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:
