Travel make benefit glorious nation Kazakhstan

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May 11-12, 2012
Flight: Austin (AUS) to Houston (IAH); United Airlines 737, econ
Flight: Houston (IAH) to London (LHR); United Airlines 777, econ
Flight: London (LHR) to Almaty, Kazakhstan (ALA); British Midland A319, econ
Hotel: Holiday Inn Almaty, 5k+$60/nt
So finally the day of departure arrives and our plans are in disarray. Being busy with work and last minute preparations I hadn't had a chance to call up United to get our tickets changed. My friend was using miles on his ticket, but my ticket was a paid fare which made things more complicated. Dean and I did decide to visit Erbil for a day, then fly to Albania and do a mad dash loop through the southern Balkans, ending in Athens.

I had booked the Supershuttle to the airport a bit tight on time, made worse when he showed up nearly 20 minutes late and still had 3 passengers to pick up! Luckily though traffic was light and we still arrived at the airport with plenty of time. The airport was nearly deserted so checkin and security took very little time. The checkin agent commented on my destination of Kazakhstan, she said she had just checked someone in that was heading to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I headed up to the United Club lounge, this was only the 2nd time I had visited there. For the last 10+ years I've had Admirals Club access but I am not flying AA as much anymore and had let my lounge access expire this year. Several months ago I had received an offer for the Continental Presidential Plus card (which gives United Club/*G lounge access) free for the first year so that was a no brainer.

The first hop on United to Houston was quick and uneventful, arriving at Terminal E I met my friend Dean who had flown in from San Antonio. We headed off to the lounge and called up UA customer service to change our tickets; we spent quite awhile on hold before being told they were not able to do so since our tickets were under airport control. They said to call back once we reached Almaty. Afterwards we went ahead and booked our flights to Erbil, Iraq on Atlasjet, a bit expensive at $405 roundtrip.

Our next United flight to London took off on time. I had an aisle seat which isn't my preferred seat since I have broad shoulders and carts always bang into me. My headphone jack was also on the fritz and I had to hold the jack down firmly most of the flight to hear any audio on the movies. The 777 was a former Continental plane and had good AVOD with large selection of movies. I watched 21 Jump Street and 3 Idiots (Bollywood film). Dinner was an uninspiring chicken enchilada. I only slept a few hours on the flight, trying to stay up the whole time to adjust to Almaty time, a full 11 hours difference from Austin!!

We arrived early into LHR Terminal 4 even after circling the obligatory holding pattern. Our next flight to Almaty was on BMI in a few hours. After the long walk from the plane to Flight Connections, the T1 bus was just pulling away, just missed it. We finally reached T1 and had to hunt around for the BMI lounge.. it was a bit of a hike as well. BMI was in the process of leaving the Star Alliance, in fact our return flight from Tehran was supposed to be on BMI after their departure from *A. But now luckily my United Club card gave us access. This was the first time I had flown BMI or been in their lounge, it was quite nice with breakfast items, wifi, etc. We only had about 20 minutes rest in the lounge though before it was already time to head down to the gate.

Almaty was still a long 7hr flight away.. at 3500 miles it is the same distance as JFK-LHR! This flight was on a A330 and was only 1/3 full, mostly with Indian passengers as the flight continued onto Amritsar after Almaty. Entertainment was severely lacking... no in-seat video just the overhead screen. The meal was also pretty bland and uninspiring.. even for airplane food. I spent most of the flight reading a book I had bought back in Austin. The rest of the flight passed quickly and soon we were coming in for a landing just as it was getting dark. We actually were about 45 minutes early landing. Since most of the passengers were connecting only a few passengers got off the plane, which meant going through immigration and customs only took a few minutes. We were in Kazakhstan, my 130th country visited.

We found a couple of ATM machines outside and got out some local currency, Tenge which is about 147:$1. I had checked taxi fares online, most had suggested 1000-1500 but there were also warnings about cheating taxis. when the driver said 500 each, that sounded OK. We even typed it out on our cell phones and double checked the price so (hopefully) there wouldn't be any misunderstanding.. especially since there wasn't a meter in the cab. So we set off to the hotel, the Holiday Inn which I had booked two rooms for my friends and I on points+cash rate. Hotels in Almaty (and Kazakhstan in general) are expensive ($200++/nt) due to oil money, indeed Almaty seemed a very prosperous place as we drove through the streets past Mercedes dealerships. We finally get to the hotel, where we find out 'they meant 500 per km'. No way were we paying that... no mention was made of 'per km' at the outset, and we didn't even know how far it was from the airport. They quoted 6000 Tenge. I hate unhappy taxi endings.. even when you think you have spelled out the fare at the outset. So I held out 2000 Tenge ($13.60) which was a fair rate... we said 2000 or 0. Didn't quite get to the arguing stage, but I was glad we had held onto our backpacks instead of putting them in the trunk, where the driver can hold them hostage. The driver kept saying hotel car rate would be 6000.. hotel car rates are usually jacked up 3-4x.. that's not the rate a taxi should be. Finally the driver relented and accepted the 2000.

