Ashgabat, Part 2 - The wonderful

Saturday, 28 Nov 09, our 2nd day in Ashgabat. Today was Eid-ul-Adha in Turkmenistan (which they also called Bayram) Unfortunately we slept like logs due to a long day before and woke up so late, so despite having 2 repeated Eid days to celebrate, we did not celebrate anything at all (the first time in my life not celebrating Eid!). Our baggage still hasn’t arrived, so we needed to get some more basic stuff, clothes and milk among others. Milk rapidly depletes for us since not only the kids, I too drink a lot of milk for the baby in my tummy.

We went to the Russian Bazaar by about noon, the weather here was colder than Istanbul… Here we saw some sports clothes which bear the name ‘Turkmenistan’ on it. I quickly grabbed a pair for me and few more for the kids, partly for immediate wearing, partly as souvenir. Then we saw beautiful fabrics which the locals normally wear as long dresses. In fact, the Turkmen women generally wear long dresses, not many wear pants. I have one of these bought by my husband earlier, and I planned to buy some more for myself and close family & friends, but maybe later… We also stopped by for lunch, typically bread and meat. Not much rice here.

After lunch we continued looking around the shops but did not buy much. With our baggage still a question mark, the last thing we needed was additional stuff to put in the baggage! We just ended up going back to our transit house and rested until the night…

Sunday, 29 Nov 09, still no news on our baggage, but life goes on. That morning we went to a theme park in Ashgabat city. A good trip for the kids indeed. So they went on the bumper car, Ferris wheel, mini car ride, games arcade, folklore museum (I call it by that name, don’t really know what that is) and we also took photos around the place.

Our days end early here, after a late lunch, we returned to our house and just stayed there til the day ends.

Monday, 30 Nov 09, in the morning we were joined by another Malaysian Petronas staff, En Ithnin on his transit from Turkmenbashy back to Malaysia. And after 3 days, our baggage finally arrived! Alhamdulillah… We were supposed to fly to Turkmenbashy on Sunday night, but luckily we managed to change the ticket to Tuesday morning without extra charges. Well, it wasn’t exactly our fault anyway that the baggage arrived late. Since all was good and well, we took this last day in Ashgabat to tour around any other interesting places here, before heading to our ultimate destination, Turkmenbashy.

We started with a visit to one of the locals who had an ‘Open House’ for Eid. She was Dr Ruli, the doctor in charge of Petronas staff here. This was an interesting visit as I had the experience to see the local people up close, the local celebration and the local festive food. Thanks Dr Ruli for inviting us!

Then we headed to somewhere a bit outskirt of the city. This place had a big grand mosque and tomb of the previous President and his deceased family members.

After prayer and some photo-sessions, we headed to another tourist destination in Ashgabat, the cable car. The ride was cheap, costed 2 Manat (RM 2.50) per pax, 2-way. The ride was long and passed over a large hilly yet desert-like area. That day was super cold and very foggy up the hills, so not much could be seen from inside the cable car. Nevertheless the ride was fun, particularly for the children.

After that we headed back to the Russian Bazaar, for some final window shopping prior departure the next day. Then we waited at the Grand Turkmen Hotel for our driver to send us back to the transit house. The day ended with repacking of our baggage to include some of the clothes and necessities we bought here.

That was the end of our holiday in Ashgabat. It was a fun and eye-opening experience to see another country, its people, culture and lifestyle. We were then all geared for the longer stay at Turkmenbashy…