Carpetblogger

Carpetblog Weighs in: THY's New Uniforms, Alcohol Policy

We have been closely following the controversies in which Turkish Airlines has embroiled itself recently: that its proposed new uniforms are ugly, and that it may or may not stop alcohol service on a few domestic/some/all flights everywhere all the time.

This may shock some of you, but here it is. We don't give two shits about what THY flight attendants wear nor what they serve.

When we get on a THY plane, we have several expectations:

• That it not spontaneously fall out of the sky;
• That it land at the correct airport;
• That its pilots speak English well enough to communicate with ATC in various countries;
• That the bus transfer time from the plane to the terminal at Ataturk not exceed the flight time.

Those are the non-negotiables.

THY, admittedly, has a mixed record on some of those criteria*. As far as we know, no plane has fallen out of the sky. But the debate in Turkey about how well THY pilots can, or more accurately, cannot, communicate in the lingua franca of international air traffic has been, shall we say, muted (and, sadly, mostly in Danish). The wrong airport landing pilot is a favorite story here at Carpetblog. And, could they park planes farther away from the terminal and not demand passengers get a Bulgarian visa stamp? We doubt it.

We don't really care what flight attendants wear, as long as the uniforms do not inhibit their ability to prevent the plane from falling out of the sky or landing at the wrong airport. So you think the proposed uniforms are ugly and impractical? Lots of things in Turkey are ugly and impractical and people seem to live with them just fine.

 

Sure, we'll be annoyed if we get on a flight from Erzurum and can't have a plastic cup of Doluca, because no one deserves a cup of warm Turkish wine more than someone who's been in Erzurum. But, we'll probably get over it, because it's a 90 MINUTE FLIGHT and there's plenty of easily-obtainable Doluca in Istanbul. (We'll revisit this policy if THY switches the wine selection on European flights from "French or Turkish?" to "Doluca or Yakut?" That justifies an uprising).

But, this is the really important thing. When an airport transfer bus approaches a line of north African airlines, with six or seven planes from airlines you've never heard of waiting in a row, and yours is the one in the middle with the red tail, delightfully named "Afyonhisar," and not the one with the airline name written in handpainted Arabic (or Cyrillic) with a staircase leading into the tail section, you say to yourself -- or maybe out loud  -- "Looking good, THY!" Then, you board, and you have a glass of Doluca and everything is fine.

If we might offer some branding alternatives to "Globally Yours," may we suggest "Yours When all Other Options are Unspeakably Awful."

 

*As always, we speak with love! <3 U THY!

Airline Passengers as Explained by their Pants: Istanbul Edition

One thousand apologies to McSweeny's for ripping off its post, Airline Passengers as Explained by Their Pants, but it was too America-centric for our taste. As the primary hub serving Crapistan, Istanbul's Ataturk airport (IST) deserves its own list.

Red tracksuit: Will vomit in the aisle.

White hiphuggers with gold pinstripes, matching sport coat, jheri curls: THY 365 to Tripoli is now boarding.

Pleated shiny slacks, with Hugoe Bose label, pointy toed shoes: Will applaud upon touchdown in Erbil.

Cargo pants and a polo shirt with a corporate logo: Checked a stun grenade, two tasers and steroid powder.

Nothing but a white towel: Checked six liters of Zamzam in Jeddah. At carousel, retrieves two litres and two empty plastic jugs. :(

Low rise jeans, muffintop: Fell in love with her waiter, sobs the whole flight back to Manchester.

Dirty white shalwar: Will leave footprints on the toilet seat.

Clean, light blue shalwar: Asks flight attendant which direction is Mecca, does ablutions in the toilet.

Leopard skin capris with rhinestone seams, stiletto heels: Did not pay for her own ticket.

Stonewashed jeans with matching jacket: Passport has “stan” somewhere on the front cover.

Quik-dry travelpants with 7+ zippered pockets, white running shoes: Loved the food, is no longer afraid of Muslims.

