Almaty Amenities

With our friends Gretchen and Chris at Guinness Pub

during Trip #1

Food is OK. Our first apartment did not have a great supermarket but we did find a pretty good restaurant where we could eat and connect WiFi. This did get expensive. We were able to reduce our costs once we moved to a second apartment in a more central location. This supermarket had more pre-prepared food and we have found some reasonably priced restaurants. The way we found the pre-prepared stuff we liked, was by looking over the selection at the deli counter and pointing. Nothing was so bad that we did not eat it to fill our belly, but there were some dishes we did not buy a second time.
There were a couple of the dishes we ordered and liked. One was Plov, which is rice and a meat mixed together. It appears to be fried rice and mutton and is very filling and good. Shasleek (spelling ?) is their version of grilled meat on a skewer. If you find some good Shasleek near your apartment you may be set for the entire trip. I finally found really good chicken and beef at Restaurant Almaty and it was reasonably priced.

Internet Wi-Fi is pretty easy to find. Some restaurants charge for a hook up, while others are free so long as you order food or drink. Mad Murphy’s was the friendliest and had the better menu of American food. Their service was slow (like most places here) but the food was good and one of the waitresses made buddies with our six year old. This was important to us and we have patronized them several times since. Chinzano (bar/restaurant) had great rice and good food but was pricier. We went there mostly for the Wi-Fi. I think that their clientele start later in the evening because if you go there before 7:00pm you may be just one of a few folks there so the service is pretty good. Guinness Pub did not have Wi-Fi but has good pizza and a very good chicken breast filet with decent service.

Communication is not a severe problem if you do not speak Russian, since a good portion of the younger Kazakhs understand English. Although, I will be brushing up on my Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet before trip two, especially for street signs and menus. In Almaty there are many restaurants with English menus, you just have to ask.

Transportation is only an issue if you are not centrally located to a good supermarket or restaurants. If you do need a ride you can hitch-hike. This is a common practice in Almaty city. We have done this several times with an interpreter and the service is good and the ride is usually about 500 Tenge or $5 to most anywhere in the city. If you feel safe enough, here is what you do. You stand in the street with your hand out, palm down and cars will pull over and you tell them where you want to go and ask how much. I tried this once without an interpreter and was unsuccessful even after showing them the map, so we walked. This is another reason to speak just a little more Russian. If I could pronounce the cross street names correctly it would be no problem to then hand the driver a hand held calculator and he would key in the amount. There is a formal taxi service that cost a little more but you have to find one.
Bring a cheap hand held calculator, it is a great tool. We have used the calculator on numerous instances in a bazaar or other setting where we need to understand a price or communicate a number.

I know I am droning on with advice and I do have another lengthy piece written about apartment living and culture shock which I will post at some point. Writing this has been therapeutic for me, because it keeps me from missing Andrew so much. I cannot wait to get back to see him and then get him home. We should see him Wednesday 8/1 after we get off the plane.

Pray for safe travel and that Andrew won’t be too mad at us. -M