. Next when that was arranged she needed money to buy a plane ticket and to get her hair done. So this money was sent to her. Then this poor chap flew over to Kiev to meet her. So the night before he's waiting in the lobby, and she's a little late. And when she finally does show up she is nothing like she said she was going to look like, and she didn't seem to happy in him either. Any way you look at it, she was not into him and I'm pretty sure she left him standing there. What makes the story funny is that while this is going on the guy is hitting on the lady at the business center by saying "you won't do something mean like that, you are pretty and I can tell you are a nice girl." Kinda creep. But this guy was mad that he had been ripped off by this girl as he said, "you shouldn't just say you love someone or that you want to see them, not right away anyways." The whole thing boils down to the guy had called the FBI in the US who said they had much more important things to deal with, and was currently trying to track down other local and international law agencies to help track this scam artist down and bring her to justice as this sorta thing would not fly in the great US of A.
We're being removed from the internet, so more tomorrow.
On the title, I've seen a number of girls here that look very similar to Sara hence the title.
Sara and Tyson
Friday, July 27, 2007
Got off a train .. only to be hit by a train
Not really, but we were hit by the flu train. Sara got off the train in St.Petersburg tired, and in want of a nap. We dropped our bags at the hotel, and ate our breakfast that we had from the train. Free food from the train, I know crazy but true. Then we had a nap and planned our attack on St. Petersburg from the Summer Gardens, well Tyson planned and Sara napped. We decided to take in the Hermitage that day and just walk around downtown, and see some catherdral. We got to the Hermitage and got into the massive line, but when we finally got to the ticket counter it was free!!! So off we went throught the packed halls. Seriously wall to wall of tourists all pushing and shoving to get the best view of the famous things. Now I've seen and saw the famous ones, but they are so full of people and you can hardly get a glance before you are shoved out of the way by the masses. It really wrecks the experience. Anyways as we went, mapless throught the hermitage Sara started to fade. I know we didn't see half of the place or really looked at more than a couple of things, but the place is massive, it would take weeks. So we left and started walking towards the hotel. Sara was feeling quite poor by this time and I had to support her some of the time. We finally arrived, and put her to bed. She was burning up with a fever so high that if I put the number down here someone at home may worry too much. Between the cold towels, puking, diaraha, Tylenols, and shakes Sara slept. The next morning I too woke up much worse for wear, and after taking some drugs of my own sleep till 5 in the afternoon. This was fine except that our room was filled with at least a dozen misquotes that we were too weak to fight off, or track down and kill. They woke us, and ate us at will. We are currently covered head to toe in itchy little red marks. The day after that we started to recover slightly. I was able to read most of the day as was Sara, but even going down the block for water and dry bread was a struggle. Poor us. We considered a doctor, but decided that since we were already better than yesterday, and we didn't what to deal with finding an English doctor and the Health Insurance crap.
Today I woke up feeling better, only to try and get up and do something, big mistake. Still lightheaded and achy. Sara is the same way although she continues to poo, which I don't know how it is possible since we've eaten soo little. We had to get up as today we have to take our train to Kiev in the Ukraine, as our Russian visa is set to expire and I would hate to be caught here and have to deal with all that problem. So we slowly packed, arranged a taxi to take us to the train station in the evening and wandered slowly to find an internet spot to let people know we are alive.
St. Petersburg we have basically missed, but I let you know what we did see. The place was built all in the 18th Century, everything basically so all the streets look the same with beautiful 18th Century Architecture. However every second building is currently undergoing reconstruction not to replace them but to make them look like they are not falling down any more. Even the ones that have been fixed are only fixed on the street, for if you look into the courtyard they are still falling down. All the 18th Century architecture is pretty to say the least and the cannels are nice, but cause the walk back to our hotel to be longer. We missed most of the major sites and so will have to return.
(Sara) Sorry dad we really didn't get to take too many pictures.. i guess that just means i'll have to take you hear one day so you can take your own pictures. Also i wish nothing more to be at home having couch service with homemade chicken noodle soup, an english magazine, watching movies (or anything english) and having mom wash my bed a thousand times to smell cleaness and to have a hot bath.. being sick overseas is probably the worse thing in the world! Or something like that. Oh yeah dad don't see the simpsons movie yet i want to see it with you. The ukraine better prove itself to get us healthy or else i'll be mad at Granny haha. Maybe some borsch soup will help? Probably not on the other end..
Well hopefully a new country will get us back into health to finsih off these next 4 weeks. Wish us luck and good health please.
Sara and Tyson
Today I woke up feeling better, only to try and get up and do something, big mistake. Still lightheaded and achy. Sara is the same way although she continues to poo, which I don't know how it is possible since we've eaten soo little. We had to get up as today we have to take our train to Kiev in the Ukraine, as our Russian visa is set to expire and I would hate to be caught here and have to deal with all that problem. So we slowly packed, arranged a taxi to take us to the train station in the evening and wandered slowly to find an internet spot to let people know we are alive.
St. Petersburg we have basically missed, but I let you know what we did see. The place was built all in the 18th Century, everything basically so all the streets look the same with beautiful 18th Century Architecture. However every second building is currently undergoing reconstruction not to replace them but to make them look like they are not falling down any more. Even the ones that have been fixed are only fixed on the street, for if you look into the courtyard they are still falling down. All the 18th Century architecture is pretty to say the least and the cannels are nice, but cause the walk back to our hotel to be longer. We missed most of the major sites and so will have to return.
(Sara) Sorry dad we really didn't get to take too many pictures.. i guess that just means i'll have to take you hear one day so you can take your own pictures. Also i wish nothing more to be at home having couch service with homemade chicken noodle soup, an english magazine, watching movies (or anything english) and having mom wash my bed a thousand times to smell cleaness and to have a hot bath.. being sick overseas is probably the worse thing in the world! Or something like that. Oh yeah dad don't see the simpsons movie yet i want to see it with you. The ukraine better prove itself to get us healthy or else i'll be mad at Granny haha. Maybe some borsch soup will help? Probably not on the other end..
Well hopefully a new country will get us back into health to finsih off these next 4 weeks. Wish us luck and good health please.
Sara and Tyson
Saturday, July 21, 2007
From Russia with Love
So this has to be quick. I apologize as much has happened, however since most of Moscow is WiFied there are no internet cafes around that we know of, now we miss not having a book of lies to blame everything on. Stop wasting time on to the good stuff. The train ride all 2.5 days of it went by in no time, hard to say it but it was true. Before we relized it we were here. We had three sets of passagers and they got better as time went along. We crossed into Russia in the middle of the night in some sort of sereal scene from a movie or something. That night we didn't get to sleep till 2am. Our last guest in our bunk (we were there the longest) Dennis has been nice enough to show us many sights around Moscow with his girlfriend Senya. Senya's sister dances for the Royal Russia Ballet, so we got to see her perform in Romeo and Juilet last night, which was an amazing ballet. Other than that Red Square is amazingly beautiful with St. Basil's at one end, and so on and so on. Sara's turn.
Ok i got 12 minutes exactly before the computer goes off. Basically Moscow is GREAT!!! So far best city we have been in. It is amazing huge, but yet everything makes sense and not chaotic. Red square is big, nice, and basically st.basil's looks like a giant candy and i want to eat it eveytime i go here. Also i think i will get Married in Moscow in Red Square in the Winter time! How magical!!!! ( Tyson has no comment on this at all!) Who says i need him to be there? Just kidding... Also i am liking the lipton flavored white and mint ice teas.. are they there yet in Canada? Pretty much the greatest thing EVER! Besides moscow.. i want to buy everything.. EVERYTHING.. and yet Tysons reminds me that we still have to survive 5 weeks of living on low funds.. :(.
Somehow our computer just added 9 minutes!?!? yippy!! So a little more detail. After we arrived and Dennis helped us get into the massive underground (well over 100 stations) and we went down ther craziest steepest longest escilator ever that went down so deep, we found our hotel. (SCAREIEST Esalator EVER.. i totally got vertigo and if one person fell on that thing.. there would be a domino effect for at least 5 minutes!!!.. Sara) Not quite but that gets the point across. That evening Dennis meet us and drove us down to Red Square, but before getting into Red Square we went into GUM this giant mall with a 3 story tall Adidas store that Sara fell in love with, so that is why she doesn't need me... anyways after that Red Square and then sushi for dinner. Then they drove us home. The next day we meet the travel agent lady by the man on horse statue, also by the monkeys, eagles, and men dressed up like Lenin and Nicholus the second, where we got our train ticket to St. Petersburg. Then off to St. Basils, like a candy, and the State historic museum 2 floors, 40 rooms and only till 1900... Then to The Church of our Saviour Jesus. Lenin is asleep or something, as the mosumel (sp?) has been closed with no sign saying when or if it will reopen, not that it would help as it would be in Russian. Then to Peter the Great Statue, and inbetween that we ate McDonalds. The busiest MCDonalds ever...
Then we met Dennis for the ballet.. we had an hour to kill before going to the theater.. but we were so tired from walking all day that we just sat by the world globe fountain that tells the time of each country when the sun is setting. OR something like that.. anwyays the ballet was splendid. Really good.. not just dancing, but acting while dancing.. very good. Sword fight was the best between Mercuito(spelling?) and the other guy (forgot his name)... romeo and juliet by the way.. it was 1 hour and 45 minutes long, with a intermission break. We really enjoyed it. After that we drove to the biggest university that i have ever seen.. Moscow University.. which is on this hill that overlooks moscow city.. very cool.. but we were still very tired and it was 11 o clock by this point.. they also have street racing here.. and we saw a ferrari but not there.. during the day. Then we went home becuase i was pretty much falling asleep walking.. we are not use to going all day and all night.. not really our style of travelling. Sorry anne! haha.
Today we got up.. but tyson was mad that i changed "plans" which really if anyone knows me i dont "do" plans... i do tentative scheduales!!!!!! You think he would know that after almost 3 years of dating!! Anyways we had a little tiff.. no biggies.. all limbs still attached. Anyways we went shopping in this huge tourist place that tyson kind of got irritated with afterawhile.. but i liked shopping it took us about 4 hours to find the perfect russian nesting doll. You need to find the one with the best painting, and the best painting that goes all the way to the tinest one, and lets just say we saw every booth at least once, and worked our way down to the bestest of the best from there, that took a while. We also found a package of old propaganda posters the ones we've been taking photos of everywhere. They aren't original, but still super cool in our opinion. Sara says good for teaching, and Henry we'll let you photocopy them if you want. Other than that we walked for over an hour to get to the restruant 2.5 minutes from our hotel (our hotel is the former Olympic village from 1980) and enjoyed a great home cooking style meal.
Tomorrow the modern history museum (1900-2000) and some walking in old Moscow. Monday to the Kremlin and that night at midnight we're off to St. Petersburg. We'll probably won't write till then.
Tyson and Sara
Ok i got 12 minutes exactly before the computer goes off. Basically Moscow is GREAT!!! So far best city we have been in. It is amazing huge, but yet everything makes sense and not chaotic. Red square is big, nice, and basically st.basil's looks like a giant candy and i want to eat it eveytime i go here. Also i think i will get Married in Moscow in Red Square in the Winter time! How magical!!!! ( Tyson has no comment on this at all!) Who says i need him to be there? Just kidding... Also i am liking the lipton flavored white and mint ice teas.. are they there yet in Canada? Pretty much the greatest thing EVER! Besides moscow.. i want to buy everything.. EVERYTHING.. and yet Tysons reminds me that we still have to survive 5 weeks of living on low funds.. :(.
Somehow our computer just added 9 minutes!?!? yippy!! So a little more detail. After we arrived and Dennis helped us get into the massive underground (well over 100 stations) and we went down ther craziest steepest longest escilator ever that went down so deep, we found our hotel. (SCAREIEST Esalator EVER.. i totally got vertigo and if one person fell on that thing.. there would be a domino effect for at least 5 minutes!!!.. Sara) Not quite but that gets the point across. That evening Dennis meet us and drove us down to Red Square, but before getting into Red Square we went into GUM this giant mall with a 3 story tall Adidas store that Sara fell in love with, so that is why she doesn't need me... anyways after that Red Square and then sushi for dinner. Then they drove us home. The next day we meet the travel agent lady by the man on horse statue, also by the monkeys, eagles, and men dressed up like Lenin and Nicholus the second, where we got our train ticket to St. Petersburg. Then off to St. Basils, like a candy, and the State historic museum 2 floors, 40 rooms and only till 1900... Then to The Church of our Saviour Jesus. Lenin is asleep or something, as the mosumel (sp?) has been closed with no sign saying when or if it will reopen, not that it would help as it would be in Russian. Then to Peter the Great Statue, and inbetween that we ate McDonalds. The busiest MCDonalds ever...
Then we met Dennis for the ballet.. we had an hour to kill before going to the theater.. but we were so tired from walking all day that we just sat by the world globe fountain that tells the time of each country when the sun is setting. OR something like that.. anwyays the ballet was splendid. Really good.. not just dancing, but acting while dancing.. very good. Sword fight was the best between Mercuito(spelling?) and the other guy (forgot his name)... romeo and juliet by the way.. it was 1 hour and 45 minutes long, with a intermission break. We really enjoyed it. After that we drove to the biggest university that i have ever seen.. Moscow University.. which is on this hill that overlooks moscow city.. very cool.. but we were still very tired and it was 11 o clock by this point.. they also have street racing here.. and we saw a ferrari but not there.. during the day. Then we went home becuase i was pretty much falling asleep walking.. we are not use to going all day and all night.. not really our style of travelling. Sorry anne! haha.
Today we got up.. but tyson was mad that i changed "plans" which really if anyone knows me i dont "do" plans... i do tentative scheduales!!!!!! You think he would know that after almost 3 years of dating!! Anyways we had a little tiff.. no biggies.. all limbs still attached. Anyways we went shopping in this huge tourist place that tyson kind of got irritated with afterawhile.. but i liked shopping it took us about 4 hours to find the perfect russian nesting doll. You need to find the one with the best painting, and the best painting that goes all the way to the tinest one, and lets just say we saw every booth at least once, and worked our way down to the bestest of the best from there, that took a while. We also found a package of old propaganda posters the ones we've been taking photos of everywhere. They aren't original, but still super cool in our opinion. Sara says good for teaching, and Henry we'll let you photocopy them if you want. Other than that we walked for over an hour to get to the restruant 2.5 minutes from our hotel (our hotel is the former Olympic village from 1980) and enjoyed a great home cooking style meal.
Tomorrow the modern history museum (1900-2000) and some walking in old Moscow. Monday to the Kremlin and that night at midnight we're off to St. Petersburg. We'll probably won't write till then.
Tyson and Sara
Monday, July 16, 2007
Down by the baaaaay
Our friend and savoir in Almaty
View across Ishim River, Astana
Zenkov Cathedral Almaty (sorry you'll have to flip this one yourselfs)
Statue in Astana beside a water fountain both things Canada lacks
looking down at Medeu (home of the 2011 Asian Winter Games)
So it has finally come the last day in the sega of the Kazakhstan travels and central asia and asia travels off to a new continent YIPPEEE! Europe here we come.. apparently it was only 15 degrees in st.petersburg the other day YES!!!!!!!! Bring on the cold! (Tyson: she says that now but if it is 15'C she'll be whinning worse then ever!) Yes well whinning shmining it will be a nice change.. because im sure turkey and greece will be hot hot hot.
