,m Sean´s Shenanigans: April 2006

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Still Here

Here in the town of Karakol at the moment. Decided to do some hiking here in north eastern Kyrgyzstan rather that go to Kazakhstan last week. The hiking season is just starting after the snow melt. Came over here with a guy from Slovenia, we first stopped at the town of Tamchi by Lake Issyk Kul for a couple of nights. We wanted to hike up the mountains, but after walking 12km though desert scrum to get to the foot of them, we were too tired and walked back (then didn't look that far away).
Then went Karakol and did a day hike up the Jeti-Ogyz valley before doing a two day hike up the Arashan valley. Have an over night bus back to Bishkek tonight and will go to Almaty tomorrow - probably. Its labour day tomorrow, so not sure how transport will be affected.

posted by Sean at 12:36 pm 0 comments

Monday, April 24, 2006

Down and Out in Bishkek

Still here in Bishkek. There is really nothing to see here but the hostel i'm staying at is nice and it was good to stay in one place for a while. I'm planning on going to Almaty, Kazakhstan tomorrow. Weather here is very changable. Its was up to 27 before falling to 14 last week and this Thursday is forecast to hit a high of 35!
Went out on Saturday night. They have beer here with 9% alcohol. After such a long layoff, it hit me pretty fast. Memory is hazy, but I remember being at a wedding reception at some time in the night/morning. I couldn't find the hostel so I had to have a snooze in the park - not the safest city to be doing it.

posted by Sean at 10:22 am 0 comments

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Bishkek

Here in Bishkek at the moment. There is not alot to see here, its just a rather modern looking city. The spring weather is great though, blue skies and 27 degrees today!
Arrived here two days ago by shared taxi from Osh (old Mercedes station wagon). The taxi took 12 hours, crossing over two snow covered mountain passes, of which the highest was over 3500m high. Its is crop sowing time here, most of the fields passed on the way here were ripped up. Mostly it seems to be done by tractors, (none of which seem to have been bought since Soviet times), with the occasional horse pulling along a one furrow plough. In one instance, I saw a man pulling the plough - with the wife steering it!
Applied for a Kazakhstan visa yesterday. Cost $35 and I pick it up tomorrow evening. Wanted to go to Uzbekistan but first you have to ring the embassy for an appointment (5 days), then you have to wait for the visa processing (14 days +), and then pay $72 - Feck 'em.

posted by Sean at 12:38 pm 0 comments

Sunday, April 16, 2006

The King is Dead, ....

Finally bit the bullet and shelled out for a new pair of jeans and runners. The final straw came when one of the Pakistanis commented "oh me, your jeans are soo dirty!".
They were going on 200 hours without a service (some way off the 450hr record set in Peru though). The repairs made to the runners proved to be futile. Paid about $8 bucks for the runners and similar for the jeans.

posted by Sean at 3:58 pm 0 comments

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Hotel Hassles

Couldn't get any answer from the Osh Guesthouse. I tried ringing but the phone just rang out. I asked the guy there if there were any hotels around. Just then some friend of his poked his head in the door and I was been led away down the street. A few back streets later, I found my self in a type of mini Ballymun. The central city lot had about 30 four-storey towers. He shouted through a window and a woman appeared. She and a few more came out and after preliminary negotiations started floundering - the call went out for the Pakistanis!
A few minutes later, two Pakistanis arrived. They said the woman wanted 600 Soms for the room. I said No. The offer came down to 500 soms for two nights. I said no, I'll give her 200 for one night - deal.
What I thought was a room has turned out to be a five room appartment, with telly, kitchen, dining room, toiley and bathroom. I think i'll stay the two nights at least.

