No, de lassan csak alakul valami, meg en is osszekapom magam, es megprobalom a lemaradasaimat behozni.
Es most orommel jelentem be az elso vendegszerzot a blogban; fogadjatok szeretettel John-t, az amerikait aki most Japanban el es 5 napot toltott egy jo honappal ezelott Almaty-ban. Sajnos innentol csak angol nyelven...
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So i went to Kazakhstan a few weeks ago, and one of the 'business requirements' was that i share my experiences with those around me. So here y'all go!
(its really just pictures and me making fun of Kazakhstan... no business, i promise)
happy reading,
Reedo
ps - if you haven't seen the movie Borat... anything in bold is a quote from the movie. you should watch it, it's really funny. but also very inappropriate and rude, so please don't think that i am saying what is in bold :)
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“Hi my name a Borat. This is my country, Kazakhstan. Is located near Tajikistan (sic), Kyrgyzstan, and next to assholes Uzbekistan.”
Trust me, the Uzbekis are assholes. Luckily, the Kazakhs are not. I mean look at that friendly guy welcoming me to his country! And honestly, I don’t blame him for being so cheerful; he just got elected President for Life. I’m pretty sure you can rephrase that dictator…
“I arrived in the country with clothing, US dollars (JP Yen) and a jar of gypsy tears to protect me from the AIDS.”
And thank god I brought the tears. As soon as Pete, the manager from the states that went with me, and I left customs, we were swarmed by tons of locals offering us “Cheapest Taxi in Kazakhstan.” Of course our contacts in Kazakhstan neglected arranging our transportation to the hotel, so Pete and I shrugged our shoulders and went with the guy. I mean after all we can expense everything, so even if he rips us off by a few hundred Tenghe, what’s the big deal, right?
So we left the airport and followed him to what was probably a 1980 Mercedes that was double-parked… but on the inside. He put our luggage in the back and we reluctantly climbed in. we sat there for about five minutes, waiting, slowly getting the impression that maybe this is “Cheapest Taxi in Kazakhstan” for a reason. Pete made the executive decision to get out, so we did (right door only due to mechanical difficulties) and went to try to get our luggage of the trunk. Nursultan, our friendly driver, came flying over, flashing his pearly whites, well metallic silvers and, for the most part, gaps, asking what was wrong.
Pete said we were in a rush and decided to take a different taxi, well, at least one that wasn’t boxed in. He also pointed out that there was no taxi sign on the top of the car. The driver flashed his winning smile, sprinted around to the front seat, and pulled a rubber block that said “Taxi” on it out of the glovebox. He slapped it on the roof, and said, “See?! Real Taxi!”
As convincing as the rubber block was, him not opening the trunk was far more persuasive in getting us back into the car. Finally the owner of the double-parked car came and moved for us, and we were on our way. After serious negotiations that mainly involved showing two white men in suits to the hotel security guards, they let our crapbox roll into the Hyatt parking lot. The driver charged us the same rate as the hotel charges for the drive (albeit, the hotel comes in a limousine) and drove off.
At least the hotel was phenomenal. NOT! At $420 per night it was the most expensive hotel I have ever stayed at. But I’ve honestly stayed in a nicer Motel 6. In Kentucky. (I wrote “Kentucky” as a further slam. Is Kentucky bad though? I dunno. Think white trash Kentucky, not southern hospitality and mint julips Kentucky.) The picture above is Pete’s room. Mine had two tiny twin beds, not extra long. And the view from my window was entirely consumed by the building next door, or more specifically, the “Building Billboard” next door, that flashed incessantly all night long. It was really amazing, even to someone living in Tokyo, the neon capital of the world. For the first ten minutes. Then it grew old really fast. One cool thing though, was that my air conditioner has three settings, “Off”, “On” and “Off.” Soviet engineering… what won’t they think of?! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DQVVsOQws )
Work the next day was business as usual, except coffee in the hotel lobby was not exactly what I was expecting. I offered to treat the Deloitte Kazakhstan woman that was our shepherd, and was pretty shocked with the $24 bill for two coffees. I live in Tokyo, where its very common to drop $100 on a meal, but even for Tokyo $12 for a coffee would be steep. I pretty quickly realized that unlike Thailand, the only other developing country I’ve been to, Kazakhstan is not cheap. Honestly, for stuff in the nice part of town where we were, it was more expensive than Tokyo.
So we got to work the first day, and probably the biggest question on my mind was what everyone would look like. Kazakhstan is wedged between China, Russia, Iran and India, so it’s in between four very different ethnic groups. I was hoping there would be some sort of amazing new breed of people I have never witnessed. But there weren’t. It was just a big mix like in America.
Work was business as usual, except the hall we had training in was pretty unique. We pulled up to a Soviet-era concrete monstrosity in the middle of a giant arboretum (Almaty means Apple, but more widely, the city is seen as a “park city.” I would disagree and call it more of a Soviet concrete block ghetto… but its probably just missing something in translation, right?) Anyways, on walking into the training facility, I was struck with possibly the most incongruous interior I have ever witnessed. The thing is, the interior was all fake. It was plaster and wood painted as marble. Very classy. Then again, as it was built in 1985 as a summer retreat for Soviet leadership, I wouldn’t really expect too much from any Soviet architect.
That night we went out for Uzbeki food. As I said in the very beginning, “Asshole Uzbekistan.” Basically, any meal you are served in any country that ends in –stan will consist of one thing: horse. (Afghanistan and Pakistan do not follow this rule as currently their citizens are not allowed food. It is against the word of Allah.) So that’s what we got. And Vodka. You know how most restaurants have wine lists? Well, being a part of the former Russian Empire, Kazakh restaurants offer Vodka lists.
