I'm sorry

I've left now, left Disneyland. Turkmenistan was a bit of an enigma to me. Its a country where up till recently it was extremely hard to get into. Even now it's a bit of a chore though my granting of a transit visa took the form of a few lines in an email saying I wanted to drive through the country and enclosing scans of both the Azeri and Uzbek visas. A couple of weeks later I received an email back. Can't remember the text off hand but it was basically one line saying something along the line of 'visa attached'. And so it was, a word document, containing a scan, of a document faxed to London, which could well have been a photocopy originally and was hand written. The only dates on it were from the fax machine and it stated five days in country. I knew this was to include the day of entry and the date of departure.

As I noted in one of my 'countries' postings I ended up with six days in the end due to the time of arrival of the ferry but was glad of that in the end when they tried to make me stay another night, which if you believe any of the xenophobic stories just bemused me that they might want me in country another day.

On arrival I was processed really simply, if in a long winded fashion. Everyone was pleasant and apologetic about delays. I felt I was wrong about the place and even though I arrived at the hotel in Turkmenbashi and it felt a little strained I figured that it might well be a figment of my imagination. So far I've really been aware that I do turn much more wary and paranoid when I'm thirsty, hungry, tired, too hot or just uncomfortable in general.

Although there were a few photos of then new president in the immigration post I was able to put that in perspective with an old vision of the empire. I've seen a few occasions where the Queen has had a photo in official rooms of government buildings and seen the likes in pretty much every country south of Hungary.

I wasn't ready however in the hotel lobby in Turkmenbashi to see a picture that must have been 5 metres in the diagonal of an expensive yacht with the photo of the new president superimposed on the top. He was wearing a lovely naval type hat.

As time went on I realised that any bus I saw had his photo. The hotels had his photo displayed. Billboards all around the country had his photo in lovely poses. Any newspaper I saw was filled with his photo. TV was filled with stories about the president, surrounded with people in an amazing orderly fashion, all clapping perfectly in unison. Many of the buildings displayed his photo. Where I didn't see his photo I saw a gold statue of the previous president, the one atop the Arch of Neutrality being one of the best as it rotates so the president is always facing the sun.

Add to this the fact that in June I visited the cable car which should have given amazing views over the city and it was closed. The arch of neutrality was closed. Surprisingly an earthquake museum nearby was, errrr, closed. Most of the public buildings were boarded off. I could get near the Russian war memorial but it's eternal flame was out. I was getting to know the feeling.

Add to this the fact that in Ashgabat I only saw one taxi. Apparently the done thing is to try and stand by the side of the road and a car generally stops. In the lonely planet guide it notes that the process is to offer a little petrol money. Despite the fact that the round trip to the closed cable car took half an hour when the porter from the hotel stopped a car and the driver charged me 20 manat, the next car which stopped after I gave up hoping for someone to give me a lift and started walking tried charging me 30 manat for a five minute trip. After an argument this came to 25 manat and then I realised that didn't have much change so passed over 20usd. I got 6 manat in return then realised as the guy drove off that I had been hit for even more cash.

Eventually I found a cafe that didn't have water, I was thirsty and hungry enough that I just got beer and ice cream which isn't a bad mix really but when the woman typed 55 into a calculator I was bemused. Handing over 10 manat she just smiled at me.

For the rest of the day I fell into paranoia due to the number of plain clothes policemen, uniformed policemen and soldiers standing around and watching. As I got hacked off waiting for a car to take me out of town I started walking. Every 100m there was someone, standing, watching. Although when I tried crossing a road I was pulled up for jaywalking the guy was really nice about it.

Not a fault of the country either but the lonely planet guide was way out of date. The currency had been revalued, prices charged were on par with the west in so many occasions, petrol didn't cost 1p per litre but 50p, although still good going by UK standards it was still a shame. Getting back to the hotel I knew that the hotel Ayzia was along the road and had a great Chinese restaurant so I walked along. Despite the name and the food being good I really wasn't ready for a Russian restaurant, with the menu being entirely in Russian. I might have fared better but was bemused from the off by 8 (eight) pages of salads.

Add this to the trip up to the border which was closed, the attempt to make me stay another night nearby because customs was closed on the second attempt. Oh no, actually, it's open. Oops. And the place didn't happen for me. It's a shame because it took away from the really funny porter at my Ashgabat hotel, the immigration staff on the way in, Aslan the restaurant owner who helped me out when I arrived in Ashgabat and the really nice family in the Karakom desert who made sure I didn't run out of petrol. There's more examples of good and bad and that's before the bizarre events around sleeping on someones floor close to the border following my first attempt at leaving.

So I'm sorry. Sorry to all the proud Turkmeni people of the world. I just didn't get your country, even though individually you were generally really nice and friendly there was something that just didn't happen for me.