Doing The Numbers

This is just a quick post to let everyone know I made it home safe and sound last Thursday and was somehow back at work Friday morning.

After a long trip, people always ask me what was my favorite/least favorite country/food/geologic formation. This isn't that post, but it's coming, along with more photos. For now, let's do the numbers:

Photos taken: 4,831 (after deleting a bunch)

Countries visited: 14
Net new: 8
Countries dropped from itinerary due to time constraints: 8
Countries I saw enough of not to go back to for more: 0
Currencies spent: 12
Languages I really wish I'd studied at some point: 17
New visas in passport: 3
(Surprisingly, Americans get visa-free travel to more countries than almost anyone)
New stamps in my passport: 20

(would have had 12 more stamps without the pesky Schengen Zone)

Beds slept in: 40 (that I paid for: 36)

Flights taken: 18 (10 international, 8 domestic, with 11 unique airlines)

Borders crossed by land (or water): 8

Trains taken (not counting subways): 28

Air miles: 24256

Surface miles in things with wheels or keels: 6448

Total miles not walked: 31,704

Circumference of the earth at the equator: 24,902

Miles walked: lots and lots (estimated 12 miles per day in Rome - I hate getting scammed by taxi drivers)

Subway systems ridden: 12

Kindle Books read (not including guidebooks): 17

Museums visited: at least 40, probably over 50
Religious and historical sites visited: I can't count that high

Times I got an extra day out of my underwear because I was too cheap for hotel laundry and forgot to wash by hand the night before: [redacted]

The Tombs of Turkistan

As I write this, I'm on my way back to Almaty, after spending a few days seeing some of the more accessible highlights of Kazakhstan.

It's hard to appreciate just how huge this country is. They say it's bigger than Western Europe. A train ride from Almaty (a little over 100 miles from the Chinese border) to one of the western-most cities takes about 70 hours, at which point you're just as close to Moscow and technically already in Europe.

Needless to say, I wasn't really expecting to see much of Kazakhstan. It wasn't even on my list, due to the time commitment, vast distances, complicated visa, and general lack of historical sights. Probably their two most interesting spots, Baikonur (NASA's only place to launch astronauts now) and the Polygon (aka Semipalatinsk, the Soviet's main nuclear treat site, which the US just finished removing the plutonium from for them) are both effectively off limits (short of spending a ton with a politically connected tour company).

After talking to one of my fellow American travelers in Iran (Karen), who is planning to visit the Stans layer this year as part of her year sabbatical, I decided to give Kazakhstan another look. She mentioned they were doing a visa waiver for one year (ending this month), and there were a few accessible Silk Road sights relatively close by.

I headed towards Turkistan, the most interesting spot, roughly 600 miles west of Almaty. Since the only buses run at night (probably because 14-17 hours with no A/C at 100+ degrees during the day would be unbearable), and flights here are kinda cheap, I splurged on a $70 ticket.

I ended up on a pretty decent airline with a really unfortunate name, Scat Air. I know picking names can be hard, and English isn't the primary tongue here, but you'd think someone would have said something. At least they own up to it in their logo, which clearly involves something hitting the fan (see below). Kazakhstan's #2 airline indeed (sorry, I'll stop now).

I flew to the nearest city with an airport, Шымкент (or Shymkent if you don't read Kazakh). It had a few attractions worth seeing, and probably the best hotel/restaurant of my trip, Orbita Boutique Hotel. For <$60/night, they put me up in the African Suite  (every room is unique), decorated with African art and not a leopard print in sight. It even had a solarium attached.

The hotel's restaurant was the real highlight though. Their menu was very extensive, with lots of local, Central Asian, and Korean specialties (more on Koreans in Central Asia later). She also kept bringing local snacks for free to try after dinner, including some kind of cheese that I swear had the texture and flavor of smoked, pulled chicken (not sure I've had that either, but best I can describe it). It sounds weird, but it went perfect with the local beer, Shimkentskoe. Instead of the usual service and cover charges, they offered me a hotel discount, and tried to refuse any tip (tipping is expected here).

The second night, she also brought out their extensive sushi menu. She hadn't shown me before because it was all in Russian, but by sounding out the Cyrillic letters and remembering my Japanese, I managed to order some of the best sushi I've had. I tried not to think about how fresh raw fish could have made it to a far corner of the world's largest landlocked country safely.

From Shymkent, it was a simple matter of finding the right bus station, find a minibus going to Түркістан, negotiate the price with the driver, and sit there patiently for over an hour, with the windows rolled up and no A/C, while the driver sells every last seat (minibuses never leave with unsold seats). I had an ice cold 1,5l bottle of water, which was almost enough to make it to Turkistan.

