Found In Translation

What I Learned In Tashkent That Should Be Applied Everywhere, Part Deux:

- Less assheads in police uniforms (guess who was sent to the backroom of the Tashkent International Airport).
- More fountains in parks with beer gardens.

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Beijing English Menu (from the Welcome The Foreign Friend Come cafe:

Roast duck of Beijing
Rinse the meat of Beijing
Wheat Joss-stick Cow Willow
Fried peanut
Korean Form Dog meat
The temple explodes the chicken cube
The meat mixs the bean curd
Fragrant and hot soil bean silk
The meat fries the mushroom
Mountain wild vegetable
The beef braises the persimmon
The dry fries Huang's flower fish
Dumpling
Fried rice
Fried noodles

Tashkent Party!

What I propose to do if elected Mayor of Vancouver (or 'What I learned in Tashkent that should be applied to everywhere'):

More themed metro stops: Really, what is better than pulling up to a Yuri Gagarin space station metro stop, or one that looks like a medieval dungeon? If it were up to me, I'd have the guy that designed the set of the Alien movies and the guy that designed the set of Killer Klowns From Outer Space design stations in our supposed 'first world' countries.

More beer gardens in parks. Enough said.

More parks for beer gardens.

More statues of guys on speeding horses. The world needs more of these.

More Uzbekistani girls.

Kyrgyzstan Vodka Party!

Word up from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where the internet is unbelievably slow. We are recovering from our Kyrgyzstan Horse Trek Yurt Vodka Party. Photos can be seen here.

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For a country that I didn't know existed before I started to planning this trip a few months ago, it possesses a scenic beauty that surpasses Canada. By, like, infinity. It was definately weird arriving here - the people speak Russian, the text is in Cyrillic, they have a washing detergent called Barf, old men wear felt hats and the drivers are worse than in China. Vodka is distributed for any occasion ever imagined, like breakfast, and the local drink kymys (fermented mares milk) is downed faster than water. And yes, kymys does taste as bad as it sounds.

We met up with Yassi, who went out with a friend of mine in high school and moved to Bishkek a few years ago. She gave us a royal tour of the city, showing us all the expat haunts, including the Maple Leaf Golf Club on the outskirts of the city, and eventually ending up at someone's house downing vodka shot after vodka shot with American Marines. Definately the cultural experience.

We are off to Uzbekistan on Sunday. Hopefully the internet will be working better there.

KYRGYZSTAN PARTY!

Y: I'm really liking Kyrgyzstan's vowel to consonant ratio (10:1). Respect.

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We were wondering how a 700km journey would take 24 hours on a bus from Kashgar to Osh, but as we found out yesterday, the Chinese have it sussed out impeccably. We arrived at the station in time for our 9pm bus, but the driver needed a further 2 hours to get his documents in order. Then we were off! For maybe 10 minutes. We pulled into the side of a gas station and spent another hour and a half doing something or the other. Tire problems? Engine falling apart? Who knew, but we were off again to the border, arriving 5 hours later through some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen: red and black mountains, green valleys and winding rivers, sheep and horses, it had it all. Definately ranks in the top 3 bus trips of all time. Then we arrived at the border.

We spent 5 hours at the border, unloading and then reloading the bus, passing through three unneccessary checkpoints (out of the bus, tick us off the list - again, proceed to next checkpoint, repeat), and finally passing through the Kyrgyz border post after several rumours that it was closed and that we would be spending the night in no-mans-land between China and Kyrgyzstan. Nevertheless, after a bumpy ride in a too-small-for-whitey berth (by about 2 feet) and a dinner of half a bag of raisins I arrived in Osh 24 hours after leaving Kashgar. Awesome.

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These are all the countries I have visited (the only criteria is that I must have stayed for at least 24 hours), which works out to only 14% of the world. I have a lot of travelling left to do...

Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang Rock!

"Don't make a career out of your childhood!" - Fatherly advice from the book Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel, which rang especially true after posing like monkeys and pretending to be birthed out of a hole in the ruins of Jiahe, which Yonatan said looked like the set to the original Planet Of The Apes movie.

Poo poo pee pee ka ka.

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Word up from Kashgar, our final stop in China and home to the greatest market of all time - the Sunday Market (Of Doom). People come from all over Central Asia to this weekly event, trading and haggling for everything under the sun. Awesomeness. Then on Monday its a 24 hour sleeper bus into Kyrgyzstan. I can't wait.

Since the Fricking Huge Dunes Of Doom, we travelled north to Turpan, which is famous for its valley of the grapes. I bought some wine for $2, and some better wine for $5. The $2 wine tasted like grape juice with a hint of alcohol (it was only 8%), and didn't really give me a buzz so I think I was hosed. The $5 wine remains to be tasted. So far the verdict is: not as bad as I originally thought. Frenchmen and Italians will be rioting in the streets of Paris and Rome.

Just a short hop north of Turpan is Urumqi, which holds the distinction of being the furthest place from the ocean on earth. It is the last real 'Chinese' city, and quite cosmopolitan for a place right in the middle of nowhere. We visited a place called Heavenly Lake, which looks like Lake Louise, but then again I'm sure every Chinese who visits Lake Louise would say that it looks like Heavenly Lake.

I was mistaken for a Kazakh by three Chinese businessmen, which I am quite proud of. My beard has reached its former glory, and I've got one month of travelling left for it to reach new heights.

The internet has given me further gas, with both journals being down for the count in Urumqi. Now the computer won't recognise my camera. Yonatan has managed to get his working though, and there are many good shots you can look at on his Flickr site here.

Mike: Out. See you in Kyrgyzstan (and pray for the blogs).