Irkutsk, Siberia: Short Stay In A Whatever Townby Randi / July 9, 2017
After three weeks of exhausting, nonstop activity in our big summer travels, we planned for four days of just pure relaxation in a presumed idyllic spot, Olkhon Island on the famed Lake Baikal, a tiny fishing village that is hard to reach and so we simultaneously assumed two incongruous thoughts: 1) that we would be two of very very few visitors (pretty true) but 2) that even so the island and village would be equipped to deal with visitors (hahah no). Can’t have it both ways. Really, parts of the island, like the lake itself and the cliffs and rocky terrain along the northern parts of the island, are beautiful, but getting there and for the most part being there is too stressful to allow for any relaxation, or, honestly, to allow me to recommend a trip here.
it’s like a little baby Azure Window! Oh Azure Window, RIP! (read the Malta posts on the main Travel page)
Through the Hostel Baikaler in Irkutsk, we booked a trip to Olkhon Island up on Lake Baikal. Most people in Irkutsk are indeed stopping there in order to venture out to the lake, which is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. The guidebook says that if all the other freshwater in the world disappeared, Baikal would be able to fill our needs for forty years. That’s a big ass lake. So the Baikaler people booked us a minibus ride to Olkhon and a 3 night stay at Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, the tiny ‘town’ on Olkhon. When I say to you to never, ever use Baikaler or Olga’s people to book anything, I really, really mean it.
The best thing I saw all that day of the 8 hour minibus – our only big toilet stop
My view for an entire day – this was the best road we took. SO BUMPY
The minibus seemed nice enough, one of the nicer vehicles we’ve seen, and since we were picked up at our hostel early we got the first row which I figured would help with my carsickness (the van fit about 16 people). I was so funny thinking anything could stop the nausea on this ride, even if you aren’t prone to it. After we left, at about 9:05, we picked up a few more travelers at another hostel, before we set off and…nope, we just parked in a busy market square one block from our hostel at 9:15, the driver got off, and I watched as he joined apparent friends to smoke in the middle of the market. At 10:30 (that’s right), he got back on the bus, and we thought jesus christ are we finally leaving, an hour and a half late? Nopeeee, he drove around while on his phone yelling at people until we found 4 other people to pick up outside a stadium. I mean. WTF. I thought okay NOW we’re leaving and it’ll be fine. Little did I know.
The roads on Olkhon
After just under two hours, we stopped for a bathroom break, which is the best kind of break you can ever offer me. Five minutes later, we drove down the road to stop for lunch. It sucked that our two stops in a 7 hour bus journey were back to back; I was so nervous about having to pee, I was having palpitations. When we left the cafe in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dirt road, the real ridiculousness of our journey started. The road to Olkhon Island is not equipped for people to drive on. There aren’t roads, really, it’s just land. And we were not in a jeep or a landrover, we were in a minibus and pretty much off-roading. We felt every jarring bump and throw from the rocky paths that turned into sand dunes that you had to carefully maneuver and then back into rocky again. It was INSANE. We were all looking at each other like ‘oh my god this cannot be the way’, holding on for dear life to the handles above us or on the seats in front of us. It was like being on a roller coaster that also shook your seat violently and spun you around. I’m nauseous just remembering it. Of course that part of the trip was about 2 hours. It was the worst travel experience ever, until the return journey three days later, which was actually worse.
The town of Khuzir (after a terrible rainstorm, hence the road is a pond)
One of the two main grocery stores in Khuzir/Olkhon
When we finally got to Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, it was not the fresh sigh of relief we were counting on. It was a few lackluster wooden shacks, and our room was a small, dank, windowless affair with two college dorm beds with ugly, not very clean looking bedding on them. Windowless was the worst part. We told the staffer that her colleagues who had arranged this for us months ago promised that we would be in a building with a bathroom inside it (I pee at least every 90 minutes and I cannot be walking to another building in the middle of the night that often). The staffer was like, um no none of the buildings have bathrooms, here is our bathroom — two outhouse stalls about a full minute’s walk up the road of the grounds. (One was a western toilet; the other was a beginning-of-Slumdog-style-elevated wooden floor with a hole in it. When I talk about outhouses from here on out (and I’m sure I will), I mean this latter kind.) The sinks were halfway back down the little road. I mean. No. Your colleagues told us you had a bathroom in our building, and that was literally the only reason we booked with you instead of elsewhere, and we told them that at booking, that it was dependent on that! She was just like well nope we don’t have a bathroom so that’s it. We got our stuff from our jail cell of a windowless room and hightailed it out of that shithole. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet, and luckily the staffer I guess heard from the colleague who made all the false promises (lies, they are called lies) and gave us our deposit back. We walked about 30 minutes in the sand dunes (omg it was so hard I’ve never been that sweaty before it’s like I had some sort of fever) up the road to Hotel Baikal View. It looked like a little string of colorful motel rooms, little log cabins in three rows, but they were so much better than motel rooms and the hotel itself was that sigh of relief we needed. The bed was the most comfortable in the entire country so far, and they had a bar, and a restaurant, and lots of staffers who spoke English and there was a POOL and a SAUNA and omg it was just great. And still much cheaper than the equivalent would be in the west.