posted by Sean at 2:16 pm 0 comments

Corrupt Borders

Crossed in to Kyrgyzstan yesterday. The border crossing took 5 hours even though we were the only bus passengers crossing (20 of us), the rest were trucks. On the Chinese side, there was only one booth for non Chinese nationals, it took over an hour to get us all through (while two attendants in the Chinese offices watched on doing nothing). After that, the customs guys took all the bags out of the luggage hold and demanded a dollar or two to put them back in. If they weren't paid, I think they were threatening to go through the passengers bags in question - extra carefully. After that arrived at the Kyrgyz border checks. Before we got there, we had to pay a $12 customs handling fee! I think it meant that for the fee there would be NO checks! A poor Bangladeshi guy got special attention. They brought him into a room and searched him finding $500 on him. The army guy took it and put it in his pocket. When the guy protested, the army guy told him that he was in an angry mood and to get out! So he did. Thats alot of money to me, it must be a fortune to a Bangladeshi. If he wasn't on board the bus, I would probably have been brought in (with over $200 in my pocket). Had it been me, I wouldn't have left them off so lightly!
To top the trip off, the bus arrived at 4:30am in Osh. Could they not just have left a few hours later. On arrival I discovered my mp3 player missing. Another electronic device bites the dust! It must have rolled out of my pocket during the night and somebody then got light fingers.
The hotel I had planned has no answer. I can't find any other ones on the net and have no maps of guides of the place - or speak Russian for that matter.

posted by Sean at 5:31 am 0 comments

Friday, April 14, 2006

Kyrgyzstan

Capital: Bishkek
Currency: Som
Exchange Rate: €1 = 50 Som
Time Zone: GMT + 5
Population: 4.7 Million


posted by Sean at 9:58 am 0 comments

Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Jolly Old Cobbler

Returned back from Kargalik this afternoon (a town 4 hours drive south of here). The best thing about the place was probably the western style toilet. It was only the second one i've seen in the past 3 or 4 weeks.
Finally bit the bullet and got my trainer soles repaired today. For the two heels and two insoles the guy charged me 20 yuan! I was in a good mood, so I paid up.
Have a bus booked for Osh, Kyrgyzstan at 8am tomorrow. Hopefully it goes, I won't say on time as the Monday bus left on Tuesday this week!
I'll miss the food here, I can choose whether to go Chinese or go local and have some Uighur delights (of which the goat dumplings yesterday were the low point). Cheap as chips too, finding it hard to spend more that $10 a day, average about 6 yuan a meal! and the hotel here is costing me 15 yuan. Expect the rest of Central Asia to be more expensive.

posted by Sean at 5:33 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Would You Leave This Man into Your Country?

Wanted to get the bus to Osh, Kyrgyrstan, this morning but it was full. Have to settle instead for the bus that leaves on Friday morning. Was going to head down south to another town on the Silk Road but it was cold and raining, so I stayed in bed.
I sat in the restaurant for breakfast this morning looking at fresh orange juice, croisants, toast, fruit, coffee, and a big chicken burger with fries. I then looked away from to poster to see my plate of steamed mutton dumplings amd bowl of weak lukewarm tea.
Helped the manager here with English translations for the hotel website and other posters around the place. First up was 5m x 3m new banner advertising the services of the Semen Hotel (it should read Seman). He asked me if it needed changing and I replied "YES"! After typing in "define:semen" in google, he soon saw why.

posted by Sean at 12:01 pm 0 comments

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Kashgar

Arrived here in the famed silk road city of Kashgar this afternoon in time to catch the end of the Sunday Market. The cities population swells by more that 50,000 people every Sunday. The main market near the centre of town is located in a new rather sterile concrete building, but the roads surrounding this are crammed with people wheeling and dealing their wares.
There is also a livestock market on the outskirts of town in which sheep, goats, camels, horses, and cattle are bought and sold. See some more pics here.

posted by Sean at 5:03 pm 0 comments

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Finally

Finally got my Kyrgyzstan visa this afternoon. Applied yesterday for it and tried to get the guy to issue it in one day but no luck (the man I spoke to on Wednesday wasn't there - surprise, surprise!). Even with back dating the the application to Wednesday, I should have had to wait a week, but I managed to whittle him down to next day.
I have booked the sleeper train to Kashgar and leave for there at 3:51 this afternoon. Its nearly 1500km away and the trip takes 23hrs.

posted by Sean at 9:01 am 0 comments

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Spending Spree

Went and bought some stuff today. Needed a camera so splashed out 1950 yuan on a Pentax Optio S6 and a 512mb SD card. I was thinking about getting a camera with ISO 1000 capabilities (takes better pics in the dark) but opted to buy an mp3 player instead. Mp3 and mp4 players are everywhere here. You can buy mp4 players with screens as small 1.2". The Chinese seem to favour the stick memory mp3 players over the hard drive ones, of which i've only seen the iPod available.

posted by Sean at 4:58 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Quest Goes On

