Staines upon Thames October 4th 2018
Well I am still home in Staines dealing with various ships problems remotely and the only likely travel ahead is to Atyrau next week but even that is not certain. I am really glad about this because after announcing I was going to return myself back to fitness I was struck down with the most horrendous cold and I am still feeling lousy this morning. Having travelled so much, missed so much sleep jumped between time zones and tried pretending that my age is not slowing me down at all, the chickens have come home to roost and I feel a bit broken. I will as usual bounce back but, and this is one of the reasons for changing the accent of this website, I will have to slow down, I will have to travel less and I will have to look after myself better. I have been pretty indestructible throughout my life but the body is now trying to tell me something. What I must not repeat is getting over this, feeling good again and making the same mistake of overextending myself trying to juggle work and home life. I may also be partly responsible for my demise because I had not totally recovered from tonsillitis when I went for my flu injections and I did ignore my dentists pleas to take it easy after having two teeth extracted to make way for implants. Instead I was on a plane to Glasgow first thing in the morning but due to the high winds we failed to land and ended up in Manchester. I travelled for over 12 hours just to get back to where I came from. have you seen the movie trains planes and automobiles, well it was a bit like that but I did not have John Candy for company www.imdb.com/title/tt0093748/
I did however venture out yesterday afternoon in order to give Mrs Jones a break from the little monster and I made the first step towards returning myself to an adonis i.e. I bought some swimming goggles. The only way is up from here and I will share my journey to becoming a supremely fit human being.
I did however venture out yesterday afternoon in order to give Mrs Jones a break from the little monster and I made the first step towards returning myself to an adonis i.e. I bought some swimming goggles. The only way is up from here and I will share my journey to becoming a supremely fit human being.
Staines upon Thames October 1st 2018
Well thankfully the start of a new week and a new month without any definite plans for travel. The morning is crisp and bright and I am working in my study and contemplating a second cup of tea. Mrs Jones will shortly be heading out to a lovely park (Saville Gardens) in a attempt to run the legs off our 19 month old ever so cute little monster. Strangers see his angelic smile, big eyes and blonde hair and think 'what a lovely quiet well behaved boy' but reality is something else as there is a monster hiding behind the facade. I think the terrible twos have arrived early with him! He loves going out and especially in the car but try to put a jacket on him in order to do so. No way! Screaming, red in the face and throwing himself to the floor and then when the battle is over he is all smiles getting into his car seat.
There is not much time for writing today as work is busy with some of our ships inevitably suffering problems, including one where a piston tried its best to come out the side of the engine. I have been organising all of the parts for it and thus my travel to the Netherlands last week. I do have a horrible suspicion that I will need to visit the vessel during the three week repair process so I think I will be back in Turkmenbashi pretty soon.
I am thinking of broadening the scope of this website to include all my travel but also pages dedicated to life after sixty. This will not be about sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a cardigan with wooden toggles and doing crossword puzzles it will be more based on keeping totally active, up to date and remaining relevant in challenging work such as mine. Part of being able to do this involves keeping fit and during the two years that I worked in Singapore I did even at age 59 manage to get very fit and add considerable muscle. I did have the luxury of being back at my serviced apartment by 1700 every day, could then do forty lengths of an outdoor pool and then into the gym for about an hour. I am sure all would agree that the best bit of exercising is the moment you stop but I also remember the great feeling as my belly reduced, shoulders increased in size and even Mrs Jones noticed the difference. Work moved on to Baku, the stress got higher, the hours longer and exercise fell by the wayside. I was even given a mug with 'I said gin not gym' written on it. Now I am totally unfit, overweight from hotel food and the fact that I am a total pig so what am I going to do about it? Well I have a lovely multi gym that I have only half built up and it has been here for about two years. I even have a small gymnasium built onto the side of the house. So the plan is to build up the gym and when travelling force myself to use the hotel gyms and if not available I have exercise bands that will keep things ticking over. I am now sixty two so if I am going to do this then I need to do it now. I will therefore bore you with my thoughts and experiences whilst trying to recover some semblance of my previous fitness.
There is not much time for writing today as work is busy with some of our ships inevitably suffering problems, including one where a piston tried its best to come out the side of the engine. I have been organising all of the parts for it and thus my travel to the Netherlands last week. I do have a horrible suspicion that I will need to visit the vessel during the three week repair process so I think I will be back in Turkmenbashi pretty soon.
I am thinking of broadening the scope of this website to include all my travel but also pages dedicated to life after sixty. This will not be about sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a cardigan with wooden toggles and doing crossword puzzles it will be more based on keeping totally active, up to date and remaining relevant in challenging work such as mine. Part of being able to do this involves keeping fit and during the two years that I worked in Singapore I did even at age 59 manage to get very fit and add considerable muscle. I did have the luxury of being back at my serviced apartment by 1700 every day, could then do forty lengths of an outdoor pool and then into the gym for about an hour. I am sure all would agree that the best bit of exercising is the moment you stop but I also remember the great feeling as my belly reduced, shoulders increased in size and even Mrs Jones noticed the difference. Work moved on to Baku, the stress got higher, the hours longer and exercise fell by the wayside. I was even given a mug with 'I said gin not gym' written on it. Now I am totally unfit, overweight from hotel food and the fact that I am a total pig so what am I going to do about it? Well I have a lovely multi gym that I have only half built up and it has been here for about two years. I even have a small gymnasium built onto the side of the house. So the plan is to build up the gym and when travelling force myself to use the hotel gyms and if not available I have exercise bands that will keep things ticking over. I am now sixty two so if I am going to do this then I need to do it now. I will therefore bore you with my thoughts and experiences whilst trying to recover some semblance of my previous fitness.
Travel Saturation September 2018
Apologies but I have once again be so busy with travelling and my work that I have been unable to keep my website updated. I promise to do better in future. So where have I been since arriving back from Ashgabat? Well I travelled back and forth to Atyrau in Kazakhstan six times and each was a very short stay. Leave home at the crack of dawn fly via Amsterdam and arrive at Atyrau in the evening. Meetings all the next day and then leave the hotel at 0400 in the morning to start the journey home. There is little I can say about Atyrau other than it is a little desolate but the Renaissance hotel is pretty civilised unless you are a practising or aspiring alcoholic. Service at the bar is charming but hopeless. When a request for a gin and tonic sends the poor girl into a spin then you know not to be so daring in the future. I found that if I asked for just white wine she was happy and selected whatever she found first in the fridge. Even then it could take thirty minutes to receive it because she is easily distracted. She is heading to the fridge then the phone rings so obviously that is more important so she takes the call and then starts chopping lemons. Getting her attention without being rude is very difficult and just as you catch her eye somebody asks for their bill. This of course takes precedence and I firmly believe that if somebody lay dying on the floor needing CPR they would have to wait until she had finished poking at that touch screen with her long fingernails before pronouncing the person dead. The bill will inevitably be wrong but there is no argument and after another hundred stabs at the screen a new bill is produced. It is also wrong so I think you can understand why there is no chance of being an alcoholic at this bar. I once made the mistake of ordering food and that took two hours so I was too weak to complain that it was not what I had ordered. Ok to end on a positive note Air Astana is considerably superior to British Airways
I won't bore you with more photographs but the above says all about the views in the vicinity of the Renaissance Hotel Atyrau.
Travel to Huddersfield
In amongst all of my travel to Kazakhstan I did have the opportunity to visit a far more exotic location. Huddersfield! From London there is no best way to get there. Too short a distance to fly and incredibly expensive on rail as well as a multitude of changes so I decided to drive. The journey was slow due to endless sections of the motorway that were undergoing improvement but with no signs of it actually taking place. It was therefore 2230 when I arrived at the Premier Inn Huddersfield and entered what the website warned was a limited carpark. There was one space that was pretty much the same size as my Range Rover Sport so I drove into it and climbed out of the tailgate hoping that the car next to me would have left earlier than me. It must have been quite a sight to see me climbing over the back seats and out of the back with as much decorum as an overweight 62 year old can manage. I quickly checked in and in true merchant navy tradition headed straight into the bar and ordered two pints of beer before closing time. Obviously drinking two pints of any liquid just before bed is not the best idea but what the hell. Back in my room I realised that I had not eaten all day but no problem all Premiere Inn hotels have kettles and I had packets of Heinz tomato soup and Itsu noodles in my bag. Have you ever tried eating slippery rice noodles with a spoon? Anyway I managed with the only collateral damage being one pillow case slightly spattered with 'hand crafted broth' whatever that means
ok I think I need to pause before continuing to describe Huddersfield and explore the noodle issue a little deeper.
ok I think I need to pause before continuing to describe Huddersfield and explore the noodle issue a little deeper.
The above is on of my list of essentials for travel, especially to uncivilised parts of the world but also for general travel when you arrive late and you cannot be bothered to wait for room service if indeed it exists. No I am not receiving advertising for the above but they really are a class above the usual Bombay Bad Boy style of pot noodle. I am actually surprised that I like them because they project everything that I am not. Gluten free, I don't care, 207 calories I guess is pretty reasonable, and suitable for vegetarians (or is it vegans), I don't care because I am a committed carnivore. So back to the point 'with hand crafted broth' seems to suggest that a person (with hands) makes this broth i.e. it is not produced in a machine that mixes exactly the same quantity of ingredients each time and drops them into a huge vat for consistency. Now I imagine lines of asian ladies dressed in immaculate white, each with a little saucepan in front of them, a pile of ingredients and then some cunning method to turn this hand crafted broth into a paste and squeeze it into a sachet. Hmmm I don't think so! Anyway dam fine noodles and with a packet of Heinz tomato soup for a starter you have a travellers emergency rations that there is no problem bringing through customs. I think even Australia would allow dried noodles and a sachet of hand crafted broth into the country.
I don't normally provide sensible travel advice so the above is an aberration.
I don't as a rule like the low end chain hotels such as Travelodge, Hilton Express etc and I have found that the standards differ greatly from one to the next. Of late I have had good experiences with Premier Inn and that is exactly where I stayed in Huddersfield. Firstly and I know you will hate me for my ignorance, I thought of Huddersfield as being a grimy, smokey city full of chimney stacks and desolate, empty factories with perhaps a few ex employees still wearing coveralls sitting and talking about the good old days. What a pleasant surprise and after the tortuous drive and having to exit my car via the tailgate, the lady in reception was all smiles and very welcoming. What a good start. The rooms are in what look like a series of factory buildings that have been nicely converted and when I woke up in the morning the view of the canal was really great. I do love a full English Breakfast and in this type of hotel it usually means a badly stocked series of heated stainless steel pots with limp bacon and congealed eggs or even worse scrambled eggs that have turned to soup. No not in this budget hotel as a waiter took my order and a good plate of breakfast and a cup of steaming coffee was on my table in about ten minutes. Excellent stuff Premier Inn.
The drive home was further torture and made worse by a slow puncture in one of my tires but my memory of Huddersfield is a good one.
I don't normally provide sensible travel advice so the above is an aberration.
I don't as a rule like the low end chain hotels such as Travelodge, Hilton Express etc and I have found that the standards differ greatly from one to the next. Of late I have had good experiences with Premier Inn and that is exactly where I stayed in Huddersfield. Firstly and I know you will hate me for my ignorance, I thought of Huddersfield as being a grimy, smokey city full of chimney stacks and desolate, empty factories with perhaps a few ex employees still wearing coveralls sitting and talking about the good old days. What a pleasant surprise and after the tortuous drive and having to exit my car via the tailgate, the lady in reception was all smiles and very welcoming. What a good start. The rooms are in what look like a series of factory buildings that have been nicely converted and when I woke up in the morning the view of the canal was really great. I do love a full English Breakfast and in this type of hotel it usually means a badly stocked series of heated stainless steel pots with limp bacon and congealed eggs or even worse scrambled eggs that have turned to soup. No not in this budget hotel as a waiter took my order and a good plate of breakfast and a cup of steaming coffee was on my table in about ten minutes. Excellent stuff Premier Inn.
The drive home was further torture and made worse by a slow puncture in one of my tires but my memory of Huddersfield is a good one.
Travel London to Ashgabat to Turkmenbashi Turkmenistan July 2018
Apologies I have not been able to update for some time because yes of course I have been travelling and once again my destination was Turkmenistan. I had been home for just one lovely week when one of our ships suffered major engine failure. I think one of the pistons trying to break its way out of the top and side of the engine can be described as pretty major.
The weather in London had been perfect and every day has been spent in the garden with my son, playing in a paddling pool or just lying in the sun because he is so good at entertaining himself. Anyway, time to make money again and with bags packed I jumped into the taxi heading to Heathrow airport for my Turkish airlines flight to Istanbul and onwards to Ashgabat Turkmenistan.
Terminal 2 is a nightmare and my first attempt at the automatic check in and baggage tag machine failed almost at the end of the process when the machine said ‘not authorized for this airline’. Rather strange since I had selected Turkish airlines and it worked up to the moment that it was meant to produce the relevant bits of printed paper. I queued at another machine and it worked fine apart from the fact that the previous attempt had caused the seats I had carefully selected the day before to be lost. Oh, indeed this is progress!
The queue at baggage drop was enormous but to be fair there were quite a few desks open so even delays due to people with bags that are too heavy or too many bags did not slow progress too much. I checked the screens and of course flight delayed by 50 minutes. Time to head to the bar and after three large Pinot Grigio's it is time to board the flight.
I have an aisle seat in the middle row so could be worse but then I saw the person who was going to sit next to me. He was a charming young man and kept apologizing for intruding on my space but in truth he was like a cross between the Michelin man a the Pillsbury Dough Boy. As I said he was a great guy and he had bought last minute tickets to watch England play Croatia in the World Cup. This was the first time he had ever been on a plane so it was interesting to see his excitement over being able to watch a video and eat in flight food. He did explain to me that he also travels a lot because he drives cattle trucks from Wales to England and one day hoped to carry cattle to France. ‘You won’t enjoy that very much’ I thought because there is a good chance of being stopped at a French farmers blockade and having your sheep set on fire whilst the French police stand idly by. Anyway, Mr. Pillsbury talked about football all the way to Istanbul so sleep was out of the question.
The weather in London had been perfect and every day has been spent in the garden with my son, playing in a paddling pool or just lying in the sun because he is so good at entertaining himself. Anyway, time to make money again and with bags packed I jumped into the taxi heading to Heathrow airport for my Turkish airlines flight to Istanbul and onwards to Ashgabat Turkmenistan.
Terminal 2 is a nightmare and my first attempt at the automatic check in and baggage tag machine failed almost at the end of the process when the machine said ‘not authorized for this airline’. Rather strange since I had selected Turkish airlines and it worked up to the moment that it was meant to produce the relevant bits of printed paper. I queued at another machine and it worked fine apart from the fact that the previous attempt had caused the seats I had carefully selected the day before to be lost. Oh, indeed this is progress!
The queue at baggage drop was enormous but to be fair there were quite a few desks open so even delays due to people with bags that are too heavy or too many bags did not slow progress too much. I checked the screens and of course flight delayed by 50 minutes. Time to head to the bar and after three large Pinot Grigio's it is time to board the flight.
I have an aisle seat in the middle row so could be worse but then I saw the person who was going to sit next to me. He was a charming young man and kept apologizing for intruding on my space but in truth he was like a cross between the Michelin man a the Pillsbury Dough Boy. As I said he was a great guy and he had bought last minute tickets to watch England play Croatia in the World Cup. This was the first time he had ever been on a plane so it was interesting to see his excitement over being able to watch a video and eat in flight food. He did explain to me that he also travels a lot because he drives cattle trucks from Wales to England and one day hoped to carry cattle to France. ‘You won’t enjoy that very much’ I thought because there is a good chance of being stopped at a French farmers blockade and having your sheep set on fire whilst the French police stand idly by. Anyway, Mr. Pillsbury talked about football all the way to Istanbul so sleep was out of the question.
Very friendly but the last thing you want sitting next to you on a long flight. I think his arms were actually slightly larger.
I arrived in Istanbul unamused and dreading my next flight which was due to take off at 0130. Even greater joy it is also delayed but thankfully fairly empty. I have to be careful not to allow honesty and fact to be taken as racist but I noted that the Turkmenistan ladies in traditional dress don’t believe that allocated seats and boarding cards apply to them. On the two occasions I have been on this flight, they just walk to the nearest three empty seats and lying across all three go to sleep in an instant. My seat was in the possession of just such a lady’s feet and despite best attempts by the cabin crew she was not going to move. The same affected a number of other passengers but nothing would make them move. Oh, I do love flying and was over the moon to cram in to a seat next to similarly displaced travelers whilst the ladies snored happily.
I arrived in Ashgabat early in the morning so went into our office in the city centre and after a couple of hours back to the airport for the one-hour flight over camel infested desert to Turkmenbashi. Stepping out of the domestic terminal into the incredible heat I was met by a driver and taken to the wonderful (not really) Hotel Charlak. Bear with me on this because I think this is the only way to describe my disappointment. I remember when I was first married and had two children and not a lot of money. Home computers were in their infancy and I desperately wanted a Sinclair Spectrum but our money went on nappies and children’s clothes so my chances of getting one for Christmas were minimal. Christmas Day approached, the tree decorated and my wife placed a beautifully wrapped present in pride of place and my name was on it. She was quite excited about this present and repeatedly told me not to pick it up and shake it or I would spoil the surprise for Christmas morning. I did not need to check out the present because it was exactly the right size for a Sinclair Spectrum box. Christmas morning arrived, the children had their Christmas stockings, we had our obligatory family custom bacon rolls, the children then opened all their presents as my excitement grew. I hoped she had bought some games to go with the computer but if not I had already bought the big dummies guide to programming in Basic so could start writing programs straight away. The moment arrived and I tore off the wrapping paper to find that my dear wife had bought me a clock radio so I would not be late for work in the mornings. How I managed to look enthusiastic I do not know but I produced a rictus grin and gave it pride of place on my bedside table as it’s red LED display blinked at me. Well back to present time because I was initially impressed with what is the best hotel in Turkmenbashi. A fairly modern building with lots of gold, a tree lined driveway and of course a gold entrance way and gold doors. This is the packaging on my bloody clock radio. The doors did not open silently in fact they did not open at all. I had to squeeze into a rotating door with my suitcase and there was only room for my feet to take tiny steps. This entry process was not helped by the person following me being impatient and pushing like a crazy man. I burst into the reception area and fell over my suitcase, thinking that I had made a fool of myself in front of the reception staff. I need not have worried because there were no reception staff, just a vast desk with a silver old fashioned bell that had to be hit for service. I waited for a while thinking that the considerable noise from my entry into the building would have attracted attention. Eventually I hit the bell and a furious woman arrived shouting at me in her local language. I believe she was unhappy I had used the bell.
I now noted that the foyer had indeed been grand at some point, being several stories high and having the obligatory gold chandelier but there was an air of neglect about the place. This equates to the moment I realised my present was not actually heavy enough to be my wished-for computer. The lift arriving on the thirteenth floor in total darkness was the moment I saw it was a cheap plastic clock radio. Using the torch on my phone I found the door and struggled to get the old-fashioned key to turn in the lock. I was in and it was also dark due to heavy red (reddish) curtains being closed to keep out the sunlight. I tugged on what once upon a time had been velvet curtain, but now damaged by the intense sun was discoloured and a bit threadbare. Light and heat blasted into the already stifling hot room.
The room was huge but bare, having two single beds and not much else apart from dust and black mold in the bathroom. I decided on the bed nearest the window and noted that the bottom sheet was too small and did not cover the mattress under the pillow. I can only imagine that the sheets must have been made for a child’s cot because these are very small singles. I have included photographs of the view from the window. It’s definitely not the worst but apologies, the windows were so dirty that it does rather obscure the view.
I arrived in Ashgabat early in the morning so went into our office in the city centre and after a couple of hours back to the airport for the one-hour flight over camel infested desert to Turkmenbashi. Stepping out of the domestic terminal into the incredible heat I was met by a driver and taken to the wonderful (not really) Hotel Charlak. Bear with me on this because I think this is the only way to describe my disappointment. I remember when I was first married and had two children and not a lot of money. Home computers were in their infancy and I desperately wanted a Sinclair Spectrum but our money went on nappies and children’s clothes so my chances of getting one for Christmas were minimal. Christmas Day approached, the tree decorated and my wife placed a beautifully wrapped present in pride of place and my name was on it. She was quite excited about this present and repeatedly told me not to pick it up and shake it or I would spoil the surprise for Christmas morning. I did not need to check out the present because it was exactly the right size for a Sinclair Spectrum box. Christmas morning arrived, the children had their Christmas stockings, we had our obligatory family custom bacon rolls, the children then opened all their presents as my excitement grew. I hoped she had bought some games to go with the computer but if not I had already bought the big dummies guide to programming in Basic so could start writing programs straight away. The moment arrived and I tore off the wrapping paper to find that my dear wife had bought me a clock radio so I would not be late for work in the mornings. How I managed to look enthusiastic I do not know but I produced a rictus grin and gave it pride of place on my bedside table as it’s red LED display blinked at me. Well back to present time because I was initially impressed with what is the best hotel in Turkmenbashi. A fairly modern building with lots of gold, a tree lined driveway and of course a gold entrance way and gold doors. This is the packaging on my bloody clock radio. The doors did not open silently in fact they did not open at all. I had to squeeze into a rotating door with my suitcase and there was only room for my feet to take tiny steps. This entry process was not helped by the person following me being impatient and pushing like a crazy man. I burst into the reception area and fell over my suitcase, thinking that I had made a fool of myself in front of the reception staff. I need not have worried because there were no reception staff, just a vast desk with a silver old fashioned bell that had to be hit for service. I waited for a while thinking that the considerable noise from my entry into the building would have attracted attention. Eventually I hit the bell and a furious woman arrived shouting at me in her local language. I believe she was unhappy I had used the bell.
I now noted that the foyer had indeed been grand at some point, being several stories high and having the obligatory gold chandelier but there was an air of neglect about the place. This equates to the moment I realised my present was not actually heavy enough to be my wished-for computer. The lift arriving on the thirteenth floor in total darkness was the moment I saw it was a cheap plastic clock radio. Using the torch on my phone I found the door and struggled to get the old-fashioned key to turn in the lock. I was in and it was also dark due to heavy red (reddish) curtains being closed to keep out the sunlight. I tugged on what once upon a time had been velvet curtain, but now damaged by the intense sun was discoloured and a bit threadbare. Light and heat blasted into the already stifling hot room.
The room was huge but bare, having two single beds and not much else apart from dust and black mold in the bathroom. I decided on the bed nearest the window and noted that the bottom sheet was too small and did not cover the mattress under the pillow. I can only imagine that the sheets must have been made for a child’s cot because these are very small singles. I have included photographs of the view from the window. It’s definitely not the worst but apologies, the windows were so dirty that it does rather obscure the view.
Travel Ashgabat Turkmenistan to London 29th June 2018
I was up at 0430 making a cup of Yorkshire tea and eating a cereal bar to tide me over until I could have what passes for breakfast on my Turkish airlines flight to Istanbul. It always looks like yellow vomit but the consistency seems to be different every time. Despite being horribly tired, I sipped my cup of tea with a smile on my face. I can put up with the rigours of two flights and the overcrowded jungle that Istanbul airport has become because I am going home and there is no definite date for when I will have to travel again. I will work from my little office in my home, I will have breakfast with my wife and child, he will visit me throughout my mornings work and attempt to break my printer, we will have lunch together and the evening I will be there for his bath time. Now that is life and not travelling around pretending to be amazed.
I was down at reception, checked out at 0500 and the gold doors opened in front of me revealing a rather beautiful sunrise and even at that time of the morning, uncomfortable heat.
I was down at reception, checked out at 0500 and the gold doors opened in front of me revealing a rather beautiful sunrise and even at that time of the morning, uncomfortable heat.
The journey to the airport at dawn is totally surreal as there are almost no cars and at each underpass where the road dips under a bridge there is a huge statue, folly, I really don’t know what to call them. I have included a selection of photographs below as examples. Hazar is falling to pieces and scarcely has any roads as well as terrible pollution whereas the white city of Ashgabat is a green roofed marble masterpiece.
They really saved the best bit for last because the approach to the airport is up a tree lined avenue and as you get nearer you see that it is white (of course) made of marble (of course) in the shape of a bird of prey and incredibly beautiful. The interior is also incredibly beautiful and incredibly empty. The attention to detail extends to the support pillars that are incredibly ornate and finished by hand. Whatever the rights and wrongs in this country and for obvious reasons I avoid political discussion, this city and especially the airport is a triumph.
The flight home via Istanbul was as usual tedious despite Turkish Airlines being one of the best and of course Istanbul airport is horrendously overcrowded until the new one opens. Home is bliss and of course to see my son absolutely fantastic. I pray never having to travel like this again.
Ashgabat Turkmenistan Thursday 26th June 2018
I arrived at the Archibal hotel at one o'clock in the morning and after a mercifully quick check in I was able to get to my room, shower away the remnants of the desert and talk to my wife on Skype. What a luxury. Now the younger me would have now gone to see if the 0300 bar was still open but the older me has marginally more sense but for some reason I fancied soup so I made a large mug of Heinz tomato soup from a packet. How can soup from a packet be so good?
Meetings with an oil company in the morning and the only flights our are the next morning at the crack of dawn. Never mind the feeling of excitement about being back with my family is building and I worked the remainder of the afternoon in the Ashgabat office with a grin on my face. My wash up meeting should have been pretty hard hitting but thought of seeing my little boy he next day softened my approach considerably. Despite my very early start I was thinking about having a really nice dinner and a few glasses of Berk before having an early night. Once again the bar was empty but at one point two expats came in and one obviously shooing the other one around said 'nice bar but theres never anybody here'. I hoped they would stop and have a chat but they disappeared back into the empty hotel.
I know that I have posted photographs of Flash Gordons rockets parked in the trees at the back of the hotel in one of my earlier posts but I took clearer photographs this time and oh my goodness there is another one up in the mountain. Could it belong to Ming the Merciless?
Meetings with an oil company in the morning and the only flights our are the next morning at the crack of dawn. Never mind the feeling of excitement about being back with my family is building and I worked the remainder of the afternoon in the Ashgabat office with a grin on my face. My wash up meeting should have been pretty hard hitting but thought of seeing my little boy he next day softened my approach considerably. Despite my very early start I was thinking about having a really nice dinner and a few glasses of Berk before having an early night. Once again the bar was empty but at one point two expats came in and one obviously shooing the other one around said 'nice bar but theres never anybody here'. I hoped they would stop and have a chat but they disappeared back into the empty hotel.
I know that I have posted photographs of Flash Gordons rockets parked in the trees at the back of the hotel in one of my earlier posts but I took clearer photographs this time and oh my goodness there is another one up in the mountain. Could it belong to Ming the Merciless?
Travel Hazar to Turkmenbashi Wednesday 25th June
The day has at last arrived and I can start heading in the direction of home. It will be a convoluted journey but I don't care because in the next couple of days I will be home with the family and hopefully not travelling again for at least a week.
