Blogs from Turkmenistan, Asia - page 6

Thursday April 12. We arrived in Turkmenbashi at 4.30 am. It was to be 8 hours before I competed all the procedures; welcome to Turkmenistan the wierdest country in Asia. In the guide book it is called a Stalinist Dysneyland but I felt it had a large dose of Hollywood. My agent/guide arrived, Oleg, and dealt with the endless paperwork. That night we stayed in a good hotel to the north of Turkmenbashi. Friday April 13. Oleg took me and the bike in his Toyota Surf back to the city and over the mountains behind before I began cycling. As I pedalled he drove about 10 metres behind. We had to cover 600 kms to Ashgabat in three days to maintain the schedule and with the state of the roadsit became apparent that this was ... read more

After the hellish border crossing experience we drove almost all day then finally getting to our bush camp near the Kow Ata underground thermal pools. i noticed there are many checkpoints everywhere we got stopped so many times I lost count, when we stopped at a market to shop for dinner, I was surprised to find out there are pork sashylik here, and our guide Ata said they are not really strict here, they are a secular country. It was very windy at the camp and took lots of effort to set up our tents. The next morning we went to the KOW- ATA underground thermal pools, it wasn't really super but a nice experience nevertheless, and we were befriended by a lot of locals and one even warned us not to go so far ... read more

Please see my newblog at mlungu.civiblog.org it's a blog dedicated to civil society and international understanding. Please send everyone who may be interested in reading about my peace corps experience the following link. mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org mlungu.civiblog.org ... read more

I have received word this week about my Peace Corps assignment. I will be heading to Turkmenistan on September 29. Due to a complete police state and US government policy towards employees keeping blogs it might be difficult for me to keep this blog up (something I haven't done since January anyway!). If you are interested in receiving emails from my about my work as a public health volunteer in Turkmenistan please drop me an email and I will include you in either this blog, or more realistically a mass email which seems to be the only way to go about things. Many countries, China for example, hire many internet censors to work on monitoring the web traffic which moves through the country. This applies to websites visited and also emails written, espcially blogs which are ... read more

We spend the entire day in and around the City of Love, doing its sights, smells and sounds. Our guide for the day is Gholuya, an old Russian woman from Ashgabat. We start with a tour to the newly constructed gigantic Azadi mosque which is more or less a copy of the Haga Sofia in Istanbul. Unfortunately it is not that popular with the locals, since the construction work was marred by some accidents costing some workers their lives. The big hall under the gigantic dome is covered in red carpets and gives a very peaceful impression at this hour. We continute to the main square in front of the parliament which has a number of interesting sights around it. Apart from the parliament building there is a similar capitolium styled buliding with a golden dome ... read more