Tag Archives: Central Asia

Kazakhstan: Almaty Winter Escapes (2)

5 Dec

Winter is really on its way now in Almaty, with snow making on and off appearances and New Year decorations springing up. Kazaxia wants to share some of its favourite things to do in and around Almaty to help pass those frosty days and long nights.

Our second tip is Tau Spa Center.

This spa center is located on the road leading through the Almarasan valley to Big Almaty lake. It combines heated outdoor swimming pools and hot tubs with a Russian banya, a Finnish sauna, a Turkish steamroom and a Japanese bath. For the hardcore there’s an unheated plunge pool for some serious cooling down.  

An outdoor swimming pool at Tau Spa Center, Almaty


There are heated indoor mineral pools and three cafés on-site providing beer, vodka and shashlyk. It can get pretty crowded at weekends and look out for bling bling crosses being worn by some of the clientèle -they’re risking some serious burns in the banya!

One-off visits don’t come cheap at 10,000 tenge ($67.50), although you can buy cards for 20 visits for 100,000 tenge ($675.00) and sometimes there are offers with 5-visit cards costing 15,000 tenge ($100 but with limited validity). Bring your own towel and dressing gown unless you want to be deprived of yet more of your hard-earned cash.

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Kazakhstan: Almaty Winter Escapes (1)

1 Dec

Winter is really on its way now in Almaty, with snow making on and off appearances and New Year decorations springing up. Kazaxia wants to share some of its favourite things to do in and around Almaty to help pass those frosty days and long nights.

Our first tip is the outdoor skating rink at Medeu.

Medeu, home to one of the best winter activities in Almaty – ice skating – is an immense skating rink located at an elevation of 1,691 metres and boasts a huge space for ice aficionados.

Since it opened in 1972 more than a hundred speed skating world records have been set in the ideal conditions found at Medeu. The setting is outstanding with snowy peaks and fir tree clad hillsides visible from the ice.

It’s easy to get to Medeu from the city with the number 6 bus running regularly from the bus stop opposite the Hotel Kazakhstan on the corner of Dostyk and Kurmangazy streets.

Lord Venal and friends take to the ice at Medeu


Some seasoned Medeu skaters think that it’s not so much fun since they cracked down on drinking on the ice, although this has made the experience somewhat safer as you’re less likely to crash into other drunks on the ice!

It costs 1,600 tenge ($11.00) for a session (half price for kids and students) and if you don’t have your own skates then you can hire them for 1,000 tenge ($6.75) for two hours.

Usually there’s two sessions a day from Thursday to Sunday with a morning session from 10.00 – 16.00 (09.00 at weekends) and an evening session from 18.00 – 23.00. You can check the opening times on this site or call 3869533 in Almaty.

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Kazakhstan: The People’s Hero

29 Nov

Lord Venal would like to be one of the first to congratulate President Nursultan Nazarbayev on his being nominated for the prestigious title of People’s Hero so he sent Kazaxia this despatch

The People's Hero, The First President's Park, Almaty, Kazakhstan

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate President Nazarbyev on his nomination for People’s Hero of Kazakhstan. It is not before time that Prime Minister Karim Masimov, who nominated the president for the award, has recognised President Nazarbyev for the great leader he has been to the people of Kazakhstan over the last two decades.

In just twenty short years Kazakhstan, under the guiding hand of its wise president, has gone from being an underdeveloped land of farmers and miners to the very edge of mature country status with its ongoing bid to join the Group of Grown Up Nations (GoGUN). Its recent decision to dispense with the services of the Peace Corps only highlighted its rapid development in recent years.

By nominating the president for this illustrious award the prime minister has proved once again what a staunch ally he has been to the great leader. I look forward to witnessing in person the great strides this country will take on the road of democratisation next January as it prepares to allow another party to join Nur Otan in parliament.

With the festive season almost upon us, my colleagues and I at the Centre for Reporting and Analysing Politics would like to raise a glass to President Nazarbayev. Let’s hope that this time next year we will be toasting the award of the long overdue Nobel Peace Prize for the Leader of the Nation.

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Kazakhstan: Sau Bol Peace Corps

23 Nov

The Peace Corps’ 18-year presence in Kazakhstan was unceremoniously concluded last weekend with the sudden pull out of its remaining 171 volunteers from various projects around the country. Astana cited the reason for the abrupt departure of the volunteers as being “a rather logical step” in light of Kazakhstan’s “great progress in the political and socio-economic development over the 20 years of its independence.” A statement from the Peace Corps echoed this sentiment. 

Does this finally mean that Astana will no longer bang on about Kazakhstan being a ‘very young country’? Let’s hope so as it’s now coming up to its 20th anniversary of independence so it’s about time it took a more mature and responsible attitude.

