Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Ok, admittedly one of the key reasons that we flew home via Kazakhstan is to bag another country. This will make 82 countries visited for Steve and 72 for Jackie - she has to make up several places that Steve worked, such as Portugal, Denmark and Hungary. We left Bishkek by car - I still have to thank our agency for sending the Mercedes limo. We unloaded at the border & walked our luggage across. Got picked up on the other side by our driver, and started to enjoy the beautiful and rugged terrain of the Kazakh steppes. Flat as Saskatchewan to the north, rugged badland foothills where we were driving (like being in Drumheller) and huge mountains to the south.
The city of Almaty is very European - it reminds me of Madrid. We toured around and saw the major sites, including "The Golden Man" - a mummy that is thousands of years old and was found dressed in armour made of gold. Some people suggest that the Golden Man is actually a Golden Woman, and that the local archaeologists are encouraged to keep this quiet since the statue of the Golden Man riding atop a winging snow leopard has become the symbol of the country.
Almaty is quite rich and WAY more expensive than Biskek (like over double) but they still have great markets & bazaars with good deals. This lady cruises the market selling drinks from her plastic jugs. That day we bought a bunch of salads, freshly baked bread (like HOT out of the oven!) and a huge container of black berries for $4 for our lunch.
Interesting fact about Almaty: they have the only known statue of all 4 of The Beatles!
Another interesting fact: at the airport, prices are BRUTAL!!! $15 for a glass of beer. UNLESS you buy it at Duty Free & pop it open in the airport. We asked the staff at Duty Free if that was legal, and they said it is perfectly all right as long as the bottles are less than 1 litre. Craft beer and little bottles of champagne for Steve and Jackie = dirt bags at the airport!!
All right! All that we needed now was 38hours of travel to get home. Fortunately we had passes for the exec lounge in Seoul. Showers never felt so good! Our Seoul > Vancouver flight was delayed an hour, so we missed 2 connections to Calgary & had to wait a couple of hours for the third one. Got on a shuttle to Canmore 5 minutes after collecting our luggage. Got to the Coast Hotel in Canmore & Jackie suggested that we take a cab home instead of driving after 40+ hours of travel. The front desk said that the cab would be there in "8-12 minutes". After waiting for an hour, Steve walked home in 12 minutes & got our car. Canmore is STUPID busy right now - it is quite a bit of culture shock to be back home, but its great to be in Canada & surrounded by friends & family again!
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