Unfortunately I could not leave Hazar first thing in the morning because we had meetings with our client and then they invited us to a sort of buffet lunch at their offices down at the base. When I say offices what I really mean is portakabins but here we are and food has been delivered. They are very proud of a huge saucepan of sturgeon soup and I am handed a large bowl full. There must be some mistake because there is what appears to be a huge spine shaped piece of cartilage floating in my bowl alongside various slivers of slimy sturgeon flesh. I avoided it and alternated mouthfuls of this soup with some pepperoni pizza. I then realised it was not a mistake because my engineer friend sitting next to me started crunching his way through what appears to be considered the best bit of this strange fish.
We eventually got away early afternoon and jumped in a nice air conditioned four wheel drive vehicle for the journey to visit one of our ships in Turkmenbashi. I am not going to repeat all the things I saw during this journey but we did at the end take a different road into the dock area of the city and it was quite interesting. Along the desert road there were large numbers of camels and most local people will have a story of driving into a camel in the dark or when they suddenly veer in front to the car. We did however seen some lovely sand dunes, sand twisters and scruffy camels and I did note that despite being in the desert, mobile coverage was better than Vodaphone in Wales. I will now include some photographs in case you have forgotten what a sand dune and a camel look like.
Unfortunately I could not leave Hazar first thing in the morning because we had meetings with our client and then they invited us to a sort of buffet lunch at their offices down at the base. When I say offices what I really mean is portakabins but here we are and food has been delivered. They are very proud of a huge saucepan of sturgeon soup and I am handed a large bowl full. There must be some mistake because there is what appears to be a huge spine shaped piece of cartilage floating in my bowl alongside various slivers of slimy sturgeon flesh. I avoided it and alternated mouthfuls of this soup with some pepperoni pizza. I then realised it was not a mistake because my engineer friend sitting next to me started crunching his way through what appears to be considered the best bit of this strange fish.
We eventually got away early afternoon and jumped in a nice air conditioned four wheel drive vehicle for the journey to visit one of our ships in Turkmenbashi. I am not going to repeat all the things I saw during this journey but we did at the end take a different road into the dock area of the city and it was quite interesting. Along the desert road there were large numbers of camels and most local people will have a story of driving into a camel in the dark or when they suddenly veer in front to the car. We did however seen some lovely sand dunes, sand twisters and scruffy camels and I did note that despite being in the desert, mobile coverage was better than Vodaphone in Wales. I will now include some photographs in case you have forgotten what a sand dune and a camel look like.
This is a rather blurred photograph of the desert as the car was travelling at some speed and bouncing over the desert track.
This has to be one of the more attractive camels that we saw on our journey.
Surprisingly the end of the journey was quite spectacular and I have never seen the Caspian Sea look blue before. I don't have much in the way of photographs because things got a little difficult when the army would not let us visit our own ship despite having a letter from the ministry to say that we could. It seems that we needed a further letter from another ministry but after about an hour arguing in the heat we were allowed onboard. The visit to the vessel did not take too long and then we went to see the new state owned shipbuilding yard. What can I say, it is a fantastic shipyard full of the latest and greatest German equipment but again no people and all the equipment untouched. No photographs again I am afraid because we were not allowed to take any. Come and see my shipyard and tell everybody how good it is and to bring their ships here for repair but you can't take any photographs to show them how good it is and in any case it is not possible to get visas for the specialists required to repair modern ships. Anyway below are two photographs fo the views heading into Turkmenbashi.
After the shipyard visit we went for an evening meeting with a government minister responsible for all ports and inland waterways. I cannot say to much but he was a very pleasant person and he fully understood when I explained we could not bring any ships to his yard because we would not be able to get materials through customs and visas for the specialists we would need to carry out the repairs. Huge white elephant comes to mind.
Meeting finished and with just enough time to get to Turkmenbashi to be comfortable for our late night flight to Ashgabat my travelling companion decided that we should go to a restaurant and eat. We were dropped at an outdoor restaurant that was full of young rich people and could have been any where in the Mediterranean from its ambience. We ordered the fastest meal available i.e. beef stroganoff and a warm salad both of which were excellent but had to be eaten in about five minutes. We were late arriving at the airport but the flight was even later so we arrived bleary eyed in Ashgabat at one o'clock in the morning.
Meeting finished and with just enough time to get to Turkmenbashi to be comfortable for our late night flight to Ashgabat my travelling companion decided that we should go to a restaurant and eat. We were dropped at an outdoor restaurant that was full of young rich people and could have been any where in the Mediterranean from its ambience. We ordered the fastest meal available i.e. beef stroganoff and a warm salad both of which were excellent but had to be eaten in about five minutes. We were late arriving at the airport but the flight was even later so we arrived bleary eyed in Ashgabat at one o'clock in the morning.
My stay in Hazar Turkmenistan Sunday 17th June 2018 to Wednesday 25th June
One evening we worked a little later than usual and the office manager suggested that we go and eat in a traditional restaurant. Well you know how much I enjoy mixing with and learning from (growing spiritually) different cultures so this was a great opportunity. Six of us drove down to the beach of dirty sand and even dirtier sea, bumped along a track and entered what looked like a run down industrial estate. We stopped outside something that looked like a very large industrial shed and entering through a small door we were now in what appeared to be a disco complete with a stage, a pole and glitter balls. The decor was gaudy purple and there were a lot of flashing lights. Mercifully we were shown to a small private dining room at the rear of this disco shed.
I have not had an alcoholic beverage since arriving in Hazar several days before so thinking this was my big chance to indulge, I was very disappointed when a selection of fruit juices were brought to the table. Never mind, my liver needs a rest so I poured myself a glass of some strange coloured fruit based liquid. Some rather tasty kebabs arrived along with different salads and I wanted to eat the lot but had to remember decorum and not be too greedy. It was a good thing because lovely crispy barbecued lamb chops, lamb pieces on the bone and screaming hot grilled chilli peppers arrived at the table. Oh how could I forget to mention that a large bottle of vodka and shot glasses also arrived. The top was removed, thrown away and the whole bottle was soon demolished during toast after toast. I was careful to eat lots of bread to soak up the alcohol but even so I was quickly feeling the effects. I was told to leave room for a special final dish and a plate with four pieces of slimy looking fish arrived. The biggest piece was plonked onto my plate and I noticed that the slime was actually a slightly yellowish colour and most unappetising. With great fan fair I was told that this was fresh Sturgeon from the Caspian Sea and I am sure that it is some sort of honour to be offered what must have been a very expensive dish. Ok travel bloggers you could relish describing eating this almost extinct fish, describe its fantastic taste, texture and smell. In reality this is a fish that has grown up eating raw sewage whilst absorbing heavy metals into its flesh. A little mercury with your fish sir? I ate it quickly pretending that I loved it and even proposed a toast to the fish half way through so that I could swig some vodka and help some of it down my throat. My eating performance was so impressive that they insisted that I have another piece. It did cross my mind that I would regret eating Mr Sturgeon and indeed I did for the next few days. It is at this point that the disco fired up and we decided to leave as conversation was no longer possible. I exited the building to the thumping beat of classic Boney M singing ‘one way ticket’. Once again I have engaged with local culture and come away enriched and on this occasion exceedingly drunk. I was safely home way before the expat curfew. One way ticket is quite apt as that is all I wanted at that moment in time.
I have not had an alcoholic beverage since arriving in Hazar several days before so thinking this was my big chance to indulge, I was very disappointed when a selection of fruit juices were brought to the table. Never mind, my liver needs a rest so I poured myself a glass of some strange coloured fruit based liquid. Some rather tasty kebabs arrived along with different salads and I wanted to eat the lot but had to remember decorum and not be too greedy. It was a good thing because lovely crispy barbecued lamb chops, lamb pieces on the bone and screaming hot grilled chilli peppers arrived at the table. Oh how could I forget to mention that a large bottle of vodka and shot glasses also arrived. The top was removed, thrown away and the whole bottle was soon demolished during toast after toast. I was careful to eat lots of bread to soak up the alcohol but even so I was quickly feeling the effects. I was told to leave room for a special final dish and a plate with four pieces of slimy looking fish arrived. The biggest piece was plonked onto my plate and I noticed that the slime was actually a slightly yellowish colour and most unappetising. With great fan fair I was told that this was fresh Sturgeon from the Caspian Sea and I am sure that it is some sort of honour to be offered what must have been a very expensive dish. Ok travel bloggers you could relish describing eating this almost extinct fish, describe its fantastic taste, texture and smell. In reality this is a fish that has grown up eating raw sewage whilst absorbing heavy metals into its flesh. A little mercury with your fish sir? I ate it quickly pretending that I loved it and even proposed a toast to the fish half way through so that I could swig some vodka and help some of it down my throat. My eating performance was so impressive that they insisted that I have another piece. It did cross my mind that I would regret eating Mr Sturgeon and indeed I did for the next few days. It is at this point that the disco fired up and we decided to leave as conversation was no longer possible. I exited the building to the thumping beat of classic Boney M singing ‘one way ticket’. Once again I have engaged with local culture and come away enriched and on this occasion exceedingly drunk. I was safely home way before the expat curfew. One way ticket is quite apt as that is all I wanted at that moment in time.
A week went by in blur of lunchtime soup and reheated dinners but on the Friday one of our engineers went offshore and the other had to head back to a remote region for family reasons. This left me on my own in the house. As the internet was almost unusable in the office I was slipping behind with my work so I elected to work from the house (prison) on the Saturday and Sunday. To be honest it was a great relief to be on my own and on the Saturday morning I was up early has a breakfast of bread, sausage and cheese then settled down to work in the living room. A little later a middle aged lady in traditional dress let herself into the house and looked shocked to see me. I understood that it was not culturally acceptable for her to be in the house alone with me. This was a problem because as an expat I am not allowed on the streets unaccompanied and in any case there is nowhere to go. As this lady was the soup cook my sustenance for the day depended on her having access to the cooker so using sign language and my awful Russian we brokered a deal. I would shut myself in the living room and she would shut herself in the kitchen. Only when I had sat down did I realise my mistake. This lady does not use stock cubes, she uses parts of animals that we usually throw away in order to make stock so this will probably take a few hours of hard boiling. I had no water, no tea and no digestive biscuits. I needn’t have worried because after about an hour, there was a knock at the living room door, it opened slightly and a cup of tea and some sort of sweet sugar glazed bread was pushed brought the gap on the floor. It reminded me of prison guards pushing food through a hatch into a cell.
The above soup is an example of what I basically lived on. No stock cubes were harmed in the making of this soup but there was always a pan filled with bones bubbling away on the cooker.
Bread in the shape of a discuss has a shelf life of approximately 30 minutes and after that comes a serious risk to your teeth. I just dipped it in my soup to soften it up a bit.
With soup cook departed I headed into the kitchen and she had made enough chicken soup for the three of us. I ate it all and was glad to see that she had also made chicken in tomato and pepper sauce for me to reheat that evening. After lunch the front door opened again and this time a young lady in traditional dress appeared but on seeing me left immediately. I guessed that she was the cleaner and not allowed to be alone with a man. I awoke with the sun streaming into my room on Sunday morning so realised that I had slept longer than my usual 6am. Quick shower and down to the kitchen and bored with bread and cheese I searched the fridge and discovered that we had eggs. I cooked fried eggs for breakfast and they tasted marvellous. Mrs Soup Cook arrived and we followed the same ritual, including the tea and sweet rolls. Beef soup for lunch and again I finished the lot. Having now got through a lot of work and feeling sleepy I indulged myself with a little nap and looked forward to watching England play Panama in the World Cup and Lewis Hamilton compete with his own demons as well as other drivers in the French Grand Prix. What a nice day!
Looking at these rather overcooked eggs, they don't really look worthy of note but at the time, having been starved of my usual foodstuffs they tasted superb and made me extremely happy.
I woke at 1600 feeling refreshed and was just having a cup of tea when the door opened again. It was the engineer returning from the region 1000km away. He is a big Turkmenistan man with dark skin and thankfully pretty good English. He put his bag down in the hall, brought a large carrier bag into the kitchen and gave me a bear hug. ‘Tonight we will eat Turkey and drink Whisky’ he announced as he produced a bottle of Chivas Regal and a raw Turkey out of the bag. Without even taking his suitcase to his room he set about dismembering the dead bird and throwing it into a huge saucepan with oil, loads of salt, pepper and chopped onions. About two hours later he brought through a big bowl of cooked Turkey parts and a loaf of home cooked bread from his village. Watching the Grand Prix in silence we chewed our way through pretty much the whole Turkey whilst swigging Whisky and mopping up the juices with bread. In thanks for letting him travel home for a few days and covering his work, he had killed one of the family Turkeys before leaving home and that is what we had just eaten. Don’t think of this as being anything like an antibiotic and steroid enhanced bird you buy in a supermarket as there was in fact very little meat on it in comparison. It was enough however to make two partially drunk people very full and very satisfied. I went to bed happy that England beat Panama and Hamilton won the Grand Prix.
I have veered away from travel here so we will rejoin my story on the day I left Hazar, fourteen days after my arrival.
I have veered away from travel here so we will rejoin my story on the day I left Hazar, fourteen days after my arrival.
Photographs of the president are everywhere even in the planes and the above was my view from my desk in the office.
Travelling Ashgabat to Turkmenbashi to Hazar 16th June 2018
I woke to sunshine streaming in through the windows, quickly showered, checked the roads for signs of life, nope nobody out there so I headed down for breakfast. Nobody in the corridor, nobody in the lift and nobody to be seen as I walked towards the ground floor restaurant. Thank God, there has not been a nuclear holocaust because there are two ladies serving breakfast but unfortunately no other guests. I really fancied a cooked breakfast so I headed to the buffet area and lifted silver lid after silver lid. All empty! Nothing at all but the waitress told me that there was a full Chinese breakfast on the other side of the room. I ordered an omelette and I did not see any Chinese people arrive to eat their Chicken Chow Mein or slurp up bowl of noodle soup, in fact I saw nobody else at all.