As it doesn't look like my photos of Turkistan will finish uploading over airport wifi, I'll let the ones in this article speak for themselves. It was definitely worth the effort to get there.

Oh, and the Scat Air logo I promised:

Stepping into Kazakhstan

Apologies for not posting for a while. I'll try to share some photos and stories from Dubai, Iran, and Kyrgyzstan soon. 

Since I was on the wrong side of the bus to get any decent photos of the amazing scenery as I crossed the border, this awkward haiku will have to do:

First glimpse of the steppe
Horses grazing cross the road
Snow-capped peaks rising

Below are details on what it's like crossing a land border in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan is probably one of the simpler ones I'll cross, with no obvious signs of corruption.

Though the border was confusing, it wasn't all that different from other land borders I've crossed, even the US/Mexico border. I'm pretty sure I was the only non-CIS (former Soviet) person crossing. Since I couldn't really read the signs (I can sound out the Cyrillic, but unless they borrowed an English word, I'm screwed), I followed the locals and trusted that someone would point me in the right direction if I needed to do something different. The only English I saw was Green Line and Red Line over entrances to separate covered, fenced walkways to the border. I assumed Green is the usual customs "nothing to declare" line.

We all got off the bus with our luggage, and crossed on foot. I follow the guy i sat next to on the bus so I don't get lost. First you have to exit Kyrgyzstan, and after checking my passport and saying "American?!" he says "Stamp!" and points to a side door. Clearly I need an exit stamp in my passport, unlike the locals.

I open the door, and there's a border guard at a computer, dealing with people crossing the other directing. He takes my passport and yells "Out!!" Clearly I'm not supposed to be there, but there was no other way to get my exit stamp. Another guard eventually comes out with my passport, asks me a couple questions, and sends me on towards the Kazakhstan border.

This time the green and red lines are packed with people with piles of packages. My guess is it's one of those borders where it's more cost-effective to send hundreds (thousands?) of people per day across on foot with the maximum duty free allowance rather than pay the import duty. Since they seem to be overflowing from the red line, I push my way past and enter the Kazakhstan immigration hall.

I see a counter with a bunch of people filling out forms, but no sign of the forms. I go back outside and find a guard handing them out. It has a big stamp across it saying the form is free in a bunch of languages (clearly trying to crack down on scammers). I find instructions posted on the wall in English, telling me what to put where, then get in line for an immigration officer.

The officer takes my passport, asks if I speak English, then asks me a question in what I assume is very rapid Russian. I say "I don't speak Russian." Then he starts over, more slowly and louder with "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!" "YES!" followed by a bunch of words I can't understand. If this was a clever way of trying to catch multi-lingual CIA spies, I passed with flying colors. More likely he thought I was a bit retarded.

After confirming I'm a tourist, he asks me in very clear English why I'm coming to Kazakhstan. I figure the real reason (it's slightly easier to get an Uzbek visa there, and I wouldn't mind getting another stamp in my passport) will sound pretty suspicious. After a brief moment of panic I say "The mountains. I want to see your mountains." He gives me that look that makes it 100% clear he thinks I'm retarded, stamps my passport, and waves me through to customs for the usual metal detectors and x-rays.

After all that, I half expect my bus to have left without me because I took so much longer than the locals (this has happened to me before). Turns out I'm the first one through! Am I good at this or what?

We wait a while for our last passenger. I hear someone say "wodka" and everyone chimes in, clearly assuming he got arrested for trying to smuggle booze. We leave without him.

The bus station in Almaty, Kazakhstan is, as usual, far from downtown. I just need to find a ride and get some local currency to pay them. I finally find the money change booth, but it takes a while to wake up the clerk to take my Kyrgyz money (it's mid-afternoon, no A/C, everyone's napping).

I search fruitlessly for an official taxi, knowing that as a foreigner, I'm less likely to get screwed if there's a meter. All I find are dozens of unofficial taxis, so I start haggling, and walking away, as the prices are all 5x what they were in the last country (I eventually find out that's the gong rate here).

I finally jump in a car, and just before pulling out, two Kazakh women jump in. One of them starts grilling me with questions, in what is starting to seem like a job interview. I seem to be answering correctly, based on her tone of voice. "An American!" "California!!" "Single!!!"

Her English is somewhat limited, but I'm pretty sure she asks if I find her country beautiful. As I just got here, I fall back on my previous answer "You have beautiful mountains."

