After a Long Absence

Well, the year is coming to a close and I’m getting complaint e-mails that I haven’t updated by blog in ages…..ok, so I’m guilty! A lot has happened over the last three months and I’ll probably have to write a couple of blog entries just to catch up.

A Kyrgyzstan Tour
At the end of September I took about three weeks of vacation to travel around Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As a safety measure after the “revolution”, Peace Corps gave all volunteers one year visas to Kazakhstan and I decided to take advantage of the free visa for a quick visit to the giant to Kyrgyzstan’s north. I first went to Almaty, the former capitol of Kazakhstan, is probably the largest cosmopolitan city in Central Asia, and it’s the place I had my first latte in over a year in a small café called “Tommie’s Pastries”. Since Almaty was my first stop during my travels, I first had to overcome the shock of how much everything cost and the fact they had supermarkets with carts, and you could actually take the products off the shelves by yourself. I learned very quickly that Kazakhstan is way more developed than Kyrgyzstan, with lots more BMWs, Mercedes and 4WD Jeeps compared to the old soviet put-put cars you’re more likely to see in Kyrgyzstan, and everything was expensive. I almost panicked because I originally budgeted only $5 a day for food (which would be good living in Kyrgyzstan) and in Almaty I needed more like $10 to eat normal…..I survived off of street food and that latte took about 75% of my first day’s food allowance. Even the prices for hotels had inflated and the cheapest accommodation I could find was for $8 in a dormitory in the train station – everywhere else was over $25 a night. The dorm was horrible! The bed was hard as a rock and I had to share a room with three other women, one who kept trying to sell me expensive Russian cosmetics, and another who started yelling and screaming at 2 in the morning because someone stole her spoon – or something like that, I was trying hard to ignore the fiasco by shutting my eyes tightly and pretending I was in Thailand again.

On the upside, I was able to see a ballet performance in Almaty, and for an excellent central, about ten rows back seat, I only paid about $8. It was the most tragic ballet I have ever seen (I wish I could tell you the name, but it was in Russian and I don’t remember), because almost everyone died. It was set in ancient Arabia and the first scene is all happy at first with the prima ballerina all in love in a happy loving family, that is, until some Arabian raiders come and kill everyone in the first scene except for the prima who gets kidnapped and taken away. The second scene shows the kidnapped girl being wooed by some Arabian king and the forsaken first wife of the harem. Lost love, forsaken love, and love refused – the third and final scene ends the ballet so that everyone either committed suicide or was murdered. It was so tragic, but it was so good to see ballet.

While in Almaty, I also visited their Art Museum, which supposedly has the largest art collection in Central Asia. With 3 floors and art ranging from paintings, to sculptures, to fabric and felt works, I loved it and I know absolutely nothing about art (but I sure like looking at it!). I also visited a couple of Russian Orthodox Cathedrals, which were absolutely beautiful both on the inside and out. Very different from the cathedrals in England (see pictures to compare) and one reminded me of a gingerbread house because it was so colorful on the outside.

The rest of my time in Kazakhstan I traveled to Shymkent (nothing at all there except a really good hotdog) for a night before traveling to a small town called Turkestan where the only real historical building in the whole of Kazakhstan is located. It’s a huge mausoleum, built in….for…..Of course, it’s a Islamic place of pilgrimage and I had to wear a headscarf (and pay an entry fee) in order to see the inside, but the outside was far more impressive and brought images of what a silk road city might have looked like, which an adjoining museum also helped with. I stayed the night there in a really scanky hotel – it was the budget option offered by Lonely Planet, but I would not recommend it to any women traveling alone unless you are broke and desperate. I was forced to have a roommate (an older business woman), and one time when she closed the door, half the wall fell off onto her bed and there were strange men hanging out all night. I didn’t feel safe there and left before the sunrise to catch a bus to Taraz, my last stop before entering Kyrgyzstan again. The only thing worth mentioning is I got the hotel to lower their price by playing the broke, desperate traveler act (seems to work for girls better than guys, so I’ve heard)….