Steve-O: Cultural Learnings of Kazakhstan for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of America

The last time I sat down to type was a week ago Tuesday from a comfortable 10^th floor hotel room in the Xijiang city of Urumqi. My ducks were lined up and house in order to exit China the next day for the great unknown of central Asia. All I needed was my Kazak visa…

The Night Bus to Kazakhstan

I woke up last Wednesday morning (April 14^th/Day 216) with the feeling you have as an eight year old on Christmas morning. A flood of uncontrollable excitement mixed with nervous fear and suspense. Will Santa bring me the Lego pirate ship I asked for? Will there be less? Will there be more? At 9am I rode the elevator up to the 18^th floor for my final breakfast on the house. The glass elevator overlooking the city’s main square was filled with people and teeming with activity. Apparently the locals were eager to embrace the near perfect spring day we’d been gifted. Not a cloud in the sky, my view crystal clear all the way to the distant snowcapped mountains as the elevator rose. A gem of a day to escape China.

By 9:30 I was northbound in what I’ll estimate to be my twentieth taxi in four days. I’m curious if any westerner has ever seen as much of Urumqi from a taxi shotgun as I have. We rolled up to the consulate to find an all too familiar disorganized queue assembling out front. I also found a familiar 6’4” German giant standing front and center. Dirk, somewhere in his early forties, hails from southern Germany and enjoys some tech job which allows him three months of travel a year. Basically the German version of Tom O’Neil. Dirk’s travel destination this year: the ‘Stans. Dirk and I met Monday morning while queuing to submit our applications. We hit it off immediately. Dirk’s original plan had been to travel from Kashgar (China) over the Tourgart Pass into Kyrgyzstan. He had successfully cleared immigration out of China the afternoon of Monday April 5^th, but since his bus was late the Kyrgyz border was closed by the time he reached it forcing him to spend another night in China. By the following morning, with the situation in the capital of Bishkek brewing full storm, the Kyrgyz border was closed to foreigners. Left no alternative Dirk had to backtrack to Urumqi to acquire a Kazak visa to enter the region. Talk about frustrating and a lot of bus travel.

About 9:45am the head guard opened the steel gate and the frenzy began with the entire crowd waving passports and applications in the air. The guard then selected about twenty people seemingly at random to enter the walled courtyard of the consulate. As for the rest…come back tomorrow and try your luck again. As you might imagine the two obvious tourists had no trouble finding their way in. By 10:30am the doors to the consulate building were opened and we filed from the courtyard to inside. Dirk and I made eye contact with our guy from Monday and he ushered us over. We were handed a bank slip with instructions to pay $20usd each at the local bank around the corner. We took this to be a positive sign. We returned and orderly presented him with two ‘paid’ receipts. He told us to come back at noon for pickup. Jackpot. With this green light we both grabbed separate cabs and dashed back to the city. His China visa set to expire the following day, Dirk headed to the airline office to book an immediate afternoon flight. I retraced my steps to the ticket office and confirmed my reservation on the 7pm Urumqi – Almaty overnight sleeper bus.

With bus ticket happily in hand I taxied back to the embassy for pickup. A marvelous feeling finally walking out of that consulate; passport in one hand, fresh thirty day Kazak visa sticker firmly in place, and a one-way bus ticket in the other. Back at the Islam Hotel the fine people were all too willing to extend me a 2pm check-out time. When it rains good fortune, it pours good fortune. Following checkout I casually strolled across the street to the warm sun-drenched park and found a bench to reflect on my China experience. Back in Shanghai when I first emerged from the underground metro station it was into a very green People’s Park. I propped up the camera and shared a few naive words of excitement. Here I was in another park on the other side of the country about to close a necessary chapter, so I thought it only fitting to prop up the camera for a few words…a few final choice words for China.

As I wrote last time the great challenge and thrill of traveling in the manner I’ve chosen is I get to keep score. Budget and time efficiency – two variables with which I can hold myself accountable for performance. While backpacking throughout Asia (or anywhere for that matter) budget and time really just equate to one thing: comfort. With a deep enough budget one can buy comfort anywhere on the globe, and if time is a limited resource a comfortable plane becomes the only option. However when the budget is finite but time is not, a world of uncomfortable options open up. It’s in this world that I’ve come to live for the majority of the past seven months. But like all relatively sane people I have a threshold, a threshold that’s constantly being reexamined and redefined. I swore after that hellish initial overnight bus down the Trans-Continental Highway in Sumatra that I’d never do it again. I did however…about a week later. Bus and train discomfort continued to reach new lows in Myanmar, India and China. But it’s all part of the tradeoff. Time versus money. Comfort versus discomfort. Despite having earned my hardship stripes numerous times before, I had zero idea what to expect when I started walking towards the Urumqi bus terminal that afternoon…

I’ll cut right to it. I’m no masochist, just a frugal and dirty traveler. The train from Urumqi to Almaty was not an option from a timing standpoint and the flight not an option from a budgetary standpoint. When the sleeper bus lurched forward that Wednesday evening in China I marked the time: 7:47pm. When it arrived in the outskirts of Almaty, Kazakhstan the next day I again marked the time: 11:20pm. Now this may sound completely ludicrous but it was the most surprisingly pleasant and enjoyable travel leg I’ve had in Asia.