Today we got up.. hard to sleep in when you are in an industrial zone (not that im grumpy about that.. roll of the eyes). But we ate some breakfast that we had left over from our supermarket shopping from yesterdays breakfast and then headed out to get some money exchanged into Rubels for Russia (we actually dont know what the currency is.. for we are now travelling solo with no lonely planet or guide books with us.. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO FOR SUGGESTED PLACES TO EAT!!!!... ) McDonalds it is! After that we sat down and ate again.. because breakfast really wasn't enough so we had also brought some bread and peanut butter and ate that. Then went to find this museum that actually doesn't exist no more.. thats another wrong for the lonely planet book of lies!
So then we decided to go paddling in the river. We put a hard hour in peter you would be proud.. haha except it wasn't paddling, it was a boat that you paddled with your feet.. and we didn't really go hard.. we more like floated along the river with the occasional feet push. ( that is what Sara did, I had to get us up and down the river) I would like to state that that is a lie.. and since i only tell the truth i paddled just as much as Tyson did.. he just wants to sound macho like! Anyways it was another hot day..plus 30 something and hanging out on the river was nice... excpet we had no water left so we were both really thirsty. Needless to say after paddling we looked for some liquids. We found some and got some ice tea and tyson got some sugary popcicle thing that was really to sweet for him but he liked the brain freeze effect that came with it.. we both miss slurpees very much!
After that paddling we decided to head to the mall to see if we could find some postcards so that we could pass some time on the train writing to people. There were no postcards there but Tyson found a key chain for himself and i found one also.. however this was after we walked back to find the other postcards we had previously found earlier in the day .. At the mall the first time we were hungry so we had some pizza again (we eat a lot of pizza.. just so easy that way and filling) but this time it took a mere 12 minutes literally instead of 2 hours it was amazingly fast and half the price.. we dont know why..it was the same place just we were inside rather then outside and we ordered the exact same pizza.. but then again when have we understood anything in this country? After that we then proceeded to go back to the first place we saw the postcards pick them up and then go back to the mall to get Tysons key chain.
Then we went to the grocery store to load up on some food for the 2.5 day train ride tomorrow. Got some essentials, bread, chocolate, candy to suck on, water, juice, pringles, oranges (we have learned our lesson that oranges travel much better then bananas), cucumbers, sunflower seeds, and yogurt for breakfast tomorrow... oh and tyson said ichic ban..we like eating the raw noodles.
And now we are at the internet place.. not a real eventful day.. just lots of walking around and hanging out and getting ready for the uber long train ride.. aaaawhk (i dont know what that word means.. but something along the lines of so not cool that its 2.5 days on a train.. to YAY! were going to Europe!)
I would also like to mention that it is about 4 weeks till I arrive on a Greek Island! Which means it is exactly starting tomorrow 6 weeks till we come home.. (Tyson: urgh, how time flies..) Well i sort of agree with him.. im also super excited to get home to see everyone and share things and play bocce ball and drink starbucks!
Well time to go get packed up and get some few hours of sleep.. we leave our hotel at 5:00 am tomorrow morning.. see you all in MOSCOW!!!!!
Today we got up.. hard to sleep in when you are in an industrial zone (not that im grumpy about that.. roll of the eyes). But we ate some breakfast that we had left over from our supermarket shopping from yesterdays breakfast and then headed out to get some money exchanged into Rubels for Russia (we actually dont know what the currency is.. for we are now travelling solo with no lonely planet or guide books with us.. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO FOR SUGGESTED PLACES TO EAT!!!!... ) McDonalds it is! After that we sat down and ate again.. because breakfast really wasn't enough so we had also brought some bread and peanut butter and ate that. Then went to find this museum that actually doesn't exist no more.. thats another wrong for the lonely planet book of lies!
So then we decided to go paddling in the river. We put a hard hour in peter you would be proud.. haha except it wasn't paddling, it was a boat that you paddled with your feet.. and we didn't really go hard.. we more like floated along the river with the occasional feet push. ( that is what Sara did, I had to get us up and down the river) I would like to state that that is a lie.. and since i only tell the truth i paddled just as much as Tyson did.. he just wants to sound macho like! Anyways it was another hot day..plus 30 something and hanging out on the river was nice... excpet we had no water left so we were both really thirsty. Needless to say after paddling we looked for some liquids. We found some and got some ice tea and tyson got some sugary popcicle thing that was really to sweet for him but he liked the brain freeze effect that came with it.. we both miss slurpees very much!
After that paddling we decided to head to the mall to see if we could find some postcards so that we could pass some time on the train writing to people. There were no postcards there but Tyson found a key chain for himself and i found one also.. however this was after we walked back to find the other postcards we had previously found earlier in the day .. At the mall the first time we were hungry so we had some pizza again (we eat a lot of pizza.. just so easy that way and filling) but this time it took a mere 12 minutes literally instead of 2 hours it was amazingly fast and half the price.. we dont know why..it was the same place just we were inside rather then outside and we ordered the exact same pizza.. but then again when have we understood anything in this country? After that we then proceeded to go back to the first place we saw the postcards pick them up and then go back to the mall to get Tysons key chain.
Then we went to the grocery store to load up on some food for the 2.5 day train ride tomorrow. Got some essentials, bread, chocolate, candy to suck on, water, juice, pringles, oranges (we have learned our lesson that oranges travel much better then bananas), cucumbers, sunflower seeds, and yogurt for breakfast tomorrow... oh and tyson said ichic ban..we like eating the raw noodles.
And now we are at the internet place.. not a real eventful day.. just lots of walking around and hanging out and getting ready for the uber long train ride.. aaaawhk (i dont know what that word means.. but something along the lines of so not cool that its 2.5 days on a train.. to YAY! were going to Europe!)
I would also like to mention that it is about 4 weeks till I arrive on a Greek Island! Which means it is exactly starting tomorrow 6 weeks till we come home.. (Tyson: urgh, how time flies..) Well i sort of agree with him.. im also super excited to get home to see everyone and share things and play bocce ball and drink starbucks!
Well time to go get packed up and get some few hours of sleep.. we leave our hotel at 5:00 am tomorrow morning.. see you all in MOSCOW!!!!!
Sara and Tyson
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Almaty to Astana
So you know how we say that we'll write tomorrow and post some pictures up and then don't write a blog entry for a couple of days... well to combat this trend I've decided never to again say that we'll post pictures tomorrow.
I believe we left off after spending the day buying books, and I'm happy to report that since that time I've finished Dracula and found it a most enjoyable read. I've decided not to start any of the other books I bought (Peter Pan and The Tale of Two Cities) until we're on the train to Moscow, which leaves early morning on Tuesday. But to speak of the train would be getting ahead of myself, for we must conclude the mailing stuff home epic, and get ourselves to Astana, with a small pleasant surprise story inbetween.
So after failing to get our burritos at the PBC place we went back to the American Ranch for burgers. My burger was red in the middle so I had to wait 30 minutes for another one, at least this new one came with more fries, which are the best part when combined with the Heniz ketchup which they were served with. Then we retired to our apartment watched some BBC and went to bed.
Early the next morning we were up and getting everything ready for the final push to get the package sent home. We took turns sitting by the phone from 8:45 to 10:00am, not once letting one of us get out of reach of the phone. Since we were suppose to be picked up at 9am by 10am I decided to call the place. The lady who had been talking to me on the phone said she had called 3 times with no answer that morning. I didn't know what to say, but that we had been there. I think since our phone can't call cell phones, cell phones may not be able to call our phone. That is my guess anyways. So the lady said that she would send a driver who would relay through her when he had arrived. Around 11am the driver showed up and we carried the rugs and book of stuff downstairs along with our hiking boots which we had decided to send home (since it was a flat shipping rate up to 15kg anyways). We loaded the stuff into the mini van, but since there was only two seats including the driver's seat only one of us could go. Sara decided to stay behind and I got into the truck. About 30 minutes later or so, we arrived at a building on the outskirts of the airport. That is when I meet Valeriya, who helped carry my stuff upstairs to the office. We repacked the boots and the box into a larger box and I filled in the required paperwork. At first when she quoted me the price I was quite worried and almost upset. I thought that the price was just for her part of the thing and that the actual shipping was on top of that, plus the cost for the ride out there was crazy expensive at 4500 teng.. She called the trucking department which dropped the pickup charge to 3000 teng. But when I found out that the price quoted was the total total cost it wasn't so bad, bad but in the ballpark of what was expected bad. By this time it was almost lunch time and one of Valeriya's coworkers informed us that since we had tee-shirts still in their orignal plastic that customs may not like that (as we could be sending the shirts to Canada and selling them.. all 4 different tee-shirts) and that for $150 US the customs guy wouldn't open the box. I was quite upset over this, but since it was their lunch time I had 1.5 hours to think it over while eating my Bounty bar and coke from the vending machine. I decided that I will just take the tee-shirts with me and carry them the rest of the way till we get home. So after lunch Valeriya came with me to do customs (note that this is not part of her or their job per say, so to guide me through the system was very nice of her). Our first stop was to turn in my passport and get a vistor pass, as I was now within the airport (across the parking lot from the office of EAT) and remove the tee-shirts from the box. Since I didn't have my bag I put two of them in my pant pockets and Valeriya carried two as we went to the first stop. There we got the form, Valeriya filled it out for me as it was in Russian, and via flirting slightly with the guy got my tee-shirts okayed. The form was stamped the first 4 times here I think. Then we went back to the warehouse, put back the tee-shirts and continued thought the building in a random order collecting signitures and stamps from 4 more people in 3 more offices, making the total number of stamps 13. Crazy eh? Then to the payment office for EAT or maybe that was before customs... anyways then we were done. Valeriya was kind enough to offer to drive me to the bus stand, I thanked her much and often for her help, as customs only took 30 minutes, and the box was finally on it way home, to arrive in Edmonton within a week. As we drove we had a good chat, and since traffic was light she drove me all the way home. She was very disappointed that we had not seem some of the sights around Almaty, and so as we approached my apartment offered to take us sightseeing that evening. I was thrilled and said we'd be waiting by the phone at 6pm when she got off work.
We went and got pizza at Mad Murphy's since it was 20% off pizza Thursday, and ran some more errands around town such as getting money and food for the train ride and got back to our apartment just at 6pm. On que the phone rang and Valeriya said that she could come, and would call from her mom's place which was near ours when we were to meet her at the street. At 7pm we waited on the busy street corner looking for Valeriya and her mom who decided to come along as well. They spotted us and we got into Valeriya's car and headed for the hills. We asked them all sorts of questions that we had been pondering over the past days/weeks. Valeriya's english was excellent while her mom's was good enough to understand the conversation. Here is what we learned: The trees are painted 4 feet high white to keep the bugs from eating the tree, as the paint is a special formula. The painted camels that are all over Almaty change yearly, as last year there was horses. The middle class is expanding, and if you are willing to work you can get ahead as companies are willing to pay well enough to afford living with such high prices. Things were bad for about 10 years after the fall of the USSR, but now they are better. In Soviet times you had to que for everything, and everyone was equal. It wasn't bad because you couldn't want anything more, you didn't know about it. Now you know and want more and more. The little bits of cloth tied to the tree are not to remember the dead, but to wish for something you want. It is much better to be free. May 1st, 2007 the president banned all Casinos due to their negitive impact on families. I think we learned some more, but I forget now, and that tells you how open and helpful they were in answering all our questions.
We drove up to this skating rink past huge homes hidden in compounds on the hillside. The skating rink is very popular in winter, and Soviet speed skaters trained there due to the high altitude. We then drove up above the rink to a large dyke that was built to stop flash floods or snow slides from either taking out the skating rink or Almaty for that matter. There are stairs that lead from the skating rink all the way up to the top of the dyke and it is said that it is good luck if a groom carries his bride the whole way up (at least 1000 stairs by estimate). We then drove down and went to the TV tower lookout. Sara was lucky that we didn't go ourselves or else we would have walked up. Valeriya and her mom would not let us pay for anything, which was very nice of them, but annoying all the same. So we got in the minibus for the ride up and had a hazy view of the city. After taking some pictures we walked and found a hilltop restruant. We refused food but gave into tea. When we sat down and said that we had not tried (can't remember the name but basically the national dish of Kazakhstan) we just had to try it (Shylak, Sara says). The dish was skewers of mutton, that were grilled on the fire, and tasted amazing. The meat was very tender and juicy. I had all of mine and some of Sara as she got full. With our tummies full and our heads tired we were dropped off at our place. A great evening to say the least. After all the hassels we came across in Almaty the kindness of Valeriya and her mom was amazing. We can't thank them enough for what they did for us. I went to sleep happy and with Alamty in a good light.
The next morning we got up and packed. Cleaned up our apartment as good as could be expected, and at 10am on the dot the landlord and his wife came. She started to clean some more and we tried to explain that we would like 5000 tenge back as we had paid for that extra night which we were not going to use. This took a while to get across, and it took a while for him to explain that the money was in the bank. So we gave up on getting it all back and asked what was in his wallet now, as this is a cash based society, we would try and get something back. After 30 odd minutes of this, he went and talked to his wife, and returned with 4000 tenge for us. We were very happy with this, and left with smiles and handshakes. I bought some new flip flops on the way to the train station.
We got to the train station early as planned. Tried to get in the wrong car, but got in the right car still some 30 minutes before the train was to leave. It was so hot in the train, we were sitting in pools of our own sweat. There is no air conditioning or something like that, because the vent system only works when the train is moving. We pulled out of the station on time and were delighted that we were alone in our compartment. This only lasted about half an hour till we reached the other Almaty station. Then our compartment was packed, there was 8 people in there. Two other with tickets and 4 who bribed their way on. This was not looking good. However 20 minutes later when our tickets were collected the bribed on passagers were told to leave our berth. I don't know where they went, but I saw them at Astana, so they weren't kicked off the train. We settled in to reading, napping, and Sara listening to music. We had dinner of rice and coke in the dinning car, and I also had cucumber and tomato salad. We went to bed, and by the time we awoke we were nearing Astana. We pulled into the station 30 minutes behind schedule. Sara didn't sleep as well as I did. I woke up in a foul mood though.
We got off the train and looked for the train station hotel, and after asking found it right inside the train station, go figure. They only had dorm beds, so we said no thanks. We then took a taxi into town to another hotel from the guidebook. It was nice and clean but turned out to be 11000 tenge per night ($100 CAN). Sara wanted to stay there, but I said it was too expensive. The lady at the counter spoke good english and offered to call around for us. While we waited a business man from Vancouver stopped to talk to us for a while. Very surprised we were travelling here, especially with our lack of Russian. He also had some interesting things to say about Kazakhstan and Astana since he has been doing business here since 1990. The lady at the counter informed us she had found a place for 4000 tenge per night, but it was a ways out of town, but it was very clean. I said okay, and Sara did not agree with me. Needless to say we weren't on the same page this day, but we went to the other place which was clean and nice, but definetly out of the way (middle of an industrail area) and booked in for 3 days. We spent most of the day in the hotel being grumpy, each in our own way, and finally ventured out in the evening for food and water. We also took our clothes to a laundry mat which was close by. Oh and note that we do not fit in at fancy places to eat. When someone is playing a piano for you while you eat, and your food is served from under a silver cover, it is too fancy for us.