If you look at the top left you can see a person. I have at last made contact with the inhabitants of whatever planet I have been transported to because I don't think I am still on earth. A rather tasty mushroom and cheese omellete arrived but I have a long journey ahead of me, 700km to be more exact so I checked out the display of food that was on tables that ran around the entire room. beautiful pastries, cold meats including parma ham, all sorts of fruit cut and ready to eat. different sorts of breads and a selection of jams and honeys on individual small glass plates. Truly unbelievable, a breakfast feast and nobody here to eat it. To use a good old English expression 'I filled my boots' and replete headed back into the foyer just to make sure that check in man was still there. He was and the presence of another human being made me feel a little bit better.
My itinerary for today is pretty straightforward. Victor the driver will collect me at 1100, take me to the airport and I will catch a Turkmenistan Airlines plane to Turkmenbashi where I will be met, given a local SIM card (foreign SIM cards don't work here) and a driver will take me on a three hour drive through the desert to Hazar. What could possibly go wrong? Before I describe my journey please bear with me because I would like to show you some views from my hotel room and the bar.
My itinerary for today is pretty straightforward. Victor the driver will collect me at 1100, take me to the airport and I will catch a Turkmenistan Airlines plane to Turkmenbashi where I will be met, given a local SIM card (foreign SIM cards don't work here) and a driver will take me on a three hour drive through the desert to Hazar. What could possibly go wrong? Before I describe my journey please bear with me because I would like to show you some views from my hotel room and the bar.
View from my hotel room window and I know I go on an on about this in yesterdays posts below but where are all the cars, where are all the people? Spooky!
Another view from my hotel room and it speaks for itself really. Most buildings white, everything tidy, no litter, no people.
View of the evening sun taken from the 16th floor bar. Note the orderly lines of what look like trees and then what looks like a rocket about to launch in the middle of it. I have zoomed in on it in the next photograph below.
I would imagine that your average travel blogger would be in ecstasy standing in a bar at the top of a seemingly empty palace of a hotel in a closed country and an even more closed city whilst Flash Gordons rocket is parked in the trees outside. Me, I just want to get my job done and get out of here. Yes whilst I am on the subject of bloggers and their claims to grow due to exposure to new and diverse cultures, don't bother coming here, there is nobody to get diverse with. If however you like surreal, and I do very much, then you just have to wonder who woke up one morning and thought it was a good idea to put a rocket statue in a field. Brilliant!
Yes good old Flash has parked his rocket in the trees at the back of my hotel. Awesome!
Everything so orderly and in straight lines, but who did it and where are they now?
I went down to the foyer to pay my bill but check out man (same one) said there was no bill to pay and it was settled. I asked him if I needed to sign anything because I had food and drinks at the late night bar (sarcasm) but he just shook his head. I took a seat and waited for 1100 to arrive. Victor arrived promptly and the gold doors opened soundlessly. I stepped out into the heat and climbed into a big four wheel drive jeep for my journey to the airport.
I tried to take some more photographs but Victor was having none of it because he was scared that the police could check my phone and I would be in trouble. Uneventful drive apart from marvelling at the weirdness of the structures that have been built and wishing that I could take photographs of them,
The airport domestic terminal is also brand new and also incredible, white, gold and very clean. My bags were repeatedly scanned, my passport repeatedly checked and then I said goodbye to Victor and clutching my Turkmenistan airlines boarding card, headed into departures. There are four gates but nothing to say which flight they are boarding so I joined the first queue and was assured that this was indeed the flight to Turkmenbashi. It was a pretty new Boeing 737 so that was a relief and when we took off the plane banked steeply in a turn which provided a magnificent view of this spectacular airport. Unfortunately my phone was switched off because I had already been warned that taking photographs could upset the plane. Worried about hurting the planes feelings, I had complied. Next time!
The plane was full of families and the atmosphere was noisy and lively which was a great relief after the silence at the hotel. The flight was good and over uninhabited desert but after an hour I could see the city of Turkmenbashi ahead. A good landing and a short walk to the carousel without getting my papers checked again or suspicious looks from young men with guns was a relief. I was clever enough to head off to the toilets (spotlessly clean) because I had a three hour car journey ahead of me and I was not sure if we would be stopping at any point for refreshments. I came out, and very efficient, my bag had already arrived.
I looked around for a driver with a sign with my name on it but nobody was there so I walked out of the door and was instantly grabbed by a smartly dressed man in the crowd and without a word, he gave me a SIM card and ushered me to a clapped out old Toyota car. The man disappeared and I was left with a rather less well dressed driver with zero English for my journey to Hazar. I climbed into the back and was glad to see that there was plenty of bottled water but not so glad to see that there were no seat belts. The holes in the trim were there but for some strange reason, the seat belts had been removed. We left the carpark of the shiny new airport and I expected to see sights similar to Ashgabat except maybe a bit more sandy.
I tried to take some more photographs but Victor was having none of it because he was scared that the police could check my phone and I would be in trouble. Uneventful drive apart from marvelling at the weirdness of the structures that have been built and wishing that I could take photographs of them,
The airport domestic terminal is also brand new and also incredible, white, gold and very clean. My bags were repeatedly scanned, my passport repeatedly checked and then I said goodbye to Victor and clutching my Turkmenistan airlines boarding card, headed into departures. There are four gates but nothing to say which flight they are boarding so I joined the first queue and was assured that this was indeed the flight to Turkmenbashi. It was a pretty new Boeing 737 so that was a relief and when we took off the plane banked steeply in a turn which provided a magnificent view of this spectacular airport. Unfortunately my phone was switched off because I had already been warned that taking photographs could upset the plane. Worried about hurting the planes feelings, I had complied. Next time!
The plane was full of families and the atmosphere was noisy and lively which was a great relief after the silence at the hotel. The flight was good and over uninhabited desert but after an hour I could see the city of Turkmenbashi ahead. A good landing and a short walk to the carousel without getting my papers checked again or suspicious looks from young men with guns was a relief. I was clever enough to head off to the toilets (spotlessly clean) because I had a three hour car journey ahead of me and I was not sure if we would be stopping at any point for refreshments. I came out, and very efficient, my bag had already arrived.
I looked around for a driver with a sign with my name on it but nobody was there so I walked out of the door and was instantly grabbed by a smartly dressed man in the crowd and without a word, he gave me a SIM card and ushered me to a clapped out old Toyota car. The man disappeared and I was left with a rather less well dressed driver with zero English for my journey to Hazar. I climbed into the back and was glad to see that there was plenty of bottled water but not so glad to see that there were no seat belts. The holes in the trim were there but for some strange reason, the seat belts had been removed. We left the carpark of the shiny new airport and I expected to see sights similar to Ashgabat except maybe a bit more sandy.
As you can see its nothing like Ashgabat and these were typical of the apartments in the outskirts of the city.
Soon there were no more buildings and the condition of the road deteriorated and the best way to describe the terrain is scrubland. Mainly dirty looking sand with a few wiry looking plants surviving the heat and lack of water. Amazingly there were scattered cattle chewing on the spiky looking bushes. I guess they must be wild because there were no signs of civilisation, not even a track. Oh yes I forgot to mention that as soon as the driver had managed to coax his old Toyota engine into life he also turned on the music. The cars bodywork may be battered, the suspension totally shot, the interior falling to pieces and the engine misfiring but the sound system was in fine fettle. I am not sure how to describe his taste in music but the best I can manage is eighties rock with a modern take i.e. an added booming base track and even intermittent rap. Some tracks were easily recognisable but others there was too little of the original left to work out which old classic it had once been.
Ok I need to pause here again because I do read other peoples travel blogs and wonder if mine should be more like theirs, all upbeat about their experiences, the wonderful people they have met, the wonderful food, the different cultures, blah blah blah and then I think no why should I. A lot of these so called travel bloggers live off money from the bank of Mum and Dad and the one I just read was a hippie girl living in Goa. Yes she lived in Goa and went to the beach body boarding, had a house there and a bloody dog. I would consider that as a long holiday or taking up residence, not real travel. Real travel is rattling through the desert in an old Toyota, base thumping, wild camels in the road and no real knowledge of the place you are going to arrive at. Come and give this a try hippie girl, it is not so enjoyable and I would instantly swap this life for being at home with my family. I mentioned that I love surreal, and experiences do not get much more surreal than this. Heading into the desert, the road disappearing under the ever shifting wind driven sand and the perfect soundtrack to overcome the horrible engine noise, a strange howling from a bearing and the thumps and bumps from what used to be the suspension. My abiding memory will be hurtling through an area further down the road where white desert sand had hidden the road, Mr DJ in the front is driving on instinct or memory, there are camels to the left, right and ahead when a Jefferson Starship track (1985) from my past started to play. Easily recognisable lyrics, 'We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll' boom boom boom boom. Strange it sort of worked and this brilliantly surreal moment did bring a smile to my face. Why am I here if I dislike travel so much? Well I fix ships for money to support my lovely life and my lovely family in the UK. Ok got that off my chest so I will move on.
Ok I need to pause here again because I do read other peoples travel blogs and wonder if mine should be more like theirs, all upbeat about their experiences, the wonderful people they have met, the wonderful food, the different cultures, blah blah blah and then I think no why should I. A lot of these so called travel bloggers live off money from the bank of Mum and Dad and the one I just read was a hippie girl living in Goa. Yes she lived in Goa and went to the beach body boarding, had a house there and a bloody dog. I would consider that as a long holiday or taking up residence, not real travel. Real travel is rattling through the desert in an old Toyota, base thumping, wild camels in the road and no real knowledge of the place you are going to arrive at. Come and give this a try hippie girl, it is not so enjoyable and I would instantly swap this life for being at home with my family. I mentioned that I love surreal, and experiences do not get much more surreal than this. Heading into the desert, the road disappearing under the ever shifting wind driven sand and the perfect soundtrack to overcome the horrible engine noise, a strange howling from a bearing and the thumps and bumps from what used to be the suspension. My abiding memory will be hurtling through an area further down the road where white desert sand had hidden the road, Mr DJ in the front is driving on instinct or memory, there are camels to the left, right and ahead when a Jefferson Starship track (1985) from my past started to play. Easily recognisable lyrics, 'We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll' boom boom boom boom. Strange it sort of worked and this brilliantly surreal moment did bring a smile to my face. Why am I here if I dislike travel so much? Well I fix ships for money to support my lovely life and my lovely family in the UK. Ok got that off my chest so I will move on.
We left the rather scruffy outskirts of Turkmenbashi and the road turned into a track with pot holed tarmac in some areas and others where it had pretty much disappeared. The lack of suspension and sitting over a rear wheel meant that I felt every bump, but at least I had the scenery and of course the disco rendition of old classics to keep me occupied. At first there was scrubland of dirty looking sand and plants with skinny looking cattle chewing on them, but as we got further from the city it transformed into desert of pure white sand and only small pockets of these robust spiky looking plants. Where there had been cattle there were now disheveled looking wild camels. Even when viewed in a zoo, camels are not the prettiest of animals, they are not exactly cuddly, but these looked like the camel equivalent of tramps. Vagrant camels with attitude walking up the middle of the road as if they owned it and I guess in times gone by they did indeed own it. I still find it incredible that with no signs of any water and almost nothing growing there are a large numbers of these beasts that call this place home.
Last signs of habitation until Hazar three hours down the road.
Goodbye civilisation hello desert.
Disco driver continued trying to miss the biggest holes in the road, sometimes heading towards the dunes to do so. and occasionally he skipped a track on his music compilation for another that sounded exactly the same. Careless Whisper by George Michael to a disco beat is hilarious at best but in the context of the strange world passing by outside it was another moment to remember. A small herd of camels came trotting down the road straight at us as George emotionally sung ‘I’m never gonna dance again’ boom boom boom and some incomprehensible rap before poor old George returns to tell us about his guilty feet having no rhythm. I was just wondering what crime my feet are guilty of as an explanation for my lack of rhythm but our scruffy four-legged friends were now getting uncomfortably close and seemed to be playing a game of dare with the Toyota. Camels won the dare and Disco driver veered off into the dunes, wheels spinning for a bit and then back onto the track as if nothing had happened. ‘tonight the music seems so loud, I wish that we could lose this crowd’ sung George and it seemed rather apt.
I am sure that you wonder why I am writing more about my mode of transport and the backing track for the journey rather than the strange world unfolding around me but to be honest the desert is just a pile of sand, some of it flat and some of it in hills called dunes but still made of sand. What else can I say, there is a lot of sand, it is very hot outside and if the car breaks down there is a possibility that we could be stranded for a considerable period of time because we saw very few other vehicles. I have been on desert safaris in Dubai but that was in air conditioned luxurious four-wheel drive vehicles and is more like a sand based fairground ride than actual travel in the desert. Those trips ended with a barbecue and bottles of Heineken but this one will not. Those trips are always close to a major highway but this is the major highway and at points it is covered in sand as the desert tries to reclaim it for the camels. I think on balance the desert is winning!
The journey continued. Sand to the left sand to the right and scruffy camels everywhere but I think that despite the noise my back being jarred and the excitement at seeing yet another dune, I may have fallen asleep. I woke as the car slowed down at a fork in the road and we parked in the sand. Disco driver needed a nicotine fix so I got out of the car and into the mid afternoon heat. You know when you have preheated your oven to 220C and the intense heat hits you in the face as you open the door, well that’s how it felt and I realised that old Toyota air conditioning was actually doing pretty good job of keeping us alive. I walked up and down the road to stretch my legs and was fascinated to see an area of sand start to become disturbed and rotate despite the fact that there was no wind at all. I watched this phenomenon get wider, taller and rotate faster until it became a funnel of rotating sand. I was transfixed at having seen this small sand twister form in front of my eyes but less transfixed when it suddenly got bored with staying in one place and and started heading towards me at speed. I hurriedly retreated to the car but Disco Driver continued leaning on wing of the car, drawing deeply on his cigarette that smells of burning camel shit.The twister got ever closer but as it made contact with the road it dispersed in a pile of sand. I took a photograph but to be honest it does not look like much because it was already starting to weaken.