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Our multi-colored string of hotel rooms! So cute
I loved that bed. It had clean white sheets and a big fluffy white comforter. The best. And every single room had its own bathroom. I was so happy that I didn’t have to put shoes and a headlamp on in the middle of the night to pee, I didn’t even care that the cabins were full of bugs (log cabins on a lake, man!), I didn’t even care that it was too cold to swim in the pool (we did jump in after our daily sauna use though, which was bracing but amazing hot damn I love saunas), I didn’t even care that housekeeping threw out my retainer/night guard and I’ve been grinding my teeth like crazy every since. (Okay, that’s not true, I cared a lot and cried but once a one-inch piece of clear plastic is gone, it’s gone. Fuckers.) I did love that sauna, hoo boy. And our first night, all night, was the hardest rainstorm I’ve maybe ever heard. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours because I thought our cabin was going to blow away, or at least flood quickly and completely. It was unbelievable. Can you imagine if we had stayed at Olga’s and I had to go out in that to trek to the outhouse in my boots and raingear and headlamp in the pitch black five times in the night??? Thank god we left. I’m so grateful to Z money for that one. I mean he didn’t want to stay at Olga’s either, he’s not a filthy monster, but yay for finding a nice place.
We ate a few times in the restaurant at Baikal View, because it was about a mile on the sand dunes to the ‘town’ of Khuzir and we were usually so tired from our day of exploring that we didn’t feel like trekking there and back (there’s like one taxi and you have to either be very lucky and find him randomly or get someone to call him, and it usually takes like 20 minutes for him to come anyway so no). The restaurant was fine, full of all the Baikal specialties husband was supposed to get. It was harder for me, but they had a really good pickle plate and good potato dishes (I say that like I’m not just talking about French fries and potato wedges). We also tried this weird kind of pickled mushroom that was interesting. I know the deathly gray color is unappetizing but they were decent.
oh I’ll have my usual thanks I guess |
like the most colorless plate of food ever |
Then, one night, the waitress was the first one (they all only spoke Russian) who understood really what kinds of things I was looking for and tried to help me get something that wasn’t just pickles and potatoes. She said what about this soup, otroshka? I had read about that soup before, and knew that it was cucumber, potato, egg, meat, sour cream, and kvass, that beer-like soda-ish dark bready drink that I for some reason like. She said this version was vegetarian, and they could do it without the egg and sour cream. I was skeptical but excited to have a soup. Lol again.
my kvass soup I can’t believe I ate this for dinner lolol
It was literally chopped up cucumber, potato, and a shittonne of spicy radish in a bowl of cold kvass. I mean. What. We were CRACKING up. It was…not bad, but it was incredibly strange and like WHAT. Imagine cold chopped veggies served in a bowl of undiluted, unadulterated soda, that’s what it was. I mean I ate it. It was still raw veggies. I still can’t get over it. I think the waitresses were laughing at me, having dared each other to see who could get the weird Americans to eat the craziest thing. I said to Husband that it’s usually with sour cream and egg and maybe that makes it less like a soda bath of cucumber and he said actually that sounds like it would be even stranger, and truly revolting. I guess the idea of soda and sour cream and egg mixed into a broth really is disgusting oh man alive Russia.
literally main street Khuzir
We did eat several meals in Khuzir, too. There were a lot of fish shacks, and a lot of small cafes, and a few decent ramshackle places with some things I could pick out. We went twice to this hopping cafe on the main drag (the name of it was just its address, and there’s like one street, so just like…it’s there) that had salads in a glass case (not refrigerated…I am living dangerously) and so I picked out a cabbage-y cucumber-y looking salad and another carrot-yuba salad! I had that yuba salad twice at this place, I was so happy to find it again, my favorite dish of Siberia. I really hope this yuba looking stuff I keep finding in Siberia (also had some in Yekaterinburg) really is tofu skin and not just some weird part of a fish (or worse) that I’ve just never seen before. That would be bad, and embarrassing. Let’s say it’s yuba before my stomach starts to hurt.
I love that this carrot-yuba salad was everywhere in Siberia!
We also went to Kafe Olkhon on you guessed it the main drag, which I really liked the look of. It was a proper old dark wooden pub-sort of place, full of Russian people and travelers. They had a menu with pictures and some English translations, and I got a giant plate of plain kasha (love it, I’m sorry) and a carrot-cabbage salad. It was a great meal for me if totally boring and plain to everyone else. I love that kind of meal.