Pleather jeans with a camel toe: Checked 75 kilos of red Chinese-made bras.

Baggy cotton trousers, floral: Put a lamb in the overhead bin.

Baggy cotton trousers, striped: Aspriational busker, put a juggling kit in the bin (Thanks to @AJKhn.)

Any we missed? Do add in the comments, or send via twitter @carpetblogger1

 

The Unaccompanied Lady Wastes Time in Islamabad

People like to ask the Unaccompanied Lady, "what do you do with your unaccompanied self when you're in Islamabad for two weeks?" Since the answer "fuck-all" rarely satisfies anyone, and the Unaccompanied Lady cannot spend all her non-working hours in sitting in the guesthouse under the AC, we have come up with a few suggestions for time-wasting in a city where there is very little to actually "do."

Shalwar shopping: As you know, to avoid drawing attention to herself or being mistaken for a frumpy missionary, the Unaccompanied Lady "goes native" in Pakistan. Shalwar shopping in Islamabad is fun because the shops are staffed by men yet women are the only customers. Ladies freely give the shop guys the what-for, treating them with the haughty disdain they deserve. Feel extra sloppy as groups of young Pakistani women, draped in the kind colorful, cute shalwar that you can never find, glide in and out of the shops like pretty birds, never dropping their dupatta (the long scarfy thing that covers your shoulders) in the dust or tripping over it. Perhaps next time you can ask them to show you how they wear such an annoying, yet potentially attractive, garment with style and dignity.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends: the cheap and cheerful shalwar shops in Jinnah Market, near Pizza Hut.

Mango Eating: The Unaccompanied Lady can only handle so much Pakistani BBQ before she breaks out in the greasy ghee meat sweats. Besides Islamic extremists, Pakistan excels most in the production of mangoes. Lucky for us it's June, which means it's the season. Can an Unaccompanied Lady survive on mangoes, and their slimy, but equally delicious little friends, lychees, for two weeks? Stay tuned.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends getting your mangoes from any old vendor, but get the biggest ones. They're the best.

Food Shopping: Islamabad's small supermarkets serve as another reminder that the globalization of cuisine has completely passed Turkey by. You can buy every imaginable American junk food (pop tarts! doritos! cake mix -- though even we don't buy that shit any more after reading this), sauce, canned good or spice mix, at reasonable prices. Not only that, there must be Chinese and other Asian people in Islamabad (those Chinese are everywhere these days!) because there are things Chinese and other Asian people like to eat: lime leaves, lemon grass, fish sauce, wasabi, seaweed and miso soup mix, none of which are available in Istanbul, a city approximately 14 times the size of Islamabad. We are no longer embarrassed to say, "yes, we import food from Islamabad to Istanbul."

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends the shops in Khosar Market.

The Nirvana Spa: One of the best parts about working in shitty places is there are very often excellent reasonably-priced spas offering innovative treatments you're unlikely to find anywhere else. The Nirvana spa falls into that category. In fact, it is so awesome that we will go multiple times for all kinds of cheap delights like pedicures, massages and sessions with the "vibrating de-fatting apparatus, which utilizes vibration to soften and break-up excessive fat build-up in specific parts of the body." Waxing is so cheap maybe we'll go Muslim and wax our whole body. It's cheaper and less effort than shaving.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends the Hot Stone Massage at Nirvana.

Culture: The Unaccompanied Lady typically recommends cultural activities because culture is important. Sadly, we visited the Lak Virsa Ethnological Museum only to find out that, while technically open, it had no electricity. Because Islamabad enjoys an uninterrupted supply of electricity for about 15 minutes a day, we suspect this is not a state affairs that will have improved if we "come back tomorrow," as suggested. As we poked inside the door to see whether a dark ethnological museum might still be worth the $2 entry fee, the guards described the interior as "like midnight." They were not wrong.

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends going shopping instead of to the Lak Virsa Ethnological Musuem.