The journey continued. Sand to the left sand to the right and scruffy camels everywhere but I think that despite the noise my back being jarred and the excitement at seeing yet another dune, I may have fallen asleep. I woke as the car slowed down at a fork in the road and we parked in the sand. Disco driver needed a nicotine fix so I got out of the car and into the mid afternoon heat. You know when you have preheated your oven to 220C and the intense heat hits you in the face as you open the door, well that’s how it felt and I realised that old Toyota air conditioning was actually doing pretty good job of keeping us alive. I walked up and down the road to stretch my legs and was fascinated to see an area of sand start to become disturbed and rotate despite the fact that there was no wind at all. I watched this phenomenon get wider, taller and rotate faster until it became a funnel of rotating sand. I was transfixed at having seen this small sand twister form in front of my eyes but less transfixed when it suddenly got bored with staying in one place and and started heading towards me at speed. I hurriedly retreated to the car but Disco Driver continued leaning on wing of the car, drawing deeply on his cigarette that smells of burning camel shit.The twister got ever closer but as it made contact with the road it dispersed in a pile of sand. I took a photograph but to be honest it does not look like much because it was already starting to weaken.
We continued our journey and the terrain became less boring as we now passed large salt flats. huge areas of flat white salt with the heat shimmering and looking like silvery liquid, almost like mercury. Why would a herd of camels want to sit down in the middle of dry salt without even a spiky bush to nibble on I wondered, but they did. Eventually we turned right again and in the middle of nowhere there was a small building and a police check point with a barrier. Out came a suspicious looking policeman with huge hat and as usual the dialogue started in a friendly manner, papers are inspected, an imaginary problem is found, voices get raised, the driver gets out of the car, money changes hands and we resumed our journey. The next highlight was a sign also in the middle of nowhere saying Hazar. We passed the sign and drove for ages before entering a town that looked like an old cowboy movie filmed on the Mexican border. I expected to see Banderas or Clint Eastwood standing outside a saloon and looking mean. Hazar looked totally the opposite of Ashgabat and my heart sunk.
With no grass available to cows that wander the streets seem to dine on rubbish from the bins.
I was taken to the company staff house that was to be my home for the next two weeks. My bedroom was large with what looked like a king sized bed but in fact was made up of two single mattresses that had springs sticking out of them. To be fair the room was kept at 24C by a modern air conditioning unit but there was no duvet just a bottom sheet and a thin and very itchy blanket that I think was made of mohair. I can imagine medieval monks willing to sleep under this blanket as a penance for their sins. An extension of the hair shirt concept but this one denies you proper sleep.
I will not discuss my work other than to say that I was driven back and forth to the office at the oil base and of course there is a curfew of 2230 for expats even if there was anywhere to stay out till that time. Driven through potholed sandy roads at 0800, back at 1230 for a lunch of soup and bread, back to work and then home again at about 1900 for whatever the cook had left us and we reheated. Was the food good, well to be honest no it was not but when there is no other option hunger took over and I ate everything that I could get my hands on. Still hungry I would retreat to my room and thanks to my wonderful wife, I would boil water in my travel kettle and either have a Heinz cup a soup or a pot noodle. Feeling more comfortable I would then have a cup of Tetley tea and allow myself two McVities digestive biscuits. This room became became my relatively comfortable prison cell and the few creature comforts made all the difference.
I will not discuss my work other than to say that I was driven back and forth to the office at the oil base and of course there is a curfew of 2230 for expats even if there was anywhere to stay out till that time. Driven through potholed sandy roads at 0800, back at 1230 for a lunch of soup and bread, back to work and then home again at about 1900 for whatever the cook had left us and we reheated. Was the food good, well to be honest no it was not but when there is no other option hunger took over and I ate everything that I could get my hands on. Still hungry I would retreat to my room and thanks to my wonderful wife, I would boil water in my travel kettle and either have a Heinz cup a soup or a pot noodle. Feeling more comfortable I would then have a cup of Tetley tea and allow myself two McVities digestive biscuits. This room became became my relatively comfortable prison cell and the few creature comforts made all the difference.
This is the road in which the staff house is situated. It is in one of the most desirable areas of Hazar
This is the view from my bedroom (sanctuary) and you can see that there is some greenery in the form of trees such as figs that don't mind the salt and sand.
Photographs of my room (cell) and the local supermarket that seemed to mainly sell bread and vodka.
Friday 15th June and still travelling to Ashgabat Turkmenistan
Its now the early hours of the morning and I am about to board the Turkish airlines flight to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. Thankfully the plane is not full but curiously the passengers seem to be mainly middle aged women in national dress. The flight started well and the cabin crew quickly served what I suppose was a breakfast. I was by now extremely hungry and eager to have a look under the tin foil of the provided meal.
Its now the early hours of the morning and I am about to board the Turkish airlines flight to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. Thankfully the plane is not full but curiously the passengers seem to be mainly middle aged women in national dress. The flight started well and the cabin crew quickly served what I suppose was a breakfast. I was by now extremely hungry and eager to have a look under the tin foil of the provided meal.
Yes you are right, it does look like somebody has vomited on a tomato and whilst I have obviously never eaten vomit, this meal tasted the way I would expect vomit to taste and the consistency was spot on. Anyway I consumed the majority of my vomit breakfast whilst watching Star Wars and marveling at the incredibly poor story line when my nose suddenly started to literally pour blood down the front of my polo shirt. I rushed to the toilets leaving a trail of red stuff on the carpet and bloody hand prints all over the door. A horrified looking stewardess thrust a pile of tissues at me and then I was left to sit on the toilet and bleed on my own. Typically the fasten seat belt sign came on pretty much immediately and we started our descent towards Ashgabat.
We landed and I stayed in my seat, still applying pressure to my right nostril and thankfully the bleeding stopped and I was able to leave the plane. I was aware that people were staring at me and I assumed that this was due to the fact that not many foreigners visit this country but when a boy in an ill fitting soldiers uniform with a large gun started showing an unhealthy interest in me I ducked into the nearest toilet. I am not surprised people were staring, with blood all over my face and a light blue polo shirt covered in the stuff, I did look a bit like a mass murderer escaping the scene of a horrific crime.
Face clean but shirt looking as if I had multiple stab wounds, I approached the uniformed man with huge hat at the visa on arrival desk. He gave me a look of disdain and sent me off to pay $500 to an old lady at another desk. Having paid and received a small piece of paper I went back to Mr big hat and he started asking questions in Russian that I could not understand. He eventually gave up and tossed my passport complete with visa back to me. Next hurdle was the immigration desk but to be fair he was pleasant and having checked out my blood-spattered attire, he waved me through. They were not finished with me yet because next was customs and I had to put my bags though a scanner. Importing food of any sort or basically anything of any sort is strictly forbidden so I was a little concerned about my suitcase full of pot noodles and Mcvities digestive biscuits. I need not have worried as the five customs men were more interested in practicing their English on me and laughing at my accent (yes I am Welsh) and nobody looked at the screen.
I am out and a smiling driver named Victor met me outside and my introduction to one of the worlds most closed countries commenced. I have some pretty poor photographs because Victor warned me that the police (and there are lots of them) do not like people taking photographs even of inanimate objects such as a pot plant. The airport by the way is brand new almost empty apart from men in uniforms and it is beautiful.
We landed and I stayed in my seat, still applying pressure to my right nostril and thankfully the bleeding stopped and I was able to leave the plane. I was aware that people were staring at me and I assumed that this was due to the fact that not many foreigners visit this country but when a boy in an ill fitting soldiers uniform with a large gun started showing an unhealthy interest in me I ducked into the nearest toilet. I am not surprised people were staring, with blood all over my face and a light blue polo shirt covered in the stuff, I did look a bit like a mass murderer escaping the scene of a horrific crime.
Face clean but shirt looking as if I had multiple stab wounds, I approached the uniformed man with huge hat at the visa on arrival desk. He gave me a look of disdain and sent me off to pay $500 to an old lady at another desk. Having paid and received a small piece of paper I went back to Mr big hat and he started asking questions in Russian that I could not understand. He eventually gave up and tossed my passport complete with visa back to me. Next hurdle was the immigration desk but to be fair he was pleasant and having checked out my blood-spattered attire, he waved me through. They were not finished with me yet because next was customs and I had to put my bags though a scanner. Importing food of any sort or basically anything of any sort is strictly forbidden so I was a little concerned about my suitcase full of pot noodles and Mcvities digestive biscuits. I need not have worried as the five customs men were more interested in practicing their English on me and laughing at my accent (yes I am Welsh) and nobody looked at the screen.
I am out and a smiling driver named Victor met me outside and my introduction to one of the worlds most closed countries commenced. I have some pretty poor photographs because Victor warned me that the police (and there are lots of them) do not like people taking photographs even of inanimate objects such as a pot plant. The airport by the way is brand new almost empty apart from men in uniforms and it is beautiful.
Dawn over the Turkmenistan desert. I always envisaged that this was a lush green country but in fact it is mainly desert as you can see from the above photograph.
Ashgabat airport from the plane. It does not look too forbidding!
The first major and slightly strange monument on the way from the airport is in the photograph above and really it is difficult to know what it is all about. I do love the street lighting because it looks a bit Third Reich in design and for anybody out there who watched the series 'Man in the high tower' I think these lights would have fitted in perfectly.
Above photo from 'Man in the high tower'. Can you see the similarity or am I imagining it?
The roads are all like this but where are the cars to use them? There are supposed to be over 1 million people living in this city so I guess they must like staying at home and watching American soap operas or surfing the net. Silly me as the media and internet is heavily sensored. I cannot even read the daily Mail! How can I survive without my daily dose of headlines about celebrities having a wardrobe malfunction?
I took this photograph because it is unusual to see another car on the road and this street sums up how the city looks. Empty!
My first impressions of Ashgabat as we set off towards the hotel were that it is mainly white and gold, incredibly clean and has incredibly straight roads. I hardly saw a soul on the journey and very few cars on the wide beautifully tarmacked streets. Even the ornate street lights are detailed in gold, and there is an almost total whiteness all around. The photographs below do not do it justice but I could hear Victor tutting as I used the camera on my phone. We arrived at a tall new building that is designed to look old and looks nothing like a hotel but yes it is a hotel and as I approached the gold front doors, they opened outwards towards me. Inside well oh my goodness somebody has spent a fortune on marble, chandeliers and detailing.
A cavernous foyer and only me and a single check in person in that huge ornate space. Check in was efficient and I have a room on the thirteenth floor. He explained that there is a bar, restaurant and a late night bar open until 3 am on the 16th floor and a further bar and restaurant on the ground floor. I started to think that my stay here would not be too bad at all and looked forward to a nice meal, mingle with the other guests and have a few drinkies in the late night bar.
It was about 0800 in the morning when I arrived and my meeting (in the hotel building) was not until 1200 so I intended having a couple of hours sleep. I entered the room or should I say small palace. It is an incredible hotel room with such attention to detail and yes a lot of the detailing was in gold but I was seriously impressed. The bed huge and the mattress soft, so quick shower and a brief sleep.
A cavernous foyer and only me and a single check in person in that huge ornate space. Check in was efficient and I have a room on the thirteenth floor. He explained that there is a bar, restaurant and a late night bar open until 3 am on the 16th floor and a further bar and restaurant on the ground floor. I started to think that my stay here would not be too bad at all and looked forward to a nice meal, mingle with the other guests and have a few drinkies in the late night bar.
It was about 0800 in the morning when I arrived and my meeting (in the hotel building) was not until 1200 so I intended having a couple of hours sleep. I entered the room or should I say small palace. It is an incredible hotel room with such attention to detail and yes a lot of the detailing was in gold but I was seriously impressed. The bed huge and the mattress soft, so quick shower and a brief sleep.
You have got to admit that's a pretty impressive entrance to a hotel and it could easily be in Dubai.
The foyer is a sea of shiny marble
And that is a basic room so I would love to see a suite.
This is a travel website so I will not go into details of the meeting other than to say that I have to travel to one of our ships about 700km away in a town called Hazar. Back in my room I worked at my computer and managed to contain myself from going up to the bar until 1900. I don’t like to be in a bar too early as my ability to drink is now seriously impaired by age, I do not want to peak too early. I entered the gold lift, marveling at the cleanliness of the gold inlayed mirrors as I was smoothly whisked up to the 16th floor.
I had noted that the corridor on the 13th floor seemed devoid of human life. No trolley heaped with sheets, no noise at all, no muted sound of conversations from the rooms as I passed the doors. Excellent insulation on those doors I thought. The 16th floor was the same, no sign of anybody so I followed the directions to the bar. The bar is beautiful and the sort of place that it is good to sit at and engage in conversation with other guests but there were no other guests and indeed there was no barman. The only way I knew that the world had not come to an end whilst I had my nap was the fact that there was a television tuned to a live Russian world cup channel. I chose a good seat at the bar with a view of the television and waited and waited. Eventually I went looking for signs of human life and found it in the form of a barman who was standing motionless in the vast restaurant on his own i.e. zero diners.
I headed back to the bar and ordered a local beer aptly called BERK, a word that means ‘a stupid or foolish person’. Read on its actually quite relevant. After an hour and three beers later I decided to have a look at the menu and order some food or I would end up too drunk for the party that would no doubt go on right up to dawn. I ordered and wandered over to the windows that had a view of a mountain range in the distance. I could see a lovely big outdoor swimming pool and only about six people sitting around it. Well it was eight o’clock so everybody was probably preparing to come up to the bar.