Finally to today. We've decided after walking around a bunch that this place since it is in the middle of the steepe is kinda like a town in the middle of our prairies. Actually it would be exactly like if Canada moved it's capital from Ottawa to the middle of geographic Canada. The weather and wind are the same as we know from Winnipeg. As we've either said or thought many times before Canada needs more statues and fountains. Astana we like better than Almaty I think, probably because it feels smaller and less busy. We went into this strange West Ed Mall type place, except with very few stores. It was an entertainment park with arcades, movie theatre, aquarium, themed restruants, and plaster replicas of famous buildings from around the world. We played pinball for a while because there was free credits on the pinball machine. Hope we didn't wreck someone's game while they were in the washroom. We also walked through a large outdoor fair, with all the rides and stuff, but this one was perminant. On the way back we walked along the river which was full of people on paddle boats or swimming on a small beach. Very Saskatchewan, we think.
We went to a place for dinner that served pizza, and waited almost 2 hours for the pizza. Good thing we weren't starving when we sat down. The pizza was good, but it's hard to tell because we ate the entire thing in less than 10 minutes. We walked back to the hotel and got our laundry which was so clean it was amazing.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Kazakhstan.
Tyson and Sara
I believe we left off after spending the day buying books, and I'm happy to report that since that time I've finished Dracula and found it a most enjoyable read. I've decided not to start any of the other books I bought (Peter Pan and The Tale of Two Cities) until we're on the train to Moscow, which leaves early morning on Tuesday. But to speak of the train would be getting ahead of myself, for we must conclude the mailing stuff home epic, and get ourselves to Astana, with a small pleasant surprise story inbetween.
So after failing to get our burritos at the PBC place we went back to the American Ranch for burgers. My burger was red in the middle so I had to wait 30 minutes for another one, at least this new one came with more fries, which are the best part when combined with the Heniz ketchup which they were served with. Then we retired to our apartment watched some BBC and went to bed.
Early the next morning we were up and getting everything ready for the final push to get the package sent home. We took turns sitting by the phone from 8:45 to 10:00am, not once letting one of us get out of reach of the phone. Since we were suppose to be picked up at 9am by 10am I decided to call the place. The lady who had been talking to me on the phone said she had called 3 times with no answer that morning. I didn't know what to say, but that we had been there. I think since our phone can't call cell phones, cell phones may not be able to call our phone. That is my guess anyways. So the lady said that she would send a driver who would relay through her when he had arrived. Around 11am the driver showed up and we carried the rugs and book of stuff downstairs along with our hiking boots which we had decided to send home (since it was a flat shipping rate up to 15kg anyways). We loaded the stuff into the mini van, but since there was only two seats including the driver's seat only one of us could go. Sara decided to stay behind and I got into the truck. About 30 minutes later or so, we arrived at a building on the outskirts of the airport. That is when I meet Valeriya, who helped carry my stuff upstairs to the office. We repacked the boots and the box into a larger box and I filled in the required paperwork. At first when she quoted me the price I was quite worried and almost upset. I thought that the price was just for her part of the thing and that the actual shipping was on top of that, plus the cost for the ride out there was crazy expensive at 4500 teng.. She called the trucking department which dropped the pickup charge to 3000 teng. But when I found out that the price quoted was the total total cost it wasn't so bad, bad but in the ballpark of what was expected bad. By this time it was almost lunch time and one of Valeriya's coworkers informed us that since we had tee-shirts still in their orignal plastic that customs may not like that (as we could be sending the shirts to Canada and selling them.. all 4 different tee-shirts) and that for $150 US the customs guy wouldn't open the box. I was quite upset over this, but since it was their lunch time I had 1.5 hours to think it over while eating my Bounty bar and coke from the vending machine. I decided that I will just take the tee-shirts with me and carry them the rest of the way till we get home. So after lunch Valeriya came with me to do customs (note that this is not part of her or their job per say, so to guide me through the system was very nice of her). Our first stop was to turn in my passport and get a vistor pass, as I was now within the airport (across the parking lot from the office of EAT) and remove the tee-shirts from the box. Since I didn't have my bag I put two of them in my pant pockets and Valeriya carried two as we went to the first stop. There we got the form, Valeriya filled it out for me as it was in Russian, and via flirting slightly with the guy got my tee-shirts okayed. The form was stamped the first 4 times here I think. Then we went back to the warehouse, put back the tee-shirts and continued thought the building in a random order collecting signitures and stamps from 4 more people in 3 more offices, making the total number of stamps 13. Crazy eh? Then to the payment office for EAT or maybe that was before customs... anyways then we were done. Valeriya was kind enough to offer to drive me to the bus stand, I thanked her much and often for her help, as customs only took 30 minutes, and the box was finally on it way home, to arrive in Edmonton within a week. As we drove we had a good chat, and since traffic was light she drove me all the way home. She was very disappointed that we had not seem some of the sights around Almaty, and so as we approached my apartment offered to take us sightseeing that evening. I was thrilled and said we'd be waiting by the phone at 6pm when she got off work.
We went and got pizza at Mad Murphy's since it was 20% off pizza Thursday, and ran some more errands around town such as getting money and food for the train ride and got back to our apartment just at 6pm. On que the phone rang and Valeriya said that she could come, and would call from her mom's place which was near ours when we were to meet her at the street. At 7pm we waited on the busy street corner looking for Valeriya and her mom who decided to come along as well. They spotted us and we got into Valeriya's car and headed for the hills. We asked them all sorts of questions that we had been pondering over the past days/weeks. Valeriya's english was excellent while her mom's was good enough to understand the conversation. Here is what we learned: The trees are painted 4 feet high white to keep the bugs from eating the tree, as the paint is a special formula. The painted camels that are all over Almaty change yearly, as last year there was horses. The middle class is expanding, and if you are willing to work you can get ahead as companies are willing to pay well enough to afford living with such high prices. Things were bad for about 10 years after the fall of the USSR, but now they are better. In Soviet times you had to que for everything, and everyone was equal. It wasn't bad because you couldn't want anything more, you didn't know about it. Now you know and want more and more. The little bits of cloth tied to the tree are not to remember the dead, but to wish for something you want. It is much better to be free. May 1st, 2007 the president banned all Casinos due to their negitive impact on families. I think we learned some more, but I forget now, and that tells you how open and helpful they were in answering all our questions.
We drove up to this skating rink past huge homes hidden in compounds on the hillside. The skating rink is very popular in winter, and Soviet speed skaters trained there due to the high altitude. We then drove up above the rink to a large dyke that was built to stop flash floods or snow slides from either taking out the skating rink or Almaty for that matter. There are stairs that lead from the skating rink all the way up to the top of the dyke and it is said that it is good luck if a groom carries his bride the whole way up (at least 1000 stairs by estimate). We then drove down and went to the TV tower lookout. Sara was lucky that we didn't go ourselves or else we would have walked up. Valeriya and her mom would not let us pay for anything, which was very nice of them, but annoying all the same. So we got in the minibus for the ride up and had a hazy view of the city. After taking some pictures we walked and found a hilltop restruant. We refused food but gave into tea. When we sat down and said that we had not tried (can't remember the name but basically the national dish of Kazakhstan) we just had to try it (Shylak, Sara says). The dish was skewers of mutton, that were grilled on the fire, and tasted amazing. The meat was very tender and juicy. I had all of mine and some of Sara as she got full. With our tummies full and our heads tired we were dropped off at our place. A great evening to say the least. After all the hassels we came across in Almaty the kindness of Valeriya and her mom was amazing. We can't thank them enough for what they did for us. I went to sleep happy and with Alamty in a good light.
The next morning we got up and packed. Cleaned up our apartment as good as could be expected, and at 10am on the dot the landlord and his wife came. She started to clean some more and we tried to explain that we would like 5000 tenge back as we had paid for that extra night which we were not going to use. This took a while to get across, and it took a while for him to explain that the money was in the bank. So we gave up on getting it all back and asked what was in his wallet now, as this is a cash based society, we would try and get something back. After 30 odd minutes of this, he went and talked to his wife, and returned with 4000 tenge for us. We were very happy with this, and left with smiles and handshakes. I bought some new flip flops on the way to the train station.
We got to the train station early as planned. Tried to get in the wrong car, but got in the right car still some 30 minutes before the train was to leave. It was so hot in the train, we were sitting in pools of our own sweat. There is no air conditioning or something like that, because the vent system only works when the train is moving. We pulled out of the station on time and were delighted that we were alone in our compartment. This only lasted about half an hour till we reached the other Almaty station. Then our compartment was packed, there was 8 people in there. Two other with tickets and 4 who bribed their way on. This was not looking good. However 20 minutes later when our tickets were collected the bribed on passagers were told to leave our berth. I don't know where they went, but I saw them at Astana, so they weren't kicked off the train. We settled in to reading, napping, and Sara listening to music. We had dinner of rice and coke in the dinning car, and I also had cucumber and tomato salad. We went to bed, and by the time we awoke we were nearing Astana. We pulled into the station 30 minutes behind schedule. Sara didn't sleep as well as I did. I woke up in a foul mood though.
We got off the train and looked for the train station hotel, and after asking found it right inside the train station, go figure. They only had dorm beds, so we said no thanks. We then took a taxi into town to another hotel from the guidebook. It was nice and clean but turned out to be 11000 tenge per night ($100 CAN). Sara wanted to stay there, but I said it was too expensive. The lady at the counter spoke good english and offered to call around for us. While we waited a business man from Vancouver stopped to talk to us for a while. Very surprised we were travelling here, especially with our lack of Russian. He also had some interesting things to say about Kazakhstan and Astana since he has been doing business here since 1990. The lady at the counter informed us she had found a place for 4000 tenge per night, but it was a ways out of town, but it was very clean. I said okay, and Sara did not agree with me. Needless to say we weren't on the same page this day, but we went to the other place which was clean and nice, but definetly out of the way (middle of an industrail area) and booked in for 3 days. We spent most of the day in the hotel being grumpy, each in our own way, and finally ventured out in the evening for food and water. We also took our clothes to a laundry mat which was close by. Oh and note that we do not fit in at fancy places to eat. When someone is playing a piano for you while you eat, and your food is served from under a silver cover, it is too fancy for us.
Finally to today. We've decided after walking around a bunch that this place since it is in the middle of the steepe is kinda like a town in the middle of our prairies. Actually it would be exactly like if Canada moved it's capital from Ottawa to the middle of geographic Canada. The weather and wind are the same as we know from Winnipeg. As we've either said or thought many times before Canada needs more statues and fountains. Astana we like better than Almaty I think, probably because it feels smaller and less busy. We went into this strange West Ed Mall type place, except with very few stores. It was an entertainment park with arcades, movie theatre, aquarium, themed restruants, and plaster replicas of famous buildings from around the world. We played pinball for a while because there was free credits on the pinball machine. Hope we didn't wreck someone's game while they were in the washroom. We also walked through a large outdoor fair, with all the rides and stuff, but this one was perminant. On the way back we walked along the river which was full of people on paddle boats or swimming on a small beach. Very Saskatchewan, we think.
We went to a place for dinner that served pizza, and waited almost 2 hours for the pizza. Good thing we weren't starving when we sat down. The pizza was good, but it's hard to tell because we ate the entire thing in less than 10 minutes. We walked back to the hotel and got our laundry which was so clean it was amazing.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Kazakhstan.
Tyson and Sara
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The name of the game is.... Beaucracy!
Since we last wrote we've been playing the game, and while we are moving forward on the board (so it seems) the finish line keeps moving and is always quite a way off in the distance. We've also been dealt some bad cards, bad cards such as: Corruption!!!! - Pay 10x what you rolled, and move only 1/3 as much as you rolled (rounding down), Language Barrier - miss a turn, whenever you roll a even number, Out of Date Guidebook - go back 3 spaces every time you land on a destination square. Believe it or not even with such terrible cards we think we may make it out alive (we're not sure about our sainity yet).
Since we wrote last we've been trying to mail a box home to Canada, get an english book to read, and buy a train ticket to Astana, not the kind of thing that should take 4 days, but then again you aren't playing the game Beaucracy now are you??
First thing, to send a package home (approx. 15-20kg) using a private mail service (Fedex, UPS, DHL) will cost in excess of $400 US. This was a dead end on the board, which we had to go back and wasted nearly a day doing. We found that shipping our package home through cargo would be the cheapest option, so we decided to do that. That is when we go the "Do not have a box card" which meant that without a box we didn't have anything to ship our stuff home in. No luck finding a box. We were able to burn DVD's of our pictures as backup though (a bonus card, not of any real value but makes you feel good). Then we got the email from the cargo place giving us the names and numbers of shipping companies that they deal with (a good card, moving us forward 5 spots). Contacts on the phone speak english 2/3 times, giving us a modist move forward 1 space. Contacts don't get back to you for many hours, lose 3 turns. Anyways I could continue in this manner, but I would think that it would or could get difficult to read, so we'll switch just to what happened...
After searching in vain for a box and making first contact to the shipping companies we went and tried to buy our train ticket. This is after we paid our landlord at our apartment for an additional 5 nights. We went to the ticket window (not sure if it was a travel agent or what, but they sold tickets, while most other travel agents didn't) and tried to say what we wanted. I had written out in Russian before we got there what we wanted as best I could using the dictionary, but still there was much confusion. We finally figured out after an hour or so that we were trying to say the same thing, picked 2nd class and tried to buy the tickets. I say try because after all that, the tickets for Saturday were sold out. So we tried another Saturday train, nothing in second class either. So we recounted and found we could go on Friday if we wanted, making our stay in Astana about 68 hours (the most allowed before you have to register is 72 hours). So we got our tickets for Friday. The problem with that is that we can't get hold of our landlord very easily to tell him we are leaving a day earlier now. We have his number but he doesn't speak a word of English and you all know how good our Russian is... We're still working on that one...
Back to the sending stuff home story. So it took a while for the three different companies to get back to us, and then we choose the one who was the cheapest, $100 US for picking us up, packing it, going through customs with us (the forms will I promise be only in Russia) and giving it to the cargo shipping company wing of Lufthansa. So we called them back to say okay.. when they informed us we needed to get a form from the museum to say that what we had wasn't historic. So the next day we headed out after falsely waiting for our landlord, we thought he was coming because we spoke to his friend, but no dice, and waiting to get the pictures we took of our stuff developed. So the museum is on the exact opposite corner of the city from where we stay, so it took the better part of an hour to walk there. When we got there we went to the 3rd floor where our pictures were examined and entered into a ledger. We have bought a Russian hat or two that we took a picture of (isn't Soviet era stuff historic? ... well I guess not) because that picture was laughed at, and we we're given strange looks over, and the looks said are you crazy? You want this? You think this is historic? etc. This continued throughout the following steps but there is no need to repeat again and again that we were made to feel stupid. So after it was entered in the ledger the form came out that they filled in, and was signed both ladies in the room. A nice man came in to laugh about the hats, who spoke good english. We had a chat about the government here (which we'll share when we get home) and hockey, he was a big Jagr fan. Then we went to the first floor, where we went to room 120A to get our form signed. Then to 120 to get the form signed agian. Then to room 128 to pay almost $90 for the form. The form was signed again here, and we were also given a recipt. Then back to room 120 to get the form signed and stamped a couple of times by two guys and the items again entered into another ledger. All in all, we waited in no lines and everyone was at their desk for the most part and the thing just at the museum took over an hour.
