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Let me tell you a little story: Once upon a time there were two brothers : Kazakhstan & Kyrgyzstan.
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The older one was favored by his adoptive father, went to a university,
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Got a good job, built a corporation that employed thousands of people and made billions, whereas the younger brother, was like:
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Kyrgyzstan : "Hah! Nerd. I'm gonna go, like, party in the mountains or something and, like, I don't know. Party and whatever man?"
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and that's basically Kyrgyzstan.
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Everyone I'm your host, Barbs. If you don't know anything about Kyrgyzstan,
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which I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't, basically they are, like, the party animals of Central Asia.
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Dude, they love to dance, and what better way to start the party than by telling you where the party's at?
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Okay, guys, seriously, I'm gonna have to ring the bell, again. Kyrgyzstan is a tripster nation,
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one that few people go to, that you might want to start checking out now,
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before the massive flocks of annoying tourists come in and ruin everything.
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First of all, Kyrgyzstan is landlocked, located in Central Asia
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Surrounded by four countries with a horrible mess of enclaves and exclaves mostly mixed in with Uzbekistan, in this area known
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as the Fergana Valley. We'll talk more about this in a bit.
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The capital city is Bishkek
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located in the north, and the country is divided into seven regions or Oblasts, with the two largest cities,
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Bishkek and Osh, acting as independent entities with the same status as an Oblast.
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Of course after those two, the third largest city is Jalal-Abad,
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However Karakol is a more popular tourist destination.
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The largest airports are of course also found in the largest cities Bishkek's Manas International and Osh International Airport.
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Okay, now back to the enclaves/exclave thing. Basically over here you see a ton of choppy scraps of land that make no sense
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because they belong to other countries within Krygyzstan.
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You have the four Uzbek exclaves including the largest one, Sokh which is strange because it's a Uzbek territory
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Even though it's 99% populated, by Tajiks. With Tajikistan you have Vorukh as, well as the area of Kayragach
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but I think Google Earth got it wrong because they put the borders here
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Which is just an empty stretch of uninhabited road.
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This all happened because a number of factors. Some being because of things like:
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Areas having historically inhabited people groups
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And others things like, you know, (Russian accent) making Soviet Russia anything was being possible.
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But, yeah, that basically covers it. I mean, the country kind of looks like a fish with deformed back fin
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but, yeah, that pretty much concludes the land demarcations.
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All right, there's the part we mentioned some notable places of interest. So, here we go
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(Forgive my horrible pronunciation)
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Karakol Dungan Mosque
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Ala Too Square with the Manas Complex
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The Ak Örgö Yurt Workshop
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The State Museum of Fine Arts
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Jayma and Osh Bazaars
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Karakol Animal Market
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The Koshoy Ruins
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The Monument of Yuri Gagarin
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These petroglyphs (Cholpon Ata and Ak Sai)
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Tasha Rabat
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Hippodrome
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And probably the most iconic national monuments: Barana Tower
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which is like one of the oldest buildings in the country that still stands today
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even though some of it was destroyed but it's still there.
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Sweet, moving on
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Now the biggest appeal to Kyrgyzstan is hands down the landscape
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I mean they have thousands of lakes over 400 rivers and canals
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88 mountain ranges forests and almost all of it is untouched, so far.
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First of all
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the country is over three-quarters mountainous, with the Tian Shan Mountains making up the majority of the land
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Here, you can also find the source of the longer river being The Naryn that flows westward.
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But the Chu river is probably the most important, as it flows through Bishkek and empties into the largest
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and most iconic fiscal landmark: Issyk-Kul Lake, the largest in the country
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Issyk-Kul is the second largest saline lake after the Caspian Sea
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The second largest high altitude lake after Lake Titicaca in South America
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(Heheh, South America)
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The cool thing is, the salt water in addition to hot springs causes the lake never freeze, even in winter freezing months
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Just to hop away and you can find the tallest mountain: Jengish Chokusu
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which is shared with China at the border.
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Yeah, China kinda has this thing, where they like to take: "Share, share half of everybody highest points"
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China: "Dude, that's the second time you make that joke"
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and i'll keep it coming
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China: "I'm watching you..."
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Hehehe, no, you're not.
