The moment that broke the Nomad's back!

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  Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Ruthless Thugs, Crooked Police, Helpful Fairies, a breakdown in translation, and the story of how it all panned out!

So life and travel in Central Asia would make any sane person want to pull out their hair Britney style!. Since I am "follically challenged" all I can do to save myself from insanity here is to try my best to share some of the absurdity of it all.

The Low Down:
So for the last few years I have been using an Internet based cultural exchange website that connects travelers with locals in a friendly way. It is not a dating website! It gives travelers an opportunity to experience a foreign country in a unique way. The website has nothing but good intentions in mind. So anyway I have used this site to make interesting connections all over the world. Up to this point I have had nothing but amazing things to say about the experiences I have had! We got in contact with a local Kyrgyzstan fellow via the site named Talay Omurov. We gave him a call and asked him if he was around and if he wanted to meet up and hang out. He told us he was free and would swing down in 20 minutes to pick us up. After he did that he drove us around for a bit and showed us the city and a few of the local sites. I should mention at this point that we never really had a good feeling about this guy, but he was the only person we knew in all of Kyrgyzstan so we tolerated him. We gave him a call early in the morning on our second day and he cheerfully came down to where we were and helped us as a Russian translator. After we were done with that he told us his family wanted to meet us. Of course we said sure, and met his mom an uncle at a local restaurant. It was a nice experience! They even paid for our food which oddly enough in true Central Asian oddness was grilled horse. After lunch he went even further out of his way by helping us find a new place to stay. He told us he could find us a one bedroom apartment with a kitchen for the same price that we were paying for a cheap run down hotel room. Since we were planing on having a lot of days to kill in Bishkek while waiting for our visas we thought it sounded like a great idea!

The moment it all got FUNKY on us
After being in town for 3 nights and seeing the guy on and off over the past few days we did not think anything of it when he called us and asked us if we wanted to hang out. A few minutes after his phone call he was knocking on our door. He was acting very strange from the second I opened the door. Even stranger was that for the first time since we meet him he had 2 other guys with him. He brought us to the local bowling alley. For some reason his "friends" never got out of the car and then out of the blue he told us that he had to leave for work and would come back later. We thought this was a little weird that he had to work since he called us to hang out????? Before he left he told us that he need to borrow $100  from us for work. We of course told him we did not have that kind of money. He finally left after a bit of going back and forth and us telling him we did not have $100 and had no way of getting it. The moment he left Special Agent Weiners figured out what really was going on........... He was dropping us off somewhere out of the way so he could go back to our place and steal our things. For some reason Weiners was a lot more certain then I was that that was what was happening. We then decided that even if that was what was going on there was no way we were going to beat them back to our place, and even if we could we did not want to have a run in with 3 guys in a dark street. We then decided to wait 30 minutes or so before we went back to access the damage. The thing is that we knew he was friends with the owner of the apartment and had potential access to a spare key. 

We had everything we owned in that room!  Just to name a few: our passports, my $1000 camera, all my picture Cd's from the last 10 months, Weiner's camera, our credit cards, over $200 in cash, Ipods, etc.... After waiting about 40 minutes we were certain they would be long gone with our things and we could safely walk back. WRONG!!! Our so called "friend" was sitting in a car right out side the apartment door! And at this point he had somehow recruited another person into the mix. So they had 4 of them in total at this point. One waiting in the car as a look out, one standing at our door step, and the other 2 of them waiting in the dark alley leading to the door. They were obviously waiting for the extra key to arrive. Believe it or not, they were as shocked to see us as we were to see them! The guy we knew came straight up to us and told us aggressively that we needed to pay him $100 for his time. He told us we needed to pay him for his services and that his time was not for free. So there we were......... in the middle of a dark street, in a strange country, in the middle of situation that we had nothing to do with! I suspected the guy was into something shady and possibly a drug dealer from the beginning. My guess looking back on the situation is that he owed these guys $100? I am giving him the benefit of the doubt by saying I don't think it was his intention from the first day we meet him to rob us. I am thinking he got himself in a bad spot and was going to use us to get himself out. Anyway there we were- FUCKED!!! The first thing we did when we realized what was about to happen was run in the direction of the nearest intersection to find a well lit public place to call the police. Our major problem at this point was that no one wanted to help us! We ended up going into 2 different stores with no luck at all in getting someone to call the police for us. Finally we went to a restaurant were a gay guy was willing to help us. He walked with us to a near by police station. Luckily someone at the station spoke a little English.