Then since we were by the Hyatt we decided to go into it to see if they had English books. Sara thought it was very cruel to take her into there. There was books, they were just $40 for a soft cover, and magazines for $20 US a little expensive for us. Sara was not happy to leave the nice marble atmosphere. She has vowed to be rich. And to one day travel in such a manner. That's right!!!!! (Sara) After that cruel outing we walked back and ate rice with soya sauce for dinner. (sara: I actually feel like were poor.. im not even kidding.. and its kind of sad because i know we are FAR from poor.. but it does feel a little like that... except maybe not poor poor.. just mildly poor)
Today we got up hoping to send our parcel home (note: on the way home we also got a copy of our visa and passport (needed for customs) but when we called the place they said they were really busy today, and that they would pick us up tomorrow at 9:00am. So we watched the All Star Baseball game secretly cheered from the NL to win for the first time in a long time, (what a boring game until the bottom of the ninth, sara say: crappy pitching) And then headed out for english books. We walked all the way to the south (uphill the whole way) to KEMP University. When we got there we were trying to explain to the security guard we wanted to go to the bookstore, when a lady (studying or trying to get on as a prof.) decided to help us. She said there was no bookstore, just a library and one shop. We went to the shop to discover that the Lonely Planet is once again filled with lies. She did direct us to Interpress, which we eventually found a couple of blocks from the university which did have some english books. Most were the learn english variety, but there was some others. The others were some Ian Fleming and other quick fun reads that were about the same price as those books at the Hyatt (3000-4000 Tenge) and some classics for 500 tenge per piece. We got some classics, (tyson did, sara having just finished Jude the Obscure did not want anything to do with classics), and that was the day.
Tomorrow we send our parcel hopefully and get hold of our landlord.
(Ran out of time to post pictures so maybe tomorrow)
Note tomorrow is our last full day in Almaty before we go to Astana, and then on to Moscow on Tuesday, July 17th
Tyson and Sara
Since we wrote last we've been trying to mail a box home to Canada, get an english book to read, and buy a train ticket to Astana, not the kind of thing that should take 4 days, but then again you aren't playing the game Beaucracy now are you??
First thing, to send a package home (approx. 15-20kg) using a private mail service (Fedex, UPS, DHL) will cost in excess of $400 US. This was a dead end on the board, which we had to go back and wasted nearly a day doing. We found that shipping our package home through cargo would be the cheapest option, so we decided to do that. That is when we go the "Do not have a box card" which meant that without a box we didn't have anything to ship our stuff home in. No luck finding a box. We were able to burn DVD's of our pictures as backup though (a bonus card, not of any real value but makes you feel good). Then we got the email from the cargo place giving us the names and numbers of shipping companies that they deal with (a good card, moving us forward 5 spots). Contacts on the phone speak english 2/3 times, giving us a modist move forward 1 space. Contacts don't get back to you for many hours, lose 3 turns. Anyways I could continue in this manner, but I would think that it would or could get difficult to read, so we'll switch just to what happened...
After searching in vain for a box and making first contact to the shipping companies we went and tried to buy our train ticket. This is after we paid our landlord at our apartment for an additional 5 nights. We went to the ticket window (not sure if it was a travel agent or what, but they sold tickets, while most other travel agents didn't) and tried to say what we wanted. I had written out in Russian before we got there what we wanted as best I could using the dictionary, but still there was much confusion. We finally figured out after an hour or so that we were trying to say the same thing, picked 2nd class and tried to buy the tickets. I say try because after all that, the tickets for Saturday were sold out. So we tried another Saturday train, nothing in second class either. So we recounted and found we could go on Friday if we wanted, making our stay in Astana about 68 hours (the most allowed before you have to register is 72 hours). So we got our tickets for Friday. The problem with that is that we can't get hold of our landlord very easily to tell him we are leaving a day earlier now. We have his number but he doesn't speak a word of English and you all know how good our Russian is... We're still working on that one...
Back to the sending stuff home story. So it took a while for the three different companies to get back to us, and then we choose the one who was the cheapest, $100 US for picking us up, packing it, going through customs with us (the forms will I promise be only in Russia) and giving it to the cargo shipping company wing of Lufthansa. So we called them back to say okay.. when they informed us we needed to get a form from the museum to say that what we had wasn't historic. So the next day we headed out after falsely waiting for our landlord, we thought he was coming because we spoke to his friend, but no dice, and waiting to get the pictures we took of our stuff developed. So the museum is on the exact opposite corner of the city from where we stay, so it took the better part of an hour to walk there. When we got there we went to the 3rd floor where our pictures were examined and entered into a ledger. We have bought a Russian hat or two that we took a picture of (isn't Soviet era stuff historic? ... well I guess not) because that picture was laughed at, and we we're given strange looks over, and the looks said are you crazy? You want this? You think this is historic? etc. This continued throughout the following steps but there is no need to repeat again and again that we were made to feel stupid. So after it was entered in the ledger the form came out that they filled in, and was signed both ladies in the room. A nice man came in to laugh about the hats, who spoke good english. We had a chat about the government here (which we'll share when we get home) and hockey, he was a big Jagr fan. Then we went to the first floor, where we went to room 120A to get our form signed. Then to 120 to get the form signed agian. Then to room 128 to pay almost $90 for the form. The form was signed again here, and we were also given a recipt. Then back to room 120 to get the form signed and stamped a couple of times by two guys and the items again entered into another ledger. All in all, we waited in no lines and everyone was at their desk for the most part and the thing just at the museum took over an hour.
Then since we were by the Hyatt we decided to go into it to see if they had English books. Sara thought it was very cruel to take her into there. There was books, they were just $40 for a soft cover, and magazines for $20 US a little expensive for us. Sara was not happy to leave the nice marble atmosphere. She has vowed to be rich. And to one day travel in such a manner. That's right!!!!! (Sara) After that cruel outing we walked back and ate rice with soya sauce for dinner. (sara: I actually feel like were poor.. im not even kidding.. and its kind of sad because i know we are FAR from poor.. but it does feel a little like that... except maybe not poor poor.. just mildly poor)
Today we got up hoping to send our parcel home (note: on the way home we also got a copy of our visa and passport (needed for customs) but when we called the place they said they were really busy today, and that they would pick us up tomorrow at 9:00am. So we watched the All Star Baseball game secretly cheered from the NL to win for the first time in a long time, (what a boring game until the bottom of the ninth, sara say: crappy pitching) And then headed out for english books. We walked all the way to the south (uphill the whole way) to KEMP University. When we got there we were trying to explain to the security guard we wanted to go to the bookstore, when a lady (studying or trying to get on as a prof.) decided to help us. She said there was no bookstore, just a library and one shop. We went to the shop to discover that the Lonely Planet is once again filled with lies. She did direct us to Interpress, which we eventually found a couple of blocks from the university which did have some english books. Most were the learn english variety, but there was some others. The others were some Ian Fleming and other quick fun reads that were about the same price as those books at the Hyatt (3000-4000 Tenge) and some classics for 500 tenge per piece. We got some classics, (tyson did, sara having just finished Jude the Obscure did not want anything to do with classics), and that was the day.
Tomorrow we send our parcel hopefully and get hold of our landlord.
(Ran out of time to post pictures so maybe tomorrow)
Note tomorrow is our last full day in Almaty before we go to Astana, and then on to Moscow on Tuesday, July 17th
Tyson and Sara
Sunday, July 8, 2007
This ain't no bread line!!
Alright where to begin..
After leaving the computer place on Friday we headed to go get our passports back from the registration place. We arrived about 10 minutes before 6:00pm the time we were suppose to get them back. The place was packed, actually thats an understatement, it was like we were going to go watch some huge sporting event, except there was no orderly line ups to get int it was a chaotic mosh pitt/mob. Tyson looks to me and says, "i am not getting in line right now.. " so i said alright, i'll measle my way in im small enough i'll just slip through the gaps, im more aggressive in nature then tyson is anyways so i can do this. I spoted some guys speaking english which i manage to get up to because if someone moved out of a space, i just quickly made my way in. Before no time i was up in the front by a huge German guy and a larger scottish guy who works over here. Ther was some pushing at this point, however the passports had not arrived yet so people were still relatively calm. So i was having a nice little chit chat with these 2 men while bracing myself in a wide stance for stability and elbows out making sure i stood my ground. At that point i was thinking.. this is probably what it was like back in the 1900's fighting your way through in a bread line. But the worse was to come.. Through the glass windows the passport people came with boxes and boxes of passports and registrations and then the mob went CRAZY!!! Peoples hands were in the air with there papers, people were screaming in russian, it was nutso.. at this point i was still protected between the 2 men and we figured since the german guy was at the front we would hand him our papers so he could just get all our passports. Well the 2 men succeeded but when it came to finding mine the women at the window first coudln't find it so i was trying to point to her to and say its the black passports, Canada, canada.. repeatedly. She then found them after about 2 minutes of people trying to shove papers in this ladies face, the screaming was getting louder and i was being bashed up against a railing. Apparently in the process they had lost one of our reciepts that proved that we had paid for the registration. At this point the lady was trying to tell me that in Russian, but like i understand.. she was getting frustrated.. i was getting frustrated because of all the people yelling at me in Russian and trying to get there papers to the lady. Finally the lady threw our passports under some counter and continued with the rest of the mob. At this point the pushing was unbearble and i was stuck and couldn't get out. Finally i just pushed my way through and made it out alive, with some bruised ribs. It was pretty much the worse thing EVER!!! I wasn't even mad about the fact that it was pushy ok, i was, but i was more disappointed that i had not succeeded in getting the passports and i didn't understand why. So i managed to pull myself together after a few angry tears of wanting to yell back in Russian "you ANIMALS"!!! and we waited till the line died and they were about to close. When we got back up there, an english speaking women had came to help the other women out and then we find out that they think we had only paid for one passport registration, but we indeed did pay for 2 but they lost one of the recipts. So finally after the lady didn't really know what to do, she just handed us our passports. This is beaucrazy at its finest!! I miss Canada when this happens!! Being stuck in corrupted central asia is sometimes hard, but Europe will come soon enough. I'll let Tyson go write the rest now, im a little wound up now.
On Sara's mob story, all I could do was watch the mob get more and more worked up as the passports weren't going through the glass quickly enough. Anyways I am proud of how Sara handled the situation, as it was a difficult one, and when we went over the event on the way to dinner it was very clear she did the right thing. We had dinner at the PBC again, which wasn't so bad and then retreated to our apartment. The next day we finally had a chance to sleep in and Sara took full advantage of this, while I woke up with the street and market around 7am, and watched some baseball. We then went to find out prices to send our gifts home, as everything we've heard about using the local land postal service is that you are just as likely to recieve your package by throwing it into a river and hoping it ends up in Canada. We went to the Fedex place which only sends express express shipments, guarrenteed 1-3 days anywhere in the world, while impressive, the rates matched and we couldn't afford it. The man was very helpful in trying to get hold of someone else, however with it being Saturday not many shops were open.
We then went to try and figure out train schedules and rates but no travel agent would help us at first and the ticket window only had a schedule in Russian. We eventually by accident found a community based tourism information center, where we asked about possible side trips on the way to Astana. Nothing turned out to be really on the way, and even if you took the 12-14 hour train ride to one of these side destinations it was a bunch more driving and required guides and etc. before you got to the places recommended to visit. So after thinking about it for a while we decided that our best option was to get all our shipping, resting, photograph copying, and sightseeing done from a base here in Almaty and then take the 24 hour train to Astana for just less than 72 hours (to avoid having to register again) before catching the train to Moscow. So after making that decision we were more relaxed as we didn't have to rush around trying to see things anymore, and enjoyed some cinnimom buns (Sara) and donair (Tyson) while we heard stories from the German guy we'd met the day before. After buying some more groceries including 17% fiber crackers we took the rest of the afternoon off to read and watch tv.
Today we strolled through the market across from our house which was as large and busier than the Sunday market in Kashgar, however the prices were very high like everything else here, so we just strolled and watched our belongings. After that we tried to find the military museum, and we think we found it, but it may have not been open or something. We got some more great pictures of propoganda posters from in the lobby anyways. We ate the lunch of sandwiches (brown bread, cheese, and salami) that Sara had made this morning while watching thre specticle of kids feeding pigeons.
Tomorrow we'll try and send our gifts home, copy pictures, and find some english books to read.
Tyson and Sara trapped in Kazakhstan
After leaving the computer place on Friday we headed to go get our passports back from the registration place. We arrived about 10 minutes before 6:00pm the time we were suppose to get them back. The place was packed, actually thats an understatement, it was like we were going to go watch some huge sporting event, except there was no orderly line ups to get int it was a chaotic mosh pitt/mob. Tyson looks to me and says, "i am not getting in line right now.. " so i said alright, i'll measle my way in im small enough i'll just slip through the gaps, im more aggressive in nature then tyson is anyways so i can do this. I spoted some guys speaking english which i manage to get up to because if someone moved out of a space, i just quickly made my way in. Before no time i was up in the front by a huge German guy and a larger scottish guy who works over here. Ther was some pushing at this point, however the passports had not arrived yet so people were still relatively calm. So i was having a nice little chit chat with these 2 men while bracing myself in a wide stance for stability and elbows out making sure i stood my ground. At that point i was thinking.. this is probably what it was like back in the 1900's fighting your way through in a bread line. But the worse was to come.. Through the glass windows the passport people came with boxes and boxes of passports and registrations and then the mob went CRAZY!!! Peoples hands were in the air with there papers, people were screaming in russian, it was nutso.. at this point i was still protected between the 2 men and we figured since the german guy was at the front we would hand him our papers so he could just get all our passports. Well the 2 men succeeded but when it came to finding mine the women at the window first coudln't find it so i was trying to point to her to and say its the black passports, Canada, canada.. repeatedly. She then found them after about 2 minutes of people trying to shove papers in this ladies face, the screaming was getting louder and i was being bashed up against a railing. Apparently in the process they had lost one of our reciepts that proved that we had paid for the registration. At this point the lady was trying to tell me that in Russian, but like i understand.. she was getting frustrated.. i was getting frustrated because of all the people yelling at me in Russian and trying to get there papers to the lady. Finally the lady threw our passports under some counter and continued with the rest of the mob. At this point the pushing was unbearble and i was stuck and couldn't get out. Finally i just pushed my way through and made it out alive, with some bruised ribs. It was pretty much the worse thing EVER!!! I wasn't even mad about the fact that it was pushy ok, i was, but i was more disappointed that i had not succeeded in getting the passports and i didn't understand why. So i managed to pull myself together after a few angry tears of wanting to yell back in Russian "you ANIMALS"!!! and we waited till the line died and they were about to close. When we got back up there, an english speaking women had came to help the other women out and then we find out that they think we had only paid for one passport registration, but we indeed did pay for 2 but they lost one of the recipts. So finally after the lady didn't really know what to do, she just handed us our passports. This is beaucrazy at its finest!! I miss Canada when this happens!! Being stuck in corrupted central asia is sometimes hard, but Europe will come soon enough. I'll let Tyson go write the rest now, im a little wound up now.