There were a few sad grocery stores in the town, one less sad that had a few fun chocolate treats we found. That less sad store also had a fellow customer wearing the best shirt I’ve ever seen. I tried to get a picture of her without being too obvious but I failed. Anyway, the shirt was red and in white block letters it said “Puberty Silent’. WHAT. IS. WHAT. We’ve seen the most incredible tee shirts with things in English written on them. I guess this is how Chinese people feel when they see the nonsense character-tattoos of westerners.
ate the entire bag of chocolate-strawberry things on the walk home. should have gotten two of them. yummm
Wandering through the dirt roads once with new French friends we met, we passed a house that had a ‘homemade bread’ sign out front. So we rang the doorbell , it started to pour, and the lady came out to the gate, in that order. We said ‘you have bread?” and she said yes how many? and we said um, I guess two? and she came out with two enormous loaves of bread. like, enormous. 50 rubles each, so pretty cheap. We were cracking up. She didn’t even let us in, we just bought bread from a random lady at her house on the side of the road. It was hilarious. Almost as funny as trying to break into that bread itself, which took not joking all of my strength to break apart. Inside, it was really nice and fluffy, delicious really, but that outer shell was f-ing armor.
“homemade bread” |
the bread lady’s house. she didn’t let us in |
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Okay, that’s enough about the food!
Olkhon itself is interesting. The town of Khuzir (and, consequently, the entirety of the surroundings for miles and miles considering Khuzir is the most built up touristed part, despite it being literally two dirt roads) is not really ready for tourists, at least not a lot of them. It doesn’t not have the infrastructure to support tourism. Does it even have infrastructure? That bus ride, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrendous. We really can’t recommend going to Olkhon because this ride was so hellish and it takes up two entire days. It’s just not worth it. Once there, the guesthouses all seem to be like Olga’s and the very famous Nikita’s, complexes of small wooden shacks with shared outhouses (oh p.s., the entire island except for our hotel was outhouses. The restaurants too – you were lucky if the restaurant you chose even had a key to the nearest outhouse shack down the block. It’s fine when traveling (used to it by now) but like not in the place you’re staying for days). (Nikita’s charges hourly for wifi, so glad we didn’t book there.) It’s cool to be at a place that is so remote and raw, but it really cannot handle the tourist trade in its current state. It’s a shame because parts of the island are beautiful, but I just don’t know how people can really go to see them. There is a hydrofoil boat that might go once or twice a week, saving most of the minibus ride, but then even getting around the island for the tours (which is the most important and best thing to do on the island; you’re not there to stay in the ‘town’) requires driving in minibuses on the same and even worse roads! The entire day! It’s just a mess there.
the roads we drove on for like a whole week
Let’s talk about those tours. We booked a tour of the north cape of the island, called Cape Khoboy, with our hotel. Every hostel or hotel books the same tour, with the same sort of driver and Soviet military-looking 9-person van, the same fish soup cooked for lunch by the driver (smelled great but I wasn’t going to eat even if it was vegan when we were driving all day on those obstacle sources of rocks, dunes, and tree roots), and the same collection of sights before and after Khoboy along the way. It cost 1100 rubles per person (100 of that was a random charge that we weren’t told about in advance and I kind of think was the driver and his friends tricking us but what could be do), which is like 15 pounds, so not bad for an entire day of sightseeing. And the landscape really is beautiful.
Okay, so this is a little terrible, but the name of the cape is pronounced like ‘ho boy’, a little phlegmier, but still close, so the entire week not joking (and still) Z and I were repeating to each other our favorite bit of SNL weekend update:
it’s when your whole body goes
hoo boyyyyy
Khoboy itself requires a decent amount of time for a hike down and up through all the twists of the mountain. We ran into our French friends there, which was hilarious. It was a beautiful place, which makes me sadder about how weird it is to be a tourist there. Seriously if they just paved the road and excavated the outhouses once in a while (it had been a too-long while for most of them) it would be oodles better.
All over Siberia, we have seen trees and bushes covered in scarves and pieces of colorful cloth. It’s like a shaman thing, I think. Shamanism is big in this part of the country. The trees are really fun to see.
Khoboy had an outhouse (worst condition of whole island), so that was lucky, since this was another of the three days (out of four) where I was a ball of nerves all day about having to pee. I’m so dehydrated.
The driver also took us to other outlets along the north side of the island, beautiful rocks jutting out over the lake that we climbed up and hiked down (some of the pics above are those other parts of the cape; I can’t tell which was which part). It was exhausting but really worth it, so beautiful.
But again, the roads. My god. I bet you think I’m being dramatic just for the sake of drama, exaggerating. Here is another picture I took on the route when I WASN’T hanging on for dear life.
These are not roads, and our little bus, my god, it’s a miracle that it made it through. All the tours are in identical buses and I just do not understand how they operate after driving through this. We spent almost 45 minutes driving through WOODS. Like, without a road, just making our way in the woods. In a bus. Here’s a picture of us going through the woods behind another car. The one in front of us really gives you the perspective I need you to have in order to agree with me on how insane this all is.
pretty scary right?
