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Day 18 - You want breakfast now?

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Following on from the previous blog…

We awoke in our hotel, just on the outskirts of the capital city. Some of you might be wondering why we're spending so many nights in hotels at the moment, and this was supposed to be a challenge. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly, we've traversed Kazakhstan. A few thousand miles of ridiculously hot weather, lots of dust and camping in random fields. Just think of the state of Mackey if he wasn't able to shower for a few weeks, and that should be reason enough why a hotel is so needed every now and then. Secondly, they're rather affordable - £17 a night we can just about to stretch the budget to. Thirdly, a good night's sleep does wonders for team morale. We are three blokes usually very grumpy in the morning, and the first few hours is usually a quiet few hours. Ensuring a good night's sleep does help improve this a lot!

Mackey, yet again, was up bright and early, and hit the included breakfast hard. Will and I thought thought we'd rather cherish the extra 30 minutes in our beds. Mackey didn't eat along though, as the hotel had four other rally teams staying. Quite good luck considering there are only 350 teams in the entire world, and dozens of hotels in the city.

We packed up, checked out, and headed down to the car park for some comrade banter. The general consensus was internet was needed by every team, for updating their respective blogs (although no team seem to write as much rubbish as me). Luckily one team though knew the location of an internet cafe, a good thing considering our track record of inner city navigation. We headed off in a 5 car convoy - great fun, be it on the open road or through a busy city centre. As good as their word, the team of Aussies (although their team name escapes me) drove us all to a little internet cafe, much to the amusement of city residents completely baffled as the 5 rally vehicles cruised through town.

The internet cafe was shut. However, a few knocks on the door, and the owner popped his head out from around the building. Seeing 10 ralliers, no doubt instead seeing walking Tenge, was happy to open for us and let us all reconnect to the wider world. The computers were quite interesting though - it took the combined effort/trial and error by all 10 of us to discover the Cyrillic for "Internet Explorer".
It was here we learnt of the tragic death of one of our fellow rally team members, having been involved in a traffic accident on the east side of Iran. The details of what happened have not been released, but we understand that two further team members are in hospital. It hit home for us; not just how dangerous the rally can be, but driving in general. We're making sure we're still being extra safe whilst on the road, but send our deepest sympathies to the families of the team.

As we were finishing up with the internet, us all having filled our need for communication with the outside world, another team asked us if we'd registered yet since being in Kazakhstan. I guess the confused looks on our faces answered their question; apparently all visitors to Kazakhstan had to officially register with immigration by the 5th day of being in the enormous country. Those not doing so faced "being punished to the full extent of Kazakh law". It was then pointed out to us, in black and white (and in English) on the back of our visa slips resting in our passports. A quick count of fingers, and we realised - today was our 5th day.

We weren't the only ignorant team though! Another couple had also skipped over this particular bit of information and were on their 5th day. And so starting our next convoying mission - to get a magic blue stamp on our visa slips which would put us firmly within the boundaries of Kazakh immigration law.

Astana isn't the biggest city, but it's the capital; all government departments have their freshly built headquarters here, and they lined the main streets - impressive white buildings, each flying the Kazakh flag and unreadable Cyrillic department names. The 10 of us proceeded to the first we found, which even mentioned Immigration (in English) inside the marble floored building. The guard dutifully watching the door looked quite perplexed when the 10 of us walked in, obviously the most exciting thing that's happened on his shift in a long day.

Unfortunately none of us spoke Kazakh, but that hadn't stopped us so far - lots of pointing at visa slips, inventing a new gesture for "stamp", indicating it was our fifth day etc, and we were told no - this wasn't the right building. They did however point us to the correct building, and off the merry troop went. We left our cars in a central position within the city, within easy walking distance of the buildings, and headed to the second building. 

It looked more like a bank than anything else, and we all bunched around a sitting attendant (who looked more like a soldier than anything else) and started our gesturing and questioning. We thought we were doing quite well - within a few minutes, I think he'd ascertained that we were here for something. Very luckily though, behind us in the queue was a lovely Kazakh lady that spoke perfect English who was happy to come to our aid. Acting as translator, she picked up what we were after and relayed the information to the semi perplexed assistant/soldier. 

He finally understood what we were after, thanks to Kazakh Lady. Huzzah! But not quite - wrong building. Kazakh Lady though was happy to show us where to go - how nice was that? Yet another display of amazing Kazakh hospitality, which has surprised us all but so very likeable. Off we followed, looking more like an arranged tour group than 10 weary rallyers, around the leafy side streets of Astana.
The place we were after turned out to be the 5th building we visited. Kazakh Lady, if you ever stumble upon this blog, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. A 15 minute walk with you could have easily been a 15 hour mission without you.

It was a travel agents we needed, the 10 of us piling into an office as she considered our request. Yes, they could happily register us and stamp our slips with the magic blue stamp. No problem - just come back the next day and they'd all be done.