On Sara's mob story, all I could do was watch the mob get more and more worked up as the passports weren't going through the glass quickly enough. Anyways I am proud of how Sara handled the situation, as it was a difficult one, and when we went over the event on the way to dinner it was very clear she did the right thing. We had dinner at the PBC again, which wasn't so bad and then retreated to our apartment. The next day we finally had a chance to sleep in and Sara took full advantage of this, while I woke up with the street and market around 7am, and watched some baseball. We then went to find out prices to send our gifts home, as everything we've heard about using the local land postal service is that you are just as likely to recieve your package by throwing it into a river and hoping it ends up in Canada. We went to the Fedex place which only sends express express shipments, guarrenteed 1-3 days anywhere in the world, while impressive, the rates matched and we couldn't afford it. The man was very helpful in trying to get hold of someone else, however with it being Saturday not many shops were open.
We then went to try and figure out train schedules and rates but no travel agent would help us at first and the ticket window only had a schedule in Russian. We eventually by accident found a community based tourism information center, where we asked about possible side trips on the way to Astana. Nothing turned out to be really on the way, and even if you took the 12-14 hour train ride to one of these side destinations it was a bunch more driving and required guides and etc. before you got to the places recommended to visit. So after thinking about it for a while we decided that our best option was to get all our shipping, resting, photograph copying, and sightseeing done from a base here in Almaty and then take the 24 hour train to Astana for just less than 72 hours (to avoid having to register again) before catching the train to Moscow. So after making that decision we were more relaxed as we didn't have to rush around trying to see things anymore, and enjoyed some cinnimom buns (Sara) and donair (Tyson) while we heard stories from the German guy we'd met the day before. After buying some more groceries including 17% fiber crackers we took the rest of the afternoon off to read and watch tv.
Today we strolled through the market across from our house which was as large and busier than the Sunday market in Kashgar, however the prices were very high like everything else here, so we just strolled and watched our belongings. After that we tried to find the military museum, and we think we found it, but it may have not been open or something. We got some more great pictures of propoganda posters from in the lobby anyways. We ate the lunch of sandwiches (brown bread, cheese, and salami) that Sara had made this morning while watching thre specticle of kids feeding pigeons.
Tomorrow we'll try and send our gifts home, copy pictures, and find some english books to read.
Tyson and Sara trapped in Kazakhstan
Friday, July 6, 2007
Almaty 3 (great name eh?)
So today we got up early because we needed to go register ourselves. Well as we are eating breakfast guess what is on TV? The Winnipeg Blue Bombers Montreal Aloutets football game live and in english, what a shock. So we watched the rest of the game and left only 15 minutes late on our way. We made it to the registration office at 10:30, and got directly into the shortest line, not because it was the right line but so we could be told what the right line was. We needed to go to line 3, or rather free for all 3. We eventually fought our way through the crowd and all we got is a form completely in Russian. We made our way out of the crowd and looked dumbfounded for a while. A guy asked to borrow our pen, and after he filled in his form he was kind enough to fill in our forms for us. We also ran into a German guy who had just finished the process so instead of fighting through to window #3 again we headed to photocopy our passport at a guy with a photocopier located just outside the building and then stood in the pay your money line. There was a lot of saving spots in line, but we eventually paid with little hassel other than the 30 minutes wasted. Standing side by side we are a wider object so less people tried to push past us and we went up to window 3 again. We got there, but hadn't photocopied the original form we had filled in, so back to the photocopy man again. Sara decided not to fight back to window #3 again, so I powered up on water while Sara hummed the Super Mario brother song, and then I went into the scrum. I was able to drop off the last form, and was told to return at 6pm this even to pick everything up. Total time 2 hours, total stops: 7. The only thing that made me feel better about the whole thing was that even the locals were having as much difficultly as we were, well except for filling out the form, unless they didn't bring a pen. I kinda enjoyed the whole thing in a sick twisted sort of way. Because how often do you get to raise elbows with Babushkas and wirery Russian men while completing paperwork in the paperwork system from the cold war, or so it seemed to me, but however do not that this system would have been set up after 1991 when Kazakhstan was formed.
After that we tried to go to the Museum of Repression, but it had some time since the lonely planet was written had become repressed itself and now the building housed a bank. Next we went to see what was described as amazing Soviet era buildings at the Science Center, but the Science Center was under reconstruction. We won't be needed to buy any more toilet paper for a while as we've started to use the LP. So we decided after a bit of ice cream to search for the Canadian Embassy, to ask them if we need to register every time we're in a city for more than 72 hours or not. Well we searched and searched, and searched some more. Finally as we were about to give up we stumbled upon it. Set on a tiny street, with so many trees around it you can't see the building almost, let alone the flag there it was. We rang the bell on the wall, and a Kazak guard came out to greet us (Sara says he wasn't a guard, just some Kazak guy who wears jeans and works at the embassy). Anyways we were informed that if we had a question through his broken english (Sara didn't feel like he acted in a Canadian manner) that we would have to return during the consulate hours, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9am till noon. We decided this probably wouldn't happen and that we'd just ask a tour company or just plan our days outside Almaty so that we spend less than 72 hours per city.
So shortly we will go and get our passports back, hopefully without any problems, and then go for dinner at PVC. Oh and by the way it is raining outside right now, and Sara isn't really happy because we don't have our rain coats, and also we are both really hungry since we've been walking constantly all day. Tomorrow we're not leaving the north east corner of the city, for nothing!!
Tyson and Sara
After that we tried to go to the Museum of Repression, but it had some time since the lonely planet was written had become repressed itself and now the building housed a bank. Next we went to see what was described as amazing Soviet era buildings at the Science Center, but the Science Center was under reconstruction. We won't be needed to buy any more toilet paper for a while as we've started to use the LP. So we decided after a bit of ice cream to search for the Canadian Embassy, to ask them if we need to register every time we're in a city for more than 72 hours or not. Well we searched and searched, and searched some more. Finally as we were about to give up we stumbled upon it. Set on a tiny street, with so many trees around it you can't see the building almost, let alone the flag there it was. We rang the bell on the wall, and a Kazak guard came out to greet us (Sara says he wasn't a guard, just some Kazak guy who wears jeans and works at the embassy). Anyways we were informed that if we had a question through his broken english (Sara didn't feel like he acted in a Canadian manner) that we would have to return during the consulate hours, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9am till noon. We decided this probably wouldn't happen and that we'd just ask a tour company or just plan our days outside Almaty so that we spend less than 72 hours per city.
So shortly we will go and get our passports back, hopefully without any problems, and then go for dinner at PVC. Oh and by the way it is raining outside right now, and Sara isn't really happy because we don't have our rain coats, and also we are both really hungry since we've been walking constantly all day. Tomorrow we're not leaving the north east corner of the city, for nothing!!
Tyson and Sara
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Almaty 2
Power to the Women! (Kazakhstan WW2 Heros)
Athletic Stadium where Sara met her dream girl
St. Nicholas Cathedral
Potential case of trademark infringment number 1 can you guess who we're thinking of?
Can you guess this one? He is now selling pharmecuticals in Kazakhstan
This one should be easy, (I wonder if maybe it's the same company lower quality, if that is possible...) CRAZY COUNTRY!!!
Yesterday we mentioned how we were going to go see a movie that was dubbed in Russian. We did end up going and it was pretty humourous. Mainly because it was funny to hear people laughing at things we didn't understand, but we knew it was funny due to what the characters in the movies were doing. It was pretty easy to follow along, we knew a few words here and there.. (such as, hello, the characters names, husband,thank you, and bye). Pretty much all the Russian we know. I only know husband because it says in the lonely planet guide that if you are a women and you are travelling alone you should always say you have a Moosh.. which is husband.. dont worry we aren't married .. i dont want to put any thoughts in peoples minds. I enjoyed the popcorn it was camarlized, Tyson kind of was disappointed because in the pop corn popper it looked as if it was buttery and salty, needless to say all we could afford is a little cup.. about what we could afford at home if we went to the movies.
Last night we went to the grocery store and got some food to cook for ouselves. We found this great tasting granola that i think tastes like captian crunch and mixed in with good yogurt its quite tasty. We also got rice and corn to eat for dinner and even got soy a sauce.. small things amuse us! Also picked up a 5L jug of water, some juice, and cheese and salami and brown bread for lunchs. It seems that we can never be satisfied from being thirsty, even when we drink 2 liters of water and juice and pop, we are always thirsty.. damn humid and hot countries!!
This morning we woke up to get ready to go registar ourselves into the country (not really sure why we have to do it, but we do or else we will have problems leaving the country and we sure the heck don't want that because we can't afford to stay in this country any longer than what we had planned). We will try again tomorrow to registar.
We walked around all day because taxis are too expensive, and we don't speak russian so public transport is chaotic with all the traffic here anyways. No real organization of any sort. So we decide to walk and take breaks in between. We first went to the St.Nicholas Cathedral which is a Russian orthadox church that was pretty interesting with its onion domes and teal colorful building and paintings inside. While inside we walked around and then this little old Babushka (lady.. but Babushka is so more fitting eh Dustin? ) started talking to us in Russian and showing us around and what things were. We picked up a bit on what she was showing us.. but other than that we just nodded and smiled and i did a whole lot of crossing (they do the sign of the cross 3 times in Russian Orthadox churchs). The lady was very kind, and even said a little prayer for us.. she seemed to have liked my name (sara) because she pondered in Awe for a couple of minutes as if to say it was sucha beautiful name (except a thousand people in the world have it .. how sad). With Tysons name she really didnt care.. haha.. its ok Tyson i like your name. And everyone associates it with Mike Tyson..
After the church, we continued on to the sports complex of Almaty to see what it was like and to see if any sporting events where going on. We managed to get into the soccer pitches and althetics field where some people were practicing running and pole vaulting. We sat for a little bit and watched, i was in such awe at the ripped muscualr track chicks that i have now made it my goal to focus on working out hard core when i get home. You know when you see those olympic track atheltes on tv your like "wow they are really fit and ripped".. but they are still far away that you dont really notice how ripped they are until one passes right in front of you and then you realize shit they are HUGE!! So its my dream summer 2009 watch out for the new ripped sara. Not grossly ripped like muscle mania just nicely ripped. Anyways.. we left there because things were closing down and we went to what was suppose to be the ice rink. We couldn't get in.. so that left us with going on to our next destination the Independance mounument.
We got almost ther when i was REALLY hungry and wanted to stop to eat our lunch. So we sat in a park and enjoyed our home packed lunch of brown bread (YIPPE) and some gouda cheese (right from Holland), and some Salami(from Spain) We called the sandwhich the international sandwhich and it was delicious. People watched for awhile and then headed to the mounument and the city government building and took some photos. Then left to go to the Central Asia Museum.
The museum was shockingly cheap 65 cents.. we almost fainted .. how could such a nice mueseum be so cheap? Oh well.. we went and saw things ranging from prehistoric ages (dinosaur bones and such) to gifts from the world leaders post independence day.. Shockingly (note the sarcasm in my voice) the United States was the first country to get its grubby little hands in here as a diplomatic relations.. Canada was like 20th or something like that(4 years later). Britain was second. We also saw old Kazahk culture costumes and such, ww2 things (more pictures of Stalin which is shocking because none where shown in Krygyzstan), and saw how Kazakhstan started Westernizing. It was a nice museum and it had AC so can't complain.
After the museum we were in search of more water. We finally found a store and got a 1.5 liter of water, and some Fanta (we finally have found different flavors of fanta how exciting). Then made our way to here. On the way we found the War Mounment and looked at the prices of the ballet. The prices of the ballet were too high for us poor travellers (around 30 bucks a ticket) we might try a cheaper theater to see if anything else is going on. The war mounument was pretty cool, it was of Women war heros .. power to the women haha.. (we dont even have statues of women in canada).. Tyson made a good point, we dont have any statues in canada.. except wayne gretzky anddddd.. A GIANT BAT! Also note, the women statues were a replacement of the old lenin statues.. shockingly no lenin statues remain here.. but in Krygyzstan lenin is everywhere.. hmmm interesting. Other than that we are here at the internent place now.. about to view the new harry potter trailer .. sooo exciting. Going to go to an Irish pub for dinner (Mad Murphys) maybe we can meet some other travellers and ponder how they can afford this place or some expats to lend us some money. Haven't seen any travellers here yet.. and we don't blame them.
Sara and Tyson
Last night we went to the grocery store and got some food to cook for ouselves. We found this great tasting granola that i think tastes like captian crunch and mixed in with good yogurt its quite tasty. We also got rice and corn to eat for dinner and even got soy a sauce.. small things amuse us! Also picked up a 5L jug of water, some juice, and cheese and salami and brown bread for lunchs. It seems that we can never be satisfied from being thirsty, even when we drink 2 liters of water and juice and pop, we are always thirsty.. damn humid and hot countries!!
This morning we woke up to get ready to go registar ourselves into the country (not really sure why we have to do it, but we do or else we will have problems leaving the country and we sure the heck don't want that because we can't afford to stay in this country any longer than what we had planned). We will try again tomorrow to registar.
We walked around all day because taxis are too expensive, and we don't speak russian so public transport is chaotic with all the traffic here anyways. No real organization of any sort. So we decide to walk and take breaks in between. We first went to the St.Nicholas Cathedral which is a Russian orthadox church that was pretty interesting with its onion domes and teal colorful building and paintings inside. While inside we walked around and then this little old Babushka (lady.. but Babushka is so more fitting eh Dustin? ) started talking to us in Russian and showing us around and what things were. We picked up a bit on what she was showing us.. but other than that we just nodded and smiled and i did a whole lot of crossing (they do the sign of the cross 3 times in Russian Orthadox churchs). The lady was very kind, and even said a little prayer for us.. she seemed to have liked my name (sara) because she pondered in Awe for a couple of minutes as if to say it was sucha beautiful name (except a thousand people in the world have it .. how sad). With Tysons name she really didnt care.. haha.. its ok Tyson i like your name. And everyone associates it with Mike Tyson..
After the church, we continued on to the sports complex of Almaty to see what it was like and to see if any sporting events where going on. We managed to get into the soccer pitches and althetics field where some people were practicing running and pole vaulting. We sat for a little bit and watched, i was in such awe at the ripped muscualr track chicks that i have now made it my goal to focus on working out hard core when i get home. You know when you see those olympic track atheltes on tv your like "wow they are really fit and ripped".. but they are still far away that you dont really notice how ripped they are until one passes right in front of you and then you realize shit they are HUGE!! So its my dream summer 2009 watch out for the new ripped sara. Not grossly ripped like muscle mania just nicely ripped. Anyways.. we left there because things were closing down and we went to what was suppose to be the ice rink. We couldn't get in.. so that left us with going on to our next destination the Independance mounument.