Other reasons for the abrupt departure were mooted in this piece on Eurasianet including concerns about rape, sexual assault, possible terrorist attacks and alleged espionage.

There was also a lively debate on Registan invoving PC volunteers past and present.

Whatever the real reasons for the pull out, perhaps the Peace Corps had been moving away from its core mission in Kazakhstan – earlier this year Kazaxia was surprised to find Peace Corps volunteers working in the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, the country’s flagship secondary education project.

This school project, named, of course, after President Nursultan Nazarbayev, is well financed and even has a budget to employ English native speaker teachers in various subject areas. So why was it using the services of Peace Corps volunteers? Surely, their talents could have been better utilised in schools that weren’t all ready getting so much generous support?

Maybe the rapid development of Kazakhstan was such that there was really no longer a need for the Peace Corps in the general school system, although the new Nazarbayev Intellectual School network still needed the volunteers?

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Kazakhstan: Beating the Blockers!

15 Nov

Kazaxia has been working on a solution to beat the blockers in Kazakhstan and keep on blogging. With popular blog platforms such as WordPress and Blogspot blocked in the country alternatives needed to be found. A fellow blogger recommended www.blog.com, which is similar to WordPress but with some ads, and it seems to be working fine in Kazakhstan.

In future Kazaxia will be appearing on kazaxia.blog.com as well as kazaxia.wordpress.com. This means that our readership in Kazakhstan will be able to access the site without having to go through proxies.

There was an interesting article on eurasianet.org last week about the situation in Kazakhstan with regard to Internet freedom. The article looked at the recent spate of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks in the country.

The article mentioned moving to platforms such as Blogspot – it’s a shame the authors didn’t do some research within Kazakhstan. Then they would have realised how pernicious the attacks on Internet freedom have become in Kazakhstan with a host of bloggers affected by the blocking of WordPress and Blogspot.

With parliamentary elections now called for January 15 in Kazakhstan, keep on checking out Kazaxia on the addresses mentioned above for information about the transition to democracy and to follow Lord Venal’s new observation adventures.

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Kyrgyzstan: Diary of an Election Observer

31 Oct

Kazaxia is honoured once again to link up with Lord Venal as he returned to the region to observe Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election on 30 October.

Greetings from Bishkek, a pleasant little city with a smattering of good bars and restaurants. I’m staying in the centrally-located Hyatt hotel which gives me a chance to explore the city and meet some of the electorate in person.

I had been warned in advance about rising anti-foreigner sentiment in the country, but I am pleased to report that my experiences with the Kyrgyz were all positive. I found the hotel staff to be most helpful and friendly. In Metro bar I saw that the locals, especially young women, were going out of their way to interact with foreigners of all ages in a most friendly manner.

On election day itself I unfortunately missed the early start as I was feeling a bit under the weather after the Halloween shindig in Metro. However, I made up for it later in the day and visited a few voting locations in Bishkek. The polling stations were doing a brisk trade by late afternoon.

The election was quite an open affair with 16 candidates vying for the top job – this was the first election in Central Asia where the result was not a foregone conclusion. The voters I spoke to had either voted for Almazbek Atambayev, the frontrunner, or an unfancied candidate called Protiv Vsekh.

The presents on offer in the polling stations were not as good as those in Kazakhstan, but still I came away with a very fetching Kyrgyz hat and some bottles of vintage Kyrgyz congac. Fortunately, I had brought my rose-tinted specs with me from my visit to Kazakhstan in April.

I spent the evening with my new buddy, Boris, a first-time observer from Washington DC. Boris is finishing up his doctoral thesis ‘Incipient Manasism in the post-Soviet Kyrgyz Space’, a most interesting topic which he described to me at length over a few bottles of the local blackcurrant wine he’d brought back from his visit to Osh.

The result when it came took us both a little by surprise as the victor, Almazbek Atambayev had only managed to amass a paltry 63% of the vote. In my previous experiences of observing elections in this part of the world, this was quite a poor result as 80% + is the norm for wannabe presidents.

This result means that there will be no run-off, which is a shame as there are a few more restaurants I would have liked to have checked out with Boris this time round, such as Smokie’s Bar B-Q and the Obama Bar and Grill, as the next election is not until 2017, but such is the life of an election observer.

Editor’s note: Lord Venal’s observation mission was funded by the Centre for Reporting and Analysing Politics

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Kazakhstan: A short walk in the Ile-Alatau National Park

30 Oct

Kazaxia took advantage of some fine autumn weather last week to visit the Ile-Alatau National Nature Park to see how the people of Almaty like to commune with nature. The park is a short drive from the centre of the city and is popular with day-trippers.

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The foothills of the Tien Shan mountain range are still showing the ravages of a devastating storm in May which trashed loads of trees, providing rich pickings forKazakhstan’s lumberjacks, who are currently engaged in clearing the damage up.

