Today we drove from the middle-of-nowhere to Semey, Kazakhstan (essentially still the middle of nowhere but at least it has a name… and cyпep-markets = super-markets). We had breakfast with Chris and James… we lefts well ahead of them from our sweet camping spot… but they passed us very quickly with their huge tires, sweet suspension, and well… a car that isn’t the BBB… hurumph… we love you BBB!!!
If you didn’t know ahead of time… there are no good road signs in this part of Kazakhstan… We found a bit of construction on the roads that wasn’t signed.. of course. The bus dealt with it sweetly… we were doing really well and until about the last 150km into Semey and the roads really turned back into the Bad-Uzbek Roads… (if you don’t know what that means please go back a few blogs and you will understand what I mean.)
Finally we arrived at the Hotel Semey. Yet another commie block hotel but at least this one had marble floors… and the blond behind the desk… Her makeup would make Madonna blush. She literally had so much make up on that we actually didn’t know what she would look like without make up on…She spoke some English which was nice. She spoke enough English to tell us where to park (behind the hotel) and that you had to run the water in the shower for at least 10 minutes before you would get hot water… okay…
So we parked behind the hotel (kind of disappointed that no other teams would see our car). In the dirt and concrete parking lot we were followed around by a weird mute parking attendant that we had to deal with while Andrea was under the bus trying to catch the dripping coolant with a cut off water bottle and gorilla tape.
Oh yeah, so on those bad roads into Semey we re-cracked the radiator…or at least we dislodged the radiator stop leak which we had put in Taganrog, Russia (see previous blogs) while slamming into potholes left and right. So we were running in super hot temperatures with dripping coolant all the way into a city that we had little idea how to get around in… which is why we chose hotel Semey instead of a nicer hotel that we had seen in the Lonely Planet guide… Hotel Semey was on the road we ended up on first thing into the city. Hey it’s an adventure right?!
So yeah… we parked the bus and then were sliding under the bus trying to catch the dripping coolant with a water bottle… and it was seriously windy… so this was not easy… and had to pay 500 som for parking… hope it wasn’t a rip off. No matter, we will fix everything in the morning… We were hungry and tired and needed food and a shower… and some sleep…
We went up to the room... which was across the hall from an open room that was totally under construction… wet cement and everything… It smelled like new construction and we had to ask the front desk when construction would start in the morning because we were NOT waking up at 5am to sledge hammers and sweaty construction guys… Bruce does that for a living. We were not dealing with that in Kazakhstan. So we set all of our stuff out and went down to ask about food... and the construction. We were assured that construction would not start until lunchtime tomorrow so we asked for directions to a super-market or magazine (little market). We walked for an hour looking for a market, as the directions we were given didn’t make sense…. Finally we found one, bought water, snacks, and a couple of beers. Went back to the hotel and had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.
Have you ever had Zel and Polka dots? Well I have. Well… at least I think we did…. The translations on the hotel restaurant’s menu were priceless… We had a dinner of salad of zel and polka dots, Meat on East, Mutton and Rice and we saw a few other things that we couldn’t even try. You can only imagine… We think that the zel and polka dots was actually string beans and peas??? Maybe?
We were the only ones in the whole restaurant which was really fancy… the décor was marble and lace but the food was mutton and zel… the waitress was very nice and we ate well… no matter the translations…
Off to bed we went with full tummies and full brains since we had a radiator to deal with in the morning and another border crossing to boot…
Viva Mongolia!
If you didn’t know ahead of time… there are no good road signs in this part of Kazakhstan… We found a bit of construction on the roads that wasn’t signed.. of course. The bus dealt with it sweetly… we were doing really well and until about the last 150km into Semey and the roads really turned back into the Bad-Uzbek Roads… (if you don’t know what that means please go back a few blogs and you will understand what I mean.)
Finally we arrived at the Hotel Semey. Yet another commie block hotel but at least this one had marble floors… and the blond behind the desk… Her makeup would make Madonna blush. She literally had so much make up on that we actually didn’t know what she would look like without make up on…She spoke some English which was nice. She spoke enough English to tell us where to park (behind the hotel) and that you had to run the water in the shower for at least 10 minutes before you would get hot water… okay…
So we parked behind the hotel (kind of disappointed that no other teams would see our car). In the dirt and concrete parking lot we were followed around by a weird mute parking attendant that we had to deal with while Andrea was under the bus trying to catch the dripping coolant with a cut off water bottle and gorilla tape.
Oh yeah, so on those bad roads into Semey we re-cracked the radiator…or at least we dislodged the radiator stop leak which we had put in Taganrog, Russia (see previous blogs) while slamming into potholes left and right. So we were running in super hot temperatures with dripping coolant all the way into a city that we had little idea how to get around in… which is why we chose hotel Semey instead of a nicer hotel that we had seen in the Lonely Planet guide… Hotel Semey was on the road we ended up on first thing into the city. Hey it’s an adventure right?!
So yeah… we parked the bus and then were sliding under the bus trying to catch the dripping coolant with a water bottle… and it was seriously windy… so this was not easy… and had to pay 500 som for parking… hope it wasn’t a rip off. No matter, we will fix everything in the morning… We were hungry and tired and needed food and a shower… and some sleep…
We went up to the room... which was across the hall from an open room that was totally under construction… wet cement and everything… It smelled like new construction and we had to ask the front desk when construction would start in the morning because we were NOT waking up at 5am to sledge hammers and sweaty construction guys… Bruce does that for a living. We were not dealing with that in Kazakhstan. So we set all of our stuff out and went down to ask about food... and the construction. We were assured that construction would not start until lunchtime tomorrow so we asked for directions to a super-market or magazine (little market). We walked for an hour looking for a market, as the directions we were given didn’t make sense…. Finally we found one, bought water, snacks, and a couple of beers. Went back to the hotel and had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.
Have you ever had Zel and Polka dots? Well I have. Well… at least I think we did…. The translations on the hotel restaurant’s menu were priceless… We had a dinner of salad of zel and polka dots, Meat on East, Mutton and Rice and we saw a few other things that we couldn’t even try. You can only imagine… We think that the zel and polka dots was actually string beans and peas??? Maybe?
We were the only ones in the whole restaurant which was really fancy… the décor was marble and lace but the food was mutton and zel… the waitress was very nice and we ate well… no matter the translations…
Off to bed we went with full tummies and full brains since we had a radiator to deal with in the morning and another border crossing to boot…
Viva Mongolia!