Semey, Kazakhstan. Even shit can taste sweet. I'm not sure that's true, but you get the idea. Steve looks under the car and sees that the shocks are totally buggered. It's a miracle it hasn't all collapsed and fallen out already. So we're stuck here for another night - which means drinking vodka with a Kazakh copper, who becomes just the latest person to try selling us sex. Ace.
It definitely makes sense to press on, but it's perfect when outside events step in to make that impossible. Surely that's what this trip's about - if you're stupid enough to have a plan, you have to abandon it all the time, whether that's for random high-speed Uzbek wedding invitations, or because your car's falling to pieces. Either way it just opens you up to more random chance, and to more signs that there may just be forces out there that are working to help you.
Take today's car trouble. We need new springs for the back. How do you get them? Go into the hotel to ask for a garage - no-one speaks any English. We've been here for 24 hours now and we've established that. Jeff tries with the security guard, no luck, so says 'it's ok, I'll try over here.' Ah, a fluent English speaker in the lobby. Perfect. And so we meet Olzhas, a kid who's here for his uncle's wake. He used to live in the US, so his English is good. He tells me how he has papers saying he was born during the period of nuclear testing nearby, and how this may have health implications. Very heavy stuff. He says the town has a high rate of cancer, and seems chuffed that we're raising money for a hospice which helps sufferers back home.
He's happy to drive Steve and Jeff to Spartak, the car parts place, to get them some springs.
They come back contented, mainly because for the second time in a matter of days, they've gotten to experience a central Asian equivalent of Par market. This one is in a massive hangar, hundreds of little shops selling pretty much the same automotive gear. This time we're willing to withold the cries of 'diversify, you retards,' as we could actually do with this stuff.
Trouble is, Fiat's aren't exactly the business round here, and the shocks Steve's been given are just too big. The dude in the shop said they could take them back, so Steve and Jeff take a taxi back to swap them. He comes back with the springs from an Audi A4 - a much bigger car than Mr W, but the only springs that looked even vaguely suitable. He needs to cut them down a bit, and the Halfords hack-saw we've got in our tool kit is shite. Luckily Sergei, the taxi driver, whisks Steve off to a garage, where a kid goes at them with an angle grinder. Ideal.
So now we have the springs, and they're the right length. Steve spends the next couple of hours improvising a solution. He's never done this before, but that doesn't stop him looking like he knows exactly what he's doing. The bastard. It's a patch-up job - it has to be when you've got the wrong springs and shit tools - but it does the job.
At one point we take a wheel off, and Jeff notices a bit of piping that's worn right down to the cable inside. The handbrake cable had come loose, and been almost destroyed by the weight on the wheel rim as it span round. A good spot, and it solves the riddle of the mysterious rattle of the previous evening. At this point Mother Waller is off cooking Super Noodles, to keep my boys fed and watered as they do manly car stuff.
By 6pm it's all done, the car looks barely higher than it did when we started, but as long as it gets us to Mongolia that'll be ideal. We need to get a local mechanic to do some business there anyway.
We celebrate with a wander round the nuclear city. We head in to a park in the centre, where we see a grown man sitting on a little red plastic chair, staring at a TV screen, singing into a microphone. Even in Japan I never saw such a shamelessly open display of crap karaoke.
Dinner is shashlik, chips and beer in one of the park's cafe-bars. All is good until two blokes come bounding over pushing their fingers in Steve's face demanding money. Apparently they're friends of the staff. Jeff had wandered off when he was supposed to pay, before the food came out, and it seems the way to point that out round here is to almost pick a fight with the customer, rather than quietly highlighting the error. Soon the aggro blokes have set up with their mates on the table right next to ours, despite the fact the rest of the place is empty. The twat radar is beeping loud, so we finish our beers and leave. This place has a definite vibe to it - people here are probably quite happy to behave like bell-ends.
We're close to heading back when we see a nice-looking beer garden and decide to check it out. It's way nicer - I meet a man taking a leak in the loo and he invites me over to drink vodka. On the way I meet one of his mates, a chubby camp chap who used to live in Tunbridge Wells. Steve says he's the closest-sounding to Borat of anyone he's spoken to here.
I get a few vodkas in - they keep magically refilling - before going back to grab Steve and Jeff. The crew is big and the talk friendly. One of the dudes, a big baby-faced guy called Roland, is a policeman. We have a go at him for taking all our money. He laughs and says he's not like that. No-one here is a huge fan of Borat. Speaking to these people, it's easy to imagine why.
Don't remember much else. Until later, vague memories of Roland joining us in the cab back to the hotel and pointing out the fact there's a brothel/sauna in the building round the back. Of course. He's insistent we go. Of course. Unfortunately it's closed. Damn. Later Steve tells me what he'd have done if it was open: 'Gone in, gone 'fuck me, this place is weird. Bye.' As for Jeff and me, the world's plan to get us to pay for sex has once again been foiled.
This may have had a bad effect on Jeff. I sense a need to release. Back in the room he starts getting all scrappy (he later claims I must have done something to set him off, but I don't think so, unless you consider lying on a bed to be an incendiary act). Steve films us grappling on the floor, slapping each other's arses. It gets properly good when, in an inspired moment of improvised weaponry, I grab a tub of talc and squirt it on Jeff's head.
Jeff's convinced he won. He has since apologised for 'being such an aggressive prick', not that he needs to. He's also still convinced I started it. I promise never to lie down near him again.
And so we sleep, in a room that smells like a freshly-pampered sumo wrestler. Tomorrow we're off to Russia.
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