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Ooooooooooohhhhhh, eddddgggyyyyy
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The sixth largest non-polar glacier in the world, Inylchek
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They have crazy looking canyons
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Like, Fairytale Canyon and The Seven Bulls Cliff
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And on top of that, at over 27.000 acres, they have the worlds largest walnut forest
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Yeah, WALNUTS
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Speaking of which food wise, they are very so much of their brothers Kazakhstan up north
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but they add a little mountain flare to the dishes, like:
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Beshbarmak
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Plov
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Kuurdak
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Oromo
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Which is also a name of that people group that we study in the Ethiopia episode. Remember, Oromo people?
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Manti
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Boorsoq
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Kurut
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Shorpo
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and Vodka, it's super cheap, is like only 4$ a bottle.
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The national animal is the Snow Leopard
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and Kyrgyzstan's wildlife is a little more diverse and unique from their cousins
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They have things like the Marco Polo Sheep, the largest in the world
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Stone Marten
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Brown Bear
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Pallas Cat
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of course horses which they like to both meat and milk
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Which by the way, milking a horses is really difficult.
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Kyrgyzstan is also famous for being an insane the untapped potential candidate for green energy
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In fact they make so much energy through hydroelectric dams they actually ended up exporting it to their neighbor countries.
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Outside investors have been keeping their eyes on Kyrgyzstan for a while,
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it's like:
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Investor: Hey, Kyrgyzstan.
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Kyrgyzstan: Yo, whats up?
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Investor: How many day your sunshine you have?
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Kyrgyzstan: I mean, 250, give or take
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Investor: Okay and those valleys and the Alai Mountain range are pretty windy year-round aren't they?
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Kyrgyzstan: Yeah, definitely
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Investor: Okay, okay, so here's an idea for you, why don't we like put the ton of solar panels and wind turbine
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Kyrgyzstan: WAIT...I mean, that's cool, man we'll get to that eventually but I think we should dance first.
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Investor: .....What?
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Oh, they also have the world's last pure mercury mine in the world.
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I mean they have a lot of mines and gold makes up a huge portion of their exports
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but yeah, mercury is big deal too. That stuff can kill you if you're not careful.
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OH NOW YOU TELL ME!
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Kyrgyzstan is beautiful with a lot of economic potential but they don't seem to tap into it too much
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I mean, they'd rather climb trees than cut them down.
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That's kind of like the Kyrgyz way, which brings us to...
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Kyrgyz....that's, what you call, these people Kyrgyz, not Kyrgyzstani, not Kyrgyzstanian, Kyrgyz. Got it? Good.
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Kyrgyzstan originally comes from a word that means something along lines of "We Are 40" referring to the original 40 tribes that inhabited the area
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40 is an important number to these people and everything starts with
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This guy, Manas. We'll jump into that in a sec, but first
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Kyrgyzstan is made up of about 6 million people and has one of the most evenly distributed populations per square kilometre
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At over 65% of the population being rural.
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The country is about 75% Kyrgyz, 12% Uzbek, 6% Russian, and the remainder is made up of various other people groups like
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Chinese, Chinese Uyghurs and so on.
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They also use the Som as their currency
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Which is one of the only currencies that uses a denomination of 3.
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They use type C plug outlet and they drive on the right side of the road.
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Now I ask some of you Kyrgyz subscribers
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What your culture is like and the responses I mostly got work, we are very similar to our Kazakh brothers, but we are mountain folk
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We grew up with a very different terrain, that has forced us to live a very different life
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We have a more relaxed party atmosphere and enjoy nature but, we aren't pushovers like, some of our neighbors.
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If there's a problem, we face it and we will fight back. Why do you think we kicked out two of our presidents?
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I'm not even joking, that was like literally in one of my emails that one of you guys wrote to me.
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Surprisingly, EU and US citizens do not require a visa upon entry unlike some of their neighbours,
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Turkmenistan: "Hey, you want to see Doorway to Hell, you pay and then get out!"
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Nah Turkmenistan is cool it's just wow they make entry so difficult.
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Anywho, as mentioned there are historical tribes however these were all united by the hero of Kyrgyzstan, Manas,
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A guy from the 10th century who fought against the Khitan and Oriat enemies
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making him the central figure of the longest epic poem in the world.
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So many things are named after this guy;
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Streets, statues, universities, radio stations, national parks and the largest airport.
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The whole Manas thing kind of solidified the Kyrgyz identity apart from their neighbors.
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Now they could claim a whole new culture based off of mountain tribes and warriors.
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Speaking of which, they were part of kind of like the invading people groups
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that forced China to build their great wall which brings us to History,
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Scythians, Turkic tribes invade, different Turkic tribes defeat the Uyghur Khante, the Manas guy comes in,
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they formed their own Kyrgyz Khante, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, 19th century Khante of Kokand,
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1850s Russians come in, 1918 Kyrgyzstan becomes part of the Soviet Union until 1991 when Kyrgyzstan gains independence,
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Two revolutions one in 2005 and another in 2010 and here we are today.
