Almaty, Kazakhstan + Accra, Ghana
#SocialDistancing has us spending all of our time podcasting. We have our weekend #10KSaturday interview features, we’ve started releasing 10-minute DAILY episodes, and we have our first ever virtual-long-distance guest episode. This month’s guest googler is Roger Seng, founder of Podcast West and the host of TWO podcasts - Dudes from Utah and Crossing Paths! He also helps other podcasters through his content creation business, Salt City Garage. So head over to him for your content needs! We met him at the Outlier Podcast Festival, you know back when you could meet people, shake hands, hug, even!
Roger is obsessed with online shopping, gadgets, and hearing the sound of his own voice. It’s why this trio have podcasts, he’s not alone in that last one, to be sure. Alison is obsessed with the coronoa virus updates. She is always preparing for the end of the world anyways, so she wants to have all the info, all the time. Lulu is obsessed with Facebook, both for news and for escaping the news.
In these uncertain times, Roger is wishing for a VR Racing Rig. Depending on how long stay-at-home orders are in place, he could have time to build one himself, or get one delivered. He’s not much for video games, generally, but if there were ever a time to escape this world IT IS NOW. Alison is wishing for a bat cave. Being quarantined with a husband and two children is taking its toll. Lulu is struggling with the inability to go to the gym. There are streaming workouts, she knows, but she is an at-the-gym-on-a-machine type of gal. The things we’ve taken for granted! Anyone else struggling? Share your stories with us on the Baes page!
Lulu decided to go to Accra, the capital of Ghana…which is in Africa, if you (like Alison) were not sure. Her first stop is the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City where she booked the Executive Corner Suite. An insanely large living room, a walk-in closet, and a soaking tub are just some of the desirable amenities this suite offers. It also comes with access to the Executive Lounge, which includes a private breakfast area, afternoon cake and nuts served from noon to six, evening cocktails, and complimentary use of meeting rooms. For $150 each, Lulu adds an early check-in of 9am and a late check-out of 6pm, and a $120 airport pickup in a Jaguar.
Lulu doesn't think you can actually visit or tour Agbogbloshie, but she is just so fascinated (and saddened) by this she had to (imaginarily) explore. A poverty-stricken neighborhood became a dumping ground for digital waste of first world nations, because it was cheaper to ship old computers, cameras, TVs, cell phones overseas then to recycle them. One of the tragic ramifications of this waste was exposure to toxic substances by burning for trace precious metals, which children do there to get dollars per day. It's also a source of criminals harvesting data left behind on these discarded devices, think banking details, social security numbers, or classified government secrets. Read more about this on Atlas Obscura.
Needing a little happy after discovering the aforementioned atrocity, Lulu goes on a hunt for the best waakye, a traditional Ghanaian food made from rice, black beans and meat, served with a boiled-egg and noodle garri (a crumbled grain). She finds it at Auntie Muni’s, the best roadside chop bar in Accra.
In what is possibly the oddest shop, Lulu goes looking for a very peculiar souvenir. The Kane Kwei Workshop crafts custom, fantasy coffins, as is the tradition in this area of Ghana. If you are thinking “WTF is a fantasy coffin?! ”, you are not alone. You can be buried in a coffin made to look like whatever you’d like… a plane, a microphone, or a corn on the cob. As macabre as this is, Lulu is excited to be bringing home a punny coffin, so long as she’s not coming home in it. Geez, this got weird. Both writing about it and talking about it in the episode gave us the shivers. Let’s try (again) to move on to a happier tone.
What lightens the mood better than a cocktail? Lulu goes for pre-dinner drinks at La Tante DC-10, a restaurant in an old plane! You can choose bar seating or the dining room, the bar area being first class seating against the walls decorated with Ghanian pillows, while the dining room is economy seats around tables. After that happy little pre-gaming excursion, Lulu heads for dinner at Japanese eatery Santoku. She started by ordering the lobster miso soup, prawn salad, and lobster tempura, then decided that with prices as cheap as they were that she was just going to drop a bunch of money and have them bring her everything, Be Our Guest style
Lulu ends her evening at luxury lounge-club Carbon where she encounters a “magical, mysterious world of luxurious hedonism, stylish surrealism and neo-nightclubbing”. Lulu is pretty sure that last one is not a word, and that this would not be something she would normally be interested in doing. But she is determined so she dons these Gucci sunglasses, orders a bottle of Dom for a random table of guests who are likely much more interested in “experiencing nightlife as never before at the most decadent destination for global style-setters.”
Lulu studied the 'stans in college, so she already knew that it was located in both Europe and Asia, a fact Alison was so excited to share. According to her research, Kazakhstan is generally safe for tourists. Famous for its large population of wild horses, it is also true - according to Alison and her research, so that's like, three degrees of uncertainty - that Kazakhstan is where man first tamed and rode horses. Alison books this Mountain Guest House on Airbnb in the capital city of Almaty. This house can sleep up to 10 guests, and has its own indoor pool!
For a jolt to her day, Alison heads to Coffeedelia where she discovers that coffee is served very sweet in Kazakhstan…taking 10 spoons of sugar is not unusual!
Alison has all the energy needed for her Horse Riding Adventure through Korsay Lakes from Viator. She bought out 12 of the 14 spots on this 10 hour nomadic-style tour Each spot is only $250, she left two spots so she wasn't too lonely, but didn't want to be around all the people when trying to be one with nature.
Next, Alison ventures to a place located a 38 hour drive away, just for the sake of she's saying she's been to...the Valley of Balls. Literally on the other side of Kazakhstan, the 12-year-old boy inside of Alison couldn't resist having a laugh.
Absolutely starving after an accidentally skipped lunch and an entire day of horseback riding, she heads for dinner at the gorgeous restaurant Alasha. The extremely extensive menu left Alison deferring to the server to bring his favorites, and a bottle of Rosé. Then its back to the Airbnb to relax in the indoor pool.
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