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Day 19 - Entering the atomic wasteland

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Following on from yesterday's blog...

We all eventually got to sleep at 2.35am, after Golum's 4th visit to my room - the last enquiring whether we wanted breakfast at that ungodly hour. The rooms were just incredible, and not in the good sense of the word. 80% of the room, from the carpets to the ceiling, was the Soviet shade of communist green. The other 20% was brown. Just being in the room sucked the joy, happiness and freedom from you.

But, it had a bed (albeit a rather firm bed) and was warm and dry; at the end of the day, just what we needed. Having finally got the message through to Golum that we wanted breakfast at 9, eventually even he counting 9 out on his fingers to show he understood, we didn't set any alarms and knew he'd be back with the same ferocity as the night before, and wake us up at 9am.

Knock Knock.

"HALLO. Security. Breakfast now"

It was 8am. I was tired, but the thought of arguing with him in the futile hope to gain that last hours sleep was too much. I grudgingly got out of bed, answered the door with the best fake smile I could muster, and thanked him for his overly keen wake up.

I told him the boys would come with me, so I banged on Will's door. A few bangs later, and he too was rudely awakened from his sleep. Cruel I know, but Will would want breakfast. And if I was up, then they would be too! A shout through the paper thin walls of the room, and he indicated he was awake. Next stop, just one door down, was Mackey. I tapped on the door with my room key fob, happy with the loud noise it would be making in the room. Tap tap… tap tap…

Golum was obviously unhappy with my pathetic Western attempts, and pushed me out of the way and hammered the door hard with his fist. Good effort, unneeded but very effective. We heard movement, and a grunt. Mackey was stirring.

I shouted through the door - "Breakfast mate", and a groggy "Yep, i'm up" was heard. And so, I waited in the narrow corridor with Golum. And waited.. and waited… I could hear movement from Will's room, him obviously getting dressed while being blinded by the glaring virescent fixtures and fittings. Mackey's room however, I heard nothing. I banged once more, this time using Golum's method, and a good 10 seconds later I heard the same "Yep, i'm up", as if it was a subconscious reaction to anything that awoke him.

I waited more, the silence being broken by the unheard sound of Golum just watching me. Just stood there, looking at me, a blank look on his little face. This freaked me out a little bit, so I banged yet again on Mackey's door. "Yep, i'm up" was the reply. I wouldn't be falling for that little trick again - I banged, and banged, until he finally opened the door, about the same time as Will.

We walked, no were actually escorted, to breakfast on the 2nd floor. Being on the sixth would mean another ride in the elevator of doom, the 50s green floor indicator randomly showing us moving to the 8th floor between the 3rd and 4th. It really was something out of a Stephen King novel - you'd almost expect it to miss the 13th floor all together if we could go that high, for some dark evil lived there.

On the way to breakfast, Golum said we needed to pay for the food. We were still tired, and Will's suggestion of arguing this sounded absolutely right. I explained we'd paid for a hotel with breakfast, and a minute of arguing using two completely different languages, good old English came out the victor.

We sat in the small restaurant, seating a maximum of 30 people, on a table big enough for us, but small enough that Golum wouldn't be able to join us. We're not being nasty, he was just that weird. The previous night, we'd asked how many rooms the hotel had. One thousand, one hundred and seventy five was the answer. I think Golum couldn't count.

The menu was in Cyrillic, but Golum was there to suggest what we should have. His suggestion was incomprehensible, and our faces probably answered his recommendation. His response was rather simple - walk to another table, where a lone businessman had just been served his breakfast. Golum scooped up his plate, the meat and egg piping hot but cooling quick, and walked it over to us. 

"?" was his facial expression, hovering the plate under our noses and looking for signs of approval. That looked fine, we nodded, but felt terribly guilty that random lone businessman had just had his breakfast stolen from under him to be used as an exhibit for three travelling Westerners. Still, we nodded and ate not long after, sneaking off to our rooms while we were on our own to pack for the day. From the 2nd floor, back up to the 6th, and then back to the lobby we didn't see our stalky friend again - maybe his shift had finished, thank god.

Just a quick note regarding the elevator of doom - it was so dodgy, that on arriving at the 2nd floor and the doors opening, Mackey did a little scientific test; he jumped up in the air as high as he could, and landed back in the stationary lift. The lift dropped a foot underneath the 2nd floor, resulting in stepping up to disembark. It was that sketchy.

Despite only having 5 hours sleep, it was time to move again. Our target today was Semey, a city in the far north western corner of Kazakhstan and near our border gateway back into Russia. Semey is further along the river Irtysh, and probably better known to the world by it's Russian name, Semipalatinsk. For this city gained fame when the Soviet military exploded some 460 nuclear bombs in an area just west of the city. Locals say they knew when tests were taking place because the ground would shake - often on a Sunday morning. Radiation is still a serious issue for locals, but we'd read that short term visitors are not in any serious risk.