A wave of negative "ohhhhh"'s filled the limited space, sufficiently exclaiming this might be a problem in any language. One of the office workers spoke rather good English, and we told her of our plight, and we needed to get going that evening. Eventually she conceded, and said the earliest we could collect our completed visas was 6pm. Good enough for us! It was about 1pm by now - giving us 5 hours to explore the city, take in a bit of culture, and a hint of relaxing; things we haven't really had a chance to do whilst constantly driving through every daylight hour.

We left Pete the Saxo on a main road, relatively safe and under the shade of the tree lined street, and walked into the city centre.
Astrana is a very nice city - a crazy mix of architecture with Soviet, Islamic, Western and futuristic influences. A reputed 8% of the national budget for the entire country is spent on the capital, providing shiny new government buildings and other very ambitious projects. It's clean, the people are friendly, and the weather was perfect for us - a nice 25 degrees, comparatively cool and a welcome change. We strolled in the general direction of the river that bisected the city, past new tower blocks and went into the first mall we found. This too was new and clean, air conditioned and filled with shops of surprising calibre - Calvin Klein, Apple, Dunhill, Gucci and other mid to high level brands showed their immaculate window displays off to all who entered. I realise all cities must have their high end shops (Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia has just had Louis Vitton open a store), but the prices look even more so extortionate when compared to general day to day living costs.

We stopped off in the little cafe you find in all shopping centres, once again having pizza. Mainly due to being the only thing we can read on the menu, and strangely enough being served in abundance throughout our entire trip - Europe, Russia, Asia, all loving the pizza. We browsed around the mall, window shopping more than anything (due to us not needing anything, and certainly not having the space in the car if we did). Maybe it's the way we look, or the way we dress, or the way we act - but once again we had security follow our every moves, constantly reporting our whereabouts and actions to his colleagues via radio. We don't take it personally though - I just make an effort to go and say hello to them.

Onwards we pushed through the city, casually strolling and attracting quite a few looks from the locals. The city really is spotless - the grass is perfectly cut, there is no litter anywhere (such a contrast from the rest of the country) and the buildings are as shiny as when they were first constructed. We found the river (mainly thanks to Mackey's extraordinary ability as a human compass), and strolled along as if we were tourists to just the one place.

We spotted some pedallo's on the river side, dozens of them lined up as if awaiting a mass influx of customers. A mass influx that would never come though, as we were the only Westerners we saw on our city walk. We were tourists after all, so we thought we'd push the boat out (excuse the deliberate pun) and take one of these fine crafts out on the water. 

We literally were the only ones on the entire river, messing around like children but having more fun than we'd had in a week. A 30 minute excursion cost us about £1.60, and we took turns racing along a line of buoys and enjoying the UK like summer weather. Once we'd returned our fine ocean going vessel (that looked ready to sink at any moment) to the amused attendants, we got an ice cream and did some more idling in the sun.

On our travels, we found the Chelsea English Pub - a UK pub for UK people. How very boring of us we know, but we were curious to find out what they served that made it so English, and so headed in. We don't want to write too much about this pub, as we accidentally ordered extortionately priced food (the worst Chicken Caesar Salad you've ever seen for £17). We include it in the blog merely to put you off should you ever visit the Kazakh capital.

After the above experience, we noticed it was just fifteen minutes to six, and we were slightly more than that away from the magic visa stamp shop. We headed off, power walking as best we could without looking like tourist knobs, and Mackey broke the group and powered on ahead. He got there just after six, where our passports and now completed visas were eagerly awaiting their return to us. As we were outside the travel agents, happy and ready to once again push eastwards on our travels, a few teams were driving along the Pete the Saxo parked road, and recognised the car immediately - it was our friends Mongolia Is Our Everest, Team Mongolia or Bust, and Team The Two Mongoleers. What are the odds of that?!

They stopped, and we had a rally reunion - a good chat, a swap of the last few day's occurrences and smiles all round. They're very good for morale and the chance to convoy onwards with other teams. Unfortunately though, these teams were in the city for the same reason as us - they needed immigration registration also. We introduced them to the travel agents, them seemingly striking gold on the stamp hunt after our previous misfortune, but were told that they wouldn't be ready until the morning. We had spent the night and day in the city but wanted to push on a bit further (as teams do catch up without noticing), so we bid adieu and off we went.
Our next town was Pavlodar about 5 hours away, and we decided to take it nice and easy. I'd do half, Will would do half, and Mackey would have a well earned break.

As it turned out, my shift was the best two and a half hours of driving i've ever done. The roads were very long and sweeping, crossing over hilly land with golden fields on either side of our empty road. The afternoon sun began to set behind us, showering everything in a red tint light and the hills providing contrasting shadows across random patches of land. The road surface was good - not perfect, for there was still a few pot holes and lumps, but that just gave me an excuse to treat it like a deserted rally track; weaving in and out of the obstacles at a sympathetic 60mph, the road ahead visible for miles. Bloc Party was the perfect accompaniment to this road, and I drove with a smile on my face for the entire time. A definite high point in the trip for me.