Then I remember she already asked what I thought of Kazakhstan, and she was really asking whether I found her and her friend beautiful. In any case, she seemed very satisfied with my answer.

Below are a couple shots of those mountains. I've spent the last couple days in a national park and ski area just outside Almaty. I have to kill about a week in Kazakhstan to get my Uzbek visa, and I wanted to escape the muggy, triple digit weather in Almaty for a bit.

Almaty is one of the two finalists for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Beijing may have the edge, but don't be surprised if you see a lot more of these mountains in the near future. 

Silk Road Shortcut

As I write this, I'm on a 300 kph Italo train, zipping from Milan to Rome. Italo is the only private high speed train in the world, and it's run by the chairman of Ferrari. Coincidentally, it has about the same top speed, and it's cheaper than the slower government run trains.

I started this trip over 2 weeks ago at the traditional start of the Silk Road, Trondheim, Norway. Ok, the Silk Road didn't really go to Norway, but Norwegian Airlines happens to have by far the cheapest flights to Europe, and a friend from California recently moved there, so it made a good place to start.

I had to go through Hell to get there (see below for proof). It's actually a town along the train line from Trondheim's airport into town. They preserved the old Danish spelling of "cargo terminal" for the amusement of English speakers. During the summer, they have to hold the train so Americans can stop for selfies.

Hell didn't exactly freeze over while I was there, though I did get snowed on the next day. Trondheim is really far north, a couple degrees below the Arctic Circle, roughly equivalent to Nome, Alaska. I'm already missing that weather, looking forward to mid-90s, muggy "spring" weather in Rome this week.

I'll post more photos of my adventures in Trondheim and Oslo soon, but for now see the photo below of the Lief Erikson statue, gazing west towards North America, taken at the stroke of midnight. He was supposedly dispatched by King Olaf from the old Norse capitol of Trondheim around the year 1000. The statue is much more recent, sent over by the Sons of Norway in Seattle. As a half-Norwegian from Washington State, I thought that was pretty cool.

I'll add more photos and adventures from my time in Norway, especially from the Constitution Day festivities in Oslo, where we watched seemingly every Norwegian citizen march past the royal family in the traditional garb of their districts. It was kind of like something out of The Hunger Games, except with lots and lots of food, which could only be lefse-wrapped hot dogs or cake. Even total strangers asked if I'd done my part by eating lots of cake and hot dogs.

From Oslo, I made my way south to stay a couple nights with friends in Germany. Along the way, I spent a night on an old sailing ship called the Barken Viking in the harbor of Göteborg, Sweden, but I wasn't there long enough to see much else. I saw a bit more of Copenhagen. I still wished I could allow more than one night there, but I only have 80 days!

After a couple fun days with friends in Germany, I caught another train to Switzerland to stay with friends there. That journey got a bit complicated when the German train engineers decided to go on strike, but I managed to get tickets on the right combination of 5 trains still running to get me out of Germany, just as the strike was ending anyway. 

Again, I'll try to share some photos of Germany and Switzerland soon, but I need to get you caught up before this train gets to Rome (we just stopped at Florence). My Swiss friends had a wedding to attend across the border in Annency, France, which simplified my train journey to Turin, Italy.

My reason for going to Turin may seem a little odd, but from a recent Stanford night class I took on Egyptian Archeology, I found out the best Egyptian museum outside Cairo is actually in Turin.

I also happened to arrive during the 2 month window this decade that the Shroud of Turin is on display. I managed to get in to see it even before the Pope. Although of dubious authenticity, it was still fascinating to go through the whole pilgrimage process to see it in person, before dashing on to Milan.

The World Expo in Milan was my main reason for the timing of this trip. I'm a big fan of World Expos/Fairs, having tried to attend as many as possible since my folks took me to the one in Vancouver, BC back in 1986. Since then, I've been to Lisbon (1998), Hannover  (2000), and Shanghai (2010), as well as trying to visit the sites and monuments from previous Expos Paris' Eiffel Tower is from the 1889 fair, Brussels' Automium is from 1958, and Seattle's Space Needle is from the 1962 fair.

While not quite as extensive or expensive as Shanghai's $48 billion Expo, it took me most of 4 days to visit all of the country pavilions and most of the other sights. Food was the theme, and the Italians went all out, as you'd expect. Picking highlights from my hundreds of Expo photos is going to be a challenge, but I'll try.

Milan itself really got into the Expo spirit, with all sorts of special events around town, including probably the biggest exhibits of Leonardo da Vinci's works ever in one city (they used the excuse to get everyone else to loan them their collections).