Carpet College: There is a wealth of knowledge idly sitting around, waiting for customers in the Jinnah and Super Markets, wasting time, just like you. What are you waiting for? Go bug them! Make them unfold and refold 172 carpets in 105 degree heat! They like it!

The Unaccompanied Lady spends hours talking to Pashtun carpet dealers (most of them are Afghans) about everything related to carpets. They are not predatory jerks like in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar and some of them actually know what they're talking about. Drink tea and talk about patterns, geopolitics, sheep breeds, Pashtun tribes, cotton prices and trade transit routes until the generators kick in and it's time for Unaccompanied Ladies to go home. Have them show you their most expensive pieces and, after you have a heart attack because they are so beautiful and you can't afford them, make the guy tell you why that one is more expensive than this one. Feel your mind get larger and your understanding of the world broader by earning a Masters in Warp and Weft at Carpet College.*

The Unaccompanied Lady recommends Niqash Carpet, near Mr. Books in Super Market, and Herat Shop in Jinnah Market.

 *The Carpetblog Carpetbuying Manifesto is coming. It's not ripe yet. Please stand by.

 

Ask Carpetblogger: Why Dubai?

This is a good question! Everyone knows that Dubai is the most useless city in the world, filled with entitled, arrogant, rude, mindlessly materialistic Emiratis and the shopping malls that sustain them. If Dubai receded into the sand that surrounds it or if its man-made palm shaped islands were drowned by rising sea levels, we would not feel bad for more than one minute.

This is all true and not subject to debate. There is absolutely no reason to go to Dubai. Unless, of course, you are arriving from one of the neighboring shitholes (Kabul, Baghdad, Kandahar). In that case, Dubai is absolutely indispensable. It is the only place for you.

Dubai must exist because Kabul does, just a short two-hour flight away. Kabul is filthy, violent, medieval and necklaced with razor wire. Thirty percent of the dust in the air is fecal matter. The blue sacks sitting in the mud (30% of which, it stands to reason, is also fecal matter) in intersections are not bags of potatoes; they are women in burqas begging. Donkey carts, armored SUVs and military convoys jam its unpaved streets.

Dubai is none of these things (it's pretty much what happens what medieval warlords do when they come into lot of money, but that's a different post). There are perfectly climate-controlled shopping malls where you can swim with the sharks, go skiing indoors or go ice skating and forget that it's 115 degrees and humid outside. Emirati men must change their crisp, white dishdashas four or five times a day because they never look dirty or sweaty. You hardly ever see any automatic weapons.

An entire industry has emerged in Dubai serving people who are transiting on the way in or way out of Kabul, Kandahar or Baghdad. It seems to exist to process large groups of loud, drunk South African PSDs coming out or sad-faced contractors going in. The young Filipino women who did our spa treatments -- knowing, without us having mentioned it, that we'd been in Kabul -- said that 80% of her clients had been in or were going to Kabul. It made us wonder to what degree the economy of Dubai depends on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than money laundering, Russian prostitutes and overvalued real estate.

Digression! The Le Meridien Dubai Airport, which, conveniently located practically on the runway, is the closest place to the terminal for a drink, a decent meal, a pool and a lovely spa. This is the most valuable travel tip ever passed along on this blog (other than this one). If you have a short layover, you can take a three-minute taxi ride and enjoy a meal and drink at one of Le Meridien's 18 restaurants or go to the spa. Thank us later.

You can't go from a place like Kabul directly to a normal place, like Istanbul or America, because your head would explode. Instead, you need to stop in to Dubai, which is the absolute 100% opposite of Kabul. We recommend you go have an expensive drink made with blackberries on the 62nd floor of a brand new hotel -- doesn't matter which, there are dozens. From that vantage point, you can watch the biggest lighted fountain in the world, which can probably be seen from space, and consider the time and resources devoted to its design and choreography. Then you can join thousands of your closest Emirati, Filipino and Bangladeshi friends and walk around the mall.

After that, you're free to go on a normal place.

