Uzbekistan PTR: Khiva and Final Parks

[Gavin]

I just got back from Uzbekistan yesterday, the first new country cred I’ve had for over 3 years. I’d had it as a rough plan for Easter 2020, but without having any details planned out or anything booked. This wasn’t a park trip, but there were plenty of plus ones to pick up.

There was some initial faff with flights, but luckily all known about prior to travelling, so it was fine. The best/only way to get to Tashkent from Hong Kong is via Seoul, which is annoyingly in the wrong direction. My original flights to and from Seoul to Tashkent, with Asiana Airlines, had a “small change” which meant the outgoing flight moved a whole day earlier and the return a whole day later. As much as I’d love to just casually add two days to the school Easter holidays, that was clearly not doable, so I cancelled and rebooked with a different airline. This also meant I now had an overnight stay in Seoul. This just meant a hotel near the airport then a flight on to Tashkent the next morning.

Oh, it’s worth noting that “Asiana” autocorrects on the phone to “Asians”, so be aware of that if you’re ranting to your Hong Kong boyfriend on WhatsApp about “stupid f**king Asiana.”

Tashkent Day 1

Airport arrivals was fine. I’d downloaded an Uber-equivalent called Yandex, but couldn’t register it beforehand with either a Hong Kong or UK phone number. This isn’t down to the app, but to the fact that it’s Russian, so incoming texts (to get a verification code) were blocked by the Hong Kong and UK providers. I’d previously bought a Thai travel sim which supposedly included Uzbekistan. This Thai number worked to register Yandex – did this while waiting in Korea for my plane to Tashkent – but when I arrived didn’t connect to any network at all. I just bought a local sim at the airport instead, which according to a few travel blogs were almost double the price of getting one in the city. I was, however, fine with paying 3 quid for 20 gigs of data while waiting for luggage to arrive rather than f**k about later to save a pound. Travel bloggers are the actual f**kng worst.

Anyway, I was glad I did this since leaving the airport is a bit awful with dozens of drivers trying to get you to go with them and clearly asking for outlandish prices. I had a car on the way with Yandex, but asked one guy out of curiosity what he was charging. He started off at about £14 then went down to about a tenner. I would’ve paid the tenner to be honest – it costs me that to get home after a night out - but the cost of the Yandex was about £1.30. This was for a twenty-minute / 9km ride, just ridiculously cheap.

This scrum at the airport exit had me slightly worried about future hassle/pushy souvenir sellers etc., but it wasn’t a problem in the slightest. The only time there was anybody pushy was just drivers waiting outside train stations etc., but they were easy to ignore, and if they did try to push it slightly, just showing them your open Yandex app was enough to make them realise they had no chance.

It was pissing down when I arrived – full on thunderstorm – so I was stuck in the hotel for a couple of hours. When it calmed down, I had a quick walk in the immediate vicinity, thinking that if the weather turned s**t again, I could quickly pop back into the hotel.

The storm seemed to have passed, and it was getting too late in the day to bother with much else, so I headed to one of the nearby parks, Magic City, which was about a ten-minute drive away. I started with this park since they were one of the only ones to have a proper website with opening times, so I knew for sure it would be open. It’s basically a food and retail complex, but with an indoor rides area and other random stuff like an aquarium. It all looks really nice to be fair.

The rides are all in this building, which really just felt like a shopping mall park and was quite disappointing given the area as a whole.

A quick note while I remember. In Uzbekistan, the parks are all free to enter and pay-per-ride, with the Tashkent parks using a prepaid card system. The cards themselves cost about 70p (probably refundable, but I didn’t bother trying) and you can add any amount to them, so you’re not going to be paying for more than you want to ride. They also apparently all stay open until late. Google Maps has them all open until 10 or 11pm. I never tried any beyond around 7pm, but I’d say those times seem accurate given that the parks were dead in the afternoons and got busier as I was leaving.

The back of the castle leads onto a park with a bunch of memorial statues of people who I’m sure are very important.

Beyond that was a metro station. With the ridiculously cheap cost of taxis, I wouldn’t have bothered with the metro at all. However, the stations of the Tashkent Metro are well-known for being quite ornate. When the first metro lines were built, Uzbekistan was still part of the USSR, so there are similarities with other metros built around the same time, probably most notably Moscow’s.