We got almost ther when i was REALLY hungry and wanted to stop to eat our lunch. So we sat in a park and enjoyed our home packed lunch of brown bread (YIPPE) and some gouda cheese (right from Holland), and some Salami(from Spain) We called the sandwhich the international sandwhich and it was delicious. People watched for awhile and then headed to the mounument and the city government building and took some photos. Then left to go to the Central Asia Museum.
The museum was shockingly cheap 65 cents.. we almost fainted .. how could such a nice mueseum be so cheap? Oh well.. we went and saw things ranging from prehistoric ages (dinosaur bones and such) to gifts from the world leaders post independence day.. Shockingly (note the sarcasm in my voice) the United States was the first country to get its grubby little hands in here as a diplomatic relations.. Canada was like 20th or something like that(4 years later). Britain was second. We also saw old Kazahk culture costumes and such, ww2 things (more pictures of Stalin which is shocking because none where shown in Krygyzstan), and saw how Kazakhstan started Westernizing. It was a nice museum and it had AC so can't complain.
After the museum we were in search of more water. We finally found a store and got a 1.5 liter of water, and some Fanta (we finally have found different flavors of fanta how exciting). Then made our way to here. On the way we found the War Mounment and looked at the prices of the ballet. The prices of the ballet were too high for us poor travellers (around 30 bucks a ticket) we might try a cheaper theater to see if anything else is going on. The war mounument was pretty cool, it was of Women war heros .. power to the women haha.. (we dont even have statues of women in canada).. Tyson made a good point, we dont have any statues in canada.. except wayne gretzky anddddd.. A GIANT BAT! Also note, the women statues were a replacement of the old lenin statues.. shockingly no lenin statues remain here.. but in Krygyzstan lenin is everywhere.. hmmm interesting. Other than that we are here at the internent place now.. about to view the new harry potter trailer .. sooo exciting. Going to go to an Irish pub for dinner (Mad Murphys) maybe we can meet some other travellers and ponder how they can afford this place or some expats to lend us some money. Haven't seen any travellers here yet.. and we don't blame them.
Sara and Tyson
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Almaty Day 1
So we got up early to try and find a new place to stay, and lets just say that a hotel for 120$ US here is junk. Really it's a single bed in a room that just fits a single bed, no fan, no airconditioning, and a worn carpet. Did I mention it was for 120$ US?? We ended up renting an apartment near a large bazzar for 5000 tenge or just over 45$ CAN per night. It has air conditioning and a fully functioning kitchen, how we are going to make and eat a good portion of our meals. We haven't had time to really see any sights yet, and will save those till tomorrow, as today was already too long and tiring. We're off to watch the new Steve Carrall movie in Russian after this, just to relax and maybe have a little nap. There was a story with a taxi that occured today, but you'll have to ask us about that one when we get home. Have to have some new stories to tell right? Oyh.. this country is nutso.. but we ate a pretty cool resaturant for lunch that was cheaper then what we ate last night for dinner so thats a bonus.. it was also decorated in old soviet union stuff and at the end of your meal they give you cool old soviet union postcards.. pretty fun!! Heres to hoping that Eastern Europe will be slightly cheaper... we have ran out of granola bars from canada to eat for food.
Tyson and Sara
Tyson and Sara
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Send money we can't afford New York, Kazakhstan
So the saying goes that Bishkek is the younger ugly sister of Almaty. If that is the case Almaty would be Bishkek's cracked out older hooker sister with expensive tastes. We really did not think Kazakhstan would be this expensive. Even though we have been told by everyone we ran into that it was uber expensive we shrugged it off and said.. "its central asia.. what could be so expensive?". How about a $7.50 pop with dinner? How is that for expensive??? Tyson's not happy.... however, i do feel bad now for making us take a taxi to Almaty for 1600 som when we could have taken a mini bus .. but we all know that me and mini buses are fighting right now.. so it was a taxi.. however now that i realize we probably will have to sleep outside and eat rats for 2 weeks i wish i would have taken the minibus puke and all. The drive and the boarder crossings were a peice of cake, really easy.. too smoothly in fact. Once we got into Almaty our driver said he couldnt take us to the travel agency because we already , conviently passed it.. (Lying scum bag... we totally didn't pass it) So we said whatever and he dropped us off at the bus station. A taxi wanted 1000 tenge which is like 8 bucks american for a ride accross town.. we said thanks but no thanks and contiuned to lug our huge packs, me carrying the foresaken box, and tyson with the little day pack and a huge bag of rugs. We at this point were hot, hungry and tired.. but searched for a taxi. First all, there is no "real" taxis, you just stand in the street and hold your hand out like a hooker not even kidding. But we did find one taxi sign and pulled him over, he wanted 3000 tenge. (are you kidding me? are we in New York City? I think so.. thats what it seems.. except its a gong show of chaos and i hate to say this but Clusterfuck , excuse my french mom and dad) we said no to this cracked out guy as well. So onwards the box and rugs, and us went. After about an hour of waiting, walking, frustration finally hit and Tyson saw one guy who was dropping off a lady and decided to ask him if he was a taxi, or whatever they call themselves. He said yes and his price was 1000 tenge (this was the lowest price we could get and asked about 6 drivers.. no one would go lower, do i look like a american from Texas that has oil money.. ??? NO!) So onwards we went to our travel agent. We got to the travel agent without any problem, and recieved our train tickets from Astana to Moscow. We asked about how we had to register, which they say we only have to do once, but have to do within 5 days. They were willing to do it for $29 US each, sorry but we'll do it ourselves. We then asked if they could help get us an apartment. For how much was the question. We were still hopeful at this point that up to this point we'd just meet scam artists, and said no more than $25 US per night. We were lucky to me sitting on a couch with a back to it, or the laugher that came back at us would have knocked us over. They half-heartedly called a few places and said that it was impossible. So we said, "What is the cheapest hotel?" They replied Doyte, for 6500 tenge per night (That is fricken $54 US) Are you kidding me!!!! Well we decided, since there was no other real choice, with it being 6pm by this point, and we could probably reorganize the next morning. So we get a taxi (only 300 tenge (again from a random man driving by, the rate should have been no more than 200 according to the travel agent, but we had bags... ) So we get to this hotel on a major road, pay and enter a russian elevator. On the 7th floor we enter our room, which has furnishing that would have been pulled from a dumpster. Its soo nasty, i think i might sleep standing up... i can't believe that 54 american dollars gets you a mattress from a dumpster on a floor.. you think im kidding but we have video coverage of it!!! Plus no fan, no air conditioning, and a very busy street. Oh joy! Hence the need for you all to send money.... So we quickly left in search for dinner.
We'll explain the city more later, but the countryside should be noted as looking very much like south central Alberta, kinda Drumheller area look (no the badlands area). Internet is also expensive here ($3.5 US an hour) oh boy I don't know how we're going to do anything here. So yeah, more on the city later. We found the American Grill House for dinner, which serves food identical to Montana's at home at identical prices. The only really great thing about dinner was the Heinz ketchup. The food was good, just like at Montana's, minus the moose heads. I had the burger, Sara the club sandwich. After dinner we found this place, and thought we'd tell everyone we're alive, and in need of more money. Frick'n Borat lied... its not cheap! Also so does the lonely planet.. book of lies i tell you!!
So parents, you'll have to accept this as an email today.
Tomorrow we search for cheaper accomodation, or start making plans to leave the city. We'll also try and see some sights tomorrow.
Tyson and Sara
We'll explain the city more later, but the countryside should be noted as looking very much like south central Alberta, kinda Drumheller area look (no the badlands area). Internet is also expensive here ($3.5 US an hour) oh boy I don't know how we're going to do anything here. So yeah, more on the city later. We found the American Grill House for dinner, which serves food identical to Montana's at home at identical prices. The only really great thing about dinner was the Heinz ketchup. The food was good, just like at Montana's, minus the moose heads. I had the burger, Sara the club sandwich. After dinner we found this place, and thought we'd tell everyone we're alive, and in need of more money. Frick'n Borat lied... its not cheap! Also so does the lonely planet.. book of lies i tell you!!
So parents, you'll have to accept this as an email today.
Tomorrow we search for cheaper accomodation, or start making plans to leave the city. We'll also try and see some sights tomorrow.
Tyson and Sara
Monday, July 2, 2007
Last day in Bishkek
Today was our last full day in Bishkek as tomorrow we leave for Almaty and Kazakhstan. For the most part it was a restful day. To note: from this point on Sara will continue to have some level of cramps until stated otherwise, thus removing the need to state it daily. Secondly somewhere over the last couple of days we reached the halfway point of our trip. It is crazy to think that we are already half done, and I know time will only start passing faster from here on. We will both be sad to leave Kyrgyzstan and hope to return one day to do a more extensive trip through the country and mountains.
Today we wandered around for a while, actually found the Canadian Consulate it was at the back of an apartment building (well actually we only found the sign, as the door by the sign had three other signs hanging around it) and there wasn't even a Canadian flag anywhere to be seen. A little disappointed with it if you ask me, where is Debra Grey with those free flags? They need one over here in Bishkek if anyone sees her. After that we walked through some of the public parks, watched some tennis lessons, and then returned to the Italian Restruant for our final meal there. We both agreed while the food was great we are getting a little sick of eating pasta almost every night.
Take care, and the next time you hear from us we'll be in Almaty (southern Borat country)
Tyson and Sara
Today we wandered around for a while, actually found the Canadian Consulate it was at the back of an apartment building (well actually we only found the sign, as the door by the sign had three other signs hanging around it) and there wasn't even a Canadian flag anywhere to be seen. A little disappointed with it if you ask me, where is Debra Grey with those free flags? They need one over here in Bishkek if anyone sees her. After that we walked through some of the public parks, watched some tennis lessons, and then returned to the Italian Restruant for our final meal there. We both agreed while the food was great we are getting a little sick of eating pasta almost every night.
Take care, and the next time you hear from us we'll be in Almaty (southern Borat country)
Tyson and Sara
Sunday, July 1, 2007
A Couple of Pictures
Some old school Propoganda from the Lenin Museum
See Roddy there are people here. The center of Kochkor, Saturday Morning
Our guide for our horse trip and his family
Getting back on the horses after lunch. Sara is on hers, mine is the black one. The little girl in the red shirt was the lucky one to get my watch with the water stuck in it (she seemed really happy none the less)
Our first view of the lake.
One of many statues that line the side of the road, usually at mountain passes. Eagles are some of the most common being a very powerful and very Krygz image here, but there are also people (war heros) , deer, leapord, and some more we can't remember.
Also we forgot to mention that today I really needed to go to the washroom, and we just happened to be by the Hyatt so we walked in and followed the sign to the Toliet. The band was playing in the lobby, the air conditioning made a slight wirl, and faint laugher could be heard from the pool. We didn't want to leave, but wanted less to be kicked out, so eventually we left. As they say a good hotel is a good hotel and a good hotel costs what a good hotel costs anywhere and everywhere it is all the same.
Also to note that after dinner we ran into our crazy Canadian lady friend again. She was just off to dinner at that time, but had a brillant suggestion. She had been wondering if there was a Canadian consolate here that may be throwing a party today, it being Canada day and all. I remembering the address from the lonely planet decided to make a small detour on the way home (6 blocks) to see if it was where the Lonely Planet say it was. Alas the LP failed again, no Canadian embassy, oh well.
Happy Canada Day!!
So it's been quite a while since we last updated, so use that as a warning for the lenght of the following. Since we last wrote there has been 6 days each having enough going on to fill an entry alone. First there was "Too hot to do anything day", followed by "Return to Ala Archa, and the search for the waterfall day", next came the "Holy crap I can't believe it is raining day", which was followed by "Oh my ass day", which preceeded the "No discount for you day", and that leaves us with today "What a better way to celebrate Canada Day then by visiting entire museums dedicated to the Communist creator Lenin day". Pictures will be added later today or tomorrow.
Too hot to do anything day.
We had great plans for this day, send a box of stuff home, go visit some musuems, and people watch in the center of Bishkek. None of which actually ended up occuring. We started the day later than we planned to, as per usual in Bishkek, and went to Fatboy's for brunch. After brunch we dragged our box over to the post office. Where believe it or not all the documents and information was in Kryg and French?? It doesn't really make sense, did the French sneek in here sometime during the Great Game was been played out by England and Russia, or where they the first country in after 1991, or did the Kryg people just decide they needed another language to put on the form to fill up the paper and choose French? Either way we were very confused when the lady wrote on our box that we needed the Poise, which wasn't in our Russian dictionary. Only after we found a lady who weighted our box did we relize it, should have realized it earlier from the documents. Anyways it turned out to send the parcel home would cost almost $200 Can. by air, and $120 Can. by ground (not recommended as many ground parcels go missing). We thought this was really expensive, and over twice the cost to send my parent's 20kg carpet home from Kashgar in China. Also I think it is crazy to spend more on shipping then the contents of the box are worth, so we drag the box onwards. We also tried DHL but they were $178 US, which we also said no to. After doing this for the better part of 2 hours the temperature was pushing 40'C, and all further plans went the way of an ice cream left outside (melted away into nothing). We spent the rest of the day lying half naked in our apartment with the fan on full blast watching a whole lot of V TV and The National Geographic Channel, with the odd half hour of CNN or BBC. We barely made it to the Italian place for dinner, and thought it was closed when we got there since everyone was hiding inside to avoid the heat. Sara has laid her foot down and said "40'C is just stupid hot, I never want it to be that hot again!"
Return to Ala Archa and the search for the waterfall day
We thought that it would be a good idea to try and escape the heat by heading to the mountians. So we decided to get up early and go to Ala Archa for the day this time equipped with a map in order to find the waterfall we missed the last time. A little before noon we had finished our brunch at Fatboy's and were ready to find a taxi to take us up into the park. Fatboy's was kind enough to once agian help us with this arrangement. We where up at the starting point to the hike at 12:45 and agreed to be back by 6:45, which we thought would be plenty of time to go find this waterfall. It was hot here too, not quite 40'C but well over 30'C, and within minutes we had stripped off all the clothes we could and the bag's zippers felt the strain of raincoats, longsleeve shirts, bottoms of pants, a lunch, water, and the ever necessary assortment of sprays, pills, lotions, and band-aids. The trail climbed quickly out of the valley on a barren sloop except for the grass, an odd rose bush, and other wild flowers. Sara was crampy again, which isn't her fault, but made progress slow. (Sara: At least i went, i could have not gone .. how many people like to hike when you feel as if somone is gutting you? So i give myself a standing ovation!!!) Whatever your thoughts are on the matter, it was slow progress under a blazing sun. I would stop and take photos (which sara found to be annoying) but it was my way of not getting annoyed for her pace. (Sara: Can you tell that we quarreled about this for a bit? haha) We made it just short of the waterfall by lunch time (2:30pm), I wanted to eat at the waterfall, but since we were not seeing eye to eye, and with low blood sugar Sara gets kinda scary we stopped just short but within sight of it. (Sara: you notice how its always me thats the issue.. someone throw me a frickin bone here!!! For having hiked once in my life in Canada to having hiked here a bazillion times overseas i think i win the nolble peace prize here!!!) Peace prize for what? Hiking is hiking, but lets get on with the story here, before someone gets fired for reading this for too long, or misses breakfast. For lunch we enjoyed bread with a Turkish Nutella knockoff, that may taste better than Nutella, but I'd never come right out and say that. After lunch we made our way up to the waterfall which was little more than a piss of water falling not all that far (the entire waterfall could fit in the camera frame standing 10 feet away, and you could walk right up and touch the rock behind the waterfall by reaching through the waterfall and get no more then your forarms wet). The only thing to note is that somehow water got into my watch, so while the watch still worked you had to read the time through droplets of water. Sara had a nap for a hour while I continued to climb up the trail towards the glacier, but an hour wasn't enough time to reach the glacier. Next time. We headed down and were about halfway back when the skies opened up for a hail storm. (Sara: this is the part when i was really getting annoyed with the constant picture taking, it was hailing and hes still taking photos, i think im going to have to start carrying the camera.. but the rain coats held off well, which i was interested in seeing how they would do). In my defense, the hail had knocked all the dust out of the air, the sun was still shinning even when the hail and thunder was coming down, and the mountains and rainbows where magnificant, not to meantion the evening light by this time. Either way, I stopped taking photos because the memory card was full,(sara: I wonder why the memory card was full.. hmmmm?) and we made it down to the car by 6:30pm just as the rain stopped. We both napped on the car ride back into town, and enjoyed a beer with dinner.
