[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] The Amazing Race 13, Episodes 8 and 9

[Edward Hasbrouck]

Sunday, 16 November 2008
The Amazing Race 13, Episode 8

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001575.html

Delhi (India) - Almaty (Kazakhstan)

Kazakhstan and the rest of the former USSR are hard (albeit rewarding)  
places for travel, as the racers find, but for very different reasons  
than in India. This week in Almaty, (older pre-independence maps may  
show the Russified name "Alma Ata"), The Amazing Race 13 came down to  
a contest between Dan and Andrew the frat boys' troubles with the  
language barrier, and Terence the vegetarian's difficulty forcing  
himself to stomach a Kazakh feast of mutton.

I was in Almaty in 1992, just after independence, before Chevron  
arrived and the oil money started to come in -- and before Borat, the  
only thing any of the racers had heard about Kazakhstan. When I was  
there, tourists were a novelty, and a welcome sign of the opening up  
of a country formerly colonized by Russia and closed off its overlords  
in Moscow from the world outside the USSR.

Today, Americans driving around Almaty are probably assumed to be oil  
workers -- rich partners of a dictatorship different from, but no  
better than, the Soviet one (and including many of the same people at  
the top), that is looting the country and keeping the oil wealth for  
itself and its cronies. As such, English-speaking foreigners are  
considered fair game for price gouging unless and until they can  
somehow dissociate themselves from local people's assumptions about  
who they are.

Getting beyond such a stereotype isn't easy, and may not be possible  
at all if you have no way to communicate who you really are. The  
presumption that any American on the street is a military contractor,  
CIA agent, oil worker, or some other sort of partner of the local  
elite -- a reasonable assumption in many countries where such people  
far outnumber American tourists -- can make travel more difficult, and  
potentially dangerous, than it might be in places where the US  
government is hated, but individual Americans are welcomed.

We had introductions to local people in Almaty and some other places  
in Russia and Ukraine, a couple of whom were professional  
interpreters. But elsewhere in the former USSR, or when we weren't  
with our friends, the language barrier was surprisingly high. There's  
more teaching and use of English today, but things have changed only a  
little: "It was definitely one of the toughest cities [on the route of  
The Amazing Race 13] to communicate, because there was not a lot of  
English," said Dan and Andrew this week.

In my experience, the places where it is most difficult to communicate  
have been places where most people are illiterate, so one can't resort  
to a phrasebook or have an English-speaker (at a hotel front desk, for  
example) write down your destination in the local language to show to  
taxi drivers or people on the street. That's my standard tactic in  
places where I can't read the local language, like China and the  
Arabic-speaking world.

Kazakhstan is still literate (the dismantling of Soviet public  
services has affected the quality of health care more than that of  
primary education), and the racers' clues included the names of the  
places they needed to go. Their problem was different: that neither  
any of the racers nor any of their drivers appeared to have any maps,  
and almost nobody on the streets spoke English.

In most of the world, English is the most common second language, and  
it is relatively unusual for college graduates not to have at least  
basic reading knowledge of written English -- enough, crucially, to be  
able to understand and translate a written address or the name of a  
landmark. It's different, though, in Kazakhstan: There is no ethnic or  
linguistic majority, and the link language between speakers of other  
local languages remains Russian, even after the breakup of the USSR.  
So most native speakers of Kazakh, Uighur, etc. learn Russian in  
school. On the other hand, ethnic Russians who wanted to stay in  
Kazakhstan after independence, and not be regarded as foreigners or  
colonialist bigots, have been under pressure to learn to speak at  
least some Kazakh. English is, at best, a third language for any of  
these first-language groups, despite recognition of its international  
importance and value.

Having been in other places where you can always find someone who  
speaks enough English to help with directions, Andrew and Dan  
erroneously conclude that, "These are horrible people - no one wants  
to help". More likely they had no idea what the angry foreigners were  
shouting at them from their vehicle, although they would probably have  
tried to help if they had been approached with a smile.  
Notwithstanding the unprecedented global hegemony of English, there  
really are parts of the world where you can find a sizable crowd of  
educated, literate people on a the streets of a cosmopolitan big city,  
none of whom know any English. Be prepared!