Anyway, I just checked out a handful of the stations on the line I was currently at. A metro ticket, for any distance, costs a whopping £0.12, and I just got off and back on at a few stations and took a few pictures. I did this again for some other stations on another day, but I’ll add those as and when.

That’s it for the first “day”, which was really just a couple of hours in the evening by the time I could actually get out of the hotel.

 

[Gavin]

Tashkent Day 2

This was going to be a mix of touristy s**t – not that Tashkent is really a touristy kind of place – with a couple of parks thrown in. I had more time than I really needed here, so was rationing the parks to a couple a day when, realistically, they wouldn’t need much time at all.

I started off by taking a taxi to this madrasa. You can have a bit of a look inside, but can’t really go beyond the entrance since it’s in actual use and not a historic/tourist spot.

Right behind it is a huge market. I had a quick look since it was there and also on the way to the next place. It’s an actual, proper market where locals actually buy stuff, not a tourist trap where wannabe influencers take pictures of bowls of spices. You know the pictures.

The next bit I wanted to see was a bit of a walk away, but not too far. It’s a complex of religious buildings. At first I hit this thing and thought that it was the stuff I wanted to see, but under renovation.

Luckily, it wasn’t. The stuff I was looking for was behind it. This huge thing was some new build.

The stuff I was looking for had a mosque, a mausoleum and a small building containing, apparently, the world’s oldest Koran. There were no people there at all when I got there, with just a small group arriving soon after. Again, not really a tourist place. Bunch of pictures; the bigger blue dome is for the new building. It’s going to look epic when it’s finished.

It was back into a taxi (well, Yandex, seeing actual taxis was a huge rarity in Tashent, not so much later in the trip) to Tashkent Tower, where a slow lift whisks you up to the dizzying height of 100 metres. To be fair, when there’s nothing else with any height for miles around, it’s enough.

Cred spotted!

Tashkentland

This was just a short walk from the tower, but was f**king closed. This had me really worried for the rest of the trip. Was it too early in the season for stuff to be open? Nope, just this place. I’m very sure it’s closed for good. All the other parks in the city were operating, and Google reviews had people complaining that nothing was operating even when it was open. It seems that the Boomerang has been SBNO for ages. I was disappointed about the cred, but almost as disappointed about not getting to try that amazing stand-up cable car thing.

I was making good time, so decided to hit up another park, walking to it and checking out a newer mosque on the way.

Irrational rant upcoming. I don’t know why, but a massive peeve of mine is empty/broke/disused water features. There’s something about them that really pisses me off. It shows a massive lack of both planning and maintenance. They’re clearly added into the design of a place, but then left to rot if anything goes wrong with them. To me, it’s a sign of just not giving a s**t. They always look ugly as f**k when their intention was to make something look gorgeous. HATE IT. Uzbekistan was full of them.

The next park then.

Anhor Park

I approached this place from the back and was worried that it might not be open, but it was fine. It was just very quiet at that time of day and the main entrance is right at the opposite end.

No idea what the hell was supposed to be, but it had a few workers doing something to it. It took up a pretty big space.

Some other stuff:

There’s a fairly new Chinese looper – at least I’m assuming it is – but not sure on the manufacturer. I thought that RCDB had the info, so I didn’t look for any other clues.

This was annoying. It needed six people to run, and that annoying thing was happening where every time anyone approached, they were told it needed six people and, instead of just waiting, they’d walk immediately away. This happened about 6 times within 10 minutes. Why the ticket bint didn’t just tell them to wait a few minutes is beyond me. I ended up walking off for a bit, planning to wait until it was a bit busier.

Did the ferris wheel.

Had a goon moment when I saw this from afar:

And just as I was getting off the ferris wheel… Bastards.

And then I had the same problem of nobody else being there. I left again because I’d noticed this:

I’ve never seen one before, so obviously had to give it a go. At £7, it was one of my biggest expenses of the whole trip apart from hotels. You’ve got to go up to the top level of a multi-storey car park, and you end up flying above a go-cart track in the next building, so the views are spectacular.

