Questions on my mind, and progress

Progress is being made! I now have a New Zealand passport, with a Kyrgyz visa valid until 2/9/07, so I am legal in this country. The Kazakh embassy accepted my application for a Kazakh tourist visa, starting 14/8/07. I should get that back on the 9th. I then only need to get a Chinese visa, and after talking to a Dutchman standing in line at the Kazakh embassy, it turns out I can get one quite quickly using a travel agency in Almaty. This means that if I have any problems getting a Chinese visa here, it should be no problem getting one in Kazakhstan. Almaty is expensive, but stopping just a few days to get the visa is OK.

The upshot of all this is that I can get moving again next week! Things will no doubt be a bit tough the first few days, after doing hardly any riding in the last few weeks. Since Tashkent there has been a lot of time hanging around, waiting for visas/parts/packages/whatever. I’m still waiting for my new barbag to get delivered here, I can only hope for the best. Although I am enjoying meeting lots of other travellers in Bishkek, I’m also looking forward to being back on the road, and heading to a new country.

For something different, here’s some of the random questions/thoughts that go through my head these days:

• Can anybody explain to me the popularity of fishing vests, like these, that I seem to see people wearing everywhere – mainly not when fishing.
• In a similar vein, camouflage clothing – I frequently see people dressed fully in camouflage clothing. For soldiers this is fine, but most of them don’t look like soldiers. My theory is that the Kyrgyz army kicked out a whole lot of Russians, but let them keep their clothes.
• Why does a 500mL bottle of vodka cost only a little bit more than a 500mL bottle of beer? E.g. a beer might cost 30 som (~$0.75), while a bottle of vodka costs 40 som (~$1). No wonder they’re all drunk on vodka
• Interestingly enough, Kyrgyz people seem relatively time-conscious (contrast with the Middle East, where time is irrelevant). But none of them wear watches. As a result, I am asked what the time is at least once per day. Yes, that’s right, I do still wear a watch. Handy to know what the date is in these countries, with visas to think about.
• The National Museum in Bishkek is rather disturbing – a whole floor is devoted to Lenin. It’s just weird walking around, looking at every book Lenin ever wrote, in every languauge it was translated into. On the ground floor was a cordoned-off section where they had a large carpet with a portrait of Stalin. I think that they never took it all that seriously in the past, so they don’t take it too seriously now. I would have loved a picture, but they were charging an extra 2 euros to take photos.

I had also been wondering about why all of Bishkek seemed to being painted/renovated/re-paved/etc. I thought maybe the Bishkekis just liked doing maintenance in the summer – but it turns out that it’s for the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which is holding a summit here. There was talk of restrictions on movement, and more police and passport checks, but so far there doesn’t seem to be much difference. Hope it stays that way, I’ve had enough of passport checks by illiterate policemen in Uzbekistan.

Anyways, another week in this town, then on the road again! Maybe. We’ll see how it goes with visas, and at the Family Medical Clinic tomorrow (nothing major, just ongoing stomach problems).