Kazakhstan: Great Success!

My visit to Kazakhstan was actually not a great success. While it was certainly worth visiting for work, I can not say that I would return for my own personal travel. As for Kazakhstan, I’ll divide my comments into a few categories.

The Hotel:

The hotel was crap. I can’t imagine how they continue to get $190 per night for the place. My room had a small twin bed that was very uncomfortable. They charged $29 for 24 hours of wifi. While I will admit their wifi was fast – it wasn’t worth the $120 I spent over the 4 days I was there. They did have a cheaper option though. They have a dialup connection you can use for $1 per hour. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but what good is dialup? Especially for downloading movies because there is nothing around the hotel to do.

There was no safe in the hotel, and the rooms were certainly old – you needed a key to open the doors, as in a regular key. You also had to remember to lock your door when you left, especially since there was no safe to put your stuff in if you forgot to lock your door.

The hotel room did come with a feature I’ve never seen before. As you can see in the picture below, the bathroom came equipped with a wall to rest your head on while sitting on the toilet. I think there might have been 18 inches of space between the toilet and the wall. If I was any taller I probably would have had my knees on the wall to even sit down on the toilet. You can also see that the water is blue. This isn’t for cleaning, but is so you can stay away from people who have been drinking out of the toilet. Anyone who had blue or green lips should be avoided immediately.

Another defining characteristic of the hotel was terrible food. The breakfast was terrible. The dinner was terrible. None of it was fresh, and it all sat waiting for you to find it in an electric warming device of sorts. Fortunately breakfast was included in our rate – because there is no way I would willingly pay the roughly $28 for breakfast every day. For me that consisted of 2 glasses of water and something that was a combination of a crepe and a pancake. The one night I went to dinner I basically had a plate of rice with some random meats – none of which were worth going back for second servings of.

The Work:

There are three centers in Kazakhstan that we had to visit. The first is a high security nuclear research center. In addition to all of the paperwork we filled out before we arrived so we could get in, we needed to bring our identification papers to the center. However nobody told me this. Our contact in Kazakhstan asked if I had my passport when we were about 10 minutes from the center. I replied by saying that I didn’t know I needed it and that nobody told me to bring it. My colleague – known here as Miss Parker – tried to give me crap for not knowing to bring my passport. I wasn’t in the mood for it and responded with the fact that I’ve needed it for 0 of the previous centers, and that I can’t be held responsible for knowing things that they haven’t told me. I eventually was able to get in, but it took the person we were meeting with having the director of the institute talking directly to the head of security. An almost expired state of Kentucky drivers license is just enough to get into a national nuclear laboratory. That particular meeting went moderately well despite my translator not being that great.

The second and third visits were much worse. Between realizing that the centers had been swallowed by other institutes in a communist equipment sharing program, to the fact that the translator/country contact pawned off her translating duties to any random semi-english speaking student she could find at each center, I really was not able to collect much data relating to the questions that I wanted to ask about the centers. Miss Parker and the country contact spoke exclusively in Russian with everyone we met with, did not include me in any of the discussions, and left me with half-assed translations that were summaries of what people were saying. I was also called out for asking questions about information that we were provided with – in RUSSIAN. Apparently I should have had my Russian-english translator out working through the documents before I asked any questions. When I asked if Miss Parker planned on translating any of the documents for me so I can write my reports she said that someone at the office in DC has an intern that I should get in touch with. I’m sure the intern will love to see 50 pages worth of presentations and other stuff show up in her email. I don’t expect Miss Parker to translate the entire thing, but I would at least expect her to give me subject headings or some idea of what was provided.

I think the easiest way to sum up the work section of the trip is that I was the dumb English speaking third wheel. I’m not bitter about it, I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do my job. When the reports are half as long as the other ones and someone asks why I’ll just point to what happened.

The City:

Whomever designed Almaty must have been in love with the grid system. The entire city is one large series of blocks that are almost perfectly and equally spaced. The streets are lined with trees, but not enough to absorb all of the car fumes from the air. The city smells like auto exhaust. It also has a very high altitude. These two conditions make trying to run rather difficult – I think I got two blocks away before I turned around and went back to the hotel.

The streets of the city were slightly different from the streets you would expect to see in the USA. Besides allowing you to simulate what it would feel like to drive across the craters of the moon, the streets allow for additional excitement related to the fact that there are no lines to designate specific lanes. While the driving experience wasn’t as terrifying as Azerbaijan or Georgia, it was still something I would describe as frightening. Essentially you never knew if the bump you felt was someone hitting you or that you hit a pothole. Additionally, sometimes you swerved away from cars and sometimes you swerved away from potholes.

The last night I was there I was on my own for dinner – actually every night I was on my own for dinner. The last night though, I went to four restaurants before I found one with an English menu. Things started off well. They brew their own beer. If you want one you have two choices, large or small. Simply having a menu translated into English does not necessarily mean that the menu is actually IN English. As you can see from some of the pictures I took, well, the translation sucked. Some of my favorite dishes were: ‘Juicy Roast’, ‘Meat by on Chinese’, and my personal favorite ‘Cauliflower in Claire’ – I hope they pay that poor girl well. I ordered the ‘Firm Dish’ which was supposed to be beef, mutton, and chicken. I was able to figure out which one was chicken, but have no idea which of the other two things that came out was beef and which was the mutton.

Other random notes:

In Kazakhstan when you have a guest over to your house, or any other type of important meeting at the house it is customary to serve the head of a goat. It’s a tradition that the oldest person gets the tongue, the youngest get the ears, and so on. I knew this when I left. However knowing about the tradition is completely different than seeing a line of 6 or 7 goat heads for sale by a sidewalk street vendor.

While I was walking I came across a long sidewalk that was filled with people holding up signs with numbers on them and letters I couldn’t read. At first it seemed like the majority of the people were women and I assumed this is how the prostitution in the country worked. Later I came across some men, and some men who were too old to be involved in prostitution – or at least too old to want to think about them being involved in it. Also, because of Borat, I thought that maybe the women were listing their prices to plow fields. Considering that some of the prices people were holding up were roughly $15, I assumed it wasn’t prostitution and was various work.

It turns out that Craigslist in Kazakhstan is actually the sidewalk of a street. Most of the people there are trying to rent apartments, sell services, and sell other random things. I also found out that at night you can find a prostitute there. You also get hassled by the gypsies, but that service is free.

Finally, in what was probably the biggest shock for me (and I don’t know why) is that the majority of the Kazak people are all Asian. The boarder with China should have probably given me a hint, but I never connected the idea in my head. The country is basically part of the former Mongolian Empire, and many of the people have Mongol roots. Yes, Mongol is a proper word.

I’m in Uzbekistan now and will write more about that sometime later. The hotel is a whole lot better, internet is free, the breakfast buffet is wonderful, and the women who work here are almost all amazingly gorgeous. Also, while I was flying here I was paging through the in-flight magazine. There was an article on some Uzbek circus families that are world famous. I came across one person that was really special though. I don’t remember her name, but they introduced her in the article like this, “Woman’s name, Uzbekistans first woman clown.” I found that to be an interesting title. I probably would have that put on my business card if it were true.