To start with the sleeper bus was not a typical bus. The layout consisted of two parallel rows of bunk beds. Five bottom and five top on each row. The rear of the bus contained two stacked bus-width size beds that could handle four people each. Fully loaded the transit hotel held twenty-eight guests. I was passenger 10B: my own bed, bottom bunk. Despite a bit of age the interior smelled fine, as did thankfully its passengers. My bed’s length was all of about 5’10” so I had to get creative to straighten my legs. The mattress and pillow were soft. All and all life was good. I love a good car ride and diverse scenery, and from the comfort of a bed I was about to enjoy a full days worth. Like I said, life was surprisingly good.

After the obligatory middle-of-nowhere dinner stop I inserted ear plugs and fixed eyes on the black Chinese desert. There was nothing to see but the occasional headlights of an oncoming vehicle, yet I was completely captivated by the dark world racing by outside. I was overcome by that familiar giddy sensation which accompanies such unique travel moments. Here I was on a dark and silent sleeper bus full of Kazaks heading into central Asia through the backdoor of a western China desert. I drifted to sleep that night a very satisfied eight year old who got everything he wanted from Santa…and was about to get much more.

One More Gripe with China

I opened my eyes sometime before 6am and from the faintest glow of dawn’s early light I could just make out the snow-covered mountainous terrain by which we were surrounded. To fall asleep in the deserts and awake in the mountains. I love this. Around 9am we pulled into a parking lot and the driver made an announcement. I’d become friendly with a number of the broken-English speaking Kazak passengers who’d taken a liking to me. After the announcement in Kazak they explained to me we’d be walking to the border from here and to bring my passport. Before heading off we enjoyed a Kazak breakfast of beef stew and bread. I was loving their country already. I changed Chinese yuan into Kazak tenge with a local guy holding a wad of bills, and my crew made sure I got a fair rate. Oh glorious people of Kazakhstan.

When breakfast was over we marched to the border. When the gates finally opened there was something of a Third World stampede. It was one of the many border moments I wish to God I could have filmed. A hundred people trying to squeeze through a five-foot wide entrance. Pushing and pulling like I’d not seen in Asia before. I wedged myself into the human wave and was swept away. The Chinese immigration center was, as expected, state of the art and staffed by rigid, emotionless, uniformed zombies. Surrounded by a sea of baby blue Tajik and Kazak passports I figured I’d be the easiest stamp in the building. Not exactly. China Can Suck It: Reason 418…

Next. I took four steps to the immigration desk and slide my open passport into the waiting hands of Zombie #1. She examined my Chinese and Kazak visas thoroughly before flipping to the first page and my picture. When my mug shot was taken in April 2008 I was logging fifty-five hours a week behind a desk and doing my best to offset the accompanying weight gain. Not to say I was fat but the edges on my face were a bit softer then than they are now. This weight discrepancy was apparently all they needed to suspect the worst. Zombie #1 called over her superior. With both Zombie #1 and #2 shifting their eyes from photo to my face and back, I couldn’t help but nervously smile and laugh a bit. I had just crisscrossed the better half of Asia with visas and stamps to prove it and here they were inferring I was doing so on the sly. When they asked for additional backup I gladly obliged and arrogantly emptied every credit and bank card on them along with my domestic and international driver’s license. Apparently still not enough. They called over Zombie #3 who ushered me to a waiting area and disappeared into the building’s bowels with my passport in hand. My heart rate climbed rapidly over the next twenty minutes while everyone from my bus passed me by. Finally Zombie #3 returned and huddled with #2. He finally returned and handed me my passport, a pen, a blank immigration card, and pointed to the signature line. I found a nearby flat surface and smoothly inked my John Hancock. I recon if I had opened my passport to inspect my own signature all hell would have broken loose. I handed it back and he stamped me out with no explanation or expression. China. Skip it.

