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A day in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan)
This is a weird place; I understand the Lonely Planet refers to it as cross between Vegas and Pyongyang; to me it feels like you're wandering through an architects model; there are hardly any other people to be seen except the cleaners who look after the gardens and sweep the streets, to be fair though there are some stunning buildings and there's no graffiti and no drunken yobos. They don't allow data services not even GPRS and I've noticed texts can quite often take a long time to deliver - I'd guess they're reading a selection on the way out.
We have the first piece of bad news today; Anne used the rest day to go for an X-Ray of the ankle that has been "bothering" her since the accident back in Turkey and it turns out that it's broken. She intends to stay with us for as long as possible but clearly before we get to the tough stuff in Tajikistan she'll have to leave - a pity it won't be just her partner Alex who'll miss her.
We take a tour in the morning and go up the famous statue that rotates to always face the sun, in the afternoon we wander round the Russian market, which is excellent, then a kebab, clean the gear and bed. A few of the boys check out the price of the girls which turns out to be $40 per hour given the laundry is so expensive here ($80) one of the lads suggests we all chip in and hire two of the girls for two hours tell them to get naked and get on with the washing -sounds like a plan to me.
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