But is it a cred…

I’m going with yes. If you’ve done one of these and a zipline, you’ll know that they’re totally different. I’m not expecting RCDB to include them anytime soon, but Coaster-Count does (yes, some of their inclusions are sketchy). I’m adding it to the count anyway.

I finally got the non-debatable cred right after and then just walked back to the hotel via some memorial thing.

There’s another day in Tashkent to come, with three more parks squeezed in.

 

[davidm]

Sigh, yet another Uzbekistan trip-report, honestly does no-one have any imagination anymore?

I particularly liked your on-ride video that you posted elsewhere of the zip-line-not-a-cred thing where the guy just seemed to point his phone at the CCTV screen.

 

[Gavin]

Sigh, yet another Uzbekistan trip-report, honestly does no-one have any imagination anymore?

I particularly liked your on-ride video that you posted elsewhere of the zip-line-not-a-cred thing where the guy just seemed to point his phone at the CCTV screen.

I'll have to add that later. I didn't know he was filming it. I was expecting him to take a picture and give me the phone back before pushing me off the edge, so it was a nice little bonus - after I'd had to go back up to the car park roof - to find a video. Thinking about it, I'm sure he pocketed the cash himself, so it's the least he could do.

 

[JoshC.]

Irrational rant upcoming. I don’t know why, but a massive peeve of mine is empty/broke/disused water features. There’s something about them that really pisses me off. It shows a massive lack of both planning and maintenance. They’re clearly added into the design of a place, but then left to rot if anything goes wrong with them. To me, it’s a sign of just not giving a s**t. They always look ugly as f**k when their intention was to make something look gorgeous. HATE IT. Uzbekistan was full of them.

I LOVE water features, so I completely get this hatred. Not irrational at all.

Loving this TR so far btw, thanks!

 

[Christian]

Great TR, I'm loving it!

Hope you had tons of delicious plov!

 

[Gavin]

^ I had it a few times and liked it.

I’m sure everyone’s been gagging all weekend for the next installment from this coaster Mecca, but I like to do these reports while I’m at work, so I’m getting paid while I do them, indirectly monetising my content or something. Such an influencer.

Tashkent Day 3

I had a full day left, and not a huge amount to do other than some cred collecting. I didn’t want to get to the parks too early since the ones I’d already been to had been dead in the early afternoons, so I didn’t want to go even earlier and maybe find them closed. I just had a walk to some other nearby stuff.

There was an absolutely enormous derelict water feature running alongside the whole length of some public square. This was just one small part of it.

I went into a museum and an art gallery since I was passing and I had loads of time. The buildings were more interesting than the contents to be honest.

This old building (Romanov Palace) was pretty cool. I think it used to be open to tourists, but is under renovation apparently.

More stuff:

For the first park, I decided to get the metro out to the end of one of the lines, and then a taxi. This wasn’t to save money or anything, but I wanted to check out a few more of the ridiculous stations.

Lokomotiv Park

As expected, the place was dead when I got there in the early afternoon. There were maybe 2 or 3 families milling about, but that was it. Again, it’s apparently open until 11pm, so I imagine it gets busier later.

Uzbekistan parks were similar to some Russian parks in that they loved adding as many Ds as possible to crappy cinema attractions I saw these 9D simulator things all over.

The creds here were both from Golden Horse, or Jinma, or whatever they’re insisting on calling themselves these days.

No issues getting on the fruit worm other than an extreme sense of confusion on their part and embarrassment on mine.

Taxi onto the next place then.

Ashxobod Sayilgohi – yes I did just copy/paste that

This was quite a substantial park in that it had a big entrance plaza, performance spaces etc.

Some more broken water feature creds:

There were three kiddy coasters here, one of which was new since the last time any coaster goons were here, so it had no pictures or name on RCDB. Here it is in all it’s glory. I give to you Quvnoq Tepalik 2:

I was worried at first since the park map/ticket booths said that all three coasters here were for ages 6-16. I didn’t have a problem getting on though. Well, maybe I did, but I couldn’t understand the ride op on one of them, and he couldn’t understand me saying I couldn’t understand him, so he just shrugged in the end and let me on it. He also came across to operate another one, and he didn’t care at this point. For the 3rd coaster, they were letting on adults with their kids, so that was fine. Other people have the creds as well, so it doesn’t seem like they’re strict. Maybe it was a recommendation rather than an actual restriction? Anyway, don’t care, got the creds.