Although I'm really looking forward to seeing the sights in Rome, my main reason for going there is to pick up a certain extremely difficult to obtain visa to a country further along the Silk Road which has been in the news a lot lately. I'll avoid being more specific until after I've been there for obvious reasons.

Until a couple days ago, it was looking very unlikely that I would get the visa. I finally got the confirmation email from their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and now the rest of my trip can actually happen.

I'll finish with a really great Italian innovation called an Appertivo. Almost every restaurant in Torino and Milano offers these "happy hour" specials, which include a fancy cocktail and tons of appetizers starting at about $7 total, with additional rounds half price. The deal is usually good from around 5pm until well after midnight. They're so filling that they're sometimes called appecena (appetizer-dinner - by any reasonable measure a filling dinner).

That feels sort of like my trip so far. Though I'm just getting to the end of the appetizer course, by any reasonable measure, I've had a very filling trip already, but it's just getting started. 

Last stop, Bali

I arrived in Bali yesterday, after about a week in Sulawesi. As usual, I'm way behind on updates, but at least this time I have the excuse that this is the first real Internet cafe I've found since Malaysia. I still need to write about the diving at Sipadan, but I want to share some impressions of Bali first. If you're expecting things in chronological order, you're reading the wrong blog.

Bali is completely unlike anywhere else I've been on this trip. It's much more of a "vacation" destination than a "travel" destination (there's a big difference, as I think I've gone on about before). I'm usually not that fond of sit-on-a-beach travel destinations, but it's hard not to like Bali. Even the airport restroom fits the theme, with bowls of flower petals around the sinks and aquariums behind the urinals.

On the recommendation of other travelers, I skipped the whole 18-year-old, drunken beach party scene near the airport and headed inland to the town of Ubud. The drive through the capital felt more like Honolulu than a typical 3rd world city. The giant statues of Shiva slaying the beast-of-the-week in all the traffic circles remind you that it's definitely not Honolulu.

Ubud probably compares closest to a small town on one of the nicer Hawaiian islands (I've only been to Oahu, so can't say for sure). Of places I've been, it's probably closest to the old town of Scottsdale, AZ, except Ubud has far more art galleries and nicer restaurants (hard to imagine, if you've been there). There are well over a hundred restaurants, all trying to create the most chill, laid-back atmosphere with the best food. It's hard to resist photographing your food when it shows up, as everything is artistically presented. Any one of them could easily be my favorite restaurant in any other town, though that's not too hard as I've been places where fried rice was literally the only thing available. Prices are high by Indonesian standards, but you can still get a full meal, including appetizer and drinks for <$5 many places, or $10 at most of the top places.

Ubud is definitely trying to corner the market for the hip traveler scene. Free wifi is pretty common at cafes here, and I feel like I'm the only one who has ever dared to bring a non-Apple laptop to this town (and they're mostly the new, trendy black Macs). Fliers for yoga and meditation classes are everywhere. There seem to be almost as many day spas as restaurants. Many restaurants offer Balinese cooking classes (great deal if they can get people to pay extra to cook their own food). Though only some places are pure vegetarian, almost every dish is available without meat.

I've only found two downsides to the place so far. First are the hundreds of desperate taxi/scooter drivers. Everything is easy walking distance, so there's really no need for there to be any taxis, and they don't seem to get much business. That seems to only make them more desperate. When they ask me "Where you go?" I love answering honestly with "I have no idea!" That seems to shut them up, since they can't take me there.

The other downside is the little Hindu floral offerings setup on the sidewalks, often every few feet, right in the spots people are most likely to step. These are similar to the little disposable, floating offerings that are placed in the rivers in India. Despite the doubtless bad karma, I wouldn't feel so bad about stepping on these except that many of them are booby trapped with burning incense. Definitely not good when everyone's wearing sandals.

I'm not sure how long I'll stay in Ubud before moving on to another corner of the island. The extreme niceness of the place does get a little tiring. I'd like to do at least one day trip to see the beautiful countryside and Hindu temples around here. Then I'll probably head to one of the quieter coastal towns to do a little snorkeling and/or diving. Bali has so much variety I would have needed my whole trip to see it thoroughly, but I'm happy getting to enjoy a couple parts of the island before flying home.

It looks like I still didn't finish my write-up of diving at Sipadan. It's about half done, so hopefully I'll get it out tomorrow. For now, I have to struggle through deciding which of the 99+ other restaurants to have dinner at while fighting the temptation to go back to one of the 3 I've tried already.