Turkmenistan: Beware the Napkin Patrol

My diplomat wife, Dana, is nearly a year into her two-year assignment at the American embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. I tagged along for the book material (and marriage), and the place does not disappoint. - g

Locals often ask me how Turkmenistan differs from my own country. I appreciate these questions, because I’m curious by nature and am fascinated by the myriad cultural differences that remain in what can seem like an increasingly homogenous world. To my American eyes, Turkmenistan is a delightfully odd place, and below are a few of my sillier observations:

Whites, Lights & Automobiles – Almost everything in Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, is white: cars, buildings, monuments, etc. White’s not my favorite color—is white even is a color?—but at night, when the multi-colored fairy lights twinkle and pop on every building on every major boulevard, it makes for a spectacular display. Ashgabat’s nightly light show rivals anything Vegas, Times Square or Tokyo ever cooked up, and no photo I’ve seen does it justice.

A photo that doesn't do it justice

Accordingly, I’m trying to convince the Americans to do up the new embassy in a dazzling red, white and blue patriotic light show. It’d be like the Fourth of July every night of the year, and on no American embassy in the entire world would such an ostentatious display of American pride be more culturally appropriate and appreciated than here. Support my efforts by writing your congressperson today!

The Napkin Patrol – A hallmark of any dining experience here, overzealous servers prowl Turkmenistan’s restaurants, eager to snatch from under your nose any paper napkin that may have so much as grazed your hand. Unless your napkin is tucked firmly between your legs, the napkin patrol is going to get it!

And it doesn’t stop with napkins. Servers will snatch my unfinished appetizer or lean over my shoulder as I put a last bite in my mouth—before I even drop my fork—and ask, “Finished?” As I sit in a coffee shop writing this post, a server just attempted to spirit away my half-finished double espresso. They're not trying to turn the tables; dining is very casual here. I’m still searching for answers.

Monumental Navigation - Things like Waze and Google Maps don’t work well here. Maps.me, an off-line wayfinding app, works fairly well, but, as often as not, I’m asking directions. You know, like we did in the 80s. Fortunately, Ashgabat’s countless self-aggrandizing monuments make useful landmarks for a newbie. A friend might give me directions like, “Make a left at the whisk, then hang a right at the lollipop, go around the toilet plunger, and it’s on your right next to the Kindergarten for Descendants of the Great Leader.”—which is a real thing. (See if you can find your way around Ashgabat! Match my friend’s instructions with the pictures.)

Stuff is hard to find this way, and it’s made much harder by the fact that businesses are often not labeled, street signs don’t exist, and buildings are often not numbered. Recently, my friend Joseph, knowing I frequent coffee shops, suggested I try Avo.

“Where is it?” I asked, which seemed like a reasonable question.

“Man, it’s in the cut,” he said, whatever that means.

“Is there a sign?”

He chuckled. “Of course not. That’d make it too easy.”

Which brings me to the next item on my list:

Marketing 101 (or lack, thereof) - Joseph sent me some coordinates, and I went on the hunt for Avo.

What ARE these things called?

My smartphone directed me to a long row of identical, white, high-rise apartment blocks. I parked my big Texas Aggie maroon pick-up among the white cars in an alley and set out on foot. I questioned moms with toddlers, businessmen in suits, construction workers and cops; everyone was very friendly, but no one had heard of the place. Finally, a smart, young couple that fit the mold escorted me to an unmarked door in a side alley of an unmarked building. There was nothing that, in any way, suggested a business operated within. I opened the door and found—voila!—a fashionable, cozy coffee shop that would be at home anywhere in the world. Clearly, someone had invested some money in the joint; I just wonder why they couldn’t be bothered to buy a sign, feather flag or whatever these things are called.

With such low-hanging fruit, I feel like I could be a half-decent marketing consultant here:

“Let’s start with a sign—any sign: sandwich board, neon, handwritten, scribbled in blood, whatever.”

Cash – Remember that? It’s money made of paper, and it’s what they use in Turkmenistan. Credit and debit cards are not a thing here, so we have to carry around huge wads of cash and use it to pay for stuff like our grandparents did. One Saturday after a brutal game of tennis at Ashgabat’s gleaming white, world-class and eerily empty Olympic tennis complex, Dana and I decided to reward ourselves with a visit to a favorite restaurant. The restaurant has no sign, of course, but we found it because a friend had taken us there the first time.

I checked my wallet as we pulled up out front. “Uh-oh, I don’t think I have enough cash.”

“What?" Dana asked. "Why don’t you have any money?”

“I don’t know. But you got money, right?”

“No, of course not,” Dana replied indignantly. “You know I don’t carry my wallet.”

“What? You think you’re the princess, or something?”

“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly.

Dejected, we went home and had leftovers. And the two things Dana hates most in the world are ’80s music and leftovers. Resolving to never let this happen again, I filled an envelope with five hundred emergency manat—twenty-five US dollars—and stashed it in the pick-up. I wrote, “Not Money!” on the envelope to deter any would-be thieves.

Vegetable Big Lots - In my country there is a veritable army of gig-workers who ferry avocado toast and pumpkin spice soy lattes to folks apparently richer than me upon the click of a smartphone button. But in Turkmenistan, delivery is decidedly low-tech. You simply call the grocery store, coffee shop, or whatever, and they’ll dispatch someone with the goods which you'll have to pay for in cold, hard cash.

When ordering fruits and vegetables my expatriate friends and I have noticed an interesting quirk. To illustrate, I recently called the small grocery store nearest my apartment—although it could be any grocery store—and it went something like this:

World's largest carrot cake

“Hi, I’d like six carrots, four tomatoes and two bananas.”

“Yes, sir,” the guy says. “But, at the moment, we don’t have two kilos of bananas.”

“No. Not two kilos. Just two bananas.”

“Oh, I understand. You want only two bananas.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. That’s two bananas, four kilos of tomatoes, and—”

“No, I’m sorry, but you misunderstand. I don’t need four kilos of tomatoes. I just want four tomatoes.”

“Yes, sir. Got it. But you want six kilos of carrots, right?”

For us Americans who never converted to the metric system because we’re certain it’s a Communist plot, allow me to explain that a kilogram is approximately 2.2 lbs. This means six kilos of carrots is a lot of carrots. Anyway, this sort of exchange leads me and my foreign friends to wonder, “Who on earth buys that many carrots?”

But just days later I actually set foot in a grocery store and found it full of proud Turkmen women lugging kilos and kilos of various fruits and vegetables.

“Who are they feeding with all that food?” I asked some locals, and they just laughed like it was the dumbest question. Clearly, there’s a party I don’t know about, and my FOMO is nigh overwhelming.

Coming soon! What Turkmens want to know about my country and its culture, e.g. What is the significance of a Magic 8 Ball? - g