 

 

 

Carpetblogger Learns and Grows

Some people come to foreign cities like Kabul to experience a different way of life, to gain a deeper appreciation of another culture and its history. We don't know many of those people. Most people we know come to places like Kabul for completely different reasons.

But sometimes, despite their best efforts, those latter people do end up learning valuable lessons about life and how to live it in a foreign culture. Despite their best efforts, they experience a degree of personal growth they never expected and an expansion of their narrow worldview.

Also, the lessons that stick are usually the ones that come at the greatest cost. This is so very true.

"Carpetblogger! How do you know all this?" We know this because we have recently learned and grown. I KNOW! SHUT UP!

We have learned that you should not try to buy booze in Kabul. It is a costly fool's errand.

Did you know that if you try to smuggle booze in to Afghanistan, which is an Islamic Republic, via the airport and get caught they might keep a bottle as a "tax" or sell your bottles back to you? So, don't try to do that. It might offend someone. Alternatively, be smarter than your average Taliban and store your stash in nalgene bottles.

Sadly, though, it is logistically difficult to smuggle in a six week supply. Alternatives must be sought.

Over the last month, we have spent $60 on a bottle of "Absolute" and $60 on a bottle of "Italian wine." If you're without a calculator close by, that's $120 on undrinkable booze. (If you have to ask why anyone would spend that much money on any bottle of liquor for any reason, you clearly have never lived on a compound or tried to manage anything in a war zone).

The red wine was an impulse buy at the Russian/Italian restaurant "Boccacio" (emphasis on the Russian). Walking out the front door after a gloppy pasta lunch, we eyeballed a full wine rack.

Suddenly, we were back in Ukraine.

"Devushkaaaa! Can I buy one of those bottles to go?"

"Nyet"

"Are you sure?" She turns to the Russian manager.

"OK. $60."

We bargained hard.

"That seems like kind of a lot for an 8 Euro bottle. Well, OK."

We carried that bottle around for three weeks, waiting for the optimal combination of high quality companions who also had a wine opener (total consultant fail: not carrying a wine opener in one's suitcase). In darker hours, we had whacked away at the cork with a knife and, later, our teeth, to no avail.

Last night, finally, 50% of conditions were met, when Scrappy the War Correspaniel and that guy Jason showed up at our hotel room with an opener in hand.

We poured out two glasses and a nalgene chalice. Profound disappointment ensued.  "Funny, the label  doesn't mention anything about it being sparkling." No matter how long we let it breathe, the situation didn't improve. Clearly, that wine had traveled from Peshawar on the back of a mule next to some RPGs in the middle of August.

The bottle of "Absolute" arrived via our media department. Generally, we count on media departments to be reliable sources of things like booze so we didn't ask key follow-up questions like, "where are you getting this stuff?" We obediently handed over $60. Big mistake! The bottle arrived in a plastic bag with a cap held on with packing tape. The inside bottom of the bottle was crusted with dirt and chunks of crud-- chunks of crud that were not yet suspended in the still-unidentified clear liquid. We are still awaiting restitution.

We've heard it's impossible to fake a beer can, so maybe we'll stick to Heieneken.

 

The Kabul Intercontinental Hotel Has Had a Remont

We've had a post in our head reviewing the old-skool Soviet Intourist chain for a couple of years now, but since we are no longer obligated to stay in those monuments to the Soviet hospitality industry, the indignities, if the not the need for a thorough assessment, have faded over time.

That doesn't mean that we don't appreciate Soviet-era design, however. In our experience, even when Soviets leave places, they leave unmistakable traces of themselves behind (see: Ukraine). Our favorite part of traveling around Ukraine, other than going to strip clubs with gangsters, was documenting Sovietica in gray industrial cities like Dnipropetrovsk or Kherson. 

Due to a variety of circumstances too boring to get into here, we were comfortably ensconced at the Kabul Intercontinental hotel for a couple of days last week. Based on a visit in 2007, during which we stepped over construction debris in the lobby on the way to dinner, we arrived under the impression that the hotel had been refurbished. 