I did the Ferris wheel as part of a reconnaissance mission for any bonus creds. Nope.

There was a fully-functional water feature!

My favourite thing about this place was all the casual copyright infringement. There was loads!

I had one more park to polish off. It was really close this one, potentially a 10-minute walk if there had been a way to do that, but not easily accessible because of a trainline and highway running between the two.

Central Park

They had a gorgeous non-operational water feature at the entrance.

This place was actually lovely. It was just a very green, tree-filled park with some rides and food places shoved in.

Boating lake?

They had three coasters here. Nothing special, but all three from “proper” manufacturers (Preston & Barbieri and SBF Visa).

And that was it for Tashkent. There were some other parks which I ignored for various reasons. One was quite a bit further out and I couldn’t be bothered for a powered dragon (bad cred whore). Another also just had a powered dragon, but prior goons hadn’t been let on it, so I didn’t bother. The other one used to have two coasters, but they were labelled as removed.

We shall get back to this.

On the whole, I quite liked Tashkent. There’s not much in the way of touristy stuff, but the upside of that is that there’s also not much in the way of tourists. I definitely stood out and was getting a fair bit of attention, but I was basically left alone to get on with it and wasn’t bothered by anyone. Outside of my hotel, there was basically zero English spoken, so it’s impossible to say if the people were friendly or not since we didn’t bother attempting to speak to each other. Perfect!

I’m glad I started here though. One of my earlier plans had me leaving Tashkent immediately, getting down to another city at the other end of the country, then working my way back up and finishing with a few days in Tashkent. I think I would’ve been disappointed in the place if I’d done that, but as a starting point, with no expectations, I liked it.

 

[Gavin]

Samarkand Day 1

After Tashkent, the next stop was Samarkand. This was an easy trip, with a high-speed train taking around two hours. I got the most expensive ticket, and I think it cost about a tenner. I got to the hotel at around lunchtime. I’d had quite a fancy hotel in Tashkent, but had cheaper stuff booked for later in the trip. I changed to something nicer for Samarkand though since I realised I would probably be spending a bit more time in the hotel and that I’d been spending no money at all since everything was so cheap.

I don’t usually bother talking about hotels, but I loved this place because of what their idea of “European” is.

I just dumped my stuff and headed out to Registan Square, which immediately made me realise why tourists don’t bother with Tashkent. It was absolutely gorgeous.

I probably spent a couple of hours there – maybe a bit less - taking loads of pictures that I’ll never look at again. There was a small mausoleum nearby, so I had a look at that. Anywhere else, it would be pretty impressive, but after Registan Square it didn't look like much.

I walked back past Registan Square again, aiming to hit up another of the “must-dos”.

It suddenly got very grey, though. There was clearly a storm coming, so I quickly grabbed a car before that hit and went back to the hotel, not being too bothered about cutting the day short since I knew I had plenty of time.

I got back just in time since there was a ridiculous hailstorm. I’d honestly seen nothing like it before.

I hope you enjoyed clicking play on that screenshot.

I didn’t do much after that, just waited for the storm to pass, headed out to a supermarket to grab drinks and snacks and just had dinner in the hotel, which had a very “expensive” restaurant where I spent about 12 quid on three main dishes and a drink.

I was having a quick check on RCDB when I saw that on the page for the Tashkent park that previously only had two removed creds listed, two new creds had suddenly appeared. They must’ve been added right as I was leaving Tashkent. I was obviously devastated as I’d skipped this place. I should know better than to do that since there’s always a chance at these little-known parks that something else might be there; I’ve found more than a few myself in the past.

I was about to drown myself in the (humble brag) hot tub in my fabulous hotel suite, but I remembered that I’d have around a five-hour layover in Tashkent Airport on the way back to Hong Kong, so that gave me something to do to kill that time/some cred anxiety until then.

I was going to go straight onto the next day, with creds, but I’ll get that added tomorrow.

 

[Gavin]

Samarkand Days 2+3

This day started by getting to another tourist hotspot slightly further out: Shah-i-Zinda. I got there quite early, before many people showed up, but it was starting to get quite busy before I left. It’s a bunch of mausoleums basically, but it was quite fab.

