Thursday 12 July 2007
After a wonderful night staying in a luxury hotel in Astana we had an important chore to perform…getting a second stamp put on our Kazakhstan entry form! We had asked the hotel to do this but they said they didn’t do that anymore but they directed us to the Immigration Office 10 minutes away. To make things easier we hired an English speaking guide and a driver for 4 hours at the cost of $160US – well worth it and it was nice to pay money to one of the locals instead of a multi national. Our guide was Armon, a young University student studying International Affairs. He spoke very good English because he has spent time with American students here.
The Entry form stamping ritual must be a hang over of the old Soviet Union – no one really knows what it is for but we are told that it is difficult to get out of the country without two stamps on your entry form and we were only given one stamp at the border. After about 10 minutes at the immigration office our Passports were returned with our second stamp on the Immigration forms and were off on a tour of Astana.
What a modern city. President Nazarbaev’s decision was to move the capital from Almaty to Astana. Huge amounts of oil money are being spent in creating an incredibly modern well designed city on the southern bank of the Ishkim River.
The new buildings are designed by the best architects from around the world and Astana is now known as the capital of fantasy. We visited the Bayterek Monument which is like a giant Soccer World Cup Trophy.
We then went to an extraordinary Aquarium which was breeding sharks thousands of miles away from the ocean.
Another extraordinary building was a pyramid structure called the Palace of Peace and Harmony. It did have one useful purpose installed in the centre and that was an excellent Opera/ballet theatre.
Construction is going on everywhere with modern apartment blocks leaping into the sky.
It was such an incredible contrast from the small villages we had seen only a few kilometres away yesterday.
We also visited a model theme park which showed all of Kazakhstan in miniature.
At the end of the tour we went to the Railway Station and purchased a map of Kazakhstan – pretty basic but we hope it will get us to Almaty.
We have asked various people just how long it will take to drive to Almaty. The most common claim is 12 hours but considering it is over 1200 kilometres we are not sure if this is possible. Armon told us that they have a fast train that does the journey in 7 hours. That is about 100mph average if that is so.
In the afternoon Dick managed to fill the Earthroamer’s main water tank by grabbing the hose he found nearby that is used to water the lawn at this exclusive hotel. The gardeners seemed to be amused.
Astana has modern shopping centres and a Bunnings-like hardware store where we purchased another 220 volt extension lead and some reflective material to put up on our windscreen when we stop in the sun.
We restocked our refrigerator with fresh milk and bread for our journey tomorrow which we purchased from a very modern supermarket.
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