Not that it needed it. The Taliban bombed it a little in 2003, just to show that they could.

Instead, we discovered it has been thoroughly remonted. For the unfamiliar, REMONT is a Russian term suggesting a remodeling project that does not result in a net improvement in facilities or, one that leaves behind the fundamental essence of a place -- such as cigarette smoke, the smell of assfat or the terror of ancient dzurnas (floor ladies with soviet-red hair). Other than a paint job and some new lamps, our room looked exactly as it did when the Soviets swaggered in in 1979 and then let the swinging door hit them in the ass on the way out in 1989.

Built in 1969 by the British but with unmistakable Soviet design input, the Kabul Intercon hosted Soviet officers until things went, uh, south for them, then housed journalists after the city fell to the Taliban, when it was the only hotel operating in the capital. The Taliban rampaged through, destroying bars and restaurants in the lobby, probably looking for booze they could sell back to its owners at at 300% markup. Now, because of its well-connected ownership, the Intercon is known primarily for being "safer than the Serena," which, well, nevermind.

Take a look at our room! We had to take the photo during the day because you could not run the klima, turn on the lights and plug in your computer or mobile at the same time. There were only two modern electrical outlets. We tried to render the bedside lamps operative only to find their cords had been spliced together so they could be both plugged in to a single prehistoric three tiny pin outlet. We learned to not curse the darkness. The desk furniture had sustained some kind of damage, possibly from that 2003 bomb.

To be fair, this phone was in a room that had had no remont whatsoever. It is still in frequent use by the 

Afghan version of dzurnas (they are guys and their hair is normal-colored) who are sweet and practically beg you to give them something tipworthy to do every time you walk out your door, when they are not busy answering calls from 1975. Replacing crabby Soviet dzurnas with helpful and attentive Afghan dzurnas is a perverse but welcome twist on a remont.

You'll notice a lovely pool in front of the Intercon. It is tile-y and light blue and looks well-chlorinated, like good pools should. It was very, very tempting for someone whose primary exercise for two weeks had been talking. But, having walked through the noon-time lobby and noticing the clientele at the nightly Iftar, we were pretty certain that taking a swim would have resulted in immediate bikini jihad.

Ask Carpetblogger: What Do You Eat During Ramadan in Kabul?

When we accepted this mission to spend six weeks in Kabul, during Ramadan, we worried about many things. Near the top of the list (after "will the insurgents allow us to buy carpets?" answer: yes) was, "what the hell are we going to eat?"

This summer, we won the trifecta of suck: in quick succession, we spent a week on a compound in Erbil, ten days in an Islamabad guesthouse then recently started six weeks on a compound in Kabul. In places where your movements are restricted --either due to security or culture (girls don't eat out alone in Islamabad) -- food quickly becomes an issue. After ten days eating the guesthouse food in Islamabad, we came home with the greasy ghee meat sweats. That's pretty bad, but not actually the worst thing that can happen to you eating in Islamabad.

The long and short of it: Food can be a real problem on these junkets, particularly if you don't like to eat meat two or three meals a day and appreciate an occasional vegetable.

Unlike Istanbullular, most people in Kabul actually fast during Ramadan, but it's not like we're able to walk down the street to the local teahouse/disease vector and grab a kebab anyway. So, we thought a lot about what we'd be eating while packing. We came up with the Consultant Survival Kit, pictured below.

  

You'll notice the bottles of rum and vodka with the Holy Plastic Chalices of Nalgene designed to evade (successfully!) bribe-seeking Defenders of Islamic Virtue at the airport. Also, peanut butter, tuna and couscous and Siriacha Vietnamese hot sauce (popularly referred to as Hot Cock). Those are the staples of our diet at home, so thank allah they are easily transportable.