Will's shift started as the last light of the day faded away, and so had to slow down a considerable amount.  There's only so far a Citroen can illuminate in front of us, so we took it nice and steady and reached our target of Pavlodar at about 2am. Pavlodar - a Soviet era industrial town, it's skyline dominated by massive rabbit-hole-style apartment blocks. From night it looked quite rubbish, and Mackey drove around the abandoned streets for about 40 minutes, trying to find those magic Cyrillic symbols that spelt out hotel. Well, they actually spelt out rOCTnsomething, but that meant hotel.

By the end of the 40 minutes, we were annoyed and tired. Where were these darned hotels?! We resorted to a cheating method; paying a taxi driver to take us to a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet book. A short taxi follow later, and £3 lighter, we arrived at the Hotel Sariarka. 12 stories tall, overlooking the River Irtysh (this description came out of the book, as it was pitch black at the time) and with an old-Soviet feel. Will & I strolled into the hotel and enquired about rooms. Not as simple as it sounds, as we first had to interrupt two security guards (who shall hereby be known as Tweedle Dum and Golum) from some cheesy soap they were watching on an old CRT television. I say interrupt, as we walked straight up to their counter (adjoining the abandoned reception) and waited. Our flip flops on the faux marble floor made ample sound to attract the attention of anyone in the vicinity, yet still they were glued to their set. A few obvious clearing of throats, and still they watched. Eventually a loud "EXCUSE ME" made them both turn round, their facial expressions a mix of annoyance and surprise.

We asked for rooms, to which Golum then nipped into the back room, returning with a half asleep receptionist. Her expression though was just of anger - how dare anyone awake the night receptionist from the sleep she was enjoying whilst supposed to be working?! We were shown prices, amounts in the thousands that we were just too tired to convert, but the look and feel of the place suggested a ten pound room. Golum was the only one that spoke any words of English, and so kindly translated (he spoke about 24 words of English though, which we soon found out).

We paid the bill (and £2 to Tweedle Dum to "watch the car for us") and Golum showed us up to our rooms on the lofty 6th floor. We bundled into the elevator, which scared the hell out of us. If you've ever played Bioshock, it was just like that - a creaking, rocking old elevator complete with faulty glowing green floor number display (which counted down 6…5….8….4….3….8….2….8….1…). Unspoken fear gripped us all as the ancient cables struggled to raise the death box to the 6th floor, and verbal relief was exchanged as the door opened and we clambered out.

It was a strange hotel. A very strange hotel. Sort of a bad dream, one where you'd never be able to leave and instead would spend your entire life trying to.

We were shown to our hotels (the "very good" single rooms), and Golum motioned the eating gesture. Breakfast? we enquired. Yes, he replied, Breakfast.We resorted to counting on our fingers to suggest 9am. Lots of confused counting by Golum - not a case of struggling with English, rather a case of struggling with numbers. After 10 minutes of standing in the corridor, trying to explain we wanted breakfast at 9am, he let us in our three rooms and we presumed he had finally understood.

How very wrong I was.

5 minutes later, after quickly climbing into bed and fast falling into a deep sleep, there was a knock at the door. Straight back up, to my room door, opened it, and there stood Golum. "Hello, what's up?" I enquired, hiding my slight frustration as he had tried to be helpful (even if it was just for a few Tenge).

"Breakfast at 6?" he asked.

What? "No, breakfast at NINE" I said, holding up 9 extended fingers. "Now, I sleep" showing the universal sleep gesture, two hands against the side of your head.I think he understood. He nodded, said goodbye, and left. Once again, I undressed and got into the rock hard bed, a small feature in the strangest room i've ever been in; looking like a Soviet living room from the 50s, complete with two armchairs and the worst furniture you'd ever seen, everything a horrible shade of green or brown (walls/ceiling/floor included).

Knock knock.

I jumped out of bed, opened the door and kept as as nice as possible. Golum was back, this time with Tweedle Dum. I asked again what I could do for him - this time, it was to ask whether we liked Pavlodar. Unbelievable - I almost told them i'd like the city much more if they let me sleep, but I made some excuse about it being too dark and we'd look at it tomorrow. Tonight though, 2.20am, I wanted to SLEEP. They left me to it, back to the hard bed I went, this time drifting off nicely.

Knock knock.

I couldn't believe it. No guesses to who was at the door yet again - Golum. I opened the door and looked at him."You want breakfast NOW?" he enquired. Beyond belief. How can any one man, be it speaking any language or any age, not understand that we were very simply explaining to him that we wanted breakfast at 9am. Not 6am, not 7am, just 9am. How can any one man then think we wanted breakfast at 2.35am?

I didn't find out till the next morning that Will & Mackey, both asleep in their equally shocking bed, were both wide awake and laughing their heads off, the paper thin walls muting nothing. Golum eventually left, for the last time that night. I think the look upon my face explained everything, in particular we weren't after breakfast at 2.35am. And so to sleep, we all went.