Edit - I had about 10 of the exact same picture, so obviously I uploaded the one with my eyes closed. Bollocks to it.

From there, I started walking back to the centre, hitting up more stuff including a newer mausoleum for Islam Karimov (some statues of him earlier in the report) - Uzbekistan’s first president and all round f**king awful dictator – and a much older complex.

Just like Tashkent, Samarkand was a big fan of the disused water feature:

Onto a park then: Yoshlik Istirohat Bog'i

Behold the selection of flat rides.

Powered dragon cred:

Sketchy local manufacturer cred:

I’d seen a couple of these things before, but they were SBNO. I toyed with the idea of whether it was a cred or not. I rode it and at first, I was going with yes.

They had another one! Another potential bonus cred!

I decided later not to count them, mostly based on my own system of “if I have to seriously question/convince myself, then it’s a no.” At first glance I thought that they were basically like giant go-gators, but looking more closely, they’re closer to a Music Express type of ride, only with more of the workings exposed, and I’m definitely not going down that hole. Also, it says a lot when Coaster-Count won’t even list them; they’ll list any old s**te!

There was, however, a legitimate BONUS CRED!

It definitely wasn’t new, so the previous enthusiasts either decided that it wasn’t a cred – it clearly is and similar things are already listed – or they missed it.

I went back to Registan Square in the evening to see it at night. There’s a light show, and it looks nice but isn’t particularly good. There’s just a bunch of music playing while the lights change colours, not particularly in time with the music. Apparently, there used to a big projection mapping thing, but it seems that was just temporary.

I didn’t really have much left to do the next day, so mostly had a lazy one in the hotel, but popped out for a bit to see some stuff I wasn’t that bothered about, starting with what’s left of an old observatory. The building is a very new museum. What’s left of the observatory is the old, underground thing.

Saint Daniel’s tomb. That bloke that didn’t get eaten by lions. I've never been eaten by lions either; when am I getting canonised? This is one of about 10 places that claim he's buried there. Very silly.

And a museum/site of an ancient city. There’s not a great deal left to look at.

And that was it for this stop. I really liked Samarkand. I’d given myself at least a day too long, but it meant taking things a bit more slowly (still walked s**tloads), and I had a decent hotel to laze around in, so it was nice. Registan Square and Shah-i-Zinda were gorgeous, so it was worth it just for those. It was definitely more interesting than Tashkent, and also quite a bit easier since there’s much more tourism there. I was still using Yandex, but there were also a lot more regular taxis around, something you just didn’t see in Tashkent at all.

 

[Gavin]

Onto the next stop. Bukhara was also on the high-speed train line, and only took about an hour and a half from Samarkand.

Bukhara Day 1

I got to the hotel around midday. It was fairly basic compared to the last two, but was well-located and had an excellent view from a rooftop terrace:

I had a wander around the square in the above picture:

Some other stuff nearby. Bukhara was much smaller than Samarkand. Samarkand had itself been very walkable, but Bukhara even more so.

There were two parks here, but since I had the whole next day as well (not needed at all really), I held some stuff back to fill some time later. Again, because of plenty of time, I decided to walk to the park furthest away (about half an hour I think), via an old prison first.

Sitora Bolalar Bog'i

I approached the park from the opposite end of the main entrance, but you could just walk in since it led directly onto the road. It wasn’t looking hopeful.

I think it’s safe to say the park has closed down, but I guess it could be temporary. Apart from the stuff at the back of the park in the above pictures, most other stuff seemed not to be in bad condition. As I got nearer to the front entrance, there was a sole staff member/security guard. There was no issue there; he seemed more concerned/apologetic that the front gate was locked and that I’d have to walk back to the other end again to get out.

Only a powered dragon, so no huge loss, but still annoying considering I’d taken a fair bit of time to trawl up there. I didn’t really do much else other than have another little wander in the evening.

I had a train at around midnight on the second night, so I kept the hotel for that night so that I could just relax beforehand. I’d kept a bit of stuff back to fill some time on the second day.

Bukhara Day 2

I started off at the Ark of Bukhara, an old fortress that is now a museum. This was just a few minutes’ walk from the main square from earlier.

The natural history section was especially enlightening.

