Reg plays football in the street

Saturday/Sunday 5 & 6 May

We like our hotel. It's airy and spacious. They are able to launder our big bag of washing - it will cost 35,000 soms - about £10. That's a bargain. I think the woman who took the washing handwashes it, because a couple of hours later she emerges with the washing in a basket.   It looks like it's been wrung out by hand, and the woman is sweating and and wipes her brow. Amazingly, she's smiling. Later I see my & Reg's wet clothes strung out over the horizontal banisters on the first floor landing. The underwear is drying in a side room. Talk about hanging out your dirty linen – though this appears to be clean now.

There's free wifi in the hotel. Reg can get it on his smartphone, but not on the laptop. It puzzles him. So we can't post the latest blog until the next day, Sunday, when the hotel proprietor kindly offers us the use of his laptop. Using a memory stick, Reg is able to transfer the blog to the internet, despite the “copy” and “paste' language being in Uzbek or perhaps Russian. The proprietor says we are welcome to use his computer again when we need to, so perhaps we can ask him again tomorrow. .We don't want to take advantage.

The hotel proprietor changes $100 into soms for us. We get 280,000 soms – a good exchange rate, as the most soms we've got before is 270,000. After breakfast we find the local market, which sells a huge variety of stuff including the usual fruit, veg and spices – bags, clothes, materials, bread, drinks, shampoos and soaps. I have shampoo but I'm running out of conditioner. Our Samarkand guide Malika did tell me it was possible to buy conditioner in Uzbekistan. No-one at the market understands “conditioner”. I buy a bottle of something that might be it – or might not!

We buy some bananas, apples and cherries for lunch. Bananas are one of the provisions that are much more expensive here than in England, probably because they're not a locally grown product. I'm really happy because I find a stall selling sewing needles and different coloured threads. I forgot to bring sewing stuff with me.

We enter a shaded teahouse to escape from the hot sun and order black tea. As usual it's loose tea served in a teapot, and we are given 2 cups without handles, in the familiar blue and white Uzbek crockery.

As in Samarkhand, everywhere we go people say hello and smile. Tiny children wave at us. Occasionally, gipsy children ask us for “bonbons” or money, but we're advised not to give any. Requests for sweets and money are not the norm though. Mostly people are just friendly. Some people are on pushbikes – they never have gears. All this friendliness and respect and welcoming attitude, especially from young people, makes us wonder. In the West, despite money shortages, we have so much, compared to these people. We can travel to most places, with possible-to-get visas … Uzbeks find it hard to get a visa to come to England. And yet, with all these problems, it's clear that young Uzbeks embrace life with a positive, open attitude.

This afternoon, we walk around the walls of Samarkand. We come across some real poverty, and shack -houses, and hear sheep bleating from inside a shed next to a shack-house. There are very few cars, and some young lads are playing football in the street. They shout hello to us and kick their football to Reg. He joins in with their game for a few minutes. As we eventually walk away, they don't want Reg to leave. They keep kicking their ball to him.

Last night we had a really good meal, but tonight, I enjoy my plov (a rice dish with carrots and peppers and a sprinkle of meat) but Reg doesn't enjoy what he orders. I've had plov twice now and enjoyed it, so true to my form when eating out at in England, (where people who know me expect me to order scampi and chips) I'll probably order plov again, because I know I'll like it.