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Chuck's Fantastic Voyage
WHew! After a country-hopping flight from Portland to New York to London to Amsterdam to Berlin to Prague to Istanbul and, finally, to Ashgabat, I have arrived! I am in Turkmenistan! The porter at the airport showed me the inside of his 1980 Chevy sedan; it seemed clean enough, so I hopped in. The porter, whose name was, I think, Mostorwaka, gladly put my bags in a separate "baggage truck" and I informed him that I wanted to see the beaches of Turkmenistan, that I wanted to go swimming immediately!
The porter kindly drove me over the pot-holed suburban wasteland of Ashgabat until we arrived at what appeared to be a public bath house. I informed him that, No, I did not need a bath, that indeed my smell was still fresh, and that to please take me at once to a lake or river or other place with a sandy beach and maybe a Margarita stand.
So we drove through the night for about 4 hours, heading direction South, I think, and when the first cracklight of dawn hit, I noticed the "baggage truck" wasn't behind us anymore.
I asked the porter, "Hey, where are my bags?"
He said, "Bags are at hotel in city."
And I said, "But I need my swim trunks!"
And he said, "Shwim?"
So I said, Fine, that I would purchase a pair of swim trunks at the first supermarket chainstore we found.
At a little town called Ghentis, the porter stalled the engine on purpose. I could tell he was stalling the engine because he was not pushing on the gas pedal. He told me to get out. He told me, "End of line." And so I got out. This porter was terrible, so I would find myself a new porter. My old porter drove away and I walked into Ghentis to find a new porter.
Ghentis is known all over Turkmenistan for its lovely beaches. I sat on the sand of one such beach near this beguiling petrol station. There was no lake, but there was plenty of beach. I took off my buttoned-up shirt, rolled it into a ball, and sunned myself for thirty minutes per side. After about an hour, I got hungry and decided I would like to eat some Iranian food. Judging from the setting sun, I'm pretty sure I was walking south over the beaches of Ghentis, across the border and into Iran.
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