With that I rejoined the masses outside waiting for our bus to clear. The ensuring wait turned into an hour during which I drank two beers (hey, they were selling) and enjoyed a great conversation with an English-speaking guy from Tajikistan. It was one of those timely conversations where I got answers to the basics. Central Asia 101. Religion, culture, language, ?como se dice?, safety, etc. (OK, I bought him a beer but he declined so I drank both).

During the wait I ran into a familiar face from a hotel lobby back in Urumqi, and a gold-toothed Kazak truck driver of twenty-five come over to say hello. “American!” We shook hands, had a conversation in comical sign language, and shared a few laughs at China’s expense (apparently no one in the region cares for it). He showed me pictures of his wife and baby girl. I was loving the warm and friendly vibe already. Oh glorious people of Kazakhstan. We eventually boarded the bus and made our way into the No-Man’s-Land buffer zone between nations. I had to snap a photo.

Seven ‘Stans

I could have cleared immigration on the Kazak side blindfolded. It was a piece of cake. I walked out of the building into the same grey overcast weather and rocky landscape I had just left in China, but everything felt different. Everything felt better. Optimistically better. I drew a deep breath through my nose. I was in standing in my first ‘Stan.

If a man were to approach you on the street this afternoon and offer you a suitcase full of money in exchange for naming the seven central Asian nations which end in ‘stan, and assuming you didn’t have the great Ken Jennings in your back pocket, how many of you could do it? Geography lesson of the day, in no particular order:

• Turkmenistan
• Afghanistan
• Tajikistan
• Kazakhstan
• Pakistan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Uzbekistan

We pulled away from the Kazak border sometime around 1pm. Comfortably horizontal I glued myself to the window and took in the Kazak countryside. In short time the road dissolved and the rear tire exploded. A lazy hour followed which gave me amply time to wander outside and let the gloriousness sink in.

As the afternoon dragged on the landscape out my window grew more and more surreal. Red deserts gave way to green rolling hills before white snowcapped mountains. The entire landscape empty save the occasional cluster of simple homes. The clouds gave way in late afternoon and the sinking sun transformed the view into a postcard. I pinched myself and mumbled under my breath more than a few times Dude, you’re in the former Soviet Union. It was a brilliant ride and one I’ll treasure.

We arrived into Almaty at 11:20pm (Urumqi time) but given the local time zone it was 9:20. It was well after dark, I was well tired, yet despite having no guide book, no information, and no plan I instinctively knew everything would work out. And it did. While collecting our luggage I asked the best dressed of my Kazak bus comrades for a decent hotel recommendation. Slightly predictable, he told me to follow him and we jumped in his friend’s Suburban. Fifteen minutes later I was deposited at the lobby of the city’s grandest hotel. I laughed at their room rate but listened to their nearby budget recommendation. By 10:30 local time I was being escorted to my third floor room in a dingy and overpriced hostel. The lady said there was already someone in my four-person dorm room and knocked on the door. When it opened I found a 6’4” German standing in the doorway. Dirk! Of all the hotel rooms in Almaty, what are the chances?

It was great to see him and we traded transit stories. Equally great to see was his Lonely Planet Central Asia copy on his bed…

Ruski Tourist Visa

Friday April 16^th was one of those days when everything just went right. And it was day I needed things to go right. When I arrive into a new town or country I address business first and everything else second. Just as Urumqi had been the key to entering the ‘Stans, Almaty, the former capital and largest city of Kazakhstan, would be the key to crossing Russia.

By 8am I had examined Dirk’s Lonely Planet guide and formulated my strategy. The day’s first stop was the nearby internet café to send off a “Safe & Sound” email to several very worried parties back home, as I’d been out of communication in the Xijiang internet vacuum for a week. Next I pulled a favorite move and saddled up to the concierge desk at the InterContinental Almaty. During some friendly initial chit chat with the Kazak concierge lady, I learned Alla had visited America. Where had she visited? New York, Washington, and Baltimore. Hook…line…sinker. Despite my status as a non-hotel guest Alla phoned the Russian consulate, several visa agencies, and drew me a map. God bless the glorious people of Kazakhstan.

With that I walked out the front door and began my education on Kazakhstan taxis. To start with there aren’t any. I haven’t seen but three official taxis yet. I learned you stand in the road and wave your hand until an unmarked and meter-less car pulls up. You then hand over your destination in writing and punch a fare bid into your phone. Some haggling will follow and you’ll be off. It was expensive learning curve to start.

It was in this initial taxi to the Russian consulate that I made one of my first great discoveries about this glorious place. If Kazakhstan had to pick one musical genre it would without question be techno/dance music. The stuff is playing everywhere from hotel lobbies to shopping malls to taxi cabs. It’s fantastic. This country’s musical accompaniment couldn’t be more up my alley. Speeding down the street towards the Russian consulate in a 1992 Audi jamming out to dance music with a Kazak at the wheel, what could be better? Cab #1.