Another day, we went on a hike along the lake with the French people. It was a cold and rainy day, but we said hey let’s be outdoorsy. But then it started to really rain, like buckets, like pouring freaking rain, and the ground/sand was incredibly muddy and I started to have trouble making my way up without slipping backwards, which is a really scary feeling, and the ground just kept giving way instead of letting me progress and it was miserable. Beautiful, but miserable. Luckily, the foggy weather really reflected that state.
that’s a boat!
It totally looks like Japan, or a scene out of Avatar, right? That fog was insane. The farther we went, the harder it got to see where we had come from, and with the rain getting harder and harder and the ground getting wetter and wetter, we all decided to stop and head back before too long (too long for me though). Our shoes were so disgusting. Not to mention our pants. We’re just always dirty this trip, it seems.
I know right now you are like…dude…all of these nature scenes look gorgeous! Why are you complaining so much! But see it’s just because it’s been a minute since I wrote about the driving conditions. After all this beauty, we still had to get back to Irkutsk/civilization. And when I tell you that the return minibus journey was BY FAR the worst bus trip yet, I really mean it. The van was not nice this time. Instead, it was over-crowded, and the door was broken. There was no trunk area for luggage, so 20 people all with giant backpacks and suitcases had to sit WITH their luggage either on their lap or in the aisle next to them, making this the most unsafe bus ever, not to mention impossible to get on and off of. The driver was awful and refused to stop for lunch. The whole thing was so bad that, when we got to the ferry crossing (where we got out of the car) (after about 1 1/2 hours), Z and I actually knocked on the windows of every car on the ferry and asked if they could take us the rest of the way for whatever money they wanted. Unfortunately, the only ones who had room for us were not going to Irkutsk. Seriously, that’s how bad it was. Thank god we made it back in one piece. When the driver started letting people off in Irkutsk, we got off at the first opportunity even though we were like 20 minutes walk from our hostel. We didn’t care we just needed to get off that death machine.
minibus from hell
Luckily, we got off in Irkutsk right near our favorite place, Engineer Coffee (or something like that), with the best, nicest staff and the best coffee (according to the coffee drinker of the two of us). They also had clean bathrooms, free water, and good wifi. It was a godsend.
After we dropped our bags back at the Hostel Baikaler for the few hours we had until our sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, we went in search of food. We decided on the great-named Sushied, with the ‘sushi’ part in cyrillic and then the ‘ed’ added after that. So fun, and the food was decent. I needed all the vegetables and ordered a green salad, a seaweed salad, a veggie sushi roll, and a veggie noodle stir-fry (to share and granted I gave Z most of the stir-fry but still, lots of food!).
my favorite kind of salad is two salads |
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So, all in all, I guess I’m glad we went to Olkhon? Lake Baikal is beautiful, and it’s cool to be somewhere few people go. But man. The discrepancy between the scenery on the coast and the lake versus the journey there and the roads and the town, it’s drastic. If you had a private helicopter you should take that and try it out for 2 days maybe. It really is so beautiful. But what a mess it all was. Except that bed. My god I loved that bed.
the main intersection of Khuzir, Olkhon Island
that lake tho
honestly I think my fave thing about Olkhon is that they recycle. first place we saw in Russia doing it.
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Beijing, China: Adventures in Health and Electronics
We’ve been together on this journey for a while, right? So it’s okay to get a little personal. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World: China. No we are going to talk about health issues we faced in Beijing, and then be rewarded with a look at our hilarious attempt to fix the little baby laptop in a huuuge Chinese computer parts superstore center where no one spoke English. It’s like an interlude. La la la la…
Just to clear up any potential confusion, no, that lead picture has nothing to do with anything. We just saw it on the street.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
this is what I look like outside in China hahahahahahahahah #bankrobber
We made our way on our first afternoon to Torana Clean Air, a smaller store than we expected with a small range of face masks and room air purifiers. They did have the masks we wanted in the sizes we needed, just not a big range of colors, so we were stuck with this weird octagon color pattern. Whatever, I don’t care what I look like if it’s keeping my lungs safer. The mask is called the Vogmask, and it helps protect from airborne particulate matter and “non-oil airborne particles” like dust, pollen, and, best of all, SECONDHAND SMOKE! I’m gonna wear this baby on the trains so hard! I know that obviously this sort of mask isn’t perfect, but it is good at filtering big and tiny particles, according to studies, and decent at the dangerous sort-of-small particles, so as long as it’s better than nothing and better than a doctor’s mask, I’m happy. I would like to get one of those total face covers with the mouth hole that you blow out of but like I’m already stared at enough here I don’t think I would be able to handle more.
They were a bit expensive at about $30 USD, but that’s super worth it for something that is helping you not get asthma and lung cancer and all kinds of shit. I do feel like I can’t catch my breath sometimes here, so I will have to see a doctor when we get back about whether China-induced asthma is a thing, but overall it’s okay. Hooray for us looking like fools but acting like smarties! I like being healthy!