Directly across the street was Bukhara Tower, a converted water tower from the 1920s. The views were decent enough.

The 2nd park was closer than the first, so headed there, going past a nearby mosque.

Samonids Recreation Park

This place was open and busy in the afternoon, kind of confirming that the other place has likely closed down. I’ll just chuck in a bunch of pictures.

I rode this as I was still in that “is it or isn’t it” phase.

The cred was having work done on it: some welding and stuff. This was annoying, but I figured there’d at least be a chance to get it later if work was being done.

In the meantime, they at least had the Uzbek favourite – a nonfunctional water feature – to admire:

There was a mausoleum in the same grounds, so I had a quick look at that and went back to the hotel for a bit. I went back to the park in the early evening since it’s apparently open late. I thought it would still be quite busy, but it was very, very quiet. I got the cred though, and it was surprisingly quite good.

After that it was just Netflix in the hotel for a few hours before checking out at around 11pm to head to the train station for the final part of the trip. Bukhara was nice, but really didn’t need more than a day. It could’ve potentially been day-tripped from Samarkand really, what with the easy and quick train connections, but was also on the way to my final stop, so staying there made sense.

 

[roomraider]

Great report.

Uzbekistan is one of my top ever travel destinations and a top recommendation for anyone who wants somewhere new and interesting to visit. Found it so easy to get around and their high speed train line is brilliant getting you easily between the 2 main tourist destinations and the capital.

On top of that as shown in your pictures the architecture of Bukhara and Samarkand is frikkin gorgeous.

I remember my dad telling me that Samarkand especially was this mythical place from ancient history and the silk road only heard about in rare news paper articles during the restoration in the 70s.


Cool photo showing how much the 70s restoration did

Ok it's not a top coaster destination but people should add it to their bucket list asap in my opinion.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

I visited Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara back in the early 90s. It was one of the most memorable places I’d ever visited, especially as it was not like any place I’d visited up to that point. Bukhara in particular really felt like a step into a time many centuries ago.

 

[Gavin]

I'd definitely agree with the above two posts. It was a great place to visit.

Let's get this thing finished then.

There was one more stop on this trip, but this one was much further away and not connected to the high-speed trains. There is an airport in the nearest major city, but flights weren’t very regular. This meant taking an overnight train, which left Bukhara at around midnight and arrived a little before 7am.

Khiva

This place wasn’t covered by Yandex (Uber equivalent), so I had to get ripped off by a local driver to the grand tune of about £2 to get to my hotel. It was potentially walkable in about twenty minutes from the train station to the main area, but I had luggage. I got to the hotel a little after 7, obviously way too early to check in, so I was just planning to dump luggage and go back in the afternoon, but they said I could have the room from 9am. Walking around at that time in the morning was great since there was almost nobody else around.

The Itchan Kala is the main (only) draw here, a walled city with most of the older stuff now used as museum space or hotels. Just wandering around the area was impressive enough. Too many pictures:

Apart from a few street cleaners and the odd other early tourist, the only other people around at that time were a film crew, whom I’d continue to see at different locations around the area throughout the day. This all makes perfect sense given how “old” the whole area looks (with quite a lot of restoration I’m assuming).

I went back to the hotel to properly check in, and just relaxed for an hour or so before heading out into the same area again, this time to go inside stuff which had started to open up. The difference once it got busier was quite large. Most of the streets were filled with souvenir stalls. I didn’t mind this at all since it created a bit more atmosphere about the place (and the stall holders weren’t at all pushy), but I’m glad I’d had that time earlier without any of that, too.

Before:

After:

Stuff being open meant access to some rooftops for views. Plus, I climbed up one of the minarets, which was mildly terrifying but void of any people thanks to a comparatively silly price of around 7 quid. Another silly number of photos. There are creds coming, I promise.

There was an amusement park in the nearest major city, Urgench. This was on the “maybe” pile of stuff to do, but since I’d pretty much done what there was to do in Khiva by early afternoon, I decided to head out there. As I said before, there was no Yandex here, but I found a bunch of minibuses near one of the city gates which shuttled between Urgench and Khiva. I just figured I’d get myself into Urgench and work things out from there, but it turned out that the minibus terminal in Urgench was right next to the park I wanted to be at.