The chances that people will be able to help you find your way if they  
have limited English (and perhaps only a reading, not speaking,  
knowledge of English) are often vastly improved by even a crude map.  
But availability of maps varies: Police states, in particular, often  
prohibit the production or public sale of detailed or accurate maps  
that might be used by domestic or foreign enemies of the state. And in  
some of these places where access to maps is highly restricted, few  
ordinary people have even rudimentary map-reading skills.

Soviet city and public transit maps (in Cyrillic, of course) used to  
be very good, and surprisingly easy to find. But post-Soviet  
cartographers have, understandably, been put to work on more  
profitable endeavors, like mapping the oil fields. Little of the oil  
money has trickled down, so there's much more money to be made  
importing luxury goods for the local kleptocracy than in local  
production of mass-market goods. Ordinary Almaty city-dwellers just  
aren't an attractive market, and a lack of up-to-date local maps is  
just one symptom of that problem. Almaty never had many tourists, the  
political capitol has moved to the new city of Astana, and these days  
most foreign visitors to Almaty are oil workers with private guides  
and/or local "minders", not independent travellers using public  
transit or trying to find their own way around town. If you can, get a  
map before you arrive: In a place with a severe language barrier, I  
often find a good map makes more difference than a poor guidebook.

The racers get little chance to enjoy Almaty, whose most obvious  
attraction may be the hiking trails into the mountains. Imagine a  
setting like Denver, where the steppe (plains) meets the mountains,  
but with peaks almost twice the height of the Colorado Front Range. We  
took a city bus to the edge of town, then spent a delightful day  
walking in the foothills near where the racers got their clues  
delivered by falconers in "Mongol" costumes.

Another joy of Kazakhstan, as of all of Central Asia, is the cuisine,  
which centers on the meat of the fat-tailed sheep (the tail fat is a  
delicacy for which they are bred) raised in those hills. To "fast  
forward" ahead, the racers have to eat a feast of boiled mutton. As a  
confirmed sheep-eater, I'd take that as a reward, not a challenge. My  
favorite Central Asian restaurant (the Uzbekistan in Hollywood)  
recently closed, and if anyone knows where in North America to find  
authentic "plov", especially of the Uighur variety, please let me know  
in the comments to this blog entry. But it's a lot to ask of of  
Terence, who hasn't eaten meat in 15 years. He "does the right thing"  
and tries, but fails and is eliminated at the end of the episode.

If you are served something you find revolting, keep in mind that if  
others are eating it, it probably isn't poisonous. You might find you  
like it! And if you can't or really don't want to eat some category of  
food, even inadvertently, plan ahead: Find someone (in the departure  
lounge or on the plane, if not earlier) to write down, "I can't eat  
kumquats", or meat, or milk, or whatever, in the local language(s) on  
a pocket-sized card. Keep it simple, and don't complicate things by  
trying to explain your reasons. Just say, "I can't" and people will  
assume it's an allergy, medical requirement, or religious  
proscription. Show people the card before you order a meal or buy  
food, and they will do their best to respect your needs.

[continued below]

=====

Sunday, 23 November 2008

The Amazing Race 13, Episode 9

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001579.html

Almaty (Kazakhstan) - Moscow (Russia) - Zhukovsky (Russia) - Moscow (Russia)

Travel continues to have many common features throughout the countries  
that once constituted the "Soviet Union". Dual prices for foreigners  
and locals, and difficulties in communication and navigation, which  
plagued the contestants in The Amazing Race 13 in Kazakhstan --  
especially Andrew and Dan -- continued to cause problems for them when  
the race moved on to Russia.

The problems began, as they so often do, as soon as they arrived at  
Sheremetyevo Airport. It may have improved in recent years -- anyone  
passed through lately and care to comment? -- but SVO still has a  
fearsome reputation, at least at one time fully deserved and rivalled  
only by JFK in New York, for baggage theft (as at JFK, by organized  
gangs of corrupt baggage handlers and customs and security inspectors)  
and outrageous overcharging of visitors by taxi drivers.

