Since our last two days were actually our meeting days, the only thing I can share was our dinners. The first meeting night, the Tajikistan government hosted a dinner for all participants at this restaurant called Buhoro. It was a big hall with a dancefloor and a stage with all the chairs and tables at the side. They again had gorgeously painted ceilings.
Again, as with the government hosted dinner in Georgia, food was overflowing! It was served to us all throughout the 3 hours we were there. We had different kinds of breads and cold cuts (no horsemeat, thank goodness), salads, meaty samosa (so good), soup (which I didn’t eat much since my friend warned me it was too oily and might upset my stomach), more meat and veggies and a huge platter of fruits.
All the while, we were entertained by different kinds of performances (obviously I take crappy photos and didn’t even make an effort to go near the dance floor).
Afterwards, my friend and I went out for some ice cream and blueberry iced latte (so yummy), with me in my super comfy ababu pants and jacket. My friend obviously has this thing for ice cream, same as when we were in Georgia. Spent the night chilling.
The next day was a whole day of meetings here and there. Since it was our last night before departure, our big boss wanted to treat us for dinner. Hence, I had a costume change. Haha.
My local counterpart recommended this karaoke type restaurant which had lady belly dancers. On hindsight, it wasn’t a good restaurant to take your bosses and co-workers to since the women would dance around our table and no one watched. Haha! And here we were, talking about gender equality, women empowerment and feminism. Actually, in Tajikistan and most of Central Asia, women are still seen as second class citizens so we still had a lot of work to do. We had our usual salads, soup, bread and of course, shashlik. I guess you can say their cuisine was very simple.
Our flight was at 4am so I didn’t even try to sleep anymore. Me and my friend just hung out till it was time for me to go. Slept on the Dushanbe-Dubai leg. One of the FAs was actually a Filipina and she was like “all of you were asleep! You didn’t even eat your food.” Haha! We proceeded to the Dubai airport business lounge and had a light breakfast. Wanted to put the glass water bottle in my bag because it was so pretty – Healthy Options carries that too but it’s too expensive – but the bottle was too heavy. Where would I even use it, right? Glad they’re making a conscious effort to lessen use of plastic bottles.
Then started our 8 hour flight from Dubai to Manila, with Kim K and Sheldon as my company.
I also tried their instant noodles, just for the heck of it. Naka-business nga, pero pagkain instant canton. Haha! I also find their plane camera amusing, it’s like their version of a dashcam so you can watch as the plane lands and you see the on-ground staff wave his lights, as if waving to say “Welcome home.”
jlapis 