So, about that…
After we left Mongolia (hip hip hoorayyy!), I had some abdominal discomfort, like, in and around the kidneys. I was peeing a helluva lot more than usual, which by now you know is a lot anyway, and it wasn’t because of drinking much more fluid, so I was concerned. We decided to go to an international health clinic we had on our emergency list (we have a list of all the hospitals and clinics where we are going where mostly expats go, so they speak English), called Parkway Health. They made a same-day appointment for me and were so nice and professional and I love them.
It was a hilarious experience, if you forget the part about me not feeling great. With my symptoms, they pretty much just needed to do a urine test. So one of the many nice nurses led me to the bathroom upstairs, but it was locked. She got another nurse, and they both tried lots of random keys to unlock it, but nothing worked. I was just standing around for like 20 minutes. Finally one of them said, “Can you just hold it?” I did my best to communicate, “Um, I don’t just need to pee, you need to test my urine, like that’s the whole point of why I’m here??” Finally they got it open and took my sample off to the lab. Meanwhile, I met the doctor. She was a lady doctor so in your face, riddles. Her English was slightly less wonderful than all the main nurses’, but still good and I felt comfortable with her. She asked if we had been traveling hard for a while, and I explained that yes, we don’t sleep we just take trains to random places for like months now. I said I had just gotten to China from Mongolia AND SHE SHUDDERED. She gets it. I said how we were pretty much in a car for 7 days there where I had to hold my pee all day and I was also dehydrated. She was like no no no this is all bad! Are you sleeping? No I’m not sleeping as much as I should be or usually need to. She was SO CONCERNED. She kept putting her hand on my shoulder like for moral support, that’s how upset she was with like, these very minor complaints. It was like if I became a doctor. I would SO be the doctor telling everyone to sleep more and drink more water and getting so upset if they weren’t doing enough of either. She was like, listen, you need to sleep more, you need to drink more water, you need to eat berries, especially red ones (amazing medicine). Then she hit a language snag and said, “You need…it’s in Chinese pingwan (or pingyan I don’t know)…just….lying down on the bed is good.” I THINK SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL ME TO TAKE NAPS. I love this doctor! The results came back and showed signs of infection, and given the symptoms was 99% a UTI. Which, given how many jokes I made about getting UTIs in my recent posts, shows that the universe looooves messing with me.
if anyone knows why I’m sharing this picture we should be best friends
We went over the things that can cause a UTI and kind of just laughed:
Dehydration – CHECK
Holding urine – CHECK
Long car rides/travel – CHECK
Squatting instead of sitting when urinating – CHECK CHECK (all that business about how it’s better anatomically to squat is just for #2; for #1 for women it leads to incomplete emptying which leads to infection in the urinary tract which issss UTI)
Poor hygiene – CHECK did you READ the Mongolian outback post?
THANK YOU PARKVIEW I WUV YOU |
They brought me a paper cup of water in a plastic holder lolol |
I mean, every single thing! Man alive! She put me on a cycle of antibiotics (and I’m all better, p.s., this blog is on a 2-week tape delay). I went to the waiting room and told Z the good news (not sarcasm; it’s a simple easily treatable thing, that’s good news). Then I said, “The doctor said I need to sleep more, drink more water, and eat berries.” Z responded, “Oh SURE she did. Did she also order you to pet more small dogs??” I almost passed out laughing so hard and had a very hard time convincing him that doing more of my favorite things was indeed doctor’s orders.
I’m relieved that we went to a real doctor who believes in medicine and fixed me up. And mostly, I’m super grateful for our UK health insurance, which covers us worldwide and immediately gave the clear when the receptionists contacted them so we didn’t even have to pay out of pocket first. We area so lucky to have such good insurance that covers us everywhere we go – well, except in the USA. It covers us in freaking China and will continue to cover us in Kazakhstan and everywhere else, but it can’t cover the USA because their healthcare system is too much of a mess. Every other country is fine though! Jesus America.
Okay that’s enough about my insides! Here’s the treat I promised you (plus one more hilarious treat at the bottom) about our adventures in Beijing’s super intense electronics scene. One whole section of the city seems to be electronic parts superstores, selling all types of gadgets but most of all doing repairs and crazy customization of gadgets. Little baby laptop’s fan stopped working, so we took it to this section of the city and just dove in headfirst. We entered one of the giant buildings, and were greeted with four floors of indistinguishable counters with Chinese guys gadgeting huge messes of gadgets. We went over to one counter that we chose randomly and showed the guy the computer and mimed a fan turning with our hands and then did a NO gesture. He got it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part. We tried the next counter, and a guy was just not into trying to figure anything we were miming out (not as many English speakers as you might expect in such a city!). Onward! The guy at the next counter was in, and he rebooted the computer a few times and determined that the fan wasn’t actually broken, but that something was stopping it, so he needed to just go in there and clean the parts instead of replacing them. How we communicated this is a feat of human interaction and behavior because it did not happen with actual language.
