Sunday, 13 September 2026

 

Start: Hotel Bishkek (KY) 17:00

Arrival: Hotel Bishkek (KY) 19:30

 

Total: ca 2 km on foot

 

 

A day doing nothing much in Bishkek. We discussed our options for the next few days, booked hotels, updated my blog and lazed in our room. Sonia typed in our expenses of the last few days. That's when she noticed that we'd been had at a gas station: the girl at the counter had put a pack of cigarettes on our bill, together with our drinks and the gas. Two euros for a packet of Virginia Slims. They'll do wonders for her lungs. At five o'clock, Sonia needed to move and I needed a beverage other than water, so we combined our two needs and went out in search of food. The hotel reception had recommended a nearby local restaurant, Navad, so that's where we went. It had looked very promising from the outside yesterday night, although Sonia had read some less than favourable reviews about it.

 

 

Just outside our hotel, we saw yet another car with a Chinese licence plate. A Xinjiang one, to be precise. Normal for this part of the world for sure, cool and exotic for us though. So we decided to take a pic. So as not to appear silly photographing licence plates, Sonia posed in the street. In the background, you can see our hotel Orto Asia. Next to Sonia, a China-registered white Honda. Incidentally, AI had warned me that Hondas were rare to non-existent in Central Asia. In yesterday's traffic jam, every third car seemed to be a Honda. AI is like the weather forecast: manages to be wrong more often than if you just took a wild guess. Just saying. Don't trust AI, kids.

 

 

On the way, we passed a faculty of the Bishkek University. The building in the background. If you squint a bit and look real hard, you can read the word Universiteti above the door.

 

Navad turned out a disappointment. We sat down and a waitress in a beautiful traditional dress brought us a large menu. We thought we had found the Kyrgyz version of Coffee Boom! Far from it. When I tried to order plov, she shook her head. No plov. None at all? Of all those advertised in your local-cuisine menu? So as not to waste more time, I asked what did they have. She turned the page to spaghetti, pizza, meatballs. Fast food grub! Sonia's beef and pepper stew was available too, and 350 grams were way too much meat for one person anyway. So we ordered that plus some side-dishes. No, though this cost five times as much as a simple meatball dish, we would not be allowed to share. Sonia wanted more time to think and meanwhile ordered a fresh orange juice. Which was on the menu. The waitress shook her head. They didn't have fresh juice. I stood up. "Let's go."

 

 

I told you they got some bad reviews", Sonia said, while we walked past a horde of twittering birds. The same sort of birds making a ruckus in Almaty? These tiny creatures were loud! We took a pic and looked them up later. Myna birds? Did they not live exclusively in Australia? Expats?

 

We almost didn't get anything to eat tonight. Everything looked either unappetizing or like fast food grub. Mostly both. In the end, we just walked into a local chip shop and got some fried chicken nuggets, fries and coke. Hard to mess that up. They took 30 minutes to prepare it. Luckily we had asked for the Coke right away. The chicken was piping hot and as expected, but the fries were half cold, half hot. How did they even manage this? "They took some cold old fries and threw them in with the new ones", Sonia said philosophically and popped another one into her mouth. "It's food." Right she was.

 

Back at the hotel, we had a video chat with our parents back home and did some crossword puzzles. Lazy day in Bishkek, check.