We checked into the hotel and found that my other friends had already arrived and checked in that morning. We knocked on their door but no answer.. they were probably out partying somewhere since it was 10PM on a Saturday night. We were hungry so decided to go out exploring to see if there were any restaurants open. The Holiday Inn is pretty centrally located, near the Intercontinental Hotel and less than a km away from Republic Square. The streets were dark and we didn't see anything open as we walked towards Republic Square. The square still had banners up from May 9th Victory Day celebrations (end of WWII in Europe). I had seen the Victory Day parades in Belarus several years previously, it is still a huge holiday in the former Soviet republics. There were a few people wandering around the square, but still nothing open. Finally we saw a coffeeshop in the distance which turned out to be open and packed, full of fashionable young things. It was interesting to see the mix of faces, some Russian, others definitely Asian. The women in general were very exotic looking. The coffeeshop had a menu with food (one item was horsemeat panini!). I passed on the horsemeat though and just had a tuna panini and beer, both of which were quite delicious. It was quite late by this point, almost midnight, so we just headed back to the hotel. Our friends had returned to their room, and were already quite toasty on a bottle of Cuban rum they had bought somewhere. My friends had somehow gotten the upgrade to the Executive Floor, while we were one floor below. However I didn't notice an executive lounge at the hotel and their room seemed identical to ours. We chatted awhile before heading back to the room to crash.

May 13, 2012
Hotel: Holiday Inn; Almaty, Kazakhstan; 5k+$60/nt
This was our only full day in Almaty and Kazakhstan.. almost a shame given the size of the country, Kazakhstan is the 9th largest in the world. We awoke to an amazing view of snow-capped mountains out our window. Almaty lies at the base of the Zailiysky Alatau mountain range, a branch of the Tien Shan mountains. It's location is comparable to Denver; built at the base of the mountains with prairie/steppe running off endlessly to the north. We met up with the two Scotts and headed out to look for breakfast. The Lonely Planet guide had mentioned a cafeteria chain called Kaganat that sounded OK.. according to their map there was one very close to the coffeeshop we had been to the previous night. Apparently though it has either closed/moved or more likely LP got the location wrong... after hunting for awhile we walked further to the next one a few blocks away. 'A few blocks' in Almaty is quite a distance as blocks are large.. it's not much of a walking city. We finally found the place though on Dostyk street, 2kms away from the hotel. The place was an old school proletariat cafeteria.. they had blinis/crepes but nothing to go with them, no honey, syrup or compote. So I had dry pancakes for breakfast. There were several students eating there, the place is very close to the university.

After breakfast, we headed down the street to catch a bus up to a ski resort in the mountains. Along the way we ran into a group of Uzbek students, they all wanted their photo taken with us! The delay cost us though as we saw the bus pulling away just as we got to the busstop. We waited around for the next one.. as we were waiting this large group of students shows up, as it turned out they all got on the same bus we did. Super crowded, we all had to stand and it was made even worse when three guys decided to bring their mountain bikes on the bus!! The fare was only 70 Tenge ($0.48). The ride up the mountain took about 30 minutes to the Medeu stadium, an ice rink/track built a few years ago. Along the way we passed pipes running along the side of the road. The pipes looked like a Windows screensaver, curving and wrapping around everything in their path, looping up above driveways and disappearing under the ground in other places.

The stadium seemed to be closed, but we noticed the cable car heading further up the hill to the ski resort. We walked down the hill to the cable car station, which we had missed seeing while standing in the packed bus. The fare was slightly expensive at 2000T but the views from the car were great. The ride was quite long, taking over 30 minutes to continue up the hill to the Shymbulak resort. There were still piles of snow at this altitude (7500'😉, nearly 5000' higher than we had started in Almaty. We spent awhile hiking around the meadows and eating lunch at a restaurant at the ski resort. There were now quite a few locals up at the resort. One guy had brought in a hooded falcon (falcon hunting is popular in Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan).

It was already after 3PM by the time we got back down to the city. The two Scotts had already spent the previous day wandering around town and had seen most of the sights. So they headed back to the hotel to rest awhile while Dean and I started a walking tour of Almaty. One advantage of starting near Republic Square is it is downhill all the way to the train station, where we would catch the metro back. The walking tour took us past the Academy of Sciences, down a lovely tree-lined street, and to Panfilov Park. The Zenkov Cathedral is located here, an amazingly ornate Russian Orthodox church and one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world. The park was full of locals out with their kids playing and enjoying the weekend. From the park, we next headed to the Green Market, a large bazaar selling clothes to food, meat, spices, bread, etc. We got lost awhile trying to find an exit from the meat market, most of the vendors by this time were already closed or shutting down and most of the doors were padlocked! Next was the central mosque. Finally we headed to the metro station for the ride back uphill to the hotel. Almaty's metro is very new, it only opened in December 2011. Currently there is only one line, running from the train station past Republic Square. It was still nearly a 2km walk from the closest metro station back to the hotel!



We met with David from Stantours to pay our balance for our Turkmenistan trip, that meant we wouldn't need to carry around a ton of cash for most of the trip! We had wired a deposit but still had the remaining balance to pay. He gave us some good tips on crossing the border to Kyrgyzstan and going from Osh to Tajikistan.

For dinner we ate at a nearby kebab place and headed to the coffee shop for beers. I finally was able to Skype United reservations trying to get our ticket sorted out. I'd hoped to get our return changed to Istanbul/Athens or at best just drop the Tehran to London leg. The wifi connection at the hotel was bad though and I kept getting disconnected. Finally I was able to get through and keep the line open, but it took nearly an hour on hold to get both of our tickets taken care of. My friend's ticket was an award, so that was easy enough to change. My ticket was going to have a $250+ change fee though, but I remembered receiving an email about BMI leaving the Star Alliance and any itineraries using BMI would not charge a change fee.. after they put me on hold again for awhile they came back and said my change fee would only be $60 for additional taxes!!

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