My travel Blog: Arrived at Almaty 16 April 2019

I took leave right after the 3-day ICT Expo. Most of my time was devoted to the preparation for the Expo and I could spare only a few hours for packing my luggage before the trip.

After boarding on the airport bus running on the highway, I was stunned to discover that I left my HKID card at home but I had no time to get back home to fetch my card as it took at least half an hour to get off at the next bus stop. At once, I called my mom and asked her to bring my HKID card to me. Thanks her for doing me a favour.

The sky is shabby when boarding and the aircraft climbed to get above the thick clouds.

For quite a long while, the thick clouds vanished and the mountain tips with snow top could be seen. I believed we had reached Xinjiang or western part of China.

It took 6 hours to reach Almaty. There are two small rivers near the airport - Malaya Almatinka, Pravy Esentai

We landed at Almaty International Airport on time. Out of my expectation, the procedure to go through immigration did not take long to complete, possibly due to the fact that there were not too many visitors (less than 50) to the country.

Queuing for going through immigration counters

We were greeted by Vlad, our guide and driver from Nomad Outfitters, 40 min. after landing. He drove us to a local mall for money exchange and buy local SIM card (4G calling + 10GB data card at ~HK$45). The shop lady needed to register us with our passports before enabling the SIM card on our phones. We spent quite some time there.

We then needed to fill in the tank before heading to Altyn-Emel. Vlad was so nice to buy us some sandwiches and cakes from the convenient store. I was starving as I had a brunch 5 hours ago on the plane.

Kazakhstan boasts significant riches in raw materials : it has giant deposits of oil and gas, coal and minerals, semiprecious stones and construction materials. Petroleum is cheap in Kazakh -

HK$17.24 per litre in HK
630.51 ₸ per gallon in Almaty (i.e. ~HK$3.5 per litre)

Vlad drove very fast as it took around 3 hours to reach the guesthouse at Basshi Village

We followed A-3 highway, passed Kapchagay which is full of casinos (seems more than 20 big and small casinos). Then we went around Kapshagay Reservoir (beautifully set up with reflection of sunset beams)