27 Jul Kazakhstan Crooks
Kazakhstan – this is not a good start to your relationship with the Dixie Chickens!
It all started at the border. The grim-faced guard spilt all of us off from Don to go to a far away office while he inspected the vehicle with Don. Then, when we were finished, he wouldn’t let us return to the bus, but held us at a distance, as it turned out, to make it harder on Don while he performed the ultimate shakedown. One that made the Moldovan official’s request for a gift seem like amateur hour.
He started with a look around the bus, where he spotted Sarita’s Jaegermeister bottle and a bottle of red wine in a crate in the back. The guard poked around halfheartedly, but it was clear to Don that he was going to be taking the booze, because he pulled it out and set it on the seat. Then he took out Will’s guitar and began playing it, saying he thought it was a nice one. Don did it was actually not a good one, and was not high quality, so he seemed to lose interest.
When Don didn’t respond to his oily suggestion that they were friends and friends might have gifts on the bus for their friends, he escalated into a terrifying game. First, he brought over his drug sniffing dog and pulled a Baggie of what he said was cocaine out of his pocket. He sprinkled some of the powder on the ground and demonstrated that the dog could find it. Then he waved the Baggie at the bus, and pointed at Don while gesturing sniffing cocaine to Don. The implication was unmistakable: he would plant the drugs in the bus and arrest Don for carrying the drugs.
Then he told Don to leave the bus and go to passport control for check-in, but Don locked the bus and kept coming back to eyeball him, preventing him from planting the drugs without being seen. It was a harrowing game of cat and mouse, with Don sweating bullets the whole time. Finally, the guard, tired of the game, just told Don to give him the bottles of wine and liquor, plus a bottle of cheap beer that he wanted to know if it was American, and therefore more valuable.
Don at this point just wanted to get the hell out of there and gladly gave up the bottles in exchange for his freedom. But what an insane extortion plot to only score a couple of liters of alcohol. Don’s parting shot to his new “friend” was to ask him if he was Muslim. And the guard said “yes, of course”, despite standing there with his stolen liquor in hand.
We fled the border area only to find what else Kazakhstan had on offer for us: the worst roads we’d ever seen. Inching along on heaving pavement with potholes the size of Ladas was unreal, especially when a biblical hailstorm started within minutes of our start down what is actually the main highway entering Kazakhstan.
Not a good first impression! Note to the Kaz tourism bureau–when we found Russia to be safer and more honest, you might need to up your game.