So we watched as he took apart the entire little netbook, because since it’s so small everything is under the keyboard, and he really had to take every last piece out. Like, we went down to the motherboard. Little baby was in 30 pieces! And to check if what he did worked, he had to put it all together again, all the tiny little barely visible screws that each have a very specific part they go with so you have to keep all these tiny screws straight and it’s a mess! Of course, the first go-round didn’t jive well with the computer, because it refused to work! So back apart it all went, a little more fixing, and then back together. Oh it was EXCRUCIATING to watch. How can people watch actual surgeries?! Finally he did a few more rounds of fiddling and it was back! It took over an hour of stress and just sitting in the super hot warehouse with people staring at us like whaaat are these tourists doing here. We also increased the computer’s RAM (I think that means it has horns now!) and we got a Chinese power cord so we don’t have to keep plugging it in with an adaptor, and it all came to I think 230 RMB, which is less than $35. Not bad! It was kind of fun to have the kind of electronics experience usually reserved to locals who have a clue what they are doing with electronics. It was definitely out of the ordinary and cool to see.
ahhh GUTS
Okay, one more random thing, I guess relating to health? At the checkout at most grocery stores we went to, they have tons and tons of condoms where in the USA there would be, like, gum and candy bars. It’s a little disconcerting but hey, China is serious about birth control which is good! But one brand jumped out at us and we were CRACKING up.
UH HUH, that’s a condom brand called JISSBON. So shocking and hilarious! But it gets better, if you can believe it. Our Chinese friend said that jissbon is ACTUALLY WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE CALL JAMES BOND. So this condom line is named after James Bond! And it JUST HAPPENS TO SOUND HYSTERICALLY PERFECT FOR A CONDOM. Omg I can’t even believe. The writing underneath says something like “you can’t even see it”, something very 007 spy-like. Ahh it’s so funny!
Okay that’s all the random thoughts I have for today. And don’t worry Mom I’m all better and it was like nothing!
Crossing the Torugart Pass: Our First Day in Kyrgyzstan
After our six weeks in China, we planned to leave the western Xinjiang region of the country and enter Kyrgyzstan, one of the harder ‘stan names for me to remember in the past that would soon become my favorite one. But the journey from ‘wait that’s a real country’ to ‘this is my favorite stan’ is a long one, one that doesn’t resolve in this post or even the next one – first we have to cross a scary mountain pass to enter the country, and then we have more time in yurt camps! I know! Again! That’s the next post; I know you can’t wait to read more about how terrible I am in the outdoors. Today, let’s talk about that mountain pass: the Torugart Pass, one of the lesser-known, lesser-traversed ways of going from Kyrgyzstan to China or vice versa.
the Chinese side was pretty
On this auspicious Monday, we woke up at 7am, after going to bed at 1:30am (so much repacking! and showering!) and not sleeping at all really because I knew I had to wake up for a thing (my worst habit), and we began our Kyrgyzstani journey. We planned to cross from China into Kyrgyzstan by one of the most complicated methods – the Torugart Pass. We are silly. We hired Kubat Tours (based in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan) to handle our crossing, and they hired Old Town Tours (based in Kashgar) to handle the Chinese end. OTT (yeah you know me) was actually 100x better and more professional than the Kubat guys, which is a shame because we only had the former a short time, while Kubat also arranged our first yurt camp night once we got through the border so we were stuck with the asshat from that company (Kubat’s son, it turned out) for longer.
So at 7am we said goodbye to Dominic at the Radisson Blu Kashgar and said hello to our nice driver and nice English-speaking guide from Old Town Tours, who would drive us the several hours through literal west-bumblefuck China from Kashgar to the Kyrgyz border. We prepared for the long day of car, police, thirst, and painful bladder as we ventured to cross the Torugart Pass, a mountain crossing from China’s Xinjiang region into Kyrgyzstan. The Torugart Pass is a Class II border – meaning only citizens of the two bordered countries can use it. So how do we and other tourists (not a lot, but still others) cross it? You must, and I mean MUST, hire a Chinese guide and car to take you up the one side, and you MUST hire a Kyrgyz guide and car to pick you up on the other side. I mean it. Well, they mean it. They won’t let you past even the first checkpoint (of many) on the Chinese side, I don’t think, if your Kyrgyz car hasn’t arrived at the border fence yet. The Chinese driver hands you off and you walk a few steps over the actual/final border into the waiting Kyrgyz car. There are a lot of times you’ll think you went through immigration for the last time, but you’d be wrong. This pass is not exactly a tourist hotspot, as you are not allowed in or out without this setup, in either direction.