After the "Pigs" got involved
We ended up going back to the apartment in a van full of at least 8 cops. In the "developed world" one would think we were safe. Not here my friends, we were in a potentially worse situation then the original one. The cops in this part of the world are worse then the bad guys!  My guess as to why so many cops were with us was that they were coming to see what they could get out of the situation. Luckily for us the original bad guys had not had the opportunity to go inside. I assume that they were not expecting us to come back and when we did and ran off they did the same. Luckily for us the only thing that became "booty" out of the whole situation was my $100 Swiss Army knife. One of the cops helped himself to it as a treat. At this point we did not care, the only thing we wanted to do was get the hell out of there! The whole time we were scared that the guys would come back and that they would all gang up against us. 

Post the "Pigs" and our introduction to "Man Land"
So we knew above all we had to get out of that situation fast. Luckily we were somehow able to sneak away in the mist of all the chaos. Our new friend "the gay fellow" who was trying to help us from the beginning took us by taxi to the nearby Hyatt hotel. I am only mentioning the guys preference for "sausage" because it plays a part in the story. Once we got to the hotel we were shocked to find out that they wanted to charge us $255 for one night. You got to realize this is a poor country and that is just crazy! I think that price had something to do with our dirty clothes, our strange new friend, and the crazy look in our eyes. There we were.......It felt like we were stuck in a bad twilight zone episode -on repeat! We were in the middle of a dangerous city, at some crazy time of the night, with a car full of potentially dangerous people looking for us, and no place to sleep! As our last resort we ended up at the Bishkek gay community center/gay shelter? Our new friend that was helping us told us we could stay the night there for free. Without a doubt this turned out to be one of the strangest place I have ever found myself. I was all stressed out at this point and really out of my element. It needs to be  mentioned that by no means do I have a problem with gay people. I studied theater in college for God's Sake! But at this point I had had enough and the last thing I was going to find amusing was a house full of "Divas." But for some reason Weiners was loving it! She was even entertaining them doing Cher impressions??? The entire place was decorated with pictures of grown men doing naughty things to each other. I am almost sure a few of the guys living there were suffering from aids. All I wanted to do was get some sleep! Unfortunately they wanted to hang out with us, drink vodka, all the while telling us how "hot" they thought Tom Cruise and Melvin Gibson are, and what they would like to do with them. I need to mention in all fairness these people in the shelter ended up being some of the nicest most helpful people that we have meet in Central Asia. 

After the Sun came up
So here we are today! We called the US embassy and moved to a safe guest house. From here we don't know what I will do next? Looks like we are both throwing in the towel on Central Asia. I am trying to get on a plane heading to Istanbul, Turkey. The amount of pleasure we have gotten from the amount of hassle in Central Asia is just not worth it. Like always everyday is an adventure and there are many more to come! -The Jonald.
(I am typing this in a rush so I have not had time to edit it and add pics, Check back later for that!)

What did I learn from all of this?
If anything the situation taught me how vulnerable I am out here in this foreign world. When you are a stranger in a foreign land and do not speak the language you truly are at the mercy of the people around you. After a the time I have spent traveling over the last few years I have meet some amazing people. I would say that 98% of the people I meet have had nothing but my best intentions at hand, but every single time when you come to the reality that their are bad people in the world it is a gut wrenching experience! 

"that there
that's not me
i go
where i please
i walk through walls
i float down the life
i'm not here
this isn't happening
i'm not here?" ~Radio Head (How To Disappear Completely)

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