As it turns out, only a couple of those items were mandatory. And, if I have to tell you which ones, you clearly don't read this blog regularly. The unexpected necessary item? The Hot Cock! It turns out that several members of our multi-national crew brought their own all-purpose condiment to make bland food more palatable: the Italian brought olive oil, the Mexican -- a delicious homemade hot-sauce from charred tomatoes. So we share. With several Italians, a Mexican, a Belgian and multiple Americans, we spend a lot of time at dinner talking about things we aren't eating.

But we should complain. Our Afghan cook prepares two meals a day for those of us trapped on the compound and they are quite edible. We suspect that, at one point in his career, he chopped up and served Soviet soldiers, but he knows what a vegetable is and is moderate with the oil. Every day we have a salad and soup with a nice meaty main. Someone taught him how to make chocolate cake and apple pie and he's getting ready to harvest the pears from the tree on the compound for a pear pie. He has taught me how to make a delicious and genuinely spicy green tomato salsa.

Not only that, the "American" supermarket is better than pretty much any in Istanbul. It stocks almost every American processed and junk food you desire, which sometimes we do. Imagine, if you will, that we will be importing food from Kabul to Istanbul, especially Thanksgiving goods. There's also an Italian supermarket which sells real pork and delicious cheese, but sadly, no wine.

After ten days already, we've only been sick once. And they call this a hardship post!

Ask Carpetblogger: How Can I Tell If I am In Crapistan*?

Tough question! Crapistan is so often either a state of mind, or like, porn, the sort of thing you recognize when you see, it can be hard to know for sure. But since we consider this blog to be the ultimate guide to Crapistan, we thought we'd outline some of the questions you should ask if you find yourself thinking, "wow, am I in Crapistan?"

• Do passengers applaud after the plane lands?

 

• Do passengers jump out of their seats just after the plane touches down (before the applause, even), grab their bags from the bins and run toward the front? (There is an inverse relationship between the likelihood passengers do this and the importance of the activities those passengers are rushing off the plane to get started doing.)

 

• Are most bags on the carousel swathed in high-tension plastic wrap or held together with packing string? (Again, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of plastic wrap used and the value of the bags' contents.)

 

• Can you see any signs, advertisements or instructions written in Cyrillic, even though you are in a country that does not use the Cyrillic alphabet? (But! It is axiomatic that if you are in a country that uses Cyrillic, you are in Crapistan. Don't even try to argue otherwise because you are wrong.)

 

• Are you struck by the talent of local (Chinese!) designers in the medium of Bedazzling?

 

• Pointy shoes. On men (that's sort of a gimme -- if you can't recognize this, you probably aren't ready for Crapistan). Shiny suits, too.

 

• Do you see more than ten people carrying rainbow-colored "Rave Girl" plastic shopping bags?

 

• Is Nescafe marketed as a superior alternative to coffee?

 

• Can you buy beer in sidewalk kiosks? In the morning?

 

• Do you fear for your safety? Crapistan is not particularly violent. The biggest danger is becoming collateral damage in a bar fight over prostitutes.

 

• Is the Duty Free shop cash-only?

It should be pointed out that just because a place is undeveloped or hovering in the gray area between third and second world, it is Crapistan. India and Pakistan, to name two examples, are not Crapistan. Crapistan implies a certain level of development in infrastructure that, out of neglect, war, kleptocratic governance, oligarchic greed or other factors, has been allowed to decline precipitously (former British colonies don't necessarily count). Also, Crapistan suggests the emergence of a vulgar middle class that has more money than sense, and accordingly, has refined and retained its tchoutcka (rube-ish) habits. For example, Crapistaniacs (new word! Credit must be given!) can afford air travel, but don't understand the protocols or the importance of real luggage.

Essay question: Baku is the Capital of Crapistan: Yes or no? Show your work!

Carpetblog management is well-aware that this is not an exhaustive assessment. The Carpetblog demographic knows Crapistan better than any readership of any blog on the entire internets. We look forward to reading your input in the comments. Also, if you can't figure out if you are currently in Crapistan, you can ask and we'll conduct the assessment and provide you with a written analysis. For free, even.

*Can you tell we were recently in Crapistan?