We did get two drinks that weren’t on the vodka list though: camel milk and horse milk. Camel milk wasn’t all that terrible, it tasted something like bad yoghurt. But horse milk was the absolute most vile liquid I have ever put in my body. Worse even that Tzar Vodka ($6/handle. That’s cheaper than nice bottled water). The best way I can describe horse milk is this:
Milk a horse in St. Petersburg (I know. I’m sure you’re thinking about where on the horse you milk. I don’t know either, but they’re mammals, so they’ve gotta have some jugs swinging down there somewhere…)
Put the milk in an open container on the horse’s back, and ride eight thousand miles across Siberia to Kazakhstan. When you get to Kazakhstan, put the container of milk on the ground beneath the horse’s tail, and wring out the tail, so that you get all the sweat flavor into the milk.
Now, as if they two-month ride didn’t spoil the milk enough, let it sit out long enough for it to ferment to the 2-3% alcohol range.
Usually I’m a pretty good sport about strange, not necessarily delicious foods (raw octopus, fermented soybeans, whole fish still living… I live in Asia, they’re all on the menu), but horse’s milk is where I draw the line. I will never, ever drink it again.
Work the next day was pretty boring, except I found out that one of the training participants is one of the 2000 people in the world that has climbed Mt. Everest. All through the first day I kept catching myself staring at his nose. It was really weird and had like overly-turned up nostrils. It turns out its because he lost the tip of it on Everest. He also, as our guide pointed out, lost all the “fingers on his feet.” Apparently, there is one other guy in Deloitte Kazakhstan that has climbed Everest. Pretty impressive collection of mountaineers for a 600 person office. Given how incredibly out of shape (due to oppressively long hours) most of my coworkers are, I would bet that I may be one of only two employees of Deloitte Tokyo that has climbed Fuji.
That night we went out for dinner at an upscale yuppie brewpub called Tinkers. They had amazing beer on tap, and served it by the liter! Nora only got a 24 oz… baby. Pete had the foresight to think to swipe his mug, and I’m definitely still anguishing in regret at not thinking to do the same.
We bumped into a group of partners from Deloitte at the restaurant, so they all showed their hospitality by buying bottles and bottles of Vodka. According to the managing director, in Kazakhstan, you always do everything in sets of three for good luck, including shots. It was excellent vodka, but not good enough to justify three shots in a row. They just kept coming too, so it wasn’t just one set of three, it was three. And then I forget.
Worse, all I ate for dinner that night was a single horse sausage, so after two liters of beer and a baker’s dozen shots, I was starting to feel a little tipsy. But the shots never let up, and I vaguely remember rolling into bed around 4 a.m.
Ring Ring
“What?!”
“John, you gunna make it to the training today?”
“Uhh yea, what time is it?”
“8:55.”
“Shit! I’ll be right down.”
“[Talking to feminist] I could not concentrate on what this old man was saying.”
And so started the most brutal day of work I’ve ever suffered through. Training started at 9, and Pete and I, the two instructors, rolled in around 9:25. Oops. Luckily, most of the trainees were out drinking too, so we were around the middle of the pack of arrivers. I thought I did a good job of hiding my incredibly terrible physical state, but apparently not. At lunch the Kazakh partner asked if I needed to go home and sleep off my hangover. I really should have said yes. We somehow managed to make it through the day, but needless to say, that night was relatively low-key.
That suit is NOT black!
Just like Borat’s inability to figure out and effectively use the best joke of all time (Not!!), I had a slight cultural slipup too. At one point in the training I told the group to rate their target companies from A to D on a bunch of different things. They just kind of stared at me, so I started going into more and more depth about different ways to rate the company. After about 15 minutes of blank stares, someone raised their hands and timidly asked, “Why are you using A-D? That seems pretty random…” It turns out the rest of the world doesn’t use letter grades in school. Swing and a miss…
The next day we went hiking in the mountains. Almaty is on the border of the Siberian steppe and the Himalayas. Ok, its not actually the Himalayas, its some other mountain range, but its much bigger than the Rockies, and it literally explodes out of the ground from right next to the city. The only problem is that it already had snowed, so hiking in leather dress shoes didn’t work so well. We basically got out of the car, took a picture, and left.
At the parking lot though, for some reason there was a statue of the Beetles.
I don’t know why every country in the world, especially one sheltered under the Iron Curtain throughout the entire time the Beetles ruled the world, finds it necessary to create statues and parks and memorials for the Beetles. But they do. And so does Kazakhstan.
In Kazakhstan it is illegal for more than five woman to be in the same place, except for in brothel or in grave.
That night we went to “Number 1 club in Kazakhstan!” It was called Mostafterpartyclub. No joke. It was totally awesome. I haven’t been anywhere nearly as Eurotrashy since I was living in Scotland (lets face it, Scottish clubs aren’t exactly on the cosmopolitan cutting edge.) It was also bizarrely situated in the center of the Central Park of Almaty, making for a really strange approach consisting of dark, unlit forests, tons of sleeping bums, and loud, thumping techno. It, like everything else, was really expensive. There was a $40 cover charge and drinks were like $15 or 20 a piece. We danced until about 4 in the morning, then crashed. Then got up at 6 to catch our flight home.
All of my pictures are up online: http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/johncreed84/Kazakhstan
Note: Anything in bold is a Borat quote and do not reflect the opinion or official stance of the author. NOT!
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