When we woke Wednesday morning we discovered that the electricity in the hotel (and the surrounding neighbourhood) was "out" and it remained that way for the next day and a half. Later in the day this situation would cause an interesting traffic event that we thought accurately demonstrated the difference between drivers in "the emerging world" and drivers countries where "road rules" have more effect on behaviour; but I will come back to that a little later.

We set out Wednesday morning to visit some of the more notable sites of this famous town. One of the first things we noticed was the extent to which the area around the major "sites" has been "developed" since we last visited this place in 2008. While the old building and structures are still impressive (not withstanding that they are mostly rebuilt or heavily rennovated) a lot of the surrounding area has been "upgraded" with pedestrian malls and modern buildings that house repetitious souvenir shops. Even the market seems to have been upgraded. Never the less we enjoyed our morning visiting the 3 main buildings of the Registan - Sher Dor (Lion) Medressa, Tilla-Kari (Gold Covered) Medressa, Ulugbek Medressa, the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, the Siob Bazzar and Shah-i-Zinda or the avenue of mausoleums.

After resting through the hotter part of the day we ventured out again in the afternoon to Timur's statue, and then to the University district. Our walk gave us an opportunity to see that Samarkand, like the other major Central Asian cities we have visited has wonderful stands of very mature trees lining many of the important roads and that these trees provide a big difference to the impact of the hot sun.

On our way back to our hotel from our afternoon walk we came across a major street intersection where the traffic lights were not working due to the electrical outage. As we approached this intersection the place was in chaos. About a dozen vehicles we blocked (not crashed) in the center of the intersection, non of them could move because this inner group were all in each others way. The group could not free themselves from the tangle because other traffic approaching the intersection simply sped around the outside of this knot. Not one of the drivers seemed to give any thought to the possibility that by a bit of orderly behaviour might actually make the intersection work more effectively for everyone, rather they were relying on blasts from their vehicle horn, the theory seemed to be that "fi I made enough noise everyone else would magically get ouy nof my way". We thought this spectacle captured the essense of central asian driving.

Thursday was more of a business day. Our first chore of the day was a visit to the market to change some dollars into Soms, the local currency. This is a bit more of a challenge in Uzbekistan than in most countries as there is a vast difference between the official exchage rate (that one will receive at a bank, approx 2150 soms to the dollar) and the black market rate that many shop keepers and even taxi drivers will give, around 2600-2700 to the dollar.The other "interesting" feature of Uzbek currency is that the largest denomincation note we have seen is 1000 som, worth somewhere between 35 and 50cents US. So shopping for groceries or the like requires carrying around a veritable stack of notes. Counting money is such a chore tha even the super market checkout girls, and gas station cashiers, have automated money counting machines.