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The Kyrgyz language is almost completely identical to the Kazakh language
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which is pretty intelligible to the Turkish language as they are all Turkic based.
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Nonetheless Russian is also an official language as it was taught during Soviet times.
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The majority of people around 88% of Kyrgyzstan identifies as Muslim.
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However you don't really see a strong Islamic presence as it was suppressed during Soviet times
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and plus the traditional Turkic and Mongoloid culture kind of infuses pre-Islamic concepts in their lifestyles.
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You see it a lot during their celebrations and traditional music and dances.
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Marriages are very interesting in Kyrgyzstan. To avoid relative marrying,
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most children learned their male ancestors down to the seventh generation or so.
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And yes, there is that stigma of kidnap weddings however it's not exactly what you think.
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Basically most people in the past were arranged to be married by families that were close friends.
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However if there were two people that loved each other but their families didn't approve,
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The only, way to get married would be if the woman was 'kidnapped'
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by her lover and once married the families couldn't do anything.
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It was kind of like a "weird illegally romantic" thing. Unfortunately in the more common era, this practice has become corrupted
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and some men took it to the extreme of literally kidnapping women that they just wanted to marry regardless of the woman's consent.
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Today the practice is shunned upon and it's left a tarnished mark on the Kyrgyz people.
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Oh, and uhh Kyrgyzstan is also famous for their dances that they take very seriously.
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Their traditional style incorporates a lot of shoulder jerking movements and bending,
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which is probably where the modern performers like these guys got their inspiration from
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Ughhh, that shoulder thing. I mean, I know it will give me nightmares but I can't stop looking.
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Speaking of performers, some famous people of Kyrgyzstan might include:
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Chinghiz Aitmatov, Roza Otunbayeva,
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Isa Akhunbayev, Valentina Shevchenko,
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Igor Paklin, Talant Dujshebaev, Eldar Djangirov,
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Salizhan Sharipov, Suimankul Chokmorov,
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Kurmanjan Datka, Mahmul Al Kashgari and Yusuf Balasaguni.
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All right, so basically Kyrgyz people are like mountain folk Turkic Mongoloid, hybrid, Muslimy people with cool dance moves.
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I could've just summarized this whole segment with that but you know
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Gotta hit that 10 minute YouTube mark so extra monetization
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All right, moving on.
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All right, Kyrgyzstan's friends are interesting considering how politically diverse they all are
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but you know with Kyrgyzstan, it's like "Meh, I don't care if you lean on complete anarchy
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if we open up trade deals, you have my attention."
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With China, things are kind of good as they make up the largest trade partner
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especially after the city of Naryn gained free trade zone status.
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Tons of Chinese people have opened up businesses and moved in.
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This however gives Kyrgyzstan a vigilant eye considering what happened to the Uyghur autonomous region, so yeah.
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When it comes to Russia, Kyrgyzstan actually really like being part of the Soviet Union during Soviet times
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and was always trying to fight for attention that they unfortunately didn't get too much of.
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It was actually Russia that had to kind of encourage them to go and adopt their own economic model and currency.
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To this day, Soviet Memorabilia is still on display in public squares
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and even after independence, they still love getting visits from their former occupier.
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The USA on the other hand provides humanitarian and military assistance
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and help them get into the world trade organization so there's a friendliness aspect there too.
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When it comes to their best friends however, almost all Kyrgyz people I talked to have said
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Kazakhstan and some said Turkey as well. Turkey was the first country to recognize Kyrgyzstan's independence
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and has an eternal friendship cooperation agreement with them as well as embassies and investments.
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Kazakhstan is basically Kyrgyzstan's big brother that does all the business and trade that trickles into Kyrgyzstan.
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When squabbles with Uzbekistan come in like pipeline shutdowns,
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they run to Kazakhstan who mediates and fixes things up for them.
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They speak the same, they eat the same.
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When Kazakhstan is pushing himself too hard, Kyrgyzstan is like:
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"Hey bro, stop it. Just take a break. Come get some fresh mountain air
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and take a dip in Issyk-Kul. Beshbarmak is on me."
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In conclusion, Kyrgyzstan is the little brother that knows he's surrounded by economic giants
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so rather than getting intimidated, he just dances, dances all his worries away.
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Stay tuned, Lao is coming up next.