The racers don't lose their luggage (stay tuned for the next episode),  
since they tend to travel with only carry-on bags whenever possible.  
But they are quoted the equivalent of more than US$100 for a ride from  
the airport into the city.

Without a local escort and negotiator or a prearranged airport  
transfer, and without speaking Russian, that's probably unavoidable.  
Moscow's incomparable Metro (subway) is clean, fast, comfortable, and  
reaches everywhere you are likely to want to go except the main  
international airport. And the taxi mafia probably wouldn't let a  
driver take a newly arriving tourist into the city for the "local"  
fare, even if the driver wanted to.

But this problem is so much worse at Sheremetyevo than anywhere else  
that the racers should have ditched their airport taxis at the site of  
the first challenge, and gotten other cabs that aren't accustomed to  
such extravagant overcharging. If they weren't in a race and didn't  
want to be taken for "fat cat" capitalists, it would have been better  
to get around by foot, bicycle, or public transit once they made it  
into the city, since foreign business people invariably travel by taxi  
or private car.

The racers had trouble flagging down cabs, but there's a trick: In  
Russia, as I explain in "The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the  
World", you don't hail a ride by holding your arm up the way you do in  
the USA. You hold your arm out and down at an angle away from your  
body, with your palm towards your body and your fingers held together  
and waving, as though beckoning the wheels of the cab in toward the  
curb at your feet.

Another way to deal with differential prices is to find or hire a  
local person -- even one with whose English is minimal -- to show you  
around, introduce you (and explain that you are a tourist and not a  
business person), and negotiate prices. Dual prices for locals and  
foreigners are an enduring legacy of Intourist hard-currency prices  
for foreigners, and most people in the former USSR feel they are  
justified by foreigners' wealth. It's a waste of time to try to insist  
on paying the "local price" for, say, a cab ride in a situation like  
that. But a local guide should be able to get you a substantially  
lower price than you would pay on your won, somewhere between the  
"local" price and the "foreign plutocrat" price..

I strongly suspect that any team that had befriended someone in the  
departure lounge or on the flight, and arranged to hire one of their  
acquaintances (perhaps a student looking to practice their English) as  
their escort for this leg of the race, would have found their way so  
much more quickly as to win this leg of the race with ease, and saved  
enough money through the ability of their escort to negotiate lower  
cab fares for the day as to more than make up the price of the escort.

Not having done that, and keeping their airport taxi all day, Andrew  
and Dan got hit with a bill at the finish line for hundreds of dollars  
more than they had. Luckily for them, the taxi driver eventually gave  
up (probably because of the television cameras) and went away without  
beating them up, holding their passports hostage for the fare, or  
calling the police. Even more luckily, the producers of the race  
imposed no penalty (although perhaps they will at the start of the  
next episode).

It's not just that the frat boys didn't ask or negotiate the the price  
before they got into the cab, as one always should, but that they kept  
going long after they knew they wouldn't be able to pay. The result,  
sadly, will be to encourage that driver, and everyone else who hears  
about the incident, to think that every tourist is a deadbeat who  
deserves to be ripped off in return.

In Moscow, unlike Almaty, there are enough foreigners and enough  
visitors from the rest of Russia to support local production of city  
maps. And the city is enough of a destination for foreign tourists for  
a wide selection of guidebooks and tourist maps to be published in  
Europe and the USA. Especially after learning in Almaty how hard it  
might be to find local maps, there was really no excuse for any of the  
racers to leave the airport in Moscow without first procuring a map.  
That's a lesson for us all: There's always a temptation to hurry out  
of the airport to experience a new country or city as soon as  
possible. But unless the only bus is about to leave, it's worth taking  
the time to check for information -- maps, city guides, hotel booking  
services, and the like -- before hitting the city.

I'd be remiss if I didn't follow these discouraging words with a note  
that I was shown warm and generous hospitality in Russia and the  
former Soviet Union. Independent travel in this region is rarely easy  
unless you have local contcats or pay through the nose. But especially  
outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, it can be not only affordable but  
fascinating and rewarding. More on that next week....

Bon voyage!

Edward

-- 

Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214