Park Amira Timura

There were two creds here, plus at least 3 swinging ships which went to ridiculous levels of swinging.

Both creds were closed though. That was annoying, especially since this had been the biggest mission of a park to get to. Well, not really difficult once I realised the bus situation, but still.

Back into a minibus then. These trips took about 40 minutes each way and cost about 30p.

I’d seen a couple of Ferris wheels earlier. One was a standalone thing just outside the city walls and didn’t seem to be operating, but there was another close to the train station which was actually part of a nice little amusement park.

Khiva Lokomotiv Istirohat Bog’i

This was obviously quite a new place, and was actually pretty nice. Annoyingly, no creds even though there was plenty of space.

At least this new park had a derelict water feature though.

Have some more pictures of the Itchan Kala.

And that would’ve been it for Uzbekistan. I had a flight from Urgench to Tashkent the following morning, then a flight from there to Seoul and finally back to Hong Kong. With layovers, this took around 24 hours, which is quite ridiculous really.

Anyway, remember this?

And that was it for Tashkent. There were some other parks which I ignored for various reasons. One was quite a bit further out and I couldn’t be bothered for a powered dragon (bad cred whore). Another also just had a powered dragon, but prior goons hadn’t been let on it, so I didn’t bother. The other one used to have two coasters, but they were labelled as removed.

[…]

I was having a quick check on RCDB when I saw that on the page for the Tashkent park that previously only had two removed creds listed, two new creds had suddenly appeared. They must’ve been added right as I was leaving Tashkent. I was obviously devastated as I’d skipped this place. I should know better than to do that since there’s always a chance at these little-known parks that something else might be there; I’ve found more than a few myself in the past.

I was about to drown myself in the (humble brag) hot tub in my fabulous hotel suite, but I remembered that I’d have around a five-hour layover in Tashkent Airport on the way back to Hong Kong, so that gave me something to do to kill that time/some cred anxiety until then.

Of course you do; you’ve been waiting with baited breath for two weeks for this cliff-hanger to be resolved!

Luckily, I had a long layover in Tashkent, so after transferring from the domestic terminal to international (a ridiculously stupid process since they’re not connected, are located at opposite sides of the runway and have no internal transportation system) and leaving some luggage, I got a taxi to the park, which was about 20 minutes away.

G’afur G’ulom Nomidagi Madaniyat Va Istirohat Bog’i

That’s the RCDB name; the amusement park section is simply called Dream Park. It was basically unrecognisable from the old RCDB pictures. There, it looked like the semi-sketchy parks in Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench, but they’ve completely overhauled it and it looks really nice, with a decent selection of rides.

RCDB had had both old creds as removed, with two new ones added, but one of the old ones was still there. Bonus cred!

One of the new ones was this spinner thing:

And the other was this THING, previously listed as having an unknown manufacturer, but a good guess would be Xi'an Shuobo Amusement Equipment, yet another Chinese company. It was absolutely f**king appalling. Strangely, the corkscrew was actually ok, but the rest of it was vile. RCDB got the pictures up before I got this report done, so I’m sorry for the lack of exclusivity, but behold it in all its glory!

And that really was the end of the trip, and what a way to finish it was!

Uzbekistan was great. I went in with very little idea of the place, but really liked it. Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva were gorgeous, and Tashkent had more going for it than I’d expected. They’ve been pushing for tourists for a while now, and while that’s quite evident in some areas, it was never a problem in terms of large crowds. Also, there’s absolutely no pushiness from locals. Most (all) of the historic sites are full of souvenir stalls, but there’s absolutely no sales pressure; they don’t even approach you at all for the most part, just leave you to look around as you please.

It’s also stupidly, stupidly cheap. I converted US$300 at the airport “to start with”, and still had $100 worth left at the end of the ten days despite paying cash for everything except hotels, including some “expensive” meals at relatively fancy places. Annoyingly, the stupid airport doesn’t have a currency exchange in departures, at least not post-immigration/security (and if there’s anything pre-security, it’s not obvious), so I ended up having to buy crap at duty free to use it up since there’s no way of getting it changed outside Uzbekistan.

Anyway, small annoyance. On the whole this was a great trip. It’s clearly not a park destination, but I managed to add 18 crappy creds to the count, mostly without having to take too much time to grab them.