A fun evening celebrating a Kyrgyz birthday!

Our friends Bjorn and Freya from Belgium arrived here in Kyrgyzstan at 8:45am Friday morning. They picked up a SIM card at the airport so we could communicate, and then took possession of their 4x4 SUV with rooftop tent. Once they were all set, they sent a note so that we knew they were on their way to meet us.

Meanwhile, we packed up all of our things at the guest house, and had a half hour drive ourselves to get to the meeting point... the same big Globus superstore where we had bought our supplies the first day we had arrived here.

Fun to see them again. This is the couple who drove our van Igor down from Canada to the Mexico border in the fall of 2024. 

So we're about to go into the Globus store to so some shopping when this local Kyrgyz guy comes up to us speaking English and asking where Bjorn and Freya got their vehicle. We started having a conversation with the guy, and ended up talking to him for probably twenty minutes. He was a super nice guy, and a wealth of information!

Kevin, Freya, Ruth, Timur, and Bjorn.

It took us probably two hours in the store. Of course they were tired having done an overnight flight from Belgium, and we were trying to stock up on things we knew we were going to need that we now knew weren't easily available in other parts of the country. But eventually we got everything we needed and started heading east outside the city.

Interesting new apartment building.

We were driving to a possible overnight spot and we passed a cemetery. Kyrgyz cemeteries are quite different. Almost all of the headstones have an engraved photo of the deceased. And the body is buried under a mound.

Kyrgyz cemetery.

I took one look at this one and thought he resembled a young Charles Bronson.

What do you think??

Some of the graves have structures.

We tried to stay at a place a few kms further on, but there were too many flies so we carried on to a private recreational lake. It turned out to be more of a pond, but the people running it were really nice and they said we could use their parking lot and toilets at no charge.

This old paddle boat looks like it's left over from the U.S.S.R. days!

We were taking a stroll around the perimeter of the pond. They have these covered picnic structures set up that they rent out to families, and as we walked by, one of the guys spoke to us in very good English. This was surprising to Ruth and I because over the past two weeks we have seen very few tourists and heard very little English being spoken. Now it was twice in one day!

Anyhow, we learned that they were there celebrating Nurdin's 50th birthday. During the conversation, we were talking about food, and they asked is we wanted to try some of their plov. Plov is actually an Uzbekistan dish, but it's popular here in Kyrgyzstan as well. Of course we never say no to an opportunity to spend some time with the locals, and the next thing you know, they've got us sat at their table.

They put on quite a spread for Nurdin's birthday!

We were worried that they didn't have enough food for four more people, but it turns out they had enough for eight more people!

The plov is served.

We were stuffed!

Nurdin, Kevin, Dmitry, Bjorn, and Freya.

Dastan, Zamira, Eliza, Anton, Nurdin, Bjorn, Freya, Kevin.

Of course the vodka was flowing as well, and eventually the karaoke started!

What a fun time we had with great people. Nurdin is a teacher and used to teach English, but now teaches phys ed. And Dmitry's English is almost perfect. In fact, it was Nurdin who helped Dmitry learn English, and now Dmitry is actually better. And of course they all speak Russian as well. We are always amazed at people who can speak more than one language!

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Set of 2 Queen Pillows.

And in Canada...

JBL Bluetooth Speaker.