The 5000 Project

Turkmenistan! when the soviet union collapsed, most ex-soviet countries took a rational look at what can be done to fix what was left over – The Turkmenistan appointed leader from USSR decided to go batshit crazy instead. He renamed days of the week to the names of his family members and banned radios in cars. He also constructed heaps of golden statues in his image with different poses and placed them all throughout the cities of his land, one with his jacket thrown over his shoulder, one sitting down with his legs crossed, one of his mother looking like mother mary holding the baby leader; the baby seemed to have the face of a man. The old leader died a few years back and with the new guy in charge I believe we travelled through the country during a drastic period of change, many buildings were brand new, including very flash train stations and nice mosaic-tiled bus stops; the people seemed to be reasonably happy and free too. It was a strange country though, although oddly modern when compared with most of Uzbekistan.

Reporters without Borders rates Turkmenistan second last in a list ranking press-freedom, north korea being the last on the list. All newspapers seem to have the current leader on the front page and there is only one internet cafe in each city, which requires passport ID before logging in to a heavily filtered net connection.

So, we arrived in Turkmenibat, went to the only hotel that seems to allow foreigners that didn’t look too flash and paid a good 5x more than what the locals pay, they didn’t even try to hide it, it seemed to be one of the countries laws. It cost $20 for a room with two single beds, we got it this cheap because we convinced the lady that we will only use one bed and one of us will sleep on the floor, somehow she trusted us; it’s pretty easy to sleep on a bed and make it look untouched afterwards. The room was probably the worst I had seen during my travels, the whole building looked like it was about to fall apart, very paper-street-esque.

We took a train to mary (ma-ree) and unfortunately for us, arrived at around 9pm – the only place of sleep we could find had a price of $40 each, we decided to go to a pub and ponder the qualm over pints of flat 30c beer. To our surprise the problem wasn’t solved after 4 pints, the bar was closing; then out jumped a local guy to our aide, he said that he can let us sleep on his floor as long as we get out at 6am, we agreed. We arrived at the apartment, and so did two bottles of vodka almost out of nowhere, which did not remain full for long. The local mafia (according to our hosts) rocked up and sat us down in the living room, they seemed to question us about our loyalties to america, asking us if we like obama, then one seemed to mime bomb explosions and mentioned iraq. They let us go after we convincingly explained that we have no allegiance to the US, I was quite happy about their decision. Afterwards they let us sleep in a different room only to be woken 1hr later… our agreed time of departure, 6am. Stumbling outside with our bags, I felt one of the nastiest hangovers in a few years, it took pretty much the whole day finding alternative accommodation for $10 each, quite a lucky find too.

The next day we met with some couchsurfers, all seemed to be american NGO workers for a group called ‘Peace Corps’, an NGO that is funded by the US government – quite a paradox. The crew explained some of the dilemmas they face working in turkmenistan, one of them mentioned that they found a bug (electronic) in their apartment not long ago, apparently many pubs and restaurants that are frequented by foreigners are bugged – although the NGOs (not US spies *cough*) didn’t seem too concerned about this, as the government is mainly worried about the information that the locals gain, the heavy punishments going to them instead of the foreigners.

One of the highlights of Turkmenistan was rocking up to a cheap motel pub to find that it moonlighted as a brothel for the iranian truck drivers, we arrived during one of the prostitute’s birthdays and managed to sit at the main table, eating the left overs from the night which included caviar; we guessed that the girls were paid a decent amount. Some guy lit fireworks within the pub, almost setting my scarf on fire.

The next day was new years, we spent the night being sober as by the time we went to find a pub or bottle shop – everything was closed, everyone seems to be with their families during new years – not drinking like there is no tomorrow. Crazy customs. There were, however, enough dangerous fireworks fired that night to cause an earthquake.

We left Turkmenistan over some of the worst roads I had encountered so far, upon arriving in Iran, I parted ways with the crazy czech. I was very happy to be on my own again, through what was to be the most interesting country I had come across; the new islamic persian empire.