I had noted that the corridor on the 13th floor seemed devoid of human life. No trolley heaped with sheets, no noise at all, no muted sound of conversations from the rooms as I passed the doors. Excellent insulation on those doors I thought. The 16th floor was the same, no sign of anybody so I followed the directions to the bar. The bar is beautiful and the sort of place that it is good to sit at and engage in conversation with other guests but there were no other guests and indeed there was no barman. The only way I knew that the world had not come to an end whilst I had my nap was the fact that there was a television tuned to a live Russian world cup channel. I chose a good seat at the bar with a view of the television and waited and waited. Eventually I went looking for signs of human life and found it in the form of a barman who was standing motionless in the vast restaurant on his own i.e. zero diners.
I headed back to the bar and ordered a local beer aptly called BERK, a word that means ‘a stupid or foolish person’. Read on its actually quite relevant. After an hour and three beers later I decided to have a look at the menu and order some food or I would end up too drunk for the party that would no doubt go on right up to dawn. I ordered and wandered over to the windows that had a view of a mountain range in the distance. I could see a lovely big outdoor swimming pool and only about six people sitting around it. Well it was eight o’clock so everybody was probably preparing to come up to the bar.
The menu was huge and provided a fantastic choice, including such things as red snapper, sea bass etc but I was cautious because if you have all this different food in stock and few actual guests to eat it, how long has it been sitting in the fridge? I played it safe and ordered lentil soup and beef stroganoff. The food arrived quickly, was well presented and tasty but it did make me chuckle that they gave me chips with the stroganoff because I am English. A second barman arrived, probably in anticipation of things getting busy and he spoke really good English. He explained that he is a trained translator but cant find work because he has a Russian surname. This seems to be a common problem in ex soviet states as I have seen the same situation in Azerbaijan. What can I say, I watched a football match and left the bar at 2245 and by that time the one remaining barman was nodding off due to boredom. Yes it was just me and him on the entire 16th floor.
This country may be closed to the outside world but they do know that British people love chips and very good chips they were too.
I managed to get through the crowd and get a prime spot at the corner of the bar!
I went back to my room and was now very aware of the silence all around me. I looked out of the window down the main road below wondering if I was mistaken and there would be cars or a person visible to let me know that life still exists outside of this graveyard hotel but there was nothing. Not a single moving light not a single sign of life. I climbed into my huge and very comfortable bed and the Berk kicked in quickly and I was soon past caring whether I was the last person alive on the planet apart from two barmen and a desk clerk.
Thursday 14th June and Back on my Travels
Too good to be true. A few days in Edinburgh with the family and it didn’t rain and then the enjoyment of coming home after being away, then back to reality. Although I kept up to date with emails whilst travelling I still have a lot of work to catch up on and then the urgent need to travel to Turkmenistan due to problems with one of our ships.
Travel to Ashgabat Turkmenistan
The only way to get there the next day was Turkish Airlines so I quickly got onto their infuriating website to book my tickets. All done and now enjoy my last day with the family before the torture of Heathrow Terminal 2, a very short transfer time at Istanbul airport and the unknowns of Ashgabat and onwards to other parts of this secretive and pretty much closed country.
The time has arrived and with my suitcase containing various pot noodles, packet tomato soup and digestive biscuits loaded into the boot, the taxi driver just laughed at my miserable face and asked which terminal. This is always a low moment for me. Driving away from my home with my wife standing at the door holding my little boy. Travelling with family can be hell but travelling without them is like a special part of hell kept for the worst kind of human beings such as mass murderers, travel agents and travel bloggers with their oh so romantic stories of far flung places and being enriched by different cultures.
It’s great to see a huge leap forward in making travel easier and faster than it used to be, and one such major step is now having to go to a machine to print and attach your own baggage label to your suitcase. Instead of a smiling Turkish airlines lady doing it for me I have been directed to a machine that after about five minutes of stabbing at the screen has just told me to seek assistance. I did in the form of an angry looking lady and she said ‘oh yes I think that machine is broken’. Did she put a sign on it to say broken, kaput, totally trashed? Well of course not and there was a man already standing there cursing in a foreign language. I tried to be helpful and said ‘it’s broken mate’. Why did I say mate? He is not my mate and I don’t use that expression. Travel is even affecting the way I speak now. I then joined a queue at a machine that was working and waited to do something that the airline previously did for me. I defeated the machine, tagged my own bag, printed my boarding cards or rather boarding floppy pieces of paper and joined a multi airline bag drop queue.
The queue was long but no matter because we have done all the hard work so how long can it take to process each person. Ages is the answer because there was just one extremely harassed man at a check in counter. Whilst Trump is giving the Chinese nation a hard time about import duties could he please mention to them that the instruction 'come to the desk one at a time' does not mean the whole family and some friends. Total chaos, and despite arriving at the airport a good two hours before my flight, it is getting perilously close to me missing it. I decided that if I don't make my flight due to this sheer incompetence then it is an omen and I will happily return home, tuck my son up in bed, open a bottle of wine and order a Red hot Indian curry.
I was approaching the end of the queue when a uniformed man asked me ‘what airline?’, ‘Turkish' I replied, ‘come with me to business class check in’ he said. 'Oh great, an upgrade' I thought so I was not angry when the queue was even bigger than the one I had just left. I reached my travel oasis, business class check in and wondered if my upgrade was for both flights. ‘Would it be cheeky to ask for this? I was just considering popping the question when the check in lady said ‘excuse me Sir this is business class and your ticket is economy,, I said ‘but but but but’ and was cut off mid but when she pressed the button that shot my suitcase into the nether regions of Heathrow and told me ‘you had better hurry this flight is boarding now’.
No upgrade and an unwarranted dressing down from a girl who was probably still in school last term. A handful of O grades and a licence to humiliate passengers!
I ran to security but oh dear another big queue and my stress levels explode when the lady in front of me has bottles and bottles of cosmetics scattered throughout her hand bag and carry on bag. It went on for ages, she was like a magician pulling objects out of a hat and I fully expected her to bring out a rabbit or start producing them from her bra and God knows where else. Belt off, laptop and Ipad out, pockets stripped, wearing trainers with no metal in them and beep beep beep. Yes it’s enter the machine, hands in the air and another dose of radiation. There is a jumble of empty trays and the usual people dressing themselves at the conveyor so I had to stretch up towards the scanner to grab my rucksack and computers. I hurriedly cram everything into my rucksack and search for a screen to tell me where to board.
Gate 43 and the first sign said it is a 15 minute walk. I ran and arrived at gate 43 in a horrible sweaty mess. The plane had not even started boarding! Ok never mind, I made it, and by the way my jeans keep slipping down I must have lost weight or not tightened my belt properly. I tried to adjust my belt but there was no belt to adjust, in my hurry and because I could not reach the tray to lift it off the conveyor I had left it at security. I thought about running back but at that moment the flight started to board. I sat down and I should not use the word distraught to describe my condition because that should be reserved for situations such as a bereavement but this was pretty damn close. This was not just a belt this was a present from my wife. A lovely Mont Blanc belt that probably cost her a fortune and it meant an awful lot to me. You know the expression 'the straw that broke the camels back' well losing my belt was that straw. I have not told my wife about losing it yet so she will be furious when she reads this.
Too good to be true. A few days in Edinburgh with the family and it didn’t rain and then the enjoyment of coming home after being away, then back to reality. Although I kept up to date with emails whilst travelling I still have a lot of work to catch up on and then the urgent need to travel to Turkmenistan due to problems with one of our ships.
Travel to Ashgabat Turkmenistan
The only way to get there the next day was Turkish Airlines so I quickly got onto their infuriating website to book my tickets. All done and now enjoy my last day with the family before the torture of Heathrow Terminal 2, a very short transfer time at Istanbul airport and the unknowns of Ashgabat and onwards to other parts of this secretive and pretty much closed country.
The time has arrived and with my suitcase containing various pot noodles, packet tomato soup and digestive biscuits loaded into the boot, the taxi driver just laughed at my miserable face and asked which terminal. This is always a low moment for me. Driving away from my home with my wife standing at the door holding my little boy. Travelling with family can be hell but travelling without them is like a special part of hell kept for the worst kind of human beings such as mass murderers, travel agents and travel bloggers with their oh so romantic stories of far flung places and being enriched by different cultures.
It’s great to see a huge leap forward in making travel easier and faster than it used to be, and one such major step is now having to go to a machine to print and attach your own baggage label to your suitcase. Instead of a smiling Turkish airlines lady doing it for me I have been directed to a machine that after about five minutes of stabbing at the screen has just told me to seek assistance. I did in the form of an angry looking lady and she said ‘oh yes I think that machine is broken’. Did she put a sign on it to say broken, kaput, totally trashed? Well of course not and there was a man already standing there cursing in a foreign language. I tried to be helpful and said ‘it’s broken mate’. Why did I say mate? He is not my mate and I don’t use that expression. Travel is even affecting the way I speak now. I then joined a queue at a machine that was working and waited to do something that the airline previously did for me. I defeated the machine, tagged my own bag, printed my boarding cards or rather boarding floppy pieces of paper and joined a multi airline bag drop queue.
The queue was long but no matter because we have done all the hard work so how long can it take to process each person. Ages is the answer because there was just one extremely harassed man at a check in counter. Whilst Trump is giving the Chinese nation a hard time about import duties could he please mention to them that the instruction 'come to the desk one at a time' does not mean the whole family and some friends. Total chaos, and despite arriving at the airport a good two hours before my flight, it is getting perilously close to me missing it. I decided that if I don't make my flight due to this sheer incompetence then it is an omen and I will happily return home, tuck my son up in bed, open a bottle of wine and order a Red hot Indian curry.
I was approaching the end of the queue when a uniformed man asked me ‘what airline?’, ‘Turkish' I replied, ‘come with me to business class check in’ he said. 'Oh great, an upgrade' I thought so I was not angry when the queue was even bigger than the one I had just left. I reached my travel oasis, business class check in and wondered if my upgrade was for both flights. ‘Would it be cheeky to ask for this? I was just considering popping the question when the check in lady said ‘excuse me Sir this is business class and your ticket is economy,, I said ‘but but but but’ and was cut off mid but when she pressed the button that shot my suitcase into the nether regions of Heathrow and told me ‘you had better hurry this flight is boarding now’.
No upgrade and an unwarranted dressing down from a girl who was probably still in school last term. A handful of O grades and a licence to humiliate passengers!
I ran to security but oh dear another big queue and my stress levels explode when the lady in front of me has bottles and bottles of cosmetics scattered throughout her hand bag and carry on bag. It went on for ages, she was like a magician pulling objects out of a hat and I fully expected her to bring out a rabbit or start producing them from her bra and God knows where else. Belt off, laptop and Ipad out, pockets stripped, wearing trainers with no metal in them and beep beep beep. Yes it’s enter the machine, hands in the air and another dose of radiation. There is a jumble of empty trays and the usual people dressing themselves at the conveyor so I had to stretch up towards the scanner to grab my rucksack and computers. I hurriedly cram everything into my rucksack and search for a screen to tell me where to board.
Gate 43 and the first sign said it is a 15 minute walk. I ran and arrived at gate 43 in a horrible sweaty mess. The plane had not even started boarding! Ok never mind, I made it, and by the way my jeans keep slipping down I must have lost weight or not tightened my belt properly. I tried to adjust my belt but there was no belt to adjust, in my hurry and because I could not reach the tray to lift it off the conveyor I had left it at security. I thought about running back but at that moment the flight started to board. I sat down and I should not use the word distraught to describe my condition because that should be reserved for situations such as a bereavement but this was pretty damn close. This was not just a belt this was a present from my wife. A lovely Mont Blanc belt that probably cost her a fortune and it meant an awful lot to me. You know the expression 'the straw that broke the camels back' well losing my belt was that straw. I have not told my wife about losing it yet so she will be furious when she reads this.
Big boys don't cry but I certainly felt like crying and I seriously considered missing the flight and going back to security but the chances of it still being there were minimal. In an extremely bad mood I joined the queue to board the plane but it was not really a queue more of a pushing shoving horde, survival of the fittest and all for what? Hey people you have reserved seats! I am cursed, it is another full flight but at least I am in an aisle seat and the lady in the middle is quite petite and unlikely to be smelly. This turned out to be the case and I watched a really good film that ended just as we were landing. See! I am not always negative.
We landed and I prepared to run along the long corridor to the transit gates, fight my way through yet more security and hopefully make my next flight. In fact I left the plane and we walked out pretty much into the central departures area with my departure gate a short distance away. This gave me an idea, and as a long shot I ran to the shopping area and there it was a Mont Blanc shop and despite it being 0130 in the morning it was open. I quickly selected the exact same belt that I previously had, asked the bemused shop assistant to cut it for me and a few minutes later I was walking towards my departure gate, rather poorer, but trousers secure and a huge smile on my face.
We landed and I prepared to run along the long corridor to the transit gates, fight my way through yet more security and hopefully make my next flight. In fact I left the plane and we walked out pretty much into the central departures area with my departure gate a short distance away. This gave me an idea, and as a long shot I ran to the shopping area and there it was a Mont Blanc shop and despite it being 0130 in the morning it was open. I quickly selected the exact same belt that I previously had, asked the bemused shop assistant to cut it for me and a few minutes later I was walking towards my departure gate, rather poorer, but trousers secure and a huge smile on my face.
Slightly later Sunday 27th May and no longer stuck in Baku
If there is one thing that I hate more than travel it is travel at very short notice. I was minding my own business writing my blog, complaining about being stuck in Baku when my wife called to say that she had hurt her eye and needed me home urgently to help look after our son. I managed to get a ticket to the UK via Istanbul and departed for the airport immediately. Unfortunately I had just hand washed a load of pants and socks so they are now tied up in a plastic bag in my suitcase.