Either way, the car journey up was still filled with discussions of which super power we'd like to gain. I ended up with teleportation, Will wanted to walk on water (?!) and Mackey wanted his ability to drink beer again. 

The road to Semey was pretty good - not too many pot holes, a flat surface on the whole, and so we made quite good time and got to our target by 5pm. Rather than carry on and push forward, we'd finally acquired another phone and had got in touch with the lovely Mongol Mongrels, who were not far behind us. The chance to convoy with our favourite team (along with all the others) at this late stage, probably to the end, was something all three of us wanted so were happy to wait in town.

We've been using the Lonely Planet as a rough guide for the cities we've visited, as many of the descriptions were rather out of date or inaccurate. An Italian team liked to call it the Lying Planet after many a failed expectation. Semey didn't have a huge piece within the now well used book, but listed three hotels (we're not sure if this was a random selection, or Semey really did just have three hotels). The descriptions of the three were varying; hot water for a few hours a day, persistence required for a cheap room, Soviet-style rooms, gloomy with no hot water; the cream of Semey's hotel crop. 

We went for the latter, Hotel Binar. We eventually found it, with the use of hiring a taxi driver to take us. Mackey presented the name, the taxi driver nodded, and jumped in the Lada with the driver. This was the first Lada Mackey had ever been in, something that excited him a little too much. His verdict on the car littering the continent? "I like it. Solid".

On arriving at the hotel, we enquired about rooms - 3 rooms, or at least spaces for 3 to sleep. We were given a price, forty something pounds for the three of us with breakfast. It looked like a very nice hotel, and the price was just right. We were showed to the room we would be inhabiting by a waiting cleaner, and climbed to the second floor of the two storey hotel. We walked along the long main corridor passing doors regularly on both sides of us, separated by typical single and double room sized gaps. As we approached the end of the corridor though, the dark panelled doors on the right hand side stopped, and a long stretch of doorless beige wall replaced it.

Continuing down the corridor, we noticed half way down the featureless beige wall was a single door - with equal wall on either side. Big room we thought, although let's focus on the room we'll be getting somewhere at the end. As long as it wasn't Soviet green, we'd be happy. 

But of course, this is a happy story - that lone door, separated from it's neighbours unlike no other, was most definitely ours. The key
was entered for us, opened and we were allowed in. Not into a bedroom though - more like a study/foyer area. A table and chairs, fridge and mini bar, and huge windows all decked in a delightful relaxing decor. To the left led through to the first bedroom - larger than any room we'd had so far, a huge bed taking centre stage, and this room embellished in passionate reds with long stem roses in a huge vase. Once again, a huge window let in light with drapes adorning the walls as if we were in a Hilton. To the right, laid the second bedroom - equal in size to the first, this time a sandy palette made it into a tranquil luxury paradise.

This was our room. No, this was our presidential suite. For about £15 each. We were happy. The cousins took the left room, rather worryingly the "passionate" room, and I was left with the "tranquil" room. The bathroom was equally as plush, with a full body jet shower. Little did the boys know when claiming their room, was that my room was en-suite. Great success.

We moved Pete the Saxo into the private enclosed car park behind our new home, and Mackey decided to make the most of the remaining daylight hours by attending to the car. After the terrible roads we've been enduring, the sump guard has taken an absolute battering, and so the exhaust loudly rattles every time we accelerate away. The exhaust "fix" that was installed (consisting of an oven glove, bungee cord and cable ties) had done us well and survived over 2,000 miles but was very much ready to give up in it's task.

Mackey set to work, using a few supplies we picked up en route - the sump guard was removed, and bent back into shape using the car jack. The exhaust was chained back up, and both fixes seemed to work perfectly. Nick Shiles, you'd be proud of Mackey.

We decided to eat in the empty hotel restaurant, hoping the food was equally nice as our rooms. They'd planned ahead for us ignorant
folks, and even presented a menu in English to us - no menu roulette for us today! We each picked a main course, mainly based on the main meaty ingredient rather than understanding what the meal title suggested, as well as soup starters, 3 extra chips and 2 extra vegetables (Will was in charge of ordering. We were hungry). Luckily though, the waitress realised the mistake in over ordering that we were making, and our meals came out not long after with sensible amounts of all of the above. 

After a very fine meal, we decided to explore the city (or at least close to the hotel) and go out for a few beers. We found somewhere within a street block, sat outside and reflected on the journey so far, anxious to see our friends the following day.

A quick side note that Will wanted to include - on using the toilet facilities at the bar, Will noticed the long line of urinals separated by a small outcrop of ceramic - as you would see at any pub or restaurant in the UK. These however, were filled with Kazakh men not using them for the traditional use (i.e. a number "1".). Rather, they were utilising them for the full range of bodily functions. I think he felt a bit strange using a centre one to relieve a full bladder surrounding by Kazakh men doing much more. Ha!