I had learned from Alla that unless I had a multiple entry Kazak visa (which I didn’t) the minimum processing time for a Russian tourist visa was two weeks. I already knew you needed two passport photos and some pesky health insurance document, but other than that I was flying blind walking into the Russian consulate.

Inside I’d find not a single word in English. Every document, every posted announcement, every application was in either Sputnik or Kazak. Uh oh. I eventually approached a window, flashed my passport, and a woman pointed to door #2. I walked in and sat down. On the other side of glass sat a red headed and fair skinned smiling woman. I explained my interest in a tourist visa, my time frame in Russia, and my intended exit into Mongolia. I took careful notes as she rattled off the necessary docs:

1. Copy of transportation ticket into Russian
2. Copy of hotel voucher
3. Copy of passport
4. Copy of Kazak visa
5. Copy of health insurance card
6. Two passport photos
7. One completed general application
8. One completed special application for US citizens
9. 21,000 Kazak tenge in cash
10. One liter potato vodka

She confirmed the processing time was two weeks and patiently fielded my numerous questions. What the hell is a hotel voucher and where do I get it? Is my BCBS health insurance card acceptable? Do you have applications in English? If I submit by 5:00pm today can you guarantee pickup on Friday April 30^th?

She wrote an address and instructed to me to visit a travel agency that could provide hotel vouchers. Cab #2. The women of Reel Visa Services weren’t happy to see me and I wasn’t happy to see them. None of them spoke English and it was only with the aid of an English-to-Russian/Russian-to-English translation website we were able to communicate. It was comical yet tiresome. All the while I’m looking at the clock knowing full well if I don’t submit my application before the consulate closes at 5:00pm I’m adding an extra weekend to my stay in Kazakhstan.

I needed documentation of a plane or train ticket into Russia for this whole thing to work. And I needed it fast. The women phoned an English speaking travel agent while I grabbed a map of Russian off the wall. During the thirty minute call with Dmitri that followed we played out every possible travel scenario. Different flights into different central Russian cities. Some direct and some requiring an overnight stay in Moscow!?!? Trains versus planes. Everything. I’m scribbling like mad trying to capture the details, all the while butchering Russian pronunciation. How am I supposed to know how to correctly pronounce Omsk or Barnaul or Chelyabinsk? I’m juggling all this with one eye on the clock. A decision eventually had to be made so had them write down the agent’s address and took off for the street. Cab #3.

After shaking hands it took Dmitri less than ten minutes to issue a $225usd one-way Air Astana plane ticket from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Novosibirsk, Russia (via a 12 hour layover in Astana) for May 2^nd. Afterwards we shook hands again. Cab #4. Back to the Reel Service women who promptly sold me the necessary hotel voucher and made photocopies of everything. It was 2:55pm. Cab #5.

When I arrived there was a small mob of some twenty people waiting outside the consulate entrance. F*ck! After a few minutes with no one moving I pushed my way to the front and buzzed the intercom. “American citizen dropping off visa application.” Buzzzzzzzzz and the steel gate swung open. Yes! I waited in line and quickly found my seat opposite that fair skinned redhead. She reviewed everything and instructed me to pay the cashier. I reappeared with my receipt and she disappeared with my application. Ten minutes later she was back and voiced the sweetest words I could have asked for: “No problems. Everything will be OK. Pickup is Friday morning two weeks from today. Be here early. Goodbye.”

I walked outside and looked up at the red, white, and blue Russian flag waving in the wind. Holy sh*t! I did it! I’m going to Russia! And it was easy. Talk about a travel high. Let’s just hope everything goes like she said it would. That evening I got something I hadn’t since December 23^rd back in Hanoi: a haircut. Afterwards Dirk and I drank a few tall beers before going to bed a very happy man.

With two weeks to kill before an April 29^th return to Almaty I was thrilled to be back playing film making tourist. No visa work, no running around, just lazy days of traveling and getting lost in Kazakhstan. The next morning I photocopied what I needed from Dirk’s Lonely Planet and formulated a plan.  The plan led west and an overnight train to a little town called Taraz. Like a seasoned traveler who knew the score and knew we’d never cross paths again, Dirk wished me a good life when we said goodbye.

The train was clean, friendly, and brilliant. The beer never tasted so good. At dawn I stepped onto the Taraz platform with zero expectations on what I’d find, just an open mind for anything. Little did I know at the time that one of the craziest and most unforgettable days of this Walkabout had already begun. I couldn’t make up what followed next if I tried…

(7:16pm – Almaty looking west)

(6:39am – Taraz looking east)