So I was bitching about still being in Baku and a couple of hours later I am sitting in a busy A320 with a change of planes and a nine hour journey ahead of me. Check in was mercifully quick and the airport fairly quiet (Sunday) so straight through immigration and up to the slightly weird Russian peasant themed restaurant. Time for lunch because I have a perilously short stopover in Istanbul before joining my flight for London.
Ok I am on the plane and it is not good news. It is a full flight and I am in an aisle seat next to a man who seems to be playing the how wide apart can I get my legs game. I can tell you that he is doing pretty well so far and he is half way into my meagre space. You have just got to love fellow passengers who take no notice of what they are told. Old wide legs decided to put his table down just before take off. He was told to close it and did so whilst grumbling only to put it straight back down and commence texting during take off. Seat belts are for sissy’s because that was soon discarded as well.
Ok we are in the air and I now have three hours next to this hairy moron. In economy the hot towels are really just damp pieces of paper but I do think that they are meant for freshening the hands and face. Maybe I have been wrong all this time and they are actually for cleaning the inside of your ears because that is what he did. Ok he has now discarded the soggy paper towel and is raking around with his fingers and inspecting the ear wax before flicking it onto the floor. Once again the romance of air travel and exposure to different cultures impresses me so much.
Food arrived and Mr wide legs has obviously decided to show off his skill at eating his entire meal with a spoon and his face a couple of centimetres above his tray. Total concentration shovelling it in and only lifting his head occasionally to push in large chunks of bread roll and noisily slurp red wine. He is an exceedingly efficient eater because mere mortals like me put in a fork full, chew, swallow and then repeat the process, whilst he just keeps shovelling everything and then filling his mouth with wine prior to chewing. Ok some of the food does fall back out of his mouth and there is some dribbling but it makes eating a quick process. Another useful lesson from my travels
We are coming in to land at Istanbul and the cabin crew are having some difficulties in getting people to put their seat belts on. It was in any case to no avail because one passenger lay down across three seats and seemed to be asleep with his head poking into the aisle as we landed. Maybe its the new AZAL brace position
Touch down and the seat belts are off as soon as the first tyre tread makes contact with the runway. Pushing, shoving and general bad behaviour ensued but the cabin crew had given up at this point. I have a very tight connection and I had to run to Turkish airways transfer at the other end of the airport to get my boarding card. Through the most lackadaisical security and down to my gate just in time. I notice that my boarding card says row 13 middle seat, how lovely! This will increase my interaction with the people of differing cultures either side of me and I will learn a lot and grow as a person.
Anyway I did not have to wait long and we are boarding the totally full A320 when they suddenly changed their minds and instructed us to leave the plane and return to departures. As soon as we had all sat down they then then told us to board the plane again without any explanation. Once they had us trapped in our seats and the door closed, they announced that there would be a delay of at least an hour. I was incredibly thirsty not having had a chance to buy a drink at the airport I politely asked if I could have a glass of water. The reaction was something similar to Oliver asking for more porridge. I did not get my water and I was too scared to ask again. We took off 90 minutes later.
The flight did not go well because after about one hour there was an announcement asking if there was a medical doctor onboard the plane. The use of the word medical is probably to stop a doctor of botany trying to treat a sick passenger. There was indeed a doctor onboard and there was a flurry of activity at the front of economy. Nothing more was said but a short while later I felt the plane change direction and I could feel my ears popping as we descended. Thinking ‘this is not good’ my concerns were proven correct when they announced that we were shortly landing in Cologne to disembark a sick passenger. Very sorry for the sick person but isn’t this another example of the joys of air travel. We descended towards the German runway but aborted the landing horribly late and rattling on full thrust we climbed back into the sky. Maybe the passenger has made a miracle recovery, maybe the doctor had healing hands. No the pilot just fucked up and we are doing a huge circle to see if he can make less of a hash of it this time.
We land safely and paramedics were onboard in a flash to remove the ailing lady. We did not leave in a flash because of course we now had to refuel. It is stupid o’clock when we land at Heathrow Terminal 4 and thankfully there are no long queues at passport control. I did not bother trying either of my UK passports at the electronic gates because neither work in the UK but they do in Europe and even Norway. A rather grumpy passport control man asked me why I had not used the machine so I explained that it was because it never even scans my face. The instant I place my passport on the glass, it says ‘seek assistance’. He scanned my passport and it seems that there is a very naughty person with the exact same name and date of birth. Until this criminal passes away, pops his clogs, becomes deceased, I am destined to queue up and be interrogated as to why I didn’t use the electronic gate. Please travel bloggers tell me something good about this example of travel.
At last I’m home. Did I mention that I love home even with an injured wife and a child that woke up just as we were dropping off to sleep.
If there is one thing that I hate more than travel it is travel at very short notice. I was minding my own business writing my blog, complaining about being stuck in Baku when my wife called to say that she had hurt her eye and needed me home urgently to help look after our son. I managed to get a ticket to the UK via Istanbul and departed for the airport immediately. Unfortunately I had just hand washed a load of pants and socks so they are now tied up in a plastic bag in my suitcase.
So I was bitching about still being in Baku and a couple of hours later I am sitting in a busy A320 with a change of planes and a nine hour journey ahead of me. Check in was mercifully quick and the airport fairly quiet (Sunday) so straight through immigration and up to the slightly weird Russian peasant themed restaurant. Time for lunch because I have a perilously short stopover in Istanbul before joining my flight for London.
Ok I am on the plane and it is not good news. It is a full flight and I am in an aisle seat next to a man who seems to be playing the how wide apart can I get my legs game. I can tell you that he is doing pretty well so far and he is half way into my meagre space. You have just got to love fellow passengers who take no notice of what they are told. Old wide legs decided to put his table down just before take off. He was told to close it and did so whilst grumbling only to put it straight back down and commence texting during take off. Seat belts are for sissy’s because that was soon discarded as well.
Ok we are in the air and I now have three hours next to this hairy moron. In economy the hot towels are really just damp pieces of paper but I do think that they are meant for freshening the hands and face. Maybe I have been wrong all this time and they are actually for cleaning the inside of your ears because that is what he did. Ok he has now discarded the soggy paper towel and is raking around with his fingers and inspecting the ear wax before flicking it onto the floor. Once again the romance of air travel and exposure to different cultures impresses me so much.
Food arrived and Mr wide legs has obviously decided to show off his skill at eating his entire meal with a spoon and his face a couple of centimetres above his tray. Total concentration shovelling it in and only lifting his head occasionally to push in large chunks of bread roll and noisily slurp red wine. He is an exceedingly efficient eater because mere mortals like me put in a fork full, chew, swallow and then repeat the process, whilst he just keeps shovelling everything and then filling his mouth with wine prior to chewing. Ok some of the food does fall back out of his mouth and there is some dribbling but it makes eating a quick process. Another useful lesson from my travels
We are coming in to land at Istanbul and the cabin crew are having some difficulties in getting people to put their seat belts on. It was in any case to no avail because one passenger lay down across three seats and seemed to be asleep with his head poking into the aisle as we landed. Maybe its the new AZAL brace position
Touch down and the seat belts are off as soon as the first tyre tread makes contact with the runway. Pushing, shoving and general bad behaviour ensued but the cabin crew had given up at this point. I have a very tight connection and I had to run to Turkish airways transfer at the other end of the airport to get my boarding card. Through the most lackadaisical security and down to my gate just in time. I notice that my boarding card says row 13 middle seat, how lovely! This will increase my interaction with the people of differing cultures either side of me and I will learn a lot and grow as a person.
Anyway I did not have to wait long and we are boarding the totally full A320 when they suddenly changed their minds and instructed us to leave the plane and return to departures. As soon as we had all sat down they then then told us to board the plane again without any explanation. Once they had us trapped in our seats and the door closed, they announced that there would be a delay of at least an hour. I was incredibly thirsty not having had a chance to buy a drink at the airport I politely asked if I could have a glass of water. The reaction was something similar to Oliver asking for more porridge. I did not get my water and I was too scared to ask again. We took off 90 minutes later.
The flight did not go well because after about one hour there was an announcement asking if there was a medical doctor onboard the plane. The use of the word medical is probably to stop a doctor of botany trying to treat a sick passenger. There was indeed a doctor onboard and there was a flurry of activity at the front of economy. Nothing more was said but a short while later I felt the plane change direction and I could feel my ears popping as we descended. Thinking ‘this is not good’ my concerns were proven correct when they announced that we were shortly landing in Cologne to disembark a sick passenger. Very sorry for the sick person but isn’t this another example of the joys of air travel. We descended towards the German runway but aborted the landing horribly late and rattling on full thrust we climbed back into the sky. Maybe the passenger has made a miracle recovery, maybe the doctor had healing hands. No the pilot just fucked up and we are doing a huge circle to see if he can make less of a hash of it this time.
We land safely and paramedics were onboard in a flash to remove the ailing lady. We did not leave in a flash because of course we now had to refuel. It is stupid o’clock when we land at Heathrow Terminal 4 and thankfully there are no long queues at passport control. I did not bother trying either of my UK passports at the electronic gates because neither work in the UK but they do in Europe and even Norway. A rather grumpy passport control man asked me why I had not used the machine so I explained that it was because it never even scans my face. The instant I place my passport on the glass, it says ‘seek assistance’. He scanned my passport and it seems that there is a very naughty person with the exact same name and date of birth. Until this criminal passes away, pops his clogs, becomes deceased, I am destined to queue up and be interrogated as to why I didn’t use the electronic gate. Please travel bloggers tell me something good about this example of travel.
At last I’m home. Did I mention that I love home even with an injured wife and a child that woke up just as we were dropping off to sleep.
27th May and stuck in Baku (Azerbaijan)
I should consider myself a lucky traveller because I sometimes stay at nice hotels and all funded by the company I work for. Wake up every morning in a King size bed with lovely crisp sheets and not have to worry about cooking or cleaning. Come home from work and all mess has been cleared up and even crisper whiter sheets back on the bed. A lovely shower and down to the restaurant for a company funded evening meal and glass of wine. I must have the dream job and should be grateful to receive even a small salary considering the luxury life I lead. What a load of crap! Day 17 away from my family, no young son waking full of energy, rattling the bars of his cot and climbing all over our bed smiling and laughing, not a care in the world. Now that is a great start to the day. Breakfast with the boy, porridge in his hair, giggling and looking forward to his day of playing with toys. Making rude noises that he immediately repeats and denying that I taught him how to do it! Toast for breakfast in the kitchen with the boy still in his high chair entertaining us. Nothing could be better! As for the evening meal, compare sitting alone, being served by waiters who pretend to like you and try desperately to remember your name. Ordering a severely overpriced glass of wine or should I say dribble and trying then failing to find something on the menu that I have not had before. This is what happened last night.
I worked until about eight o'clock and rather hungry after my usual Turkmenistan lunch on the ship consisting of a bowl of soup, raw fish and some bones. These large bones have fragments of meat and various ligaments attached and look as if they may have belonged to a dinosaur. Ok I digress so back to my lunch. The ships cook is a tall totally bald spooky man with a voice an octave too high and an Uncle Fester look about him. Sad to say but I think this gentleman has one less testicle than Hitler had and three less than Genghis Khan.
I should consider myself a lucky traveller because I sometimes stay at nice hotels and all funded by the company I work for. Wake up every morning in a King size bed with lovely crisp sheets and not have to worry about cooking or cleaning. Come home from work and all mess has been cleared up and even crisper whiter sheets back on the bed. A lovely shower and down to the restaurant for a company funded evening meal and glass of wine. I must have the dream job and should be grateful to receive even a small salary considering the luxury life I lead. What a load of crap! Day 17 away from my family, no young son waking full of energy, rattling the bars of his cot and climbing all over our bed smiling and laughing, not a care in the world. Now that is a great start to the day. Breakfast with the boy, porridge in his hair, giggling and looking forward to his day of playing with toys. Making rude noises that he immediately repeats and denying that I taught him how to do it! Toast for breakfast in the kitchen with the boy still in his high chair entertaining us. Nothing could be better! As for the evening meal, compare sitting alone, being served by waiters who pretend to like you and try desperately to remember your name. Ordering a severely overpriced glass of wine or should I say dribble and trying then failing to find something on the menu that I have not had before. This is what happened last night.
I worked until about eight o'clock and rather hungry after my usual Turkmenistan lunch on the ship consisting of a bowl of soup, raw fish and some bones. These large bones have fragments of meat and various ligaments attached and look as if they may have belonged to a dinosaur. Ok I digress so back to my lunch. The ships cook is a tall totally bald spooky man with a voice an octave too high and an Uncle Fester look about him. Sad to say but I think this gentleman has one less testicle than Hitler had and three less than Genghis Khan.