Holy crap I can't believe it's raining day
So we woke up and I (its sara writting now) was expecting blistering heat and was getting myself prepared to get ready to go to kochkor... ok wait thats a lie.. we first stayed in bed till 11, with hopes of getting up at 9.. i am really good with shutting off the alarm before Tyson realizes it and therefore i can sneak at least another hour of sleep in, and then if he does wake up.. and says "Oh we gotta go and get ready to leave" I just turn on the TV for him and that gives me AT LEAST another hour or 2... im so good at this game. (Tyson: it is a mean game, and it effects your ability to eat breakfast) everyone knows that i like to sleep so in my defense im on vacation and i sleep at home when im on vacation. Anyways.. after finally getting up Tyson looked outside and said.. its raining out.. Im not even kidding i almost peed my pants when i looked and yep it was raining.. i was dancing for joy!!! My prayers had been answered or somebodys prayers anyways.. i was so excited to get outside that i had laid my clothes out and got my rain jacket all prim and proper to wear.. it was a glorious day!!! The rain felt amazin and i was seriously contemplating staying in Bishkek to enjoy the rain before going to Kochkor. But we decided to get moving and skip breakfast, go to a store and get some fruit and bread and chocolate and an ice tea and find a taxi to take us to Kochkor (because like i said in previous blogs, im so done with minibuses and puke) (Tyson: the reason we decided to skip a meal was that we needed to get a day trip organized that evening from Kochkor, and were unsure as to when the agents closed, so we wanted to arrive before 5pm) We got a taxi to the market where you can get a relatively cheap taxi to bargin with to go places you want to to. When we first arrived this man was like "1000 som take you to kockor" , we were like ok, lets see this guys car.. so we went accross some lanes of traffic dodging cars like bullets (more like Frogger) and got to this guys car.. which was JAM packed with people, bags and other stuff.. i looked at Tyson with the many great facial expressions that im sure i have had during this trip and said "no way in hell im getting in that car, our bags wouldn't even fit anyways they would have to strap them to the roof" (Tyson: the car was a VW stationwagon with an extra row of seats in the trunk (7 seats plus the driver, 5 seats already filled with 7 people (5 adults 2 kids, plus luggage already overflowing from the much reduced trunk)) So as Tyson is good at reading my looks now.. it only took him about 1.5months into this trip haha and realized that if i get in this car.. im going to lose my girlfriend so we said no thank you.. plus i wouldn't pay 1000 som for that ride.. more like 10 som. SO we played frogger again to get to the other side to find a new taxi driver. We found a nice man who took us to Kochkor at a nice speed, i still hate driving here though. We got into Kochkor about 4-4:30 pm and found this B&B that was recommended to us by an expat working in the area. The B&B was excellent, the guy who greeted us spoke excellent english and was very helpful in finding us day options we could do from Kochkor. There was 2 options really, 1) go to song kol lake which was 2 hour drive, a ridiculous price for the car to take you there, and then once you are there you can hike a bit, or horse ride or whatever, and 2) Hike up to this smaller lake which was about 10 minutes to the village where you would start your hike the hike would be a long day we figured about 20 km each way (we didnt realize that at the time but when we got back we figured it out). So we talked it over and i really left the decision but to Tyson because i didn't want to be the bad monster in not letting him get his fullfilment of the mountain scenary. (Tyson: That is sara being mean in saying that both looked the same to her. We decided on the smaller lake because if it was still raining tomorrow the smaller valley would give better views still in the rain, and it was cheaper, and we'd already been to two large lakes that are surrounded by large mountains (Namsto Lake Tibet, and Karakol Lake near Kashgar). So the final decision was that we would ride a horse up to the lake, and then hike back down. We then decided that we would like dinner at 7 pm at the B&B and then we went for a walk to look for handicrafts and carpets. Most places were closed for the day so we just went back to the guest house and waited for dinner. Dinner was amazing, i was worried about what it would be like, but it was sooo good. We had this pasta soup with carrots and potatoes and onions, cucumber and tomatoe salad, and some fried potato thing with sauce it was delicious, there even was PICKLES!!! But after not having a pickle for so long i had a few bites but i just didnt think it tasted as good as bricks pickles that we have at home.. none the less the meal was fantastic and i ate it all.. After dinner we had a SERIOUS game of chess. It wasnt that serious, i lost and decided that i did not want to hurt Tysons feelings if i were to play for real in the next game and so we headed to bed early. We were to start our day tomorrow at 6:30 am sharp for breakfast, and 7:00 am departure time.
Oh my ass day
We sluggishly got up, and proceeded to the dinner table for breakfast. It was crepes and bread with the delicious homemade jam. They have the best homemade jam in this country!!! The crepes were so good i don't even think i took a breath when i inhaled them. After breakfast we got into the car and made our way to the village to meet our guide and our horses. I have never been on a horse before so i was a little nervous, and Tyson hasn't ridden since he was a kid. We were both a little scared because of what happend to Tysons mom on a horse, but we figured we would do it anyways. So we got on our horses got our whips and headed off for the long journey. At first we rode really slow, because we didnt know any better, the guide kept trying to tell us how to say the word for "faster or something .. something to make the horse go anyways"... it was either, Cho, chew, cha, cho cho, chai, somewhere along the lines. After trying to whip the horses which wasn't working that well either, i figured that kicking it with my heels made my horse go faster. At first for the first 3 hours, it was fun, it was really nice to see the scenary from on a horse rather then always looking at the ground to see where im walking when hiking. It was soo peacful, really majistic and tranquil. (Tyson: the scenry was very different than our previous hikes as we were know in Central Krygyzstan which lacks any vegitation larger than a rose bush. Also the horses were in good shape and responded well to directions but not always so well to requests to go faster. Mine didn't like walking on rocks while Sara's disliked walking through water) We saw many Kryg Platapuses as Sara calls Marmots. I know they are not platupuses i just like calling them that.. for fun. They are cute though, there was even some baby ones. Anyways we stopped for a bit to rest, at this point we were feeling fine, nothing hurt all was well. The lake was very far, we had to ride high and over an old terminal moraine. At this point things were starting to hurt a little from the trotting and my body jolting up and down. But then we saw the lake. It was nice, fairly big. We kept on going for a bit before we got over half way around the lake when i turned to Tysons asking i thought we were stopping at the lake and walking back down.. he just shrugged his shoulders and said lets see where the guide takes us. After we had passed some Yurts and got past the lake, even Tyson was wondering where we were going and asked the guide, who said to a "yurt" .. at this point im thinking hmm.. we already passed like 10 yurts.. which yurt are you taking us to? Finally after crossing a larger river, and riding for the better part of 5 hours we got a yurt where we were graciously greeted by a "shepards life family" this is the organization we had booked our tour from it helps Krygz families and the tourist buisness. The family was very nice and kind and fed Tyson lunch, i didnt want any i was apprehenisive about what it was, but i did have some bread an jam. Except this bread tasted like Indian nan bread and it was the best tasting bread we have had since being here. (Tyson: the meal was pressure cooked potatoes, carrots and spring onions, which also tasted amazing, second in best food since the last yurt meal beside Karakol lake) If i woul have known it was potatoes and such, i would have had some but i had a fear it was going to be sheeps eye and friend mutton.. (you should know by know that you always get potatoes) IT says in the lonely planet guide that yurt people eat mutton and i dont want mutton or sheeps eye! (but how right has the LP been about really anything in Krygyzstan?) True true! Anyways after Tysons second helping of lunch it was 2:00pm and we decided to take the horses down because we figured it would takes us at least 5-6 hours to walk back down that maybe we could get our horses running and it would be faster. Getting on the horse the second time to go back down did not feel so well. Our bums were hurting by this point already and our legs. But we managed to be ok for about an hour then the real pain kicked in. The trotting hurt like a son of a B!!!!!!!!!!! The trick was to try and get the horses to gallop which hurt the least, but often instead of galloping it would be a steady or rather unsteady trot. Long story short, we got back around 7:30 pm to the village, i had to get off my horse for the last half an hour due to realizin that i could probably walk faster then the speed i was on my horse and came to the sense that self inflicting pain just is not fun anymore. Everything hurt, it felt like i had just played 3 tournaments back to back to back of Ultimate frisbee. (Tyson: by this point even walking on the horse hurt, especially since it would stop every 5 seconds to eat, so for the last 15 minutes I got the thing trotting (no running left) as fast as I could which hurt soo much but it was over sooner...) I arrived last and in much pain. We paid our guide, thanked him, and now i can cross riding a horse till the seat of my pants caught on fire around mountains for 12 hours off my list of things to do before i die. Still need to get to Hawaii though. Our guide "apparently" tried to call a taxi for us to get us back to kochkor, but he said no taxi only my friend.. how convienent.. and how convienet that it only costed us 100 som to get to the village, but his friend wanst 120 som to take us back.. being really tired and sore i just wanted to get back so 120 it was, he wasn't budging for 100. (Tyson: The cool thing was that the guy's friend drove a Lada, an old one at that. What a bare bones vehicle, I noted the only extra was that every seat in the car had it's own ash tray!!) We got back to the guest house and waited for dinner, it was a good dinner again however we were so tired we could barely eat, i thought i was going to fall alseep in my pasta dish. We headed to bed at 8:30 pm with half eaten dinners and slept the night away, except you know when you have been in a moving thing for too long, like at an amusment park, or on a trampoline and you feel that motion when you close your eyes, that was my entire night of feeling like i was on the damn horse still so falling asleep was hard. We also ran into that crazy canadian girl that we met in Karkol, she was thinking of coming back to bishkek with us the next day but opted out to stay another day in kochkor.
No Discount for you day!
We got up and after breakfast of talking to our Crazy Canadian friend, went off in search of carpets. Found the store we where looking for which had lots of selection, and we proceeded to pick out all the ones we thought looked good before narrowing that pile down to a few goods ones. We picked out a number of carpets and thought that we could get a good deal, since we had picked out more than 2. Not for us, as the shop owner was out of town and this lady was unable to give deals, how convient (as Sara would say). Since the listed prices were already better than the other shop in town and a steal compared to the prices in Bishkek not to meantion the selection we decided what the hell we only live once. Unfortunetly we did not have enough som to make the purchase and no where in town would take visa, mastercard, debt, traveller cheques, but there was half a dozen internet cafes, does that make any sense. Since it was Saturday just before noon all the banks were closed (both of them) to change US dollars, and it wasn't apparent when or if they were going to reopen for the day. So we found a shrewd old women in a conveince store who would give us a 1 som/US dollar better rate then the CBT office (tourist office). Well 1 som better on $50 dollar bills, 0.5 som better on $20 dollar bills. We were quite unhappy that the rate was different because our bills are brand new, but whatever.. So we loaded up on another huge bag of soveniours that we'll be dragging across Asia for a while. We then found a taxi to take us back to Bishkek, went back to the B&B, got the rest of our bags and headed for Bishkek a little to fast. Luckly when we asked the driver to slow down he did so, so much so that he stopped for a 30 minutes break at a truck stop type place. Once back in Bishkek we got our apartment back and enjoyed our return to the Italian resturant (we've planned out what we are going to eat each night for our last three nights here).
What a better way to celebrate Canada Day then by visiting museums dedicated to Lenin (or something like that) day
We got up relatively early for us in Bishkek. I washed my canadian hat because it was filthy and i figured it should be spik and span for canada day. We got up and decided that we would go for breakfast/lunch go to the musuems and write a really long blog. We also put on all of our canadian stuff, bracellets and things to hand out to people, such as the waiters at the italian restaurant and at fatboys because they see us the most. The museums were interesting, it would have been nice to been able to read some russian, but none the less it was a museum dedicated to Frunze, lenins side kick who grew up here. The second museum was more to lenin and other random stuff such as evolution diagrams, old pottery from china, and then pretty much a whole floor dedicated to lenin. The musuem was two floors the first was the history of the Krygz people from the stone age until the height of thier nomadic society (around the same time the Russians came in). The second floor was all Lenin, there Sara I know you want to go eat, but lets say it so it makes a thread of sense. We haven't eaten in 6 hours im hungry so to make things short, musuems good, watching kids and adults play in a water fountain was fun, and now writing this blog has taken to much time, so we must go and get a beer with dinner and celebrate canada day with some calazones , beer, and dessert!!!!!
Too hot to do anything day.
We had great plans for this day, send a box of stuff home, go visit some musuems, and people watch in the center of Bishkek. None of which actually ended up occuring. We started the day later than we planned to, as per usual in Bishkek, and went to Fatboy's for brunch. After brunch we dragged our box over to the post office. Where believe it or not all the documents and information was in Kryg and French?? It doesn't really make sense, did the French sneek in here sometime during the Great Game was been played out by England and Russia, or where they the first country in after 1991, or did the Kryg people just decide they needed another language to put on the form to fill up the paper and choose French? Either way we were very confused when the lady wrote on our box that we needed the Poise, which wasn't in our Russian dictionary. Only after we found a lady who weighted our box did we relize it, should have realized it earlier from the documents. Anyways it turned out to send the parcel home would cost almost $200 Can. by air, and $120 Can. by ground (not recommended as many ground parcels go missing). We thought this was really expensive, and over twice the cost to send my parent's 20kg carpet home from Kashgar in China. Also I think it is crazy to spend more on shipping then the contents of the box are worth, so we drag the box onwards. We also tried DHL but they were $178 US, which we also said no to. After doing this for the better part of 2 hours the temperature was pushing 40'C, and all further plans went the way of an ice cream left outside (melted away into nothing). We spent the rest of the day lying half naked in our apartment with the fan on full blast watching a whole lot of V TV and The National Geographic Channel, with the odd half hour of CNN or BBC. We barely made it to the Italian place for dinner, and thought it was closed when we got there since everyone was hiding inside to avoid the heat. Sara has laid her foot down and said "40'C is just stupid hot, I never want it to be that hot again!"
