Asia Tour 2026 - Day 16/25 - 25th August - Almaty, Kazakhstan - City 11/15 - Country 6/9
Breakfast time again, I love breakfast made to order! This time I had the "fried eggs with vegetables" that turned out to be an omelette with vegetables, it was okay, edible.
We ordered a taxi to the bus station which was completely full with tourists, up to this point I had not seen so many tourists at all. It was only 11km to the border and we arrived to see a huge cue of all kinds of vehicles waiting to be checked through. On the bus we already made friends with Isaac from Canada, a German, a Pole and two Turks.
We took our bags off and proceeded to the check point, got stamped bags checked the clocks went back an hour again and we did the same to cross into Kazakhstan. At the Kazakh side there was a slow queue with a woman with kids stopped in front of me. A few people switched queues and I tried the same, but I was moved again by one of the guards.
Outside Stanislav, Isaac and everyone else were waiting patiently, but as to where the bus was, nobody knew, something vague like a "gas station". We wandered a bit then a guy was shouting "Almaty! Almaty" waiving people through, there it was a run down bus waiting for us. We didn't leave, some Kazakh guys tried to force the Turkish guys to leave but they stood their ground and staid. It turned out they were not treated well and the border at all. I understood pretty much all of what was being said in Turkish.
As we approached Almaty, the traffic slowed down considerably. We got stuck beside a Georgian lorry with cars all with Georgian number plates. We would slowly overtake him, then he would inch past us.
At the station within a few minutes we had the "taxi-taxi" guys all over us, he didn't recognise our address but I realised I had the actual address as a message from the owners. The entire trip was about 20 euros.
We were at the right address but there were lost of entrances and buildings in a sort of communist dystopian living area with security codes for everything. The code we were given for the gate worked, but not the building. We just waiting for someone to enter. Our apartment was very nice, but we also had a separate PIN code to get in!
It was laundry day, so we put on the washing and went shopping at the supermarket for salad stuff. I also contacted the owners who told us about an electronic key as the code didn't work. So that was our first night, laundry and salad.
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#Bishkek #Kyrgyzstan #Бишкек #Кыргызстан #ბიშკეკი #ყირგიზეთი #Бішкек #Қырғызстан #Bisjkek #Kirgizië #Bishkek #AnChirgeastáin
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