The park is ostensibly a protected zone where building is not allowed, but this hasn’t stopped some bigwigs from commandeering a prime slice of the park for their own compound of four sizeable wooden mansions. The walled compound stands opposite the dilapidated housing of the Park Rangers making for a stark contrast of how the two halves live in Kazakhstan.

Sometimes, guards man the barriers at the park entrance to extort an ‘entrance fee’ to the park. Seeing the rubbish strewn all around the park, you can’t help but wonder what happens to all the park fees the guards collect.

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Kazakhstan: Building boom on Astana’s right bank

13 Oct

Kazakhstan’s snazzy new capital Astana is starting to spread its tentacles into the decaying  Soviet-era heartland on the right bank of the River Ishim as the building boom, which stalled a few years ago, seems to be taking off once again.

A last remnant of Astana's rapidly disappearing old town

While intense  efforts were focused on President Nazarbayev’s dream city on the left bank of the River Ishim, the old Tsarist buildings and Soviet blocks of Tselinograd, as was, were mostly left untouched after a rash of government buildings were put up in the late 90s in the old town.

Now all that is changing rapidly.  With land prices picking up once again, the developers have started clearing away swathes of one-storey houses which were once formed the outskirts of Tselinograd.

The tumbledown low-rise houses with their blue shutters and leafy gardens are rapidly being replaced by hulking skyscrapers that dwarf even the Soviet blocks.

The emerging face of Astana's right bank

It was only a matter of time before the village-like district, complete with stand pipes for water,  was consigned to history. In the brave new world of Astana  there’s no room for sentiment when there’s pots of money to be made.

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Kazakhstan: The vexed question of language

8 Oct

There’s not too many issues that can get the people of Kazakhstan hot under the collar – the threat of Chinese expansion is one that springs to mind, another is the use of right-hand drive cars – but one sure-fire issue that can guarantee a good turnout at a rally is the vexed question of language.

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Kazakh, the state and official language, still struggles to claim a dominant role in the country, with Russian still in widespread use in many spheres.

Last Sunday, October 2, around 1500 people turned up in warm, sunny conditions to protest in favour of the Kazakh language, with some calling for a clause in the constitution that gives Russian equal status for use in state bodies to be dropped.

The usual suspects were out in force from the world of nationalist politics and literature. Two hours of speeches ensued broken up by some poetry and performance by a boy-band. The age profile of the demo was predominantly the over 50s with a few families hanging around. Slavic features were conspicuous by their absence in the crowd.

Maybe if the organisers want to get their message to a wider audience, instead of speechifying from the stage they should try some new approaches. How about a rap competition in Kazkah or a poetry slam to appeal to young people? Piles of Kazakh language newspapers were scattered about for people to take home but what about some DVDs or books for kids – the next generation which can ensure the survival of Kazakh.

Refreshments were also absent from the proceedings – another missed opportunity – the crowd could have been fed with baursaki – fried dough balls – swilled down with kymys – fermented mares’ milk – provided it was ordered in Kazakh!

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Thunderbird flying in to Kazakhstan?

30 Sep

When Kazaxia spotted this intriguing headline ‘Thunderbird expands to Kazakhstan‘, it immediately invoked distant memories of teenage parties and getting hammered on the notorious American drink Thunderbird. Described politely as ‘a low-end fortified wine’ this noxious mix of chemicals was well-known as a quick fire route to oblivion.

A bottle of Thunderbird in its natural setting (image taken from bumwine.com)

It was with interest that Kazaxia clicked on to the link to the headline – was this really an attempt by E&J Gallo Winery, the makers of this interesting drinking experience, to break the stranglehold of vodka and cheap port wine as the drink of choice for Kazakhstan’s down and outs?

Alas for Central Asia’s winos, it was not to be as this Thunderbird turned out to be merely a management training company. Or maybe not …

The bumwine website describes Thunderbird wine as

If your taste buds are shot, and you need to get trashed with a quickness, then “T-bird” is the drink for you.  Or, if you like to smell your hand after pumping gas, look no further than Thunderbird.  As you drink on, the bird soars higher while you sink lower.  

Kazaxia contacted Lord Venal on the subject of Thunderbird and he waxed lyrical about his misspent youth spent on park benches drinking the wino’s favourite tipple.

I vaguely remember climbing out of the window of my boarding school and making for the village shop where I’d buy a bottle of Thunderbird and proceed to get well and truly ratarsed.

recalled the sometime election observer.

When my eye started twitching, I decided it was time to call it a day and moved on to more respectable tipples.

The good lord expressed surprise that it was actually a training organisation and wondered whether it would be interested in funding a trip to monitor the upcoming elections in Kyrgyzstan, maybe in a tie-up with the E&J Gallo Winery?


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