Return to Ala Archa and the search for the waterfall day
We thought that it would be a good idea to try and escape the heat by heading to the mountians. So we decided to get up early and go to Ala Archa for the day this time equipped with a map in order to find the waterfall we missed the last time. A little before noon we had finished our brunch at Fatboy's and were ready to find a taxi to take us up into the park. Fatboy's was kind enough to once agian help us with this arrangement. We where up at the starting point to the hike at 12:45 and agreed to be back by 6:45, which we thought would be plenty of time to go find this waterfall. It was hot here too, not quite 40'C but well over 30'C, and within minutes we had stripped off all the clothes we could and the bag's zippers felt the strain of raincoats, longsleeve shirts, bottoms of pants, a lunch, water, and the ever necessary assortment of sprays, pills, lotions, and band-aids. The trail climbed quickly out of the valley on a barren sloop except for the grass, an odd rose bush, and other wild flowers. Sara was crampy again, which isn't her fault, but made progress slow. (Sara: At least i went, i could have not gone .. how many people like to hike when you feel as if somone is gutting you? So i give myself a standing ovation!!!) Whatever your thoughts are on the matter, it was slow progress under a blazing sun. I would stop and take photos (which sara found to be annoying) but it was my way of not getting annoyed for her pace. (Sara: Can you tell that we quarreled about this for a bit? haha) We made it just short of the waterfall by lunch time (2:30pm), I wanted to eat at the waterfall, but since we were not seeing eye to eye, and with low blood sugar Sara gets kinda scary we stopped just short but within sight of it. (Sara: you notice how its always me thats the issue.. someone throw me a frickin bone here!!! For having hiked once in my life in Canada to having hiked here a bazillion times overseas i think i win the nolble peace prize here!!!) Peace prize for what? Hiking is hiking, but lets get on with the story here, before someone gets fired for reading this for too long, or misses breakfast. For lunch we enjoyed bread with a Turkish Nutella knockoff, that may taste better than Nutella, but I'd never come right out and say that. After lunch we made our way up to the waterfall which was little more than a piss of water falling not all that far (the entire waterfall could fit in the camera frame standing 10 feet away, and you could walk right up and touch the rock behind the waterfall by reaching through the waterfall and get no more then your forarms wet). The only thing to note is that somehow water got into my watch, so while the watch still worked you had to read the time through droplets of water. Sara had a nap for a hour while I continued to climb up the trail towards the glacier, but an hour wasn't enough time to reach the glacier. Next time. We headed down and were about halfway back when the skies opened up for a hail storm. (Sara: this is the part when i was really getting annoyed with the constant picture taking, it was hailing and hes still taking photos, i think im going to have to start carrying the camera.. but the rain coats held off well, which i was interested in seeing how they would do). In my defense, the hail had knocked all the dust out of the air, the sun was still shinning even when the hail and thunder was coming down, and the mountains and rainbows where magnificant, not to meantion the evening light by this time. Either way, I stopped taking photos because the memory card was full,(sara: I wonder why the memory card was full.. hmmmm?) and we made it down to the car by 6:30pm just as the rain stopped. We both napped on the car ride back into town, and enjoyed a beer with dinner.
Holy crap I can't believe it's raining day
So we woke up and I (its sara writting now) was expecting blistering heat and was getting myself prepared to get ready to go to kochkor... ok wait thats a lie.. we first stayed in bed till 11, with hopes of getting up at 9.. i am really good with shutting off the alarm before Tyson realizes it and therefore i can sneak at least another hour of sleep in, and then if he does wake up.. and says "Oh we gotta go and get ready to leave" I just turn on the TV for him and that gives me AT LEAST another hour or 2... im so good at this game. (Tyson: it is a mean game, and it effects your ability to eat breakfast) everyone knows that i like to sleep so in my defense im on vacation and i sleep at home when im on vacation. Anyways.. after finally getting up Tyson looked outside and said.. its raining out.. Im not even kidding i almost peed my pants when i looked and yep it was raining.. i was dancing for joy!!! My prayers had been answered or somebodys prayers anyways.. i was so excited to get outside that i had laid my clothes out and got my rain jacket all prim and proper to wear.. it was a glorious day!!! The rain felt amazin and i was seriously contemplating staying in Bishkek to enjoy the rain before going to Kochkor. But we decided to get moving and skip breakfast, go to a store and get some fruit and bread and chocolate and an ice tea and find a taxi to take us to Kochkor (because like i said in previous blogs, im so done with minibuses and puke) (Tyson: the reason we decided to skip a meal was that we needed to get a day trip organized that evening from Kochkor, and were unsure as to when the agents closed, so we wanted to arrive before 5pm) We got a taxi to the market where you can get a relatively cheap taxi to bargin with to go places you want to to. When we first arrived this man was like "1000 som take you to kockor" , we were like ok, lets see this guys car.. so we went accross some lanes of traffic dodging cars like bullets (more like Frogger) and got to this guys car.. which was JAM packed with people, bags and other stuff.. i looked at Tyson with the many great facial expressions that im sure i have had during this trip and said "no way in hell im getting in that car, our bags wouldn't even fit anyways they would have to strap them to the roof" (Tyson: the car was a VW stationwagon with an extra row of seats in the trunk (7 seats plus the driver, 5 seats already filled with 7 people (5 adults 2 kids, plus luggage already overflowing from the much reduced trunk)) So as Tyson is good at reading my looks now.. it only took him about 1.5months into this trip haha and realized that if i get in this car.. im going to lose my girlfriend so we said no thank you.. plus i wouldn't pay 1000 som for that ride.. more like 10 som. SO we played frogger again to get to the other side to find a new taxi driver. We found a nice man who took us to Kochkor at a nice speed, i still hate driving here though. We got into Kochkor about 4-4:30 pm and found this B&B that was recommended to us by an expat working in the area. The B&B was excellent, the guy who greeted us spoke excellent english and was very helpful in finding us day options we could do from Kochkor. There was 2 options really, 1) go to song kol lake which was 2 hour drive, a ridiculous price for the car to take you there, and then once you are there you can hike a bit, or horse ride or whatever, and 2) Hike up to this smaller lake which was about 10 minutes to the village where you would start your hike the hike would be a long day we figured about 20 km each way (we didnt realize that at the time but when we got back we figured it out). So we talked it over and i really left the decision but to Tyson because i didn't want to be the bad monster in not letting him get his fullfilment of the mountain scenary. (Tyson: That is sara being mean in saying that both looked the same to her. We decided on the smaller lake because if it was still raining tomorrow the smaller valley would give better views still in the rain, and it was cheaper, and we'd already been to two large lakes that are surrounded by large mountains (Namsto Lake Tibet, and Karakol Lake near Kashgar). So the final decision was that we would ride a horse up to the lake, and then hike back down. We then decided that we would like dinner at 7 pm at the B&B and then we went for a walk to look for handicrafts and carpets. Most places were closed for the day so we just went back to the guest house and waited for dinner. Dinner was amazing, i was worried about what it would be like, but it was sooo good. We had this pasta soup with carrots and potatoes and onions, cucumber and tomatoe salad, and some fried potato thing with sauce it was delicious, there even was PICKLES!!! But after not having a pickle for so long i had a few bites but i just didnt think it tasted as good as bricks pickles that we have at home.. none the less the meal was fantastic and i ate it all.. After dinner we had a SERIOUS game of chess. It wasnt that serious, i lost and decided that i did not want to hurt Tysons feelings if i were to play for real in the next game and so we headed to bed early. We were to start our day tomorrow at 6:30 am sharp for breakfast, and 7:00 am departure time.
Oh my ass day
We sluggishly got up, and proceeded to the dinner table for breakfast. It was crepes and bread with the delicious homemade jam. They have the best homemade jam in this country!!! The crepes were so good i don't even think i took a breath when i inhaled them. After breakfast we got into the car and made our way to the village to meet our guide and our horses. I have never been on a horse before so i was a little nervous, and Tyson hasn't ridden since he was a kid. We were both a little scared because of what happend to Tysons mom on a horse, but we figured we would do it anyways. So we got on our horses got our whips and headed off for the long journey. At first we rode really slow, because we didnt know any better, the guide kept trying to tell us how to say the word for "faster or something .. something to make the horse go anyways"... it was either, Cho, chew, cha, cho cho, chai, somewhere along the lines. After trying to whip the horses which wasn't working that well either, i figured that kicking it with my heels made my horse go faster. At first for the first 3 hours, it was fun, it was really nice to see the scenary from on a horse rather then always looking at the ground to see where im walking when hiking. It was soo peacful, really majistic and tranquil. (Tyson: the scenry was very different than our previous hikes as we were know in Central Krygyzstan which lacks any vegitation larger than a rose bush. Also the horses were in good shape and responded well to directions but not always so well to requests to go faster. Mine didn't like walking on rocks while Sara's disliked walking through water) We saw many Kryg Platapuses as Sara calls Marmots. I know they are not platupuses i just like calling them that.. for fun. They are cute though, there was even some baby ones. Anyways we stopped for a bit to rest, at this point we were feeling fine, nothing hurt all was well. The lake was very far, we had to ride high and over an old terminal moraine. At this point things were starting to hurt a little from the trotting and my body jolting up and down. But then we saw the lake. It was nice, fairly big. We kept on going for a bit before we got over half way around the lake when i turned to Tysons asking i thought we were stopping at the lake and walking back down.. he just shrugged his shoulders and said lets see where the guide takes us. After we had passed some Yurts and got past the lake, even Tyson was wondering where we were going and asked the guide, who said to a "yurt" .. at this point im thinking hmm.. we already passed like 10 yurts.. which yurt are you taking us to? Finally after crossing a larger river, and riding for the better part of 5 hours we got a yurt where we were graciously greeted by a "shepards life family" this is the organization we had booked our tour from it helps Krygz families and the tourist buisness. The family was very nice and kind and fed Tyson lunch, i didnt want any i was apprehenisive about what it was, but i did have some bread an jam. Except this bread tasted like Indian nan bread and it was the best tasting bread we have had since being here. (Tyson: the meal was pressure cooked potatoes, carrots and spring onions, which also tasted amazing, second in best food since the last yurt meal beside Karakol lake) If i woul have known it was potatoes and such, i would have had some but i had a fear it was going to be sheeps eye and friend mutton.. (you should know by know that you always get potatoes) IT says in the lonely planet guide that yurt people eat mutton and i dont want mutton or sheeps eye! (but how right has the LP been about really anything in Krygyzstan?) True true! Anyways after Tysons second helping of lunch it was 2:00pm and we decided to take the horses down because we figured it would takes us at least 5-6 hours to walk back down that maybe we could get our horses running and it would be faster. Getting on the horse the second time to go back down did not feel so well. Our bums were hurting by this point already and our legs. But we managed to be ok for about an hour then the real pain kicked in. The trotting hurt like a son of a B!!!!!!!!!!! The trick was to try and get the horses to gallop which hurt the least, but often instead of galloping it would be a steady or rather unsteady trot. Long story short, we got back around 7:30 pm to the village, i had to get off my horse for the last half an hour due to realizin that i could probably walk faster then the speed i was on my horse and came to the sense that self inflicting pain just is not fun anymore. Everything hurt, it felt like i had just played 3 tournaments back to back to back of Ultimate frisbee. (Tyson: by this point even walking on the horse hurt, especially since it would stop every 5 seconds to eat, so for the last 15 minutes I got the thing trotting (no running left) as fast as I could which hurt soo much but it was over sooner...) I arrived last and in much pain. We paid our guide, thanked him, and now i can cross riding a horse till the seat of my pants caught on fire around mountains for 12 hours off my list of things to do before i die. Still need to get to Hawaii though. Our guide "apparently" tried to call a taxi for us to get us back to kochkor, but he said no taxi only my friend.. how convienent.. and how convienet that it only costed us 100 som to get to the village, but his friend wanst 120 som to take us back.. being really tired and sore i just wanted to get back so 120 it was, he wasn't budging for 100. (Tyson: The cool thing was that the guy's friend drove a Lada, an old one at that. What a bare bones vehicle, I noted the only extra was that every seat in the car had it's own ash tray!!) We got back to the guest house and waited for dinner, it was a good dinner again however we were so tired we could barely eat, i thought i was going to fall alseep in my pasta dish. We headed to bed at 8:30 pm with half eaten dinners and slept the night away, except you know when you have been in a moving thing for too long, like at an amusment park, or on a trampoline and you feel that motion when you close your eyes, that was my entire night of feeling like i was on the damn horse still so falling asleep was hard. We also ran into that crazy canadian girl that we met in Karkol, she was thinking of coming back to bishkek with us the next day but opted out to stay another day in kochkor.
No Discount for you day!
We got up and after breakfast of talking to our Crazy Canadian friend, went off in search of carpets. Found the store we where looking for which had lots of selection, and we proceeded to pick out all the ones we thought looked good before narrowing that pile down to a few goods ones. We picked out a number of carpets and thought that we could get a good deal, since we had picked out more than 2. Not for us, as the shop owner was out of town and this lady was unable to give deals, how convient (as Sara would say). Since the listed prices were already better than the other shop in town and a steal compared to the prices in Bishkek not to meantion the selection we decided what the hell we only live once. Unfortunetly we did not have enough som to make the purchase and no where in town would take visa, mastercard, debt, traveller cheques, but there was half a dozen internet cafes, does that make any sense. Since it was Saturday just before noon all the banks were closed (both of them) to change US dollars, and it wasn't apparent when or if they were going to reopen for the day. So we found a shrewd old women in a conveince store who would give us a 1 som/US dollar better rate then the CBT office (tourist office). Well 1 som better on $50 dollar bills, 0.5 som better on $20 dollar bills. We were quite unhappy that the rate was different because our bills are brand new, but whatever.. So we loaded up on another huge bag of soveniours that we'll be dragging across Asia for a while. We then found a taxi to take us back to Bishkek, went back to the B&B, got the rest of our bags and headed for Bishkek a little to fast. Luckly when we asked the driver to slow down he did so, so much so that he stopped for a 30 minutes break at a truck stop type place. Once back in Bishkek we got our apartment back and enjoyed our return to the Italian resturant (we've planned out what we are going to eat each night for our last three nights here).
What a better way to celebrate Canada Day then by visiting museums dedicated to Lenin (or something like that) day
We got up relatively early for us in Bishkek. I washed my canadian hat because it was filthy and i figured it should be spik and span for canada day. We got up and decided that we would go for breakfast/lunch go to the musuems and write a really long blog. We also put on all of our canadian stuff, bracellets and things to hand out to people, such as the waiters at the italian restaurant and at fatboys because they see us the most. The museums were interesting, it would have been nice to been able to read some russian, but none the less it was a museum dedicated to Frunze, lenins side kick who grew up here. The second museum was more to lenin and other random stuff such as evolution diagrams, old pottery from china, and then pretty much a whole floor dedicated to lenin. The musuem was two floors the first was the history of the Krygz people from the stone age until the height of thier nomadic society (around the same time the Russians came in). The second floor was all Lenin, there Sara I know you want to go eat, but lets say it so it makes a thread of sense. We haven't eaten in 6 hours im hungry so to make things short, musuems good, watching kids and adults play in a water fountain was fun, and now writing this blog has taken to much time, so we must go and get a beer with dinner and celebrate canada day with some calazones , beer, and dessert!!!!!
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