The drive to the first border checkpoint was mostly dirt and mountains, and it was quite pretty. Well, first, we had to stop at OTT offices to reprint our very crucial documents because they had made mistakes in our names. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes so hard that it is probably dangerous. Every company we dealt with in China asked us repeatedly to make sure that we double and triple and 100-timesple checked our passport details because Chinese officials are very strict about everything being right, and of course despite sending copies of our passports multiple times, this company was the one to screw up and not us. ughhh. Anyway, we drove through Kashgar and I noticed a cab with its display reading ‘8/15/2008 18:58’ and I was like ‘sure that is close enough to the actual date, 8/28/2017 at 9am, this is probably a good sign.’
My first pee stop was behind an abandoned (so the driver said, but I don’t know) stone facade in a desert-like expanse that was already starting to look like Mongolia. Remember back during that trip, how I reacted the first time someone suggested I simply find a place to hide in order to pee? My how I’ve changed – stopping by this facade was my idea.
Soon we entered a more mountainous region with little to speak of besides a few random shacks and small farms, a region the guide called No Man’s Land. We stopped at a few passport control kiosks on the road where Chinese officials just looked at ours from the car. It was not exceedingly stressful.
the higher we went the prettier the mountains got!
Despite all the red tape, we were not the only tourists crossing the pass today – but we were at Chinese immigration with literally everyone else using it today! The timing of passing is very specific, so your driver will make sure to get you to the Chinese side by a certain time because outside of that window, you’re screwed. Or at least they are supposed to make sure of it. So all the crossing tourists were there at the same time. At about noon (China time, so 10am Kyrgyz time), we were at one of the final Chinese immigration posts, the kind you have to actually go inside. Once inside, we met the others, our first tourists in a while – a Dutch couple and a huge bus filled with senior citizens from Australian and New Zealand. That’s everyone who crossed the Torugart on this day. We had lots of time to chat with them because nothing was on when we arrived – like I said, this was it, no one had arrived before us or anything. So we had to wait while they found people to turn the machines on (turn the machines back on!!). Then the Chinese officials checked our passports – they did a check at a regular border-control-looking window as our bags were x-rayed (the extent of the baggage inspection, actually, for the entire day) but then after that, in the same place, our passports were collected and pored over by people in a secure room, for like 30 minutes or more, which was weird. This building had one squat toilet for each gender, and the stalls did not have doors.
While we all waited the long time for our passports, we also had to wait for our vehicles to make it through inspection. Apparently, we didn’t get there at a time that suited the Chinese officials (even though we were all there the same time, so, it seemed right) so they made the cars wait extra long before okaying them. Boolsheet. So we got to know our fellow intrepid travelers. The Dutch couple had booked with Kubat as well, so we were with them that evening in the yurt camp and got to talk to them a lot. The elders from Australia and New Zealand – traveling on a giant bus so maybe 40 of them? – were doing a big tour of lesser-known Jewish stuff around Asia, like visiting small synagogues and meeting Jewish communities in random places all over tarnation. They were all Jewish themselves, mostly linked from their community back home, and I said “Oh I’m Jewish!” and they said “Yeah we thought so.” Ummmm okay? Is it my frizzies around my hairline or my nose that gave it away? They told me about all the surprising Jewish communities from Beijing to Almaty and asked if we found any in China ourselves and I said “I found really good bagels in Kashgar! Did you try them?” I have a one-track mind. It was nice talking with other travelers though; I thought I hated other travelers but maybe I just hate yoots. One lady in the old Jews group was originally from the UK, so she knew our neighborhood in London and asked if we went up to Finchley or the surrounds at all – that’s the Jewish area of London – and I said “Oh I go to Golder’s Green a lot because that’s where the Kosher Kingdom store is and that’s the only place to buy good pretzels!” They smiled politely.
Finally we got the China exit stamp from this stop and drove an hour or two down to the next please-exit-China-here fence, but they were on their freaking lunch break. They said it could be a 90 minute wait. So this was our punishment from the last group of officials who held our cars too long; they knew we would then get to this stop on their lunch break. So frustrating. We took our lunch break (raisins and bagels that we luckily brought because OTT did not bring us food, or water) in the back of the van. There was an open toilet thank goodness; it was abysmal. Finally they finished lunch and opened the fence to let us out of China. GUYS NO MORE CHINA! 40 days and 40 nights is a lot! We out!
KYRGS! I SEE YOU OVER THERE!
On the other side of the fence was our Kyrgyz car and guide from Kubat Tours. The Dutch couple (the non-Jews) (hey hey hey we were the majority at the Torugart Pass! Map it!) also booked with them so we were all picked up by Kubat’s dumb son and another driver. The Son smokes a lot and is quite unfriendly. We drove to the Kyrgyz entry point, the four of us tourists now moving together for the rest of the day. We got stamped by a guy behind a window who clearly did not expect to have to work today, and I used another gross toilet despite being super dehydrated. Then we drove to another building onsite, and The Son, the driver, and a border guard who hitched the short ride with us got out, went in a building, and I think just hung out for 10 minutes because they are buddies. We just sat in the car and waited. So ridiculous and unprofessional. They finally came out with another guy who came over to the car and laughed at us and asked where we were from (a question that we hated by this point and that would enrage us beyond control by the end of our travels).