Got an address for the embassy which was basically like telling me it was a building on the Cork Rd! I couldn't find it after a couple of hours of searching. Then went to the tourist information and they gave me an address. Went there this morning, but as it turned out, it was the address of a hotel. Luckily a guy there had passed the embassy a few days earlier and was able to point me in the right direction. When I got there (10:20 am), the cleaning lady just said "four". I didn't know if she meant 4 mins, 40 mins, 4 hours, or 4 o'clock (local time or Beijing time) ? I waited 40 mins but no luck, so I decided to head into town and come back at 4 o'clock. Fortunately there was someone there when I returned, but he said they were busy and I couldn't get a visa today (nor tomorrow either)!
Normally the price is $56 for a wait of 7 days and $112 for 3 days, but he told me that if I came on Friday morning, I could have the visa back that evening for $56. I don't feel very confident that this will happen when I go on Friday, but i'll live in hope.

posted by Sean at 5:01 pm 0 comments

Monday, April 03, 2006

The Quest for Kyrgyzstan

Woke up this morning with the intention of finding the Kyrgyzstan Embassy here. The guy at reception spoke no English so aquired the the help of some woman next door. Her English wasn't much better, but told me to take bus 104 to the south of the city. When I arrived at her designated location, there was no embassy to be seen. Eventually, after a bit of searching I found the Kyrgyzstan Airlines office, a nice man there told me the address and showed me a map. The embassy was in the north of the city. After a bit of walking and busing, I got near the embassy but it was nearly closing time (midday). After running there I found about 100 people standing outside. I decided to join the queue and got talking to a German girl (the only other western there). After about 45mins of waiting and chatting about future destinations, she asked me why I was taking such a circuitous route. Only then did I see the sign clearly - Embassy of Kazakhstan! F&#$ it, i'll have to try again tomorrow morning.
The hostel is pretty ok but there are only two of us here at the moment - am told its the off season. They have a pretty nice TV and I bought a DVD tonite to watch. The DVD (Oscar winner Crash) cost me 10 RMB and a pint bottle of beer 1.6 RMB from the supermarket. All in, came to less than 1.20 euro - not bad. Intenet is only 3 RMB an hour too. My visa will take 7 days, so may stay here a while.

posted by Sean at 5:17 pm 0 comments

Sunday, April 02, 2006

The West

Arrived here in Urumqi after a 3 hour flight from Chengdu this evening. Nearly missed the flight and only got to the check in desk with a minute to go. I had to pick up my e-ticket from a certain desk but couldn't find it for 10 mins. I only knew the time of the flight but had no booking number or airline. After a few hand gestures and a bit of drawing, I eventually located it.
Its was cold and raining when I arrived - reminded me of home. It took me 2 hours to find a place to stay. The places on the Lonely Planet were either closed or no longer offered dorms. I eventually found a new hostel with dorms for 35 RMB an night - no thanks to the taxi driver who dropped me off at the wrong hotel!
All China runs on Beijing time so its dark here 'till after eight in the morning but stays light 'till nearly nine at night. The locals run on their own time (2 hours behind), but offices and transport run on Beijing time. This province used to be 90% Uighurs (locals population) in the '50s but its now about 50-50, with alot of Han Chinese being relocated here from eastern provinces. The majority here in Urumqi are Han while in the countryside still has a Uighur majority. The train track to here was only completed a few years ago, and since then the Han have been flooding in. Its doesn't augur well for Tibet as the train line to Lhasa is completed and due to start transporting people in July.

posted by Sean at 4:53 pm 0 comments

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Pandas

Went to the computer market here in Chengdu today. Its made up of 2 massive malls, one is 7 stories high and the other is nearly as big. They have everything that goes onto, into, or beside a computer. Was looking at cameras, the prices are lower that I can see on the internet. Waiting 'till I get to Urumqi before buying because it has a tax free port status (even though its the furthest city in the world from the ocean!) and I may get one cheaper. Its may also be dearer, but anyroads i'll soon see.
Tried to book a flight there for tomorrow but alot of problems. First, I couldn't enter my credit card details on the net, so I had to ring. Then, when I looked at my email this evening hoping for confirmation, I see that they want me to fax them my signature, passport and credit card! I did that and not they still havn't sent confirmation. I'm not sure what i'll do now.
Chengdu is the place in China to see Pandas. Its costs 70 RMB to go out there with a tour from the hostel to see them tomorrow. I'll probably do it but you have to get up at 7am or something. You can also pay 400 RMB and have a picture taken cuddling one - some chance!

posted by Sean at 4:41 pm 0 comments