This rather odd man of dubious hygiene has a very limited menu i.e. it is pretty much the same each day. I am only guessing but I think the cooking process is something like this. Get a couple of large animal legs out of the fridge and boil them furiously for about five hours. Remove them from the pan, add potatoes and if you are really lucky some lentils to the stock, sprinkle with shards of bone and serve as soup. Sometimes the meat from the bone does not make an appearance but if it does it has been sautéed in copious quantities of cheap oil with a few onions thrown in for good measure. Despite five hours of boiling and then bubbling in oil, the meat is still pretty tough. One thing for sure, this animal had a hard life that involved climbing mountains or ranging prairies, it is the antithesis of Wagyu beef and probably died of natural causes. No massage has been involved in the preparation of this product! This meat, complete with all the oil is then put in a bowl and served cold along with equally cold claggy starchy spaghetti. The huge bones are then placed on the table in front of us. We all sit around one table wearing dirty smelly coveralls in the tiny mess room of the ship and the dining etiquette is as follows. Bowls of soup placed in front of us, everybody grabs handfuls of bread then feverishly and noisily slurp up the soup whilst cramming their mouths full of bread. This takes about 30 seconds and is all over whilst I am still adding pepper and salt to try and give it some flavour. I have stopped asking for bread because it is grabbed by a well meaning person with oily hands and passed to me. I do like a drop of olive oil and some balsamic with my bread but not used engine oil and bearing grease. They then tip some of the oily meat onto their plates add sticky spaghetti and shovel it in whilst dragging at the communal bones with their forks. I guess if one of them catches a disease then they all will get it. Remember, men used to tell their wives that they had not been unfaithful to them and their sexually transmitted disease was caught from a toilet seat well I wonder if sharing a dead animal could also be an excuse. Probably picked it up from some dirty bastards fork during lunch darling, not my fault, just take these tablets and you will be right as rain. Curiously there are nearly always two bowls of small raw fish, bathed in oil and sprinkled with onions. They are complete with heads and guts and I have not seen anybody eat them. Are they just for decoration? Eating one is probably like drinking your finger bowl thinking it is watery soup. Yes I did that in Korea once! You probably think that I am seriously exaggerating so on Tuesday I will take more photographs but here is one of a particularly poor lunch. Cold mash and raw fish. Cold mash with tomato sauce it is then. I didn't realise that the romantic travel blog writers much sought after experience of different cultures and foods would be like this. This is not a back packing gap year student nibbling a deep fried cricket at a street market and bombarding Instagram followers with how he or she is engaging with the local culture. Bullshit. I am engaging with the real local culinary and cultural differences and I am not sure that I particularly like them or have grown as a person for having experienced them. It is likely that I have made some friends but they are probably the new bacteria and parasites that are now resident in my guts.
Oh dear I seem to have digressed from my own digression and somehow managed to include sexually transmitted diseases so back to the point I was making. Yes I am hungry because of the previously described less than perfect lunch and possibly due to an infestation of intestinal worms that I could have picked up whilst eating the "same food as the locals and engaging with their culture". I doubt I have worms actually because the toxic anti parasitic intravenous drugs I had to endure in Venezuela nearly wiped me out never mind a bunch of worms. Ok whilst on the subject. Back packers seem to ignore the fact that people in third world countries die in their millions from food and water borne diseases that don't exist in Europe. I should know because having had amoebic dysentery I can assure you that it is not particularly clever to willingly expose yourself to these diseases. Mine was easily identified because I was incredibly ill and without swift medical intervention could easily have died of dehydration but this disease can just bide its time in your intestines showing no symptoms and then one day suddenly become active, perforate your gut and run riot throughout your body organs. My particular bugs have a habit of destroying the liver. I have done enough damage to that particular organ without having a load of parasites joining in. Ok before I do get back on track, there is a myth that you will be fine if you drink only bottled water. How does this work when I have bought big brand bottled water in Azerbaijan that turned out to be counterfeit and probably came from a rusty tap in an unhygienic basement. Bottled water in West Africa that says only "bottled at source". By the taste of it and the effect on my digestive system, the source was a flooded ditch with a dead wildebeest rotting in it. Hey gap year students writing so effusively about the joys of travel to remote places, how about some dormant intestinal parasites and a touch of malaria to start off your University studies. Its all a lot more serious than the Chlamydia you will no doubt catch during the period of your education.
Travel 26th May 2018 and still in (Baku Azerbaijan)
Well this is now well past being a joke and unusually for me, I am depressed. I need to be home for family reasons, the ship I was repairing is repaired and ready to go, I have a ticket for tonight's AZAL flight direct to Heathrow but my seat will be empty and I will be sitting at the hotel bar hoping that miraculously there is some tasty exciting dish that I have missed on the menu. I am going to be disappointed again. My planned three day visit is already at 16 days but I was full of hope when we made the dangerous journey to the shipyard. I did not shout at my driver when he lit up his camel shit cigarette and started texting whilst accelerating towards cars that were obviously braking. No Stevie was in a good mood because I only had to survive this journey, do a few hours of sea trials, get dropped off at the quayside, wave to the departing ship and head to the airport. Simple? No not in Baku it is not. Nothing is simple, nothing is what you expect and there is always a sting in the tail.
It seems that it is a holiday weekend so the authorities required are not available until Tuesday. Multi million pound ships can’t move because everybody is heading to the countryside for a holiday. People need holidays of course but ships don’t have holidays and they cost a fortune to keep idle so you cannot just shut down because it’s a bloody holiday. Azerbaijan, do you want foreign business?
Well this is now well past being a joke and unusually for me, I am depressed. I need to be home for family reasons, the ship I was repairing is repaired and ready to go, I have a ticket for tonight's AZAL flight direct to Heathrow but my seat will be empty and I will be sitting at the hotel bar hoping that miraculously there is some tasty exciting dish that I have missed on the menu. I am going to be disappointed again. My planned three day visit is already at 16 days but I was full of hope when we made the dangerous journey to the shipyard. I did not shout at my driver when he lit up his camel shit cigarette and started texting whilst accelerating towards cars that were obviously braking. No Stevie was in a good mood because I only had to survive this journey, do a few hours of sea trials, get dropped off at the quayside, wave to the departing ship and head to the airport. Simple? No not in Baku it is not. Nothing is simple, nothing is what you expect and there is always a sting in the tail.
It seems that it is a holiday weekend so the authorities required are not available until Tuesday. Multi million pound ships can’t move because everybody is heading to the countryside for a holiday. People need holidays of course but ships don’t have holidays and they cost a fortune to keep idle so you cannot just shut down because it’s a bloody holiday. Azerbaijan, do you want foreign business?
Travel 23rd May 2018 (Baku Azerbaijan)
My travelling since arriving in Baku on 13th May has been restricted to a perilous journey to the shipyard every morning and back again at night. As with most travel related activities there is nothing good about this process. I am collected from my hotel by the absolutely crazy driver of a lime green old Mercedes estate car with a badly cracked windscreen and he tries to kill me every day. I am confident that we will either smash into the back of another car or kill a pedestrian before I leave this country. Basic common sense is missing and he seems to revel in being the "Crazy Driver". Despite the fact that he is a heavy smoker with stained teeth and a terrible diet this is of no consequence because he will definitely die sitting in his car, probably with a cigarette in his mouth and whilst texting. Sorry I am wrong, he will not be sitting in his car because he refuses to wear a seatbelt so he may end up on the back seat of the car in front or a hundred meters up the road having swallowed a shedload of windscreen glass and gravel.
My travelling since arriving in Baku on 13th May has been restricted to a perilous journey to the shipyard every morning and back again at night. As with most travel related activities there is nothing good about this process. I am collected from my hotel by the absolutely crazy driver of a lime green old Mercedes estate car with a badly cracked windscreen and he tries to kill me every day. I am confident that we will either smash into the back of another car or kill a pedestrian before I leave this country. Basic common sense is missing and he seems to revel in being the "Crazy Driver". Despite the fact that he is a heavy smoker with stained teeth and a terrible diet this is of no consequence because he will definitely die sitting in his car, probably with a cigarette in his mouth and whilst texting. Sorry I am wrong, he will not be sitting in his car because he refuses to wear a seatbelt so he may end up on the back seat of the car in front or a hundred meters up the road having swallowed a shedload of windscreen glass and gravel.
The photograph on the left clearly shows the mixture of old and new with the magnificent old building on the left and the skyscrapers of Port Baku ahead. The centre photograph is my journey into work every morning and you can see the Flame Towers up on the hill. The third photograph is just to prove that the are still old style Lada cars on the road here. Below is a brief video of my morning drive along the boulevard. It is a slower version of an F1 start, with slip streaming, weaving and diving down the inside. We were well back on the grid but my driver took exception to being cut up by the white Kia so decided to dive down the inside into an impossibly small space despite the fact that White Kia man was indicating left at the time. It was close but crazy driver was happy and beaming with delight informed me that "I fuck him yes?". Unfortunately in Baku a car is a weapon and pride on the road is everything. It also leads to a huge number of deaths.
My Recent Travel 13th May 2018 (Baku Azerbaijan)
If you persevere and read my blog, you will note that I spend a lot of time travelling to and from Baku. Why Baku? Well it is one of the more advanced countries that has a Caspian Sea coastline and reasonable shipyard facilities. On this occasion I am here to look after the docking and upgrading of one of our vessels and I will be here for ten days. As you have no doubt worked out, I am an old man travelling and I have grown to hate the whole process. I love my job, I just hate the nonsense involved with travelling too and from it!
I left home reluctantly on Thursday 10th May. Gemini taxis know me very well now and only need to ask what terminal number I am going to. Joy, there was no queue at check in so a good omen for a quiet flight. No complaints about security, they have a difficult job to do but why do so many Muppets leave metal objects in their pockets so that it is all stop and they have to assume the hand in the air pose and have a good dose of radiation to boot. Ok my next security based gripe is people who do not remove their possessions from the plastic trays and stand there dressing or organising their handbags whilst everything is choked up back to the scanning machine. Pick up you possessions, stack your tray and go to the bloody tables you idiots.
I decided to visit the toilets before heading down to the gate and I was standing there at the urinal in a crowded toilet, minding my own business when I heard a familiar voice bellow “show us your cock”. Believe it or not this was a BP HSE man I used to work with in Baku and he was exceedingly drunk. After repeating his flashing request loudly a few more times, I washed my hands and left the gents rather red faced. I arrived at the gate and there he was so I could not be too rude and I had to sit near the slurring, swearing, monster that he becomes when inebriated. He was travelling with another BP employee who was trying quietly and diplomatically to suppress the offensive behavior. All to no avail and after rummaging in his rucksack for a while, scattering scrunched up receipts and used tissues on the floor he produced a half bottle of Johnny Walker Whisky and proceeded to finish it. I was very glad when boarding commenced and I could get away from him. I am going to name this next photograph "Heaven and Hell" and I will explain below.
If you persevere and read my blog, you will note that I spend a lot of time travelling to and from Baku. Why Baku? Well it is one of the more advanced countries that has a Caspian Sea coastline and reasonable shipyard facilities. On this occasion I am here to look after the docking and upgrading of one of our vessels and I will be here for ten days. As you have no doubt worked out, I am an old man travelling and I have grown to hate the whole process. I love my job, I just hate the nonsense involved with travelling too and from it!
I left home reluctantly on Thursday 10th May. Gemini taxis know me very well now and only need to ask what terminal number I am going to. Joy, there was no queue at check in so a good omen for a quiet flight. No complaints about security, they have a difficult job to do but why do so many Muppets leave metal objects in their pockets so that it is all stop and they have to assume the hand in the air pose and have a good dose of radiation to boot. Ok my next security based gripe is people who do not remove their possessions from the plastic trays and stand there dressing or organising their handbags whilst everything is choked up back to the scanning machine. Pick up you possessions, stack your tray and go to the bloody tables you idiots.
I decided to visit the toilets before heading down to the gate and I was standing there at the urinal in a crowded toilet, minding my own business when I heard a familiar voice bellow “show us your cock”. Believe it or not this was a BP HSE man I used to work with in Baku and he was exceedingly drunk. After repeating his flashing request loudly a few more times, I washed my hands and left the gents rather red faced. I arrived at the gate and there he was so I could not be too rude and I had to sit near the slurring, swearing, monster that he becomes when inebriated. He was travelling with another BP employee who was trying quietly and diplomatically to suppress the offensive behavior. All to no avail and after rummaging in his rucksack for a while, scattering scrunched up receipts and used tissues on the floor he produced a half bottle of Johnny Walker Whisky and proceeded to finish it. I was very glad when boarding commenced and I could get away from him. I am going to name this next photograph "Heaven and Hell" and I will explain below.
Heaven is of course the fact that I have three vacant seats to stretch out on and hell is to the left in the form of a hyperactive screaming child. I know children have to travel and I do feel sorry for the parents trying desperately to keep them quiet but yes it is another reason that I do not like travelling. If it wasn't for the fact that it was a girl it could have been Damian from the Omen or maybe it was Regan the head rotating girl from the Exorcist.
My next moan is not directly about travel although on this occasion it did happen during travel so I feel justified in writing about it. A man went to the toilet and made faces at the little girl as he passed. When he came out he went to do the same but was faced with a large white boob that the mother had just released from her bra. He looked away immediately and headed back to his seat but she stared at him as if he was some sort of pervert. Breast feeding in public, no problem, its normal and the majority of men will notice (yes we have eyes) and look away quickly in order not to make the mother feel uncomfortable but being glared at for having accidentally seen something is unacceptable.
Having been so happy to have three seats to myself, I lifted up the arm rests and tried to get comfortable but without a pillow it was pretty much impossible. I did however sleep for about three hours but in such an awkward position that I could hardly move and it was a painful process getting my body back to its normal shape. Anyway we are approaching Baku and heading towards dawn and it always seems spectacular on this flight.
My next moan is not directly about travel although on this occasion it did happen during travel so I feel justified in writing about it. A man went to the toilet and made faces at the little girl as he passed. When he came out he went to do the same but was faced with a large white boob that the mother had just released from her bra. He looked away immediately and headed back to his seat but she stared at him as if he was some sort of pervert. Breast feeding in public, no problem, its normal and the majority of men will notice (yes we have eyes) and look away quickly in order not to make the mother feel uncomfortable but being glared at for having accidentally seen something is unacceptable.
Having been so happy to have three seats to myself, I lifted up the arm rests and tried to get comfortable but without a pillow it was pretty much impossible. I did however sleep for about three hours but in such an awkward position that I could hardly move and it was a painful process getting my body back to its normal shape. Anyway we are approaching Baku and heading towards dawn and it always seems spectacular on this flight.
Let’s be honest, the so called Dreamliner is still a pretty uncomfortable way to travel but those curved wings are beautiful