Finally we left and drove farther into Kyrgyzstan towards Tash Rabat, with just a few stay-in-the-car checkpoints en route. Tash Rabat is an ancient (15th century) caravanserai, kind of like a country inn for travelers to rest for a night during their travels but bare and made of stone and very Game of Thrones looking. It was pretty cool to see, and we were staying in a yurt camp within walking distance.
we were really in mountains!
so Game of Thrones right?
Tash Rabat
The coolest caravanserai on King’s Landing!
It was probably an hour and a half drive from the entry to Tash Rabat and I had to pee sooo badly. And it was suddenly super cold! It was such a sudden change like China had said byeee we are keeping all of our warmth from you now! But really, it’s because we were sooo high in the mountains now. Kashgar’s elevation was 1300 meters. Tash Rabat’s? 3600 METERS. I didn’t realize this until a few days later, but this was the highest elevation I’d ever been to in my life. It’s also at a level that could be dangerous for people who aren’t acclimated to it, so thank god I was okay. And I’m such a worrier that I bet if I knew in advance that this elevation could pose problems for a newbie like me, I would have for sure felt sick. Scary! So dangerous!
BURSTING INTO TEEEEARS
this is me hiding from King Joffrey (is he still on the show I’m behind). just kidding i’m blowing my nose and thinking WHY DIDN’T I BRING LONG PANTS
The Dutch couple from the crossing was staying at our same yurt camp, and they were sticking with The Son for a country tour for the whole week, while we luckily went off with the much better NoviNomad tour company the next day. The Son was so horrendous. First of all, he didn’t have water for anyone. Luckily we brought emergency 5L jugs but jesus, what about the people you are guiding for the week? He smoked endlessly, and right in your face. He failed to answer simple questions or act in any way like he was working. Maybe he wants to get fired. He spent the afternoon and evening hanging out with his guide friends and other Kyrgyz people by a small building in the yurt camp. I went over to him at 7pm or something and walked towards the group of guides and drivers and waved to him to motion that I had a question, and he just looked away and kept chatting. Dick. I asked what time dinner was, and he said, “It’s ready.” Thanks for telling us! I said, “Ok…where should we go?” and he just nodded at a yurt and kept talking to his friends. What a dickwad. Dinner was good, in that there was food for me, and a lot of us. There was a basket of good bread, and the first course was a rice noodle salad with carrots and then the main was grilled eggplant and peppers with rice. This was the first of nearly daily plates of grilled nightshades plus every version of carb. At dinner, we were sitting next to the Dutch, his more important clients, and we all asked him if there was any celebration or anything for Kyrgyz Independence Day, which was later that week and we’d all be there for. He blinked and then just kept eating. He ignored everything. We actually met Kubat the next day in Naryn and he seemed very professional and good, so I think he just has to fire his son as a guide because there’s no way anyone should be stuck with him in a foreign country for more than a day. Kubat let me use his toilet and as I left I said ‘your son sucks byeeees.”
So I know you all want to hear about my first night back in a yurt camp after all these glorious months of sleeping indoors near toilets. It was cold. The toilets were 190 paces away from our yurt, and they were actually okay. Squats, but in a building of three, so like, sort of real. And there was toilet paper! They also had a set-up of those push-up sink buckets that were always filled, so it was a lot better than we’ve experienced before. Still not fun, but at least I didn’t have to pour bottled water over my hands all the time (we didn’t have enough for that!) or pee in a fly-ridden tarp. Of course, at night, it was the coldest I’d ever been (until the next night!) and that mixed with the aforementioned 190 paces meant I was quickly back to my old habits of just peeing outside the yurt in the middle of the night (even with my headlamp, it was way too dark to make it to the outhouse safely). And despite the dehydration, I had to pee 10 times that night! One time, a guy with a flashlight was apparently doing security rounds or something, not that I really believe that that’s a thing but anyway, there he was and he was coming my way so I peed as fast as I could and made it back inside before he caught me. What a tremendous time.
all the cars had terrible exhaust that infiltrated my every waking moment
another yurt, another random child
The next morning, I put on all my clothes (all of them; I mostly packed for the previous three months of hot weather) and went to the food yurt for breakfast. They were all eating crepes and Kubat’s POS son forgot to tell the lady that I don’t eat milk or eggs so thanks, dickface. We left with the other driver and drove two hours to Naryn, where we had to pay Kubat, say ‘sorry for your son’, and then meet our NoviNomad guide who would show us the rest of the country over the next 8 days. Guess what – it all gets better! Stay tuned and think of me if you have to pee outside today! BUT DON’T. THAT’S FOR MONSTERS.
