The Flight to Ashgabat
We flew with Lufthansa, and our itinerary was Jakarta - Singapore - Frankfurt - Baku - Ashgabat, which (including transit time) summed up to 36 hours of travel. Tiring? Absolutely!! :D

We arrived at 1 a.m and was taken straight to Nissa Hotel, which is one of the nicer hotels in Ashgabat. If you should come to Ashgabat there are two other hotels I recommend you to stay in: President Hotel and Grand Turkmen Hotel.

mobil2 Turkmenistan Flag hotelview1

First Day Impressions

- Weather
We came in the spring season. The temperature was around 0-10 degrees Celcius, cloudy and windy. For me it was lovely, but for my wife, it was horrible :P The weather is warming up though, and they say it gets up to 40 degrees in the summer.

- Language
The official language here is Turkmen (not Turkish, nor “Turkmenish” :P), but because Turkmenistan was under the Soviet Union for some time, a lot of people speak Russian also. You will find that most people speak both Russian and Turkmen. Here are some simple Russian to get by on your first day:

Hi! : Privet!
Good morning : Dobroye Utra
Good afternoon : Dobriy Den
Good evening : Dobriy Vecher
Thanks : Spasiba
Please / You’re welcome : Pojaluysta
How much? : Skolko?

- People
Personally, until now I have a hard time correlating names with the sex of its owner. On my first day, I mistaken “Gulya” for a man, when she is really a woman. I then learned that it’s easier when you know their last name. Kurbanova, Abramova, etc. are women names; while Annamuradov and Mamedov are men names. 89% of Turkmens are moslem, you can also tell by their names (Mukhamedov, Muradov, etc), but they don’t intensively practice the Islamic teachings. From all the people I’ve met, I’ve learned that none of them practice the daily prayers, nor the Friday prayers. You will find that they eat pork, ham, bacon which is widely sold; and drink beer and vodka. I then learned that this was because Turkmenistan declared independence in 1994, and most people have forgotten the Islamic teachings, and even if they do know, its very hard to switch from one culture to another, which is understandable. It’s also a common thing here for people to shake hands when they meet.

- Finance and Banking
There are no EDC (Electronic Data Capture) machines, no ATMs (Auto Teller Machines) so you can forget your platinum visa or mastercard :) The only thing you can pay with here is Turkmen Manats ™. Now, here’s something important that you should know. At the airport, you will see that the official exchange rate is 5200TM to the US Dollar. But outside, there’s also a unofficial (black market) rate, where you can exchange 1 USD for about 23,800TM. You can easily exchange it at local markets/ supermarkets, but if you go to banks, they will give you the official rate. You choose ;)

- Food
Bread, I guess, is the source of carbohydrate. At supermarkets, you have to ask the girl at the counter if you want to buy rice. The food here is spicy, as in they use a lot of spices, but necessarily hot. You can find many Russian restaurants, Turkish restaurants, and of course Chinese Restaurants. One good meal at a restaurant would cost around 80,000 TM.

- Entertainment
Discos, Pubs, Cinemas, everything’s available. Although it’s important to know that all movies playing in cinemas are dubbed in Russian, and not subtitled. This includes VCDs and DVDs, they’re all dubbed in Russian. Television channels, you can get many channels, depending on where you point your antenna.

It’s a small, clean and quiet city. Overall, I guess it wasn’t as bad as I expected to be :) Will post some pics sometime later.