bishkek | Jason Around the World

Apologies in advance this post will be a stream of consciousness mostly text post because, well, we were so busy working we didn’t get to see a whole ton!

Ended up working until mid-afternoon in downtown Bishkek, and at 4pm we got ready to head to the Almaty. Our office in Bishkek had arranged a driver to take us to the border, and our office in Almaty had arranged another driver to meet us at the border and take us the rest of the way. Sounded like an easy plan, and as someone who’s gotten used to negotiating minibusses and share-taxis the last couple years it was a rare treat! Not only the chance to not have to negotiate, but comfortable and uncrowded. Score!

Traffic in Bishkek wasn’t awful for a Monday afternoon, and about 30 minutes later we were at the border. Our Kazakh driver was already waiting for us on the Kyrgyz side, and walked us through the car lines (the pedestrian lines were super long on both sides of the border, and apparently he knew some tricks that we could just walk through the much shorter car lines…it took quite a bit of yelling, complaining, and posturing, but in about 15 minutes we were through the border. His car was parked on the Kazakh side, so he loaded up our luggage, and we got ready to head out. I turned back to take a quick snap of the border from the Kazakh side:

Very soon after the border, things got very rural…very fast. We drove for around two more hours before we started to see any signs of the city, and then spent nearly another hour fighting Almaty traffic trying to get to our hotel. All total from downtown to downtown travel time was around 4 hours, and that wouldn’t include any time fighting at the border or negotiating with taxis.

Our hotel was the Rixos Almaty and appeared to be located pretty centrally in the city. It was around 8pm by this time, so after checking in we decided to head out quickly in search of a bite. Nothing was easy to find and we were getting pretty hungry at this point, so just decided to admit defeat and head back for room service since we had an early morning. Unfortunately work was incredibly busy here, so there wasn’t a whole ton of time to sightsee. So, I’ll do a mini hotel review first.

The obvious place to start, since I just mentioned room service, is with the food. Let’s just start by saying that for the region I thought prices were outrageous. I ended up with a club sandwich and a beer from room service, which came to nearly $45. Stunning. I was expecting to get something pretty awesome for that price, but you be the judge:

Got to the hotel around 430am, the Hyatt Regency Bishkek:

Guess this is as good of a place as any to start the hotel review…since I had problems from the very start. Check-in was quick, up to my room, and it was roasting. AC and blower weren’t working. Call down to front desk and ask to switch rooms, “no, we are full, I will send someone up.” The maintenance guy fiddled with it for 30 minutes and couldn’t get it to turn on either, and then I elevated and demanded a manager. He still said there’s no rooms, blah blah blah. I threw a mild fit. Well, look there, there’s a room on the Executive Floor. Funny how that worked out! An hour after arriving, around 5:30am, I passed out…and didn’t wake up until nearly 2pm.

But, back to the hotel. The staff was friendly the entire time, although I didn’t have a ton of interaction with them. The perk of the new room was executive lounge access, but it was nothing to get excited about. A nice espresso machine and cookies (?) in the morning, but in the evening they put out quite a nice snack display with meats, cheeses, etc, and free beverages. I was allowed to bring my colleague in as well, so that was a nice perk.

Other than that, we really didn’t use any hotel facilities. We had one drink in the bar which tried really hard to be cool, but weren’t overly impressed with it. There was an in-house travel agent, who was fantastic and managed to book us a daytrip for the next day at around 9pm – impressive, and more on that later.

The room was comfy enough, and no complaints about the bed or room temp once I got a room where the AC worked. It was plenty quiet, and my room had a huge shower and tub in it. I would say the paying the extra $20 or so for the deluxe room upgrade was way worth it – it was double the size of the standard rooms plus had a king bed. Overall, no question this is THE place to stay in Bishkek.

So, woke up at 2pm, and decided to go for a stroll. I’ll go through the sites pretty quickly, and I didn’t see all of these the first day….since I had the weekend to recover. But, going to post them all now regardless.

We’ll start right next to the Hyatt with the national opera and ballet:

A short walk away was the Dom Soyuzov, a very cool Soviet-era building:

Jason Around the World

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Almaty, Kazakhstan and time in Almaty

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan