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April 2008 - Almaty Kazakhstan and Moscow Russia Trip

Bill and Anette St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square Almaty Kazakhstan Russian church Anette in front of bell at Kremlin in Moscow Church inside Kremlin Buildings in Kremlin Moscow Almaty Kazakhstan Visit In April 2008 Bill and Anette visited Almaty Kazakhstan in relation to a possible relocation for Bill's work.  You can read about Kazakhstan here.  The country has gone through an amazing transformation over the past decade due to the economic growth provided by its vast natural resources. Getting to Almaty was not that easy as there are not any direct flights from southeast Asia.  As such we routed through Beijing which was an ordeal in of itself as our trip was shortly prior to the Beijing Olympics and all the kinks hadn't been worked out at the new Beijing airport terminal.  In Beijing we needed to transfer to another terminal however the transit train hadn't been completed yet.  As such we needed to clear immigration to get to the other terminal.  The only problem was that we didn't have a China visa since we had not planned on staying in China, we only planned to transit in the Beijing airport to catch an onward flight to Almaty Kazakhstan.    The fact that the China immigration officials didn't  speak very good English didn't help our cause.  By the time our situation was understood we had already missed our onward flight.  As such we were probably within 15 minutes of being deported from China by the immigration authority and forced to return to Singapore on the same plane we had arrived on.  Fortunately the Singapore Air agent was very helpful and determined that there was the same flight the following day (24 hours later) which was fortunate since this wasn't a daily flight.  We were finally able to get a 24 hour visa and head to a local hotel to get a few hours rest before returning to the airport the following day to wait for our new onward flight.  The whole ordeal convinced us that the Beijing airport doesn't get very many international transferring passengers and this should be avoided at all costs.  In the end we finally made it to Almaty the following day and Anette got to visit China (although besides the airport and a nearby hotel she didn't see much). Location map Bill and Anette in the mountains above Almaty Bill and Anette in Almaty public park Anette with Medeo skating rink (Almaty) in background View of mountains from city of Almaty Click here to see a photo album from our Almaty Kazakhstan visit Impressions of Almaty Kazakhstan Being a former republic of the Soviet Union both Anette and Bill had certain stereotypes before visiting Kazakhstan.  Our trip confirmed some of our preconceived stereotypes but on the other hand we were pleasantly surprised by certain other things.  Everyone from Bill's office that we came into contact were very friendly and helpful.  On the flip side our general impression of people you see in the street were that they didn't smile very much and didn't seem to be outwardly happy.  We don't know if this is because of a cultural tendency of not wanting to smile but we did find that if you smiled at them they would generally smile back.  Another thing we noticed was that English was not as widely spoken as we had become accustomed to in Jakarta Indonesia.  During our visit we had an opportunity to visit some of the shopping malls and generally found prices of western imported goods to be very expensive.  Of particular notice was the costs of meals in restaurants and drinks in hotel bars.  To some extent this should be expected but our general feeling was that the prices were very much higher than most countries we had visited in southeast Asia. The weather was beautiful during our visit and the cool spring air was refreshing from the tropical heat we are accustomed to in Jakarta.  In addition the nearby Tian-Shan mountains provided a nice view with their snow capped peaks. In the end after considering many factors we decided that a move to Kazakhstan wasn't right for us at this point in time.  We enjoyed our "look-see" visit and hope to return again in the future as tourists and see more of the country.  Below is a slideshow of photos taken during our trip to Almaty Kazakhstan: Moscow Russia Visit After visiting Almaty we headed to Moscow Russia for a couple of days of meetings.  After spending a few days in Moscow we soon discovered that Moscow prices were significantly higher that what we experienced in Almaty.  I guess this can be attributed to the new found wealth created by all the oil money flowing through the economy.  Although we only had a couple of days in Moscow we enjoyed one day of sightseeing where we were able to visit the Kremlin and Red Square.  See photos in the below slideshow: Location map Moscow Russia Visit Photos St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square The Kremlin Bill and Anette in front of a war memorial at the Kremlin Red Square Click here to see a photo album from our Moscow Russia visit Last Update: 24 February 2009          Copyright © 2009 All Rights Reserved William Deertz  -  www.wdeertz.net