Beijing 20.08.12

Aimee woke up to Tupperware being put in her lap at 8am, little Madeline tapping Aimee and handing her a container, she thanked her and nodded back off before being woken up again shortly after to hold another one. Axle and Madeline are the cutest kids just adorable, even when teething :)
Mel had called the airline the night before to get an update on our bags and hopefully they would be on the flight arriving at 10am today.

We had come bacon and eggs for brekkie and called up again to find out about our bags....hoorah they were here!!!!! But they wouldn't be here until 3pm we had to meet our guide at 5pm and we still had to organise and post a whole heap of stuff home.
At around 12 when the kids were napping Mel, Aimee, Bec and I went for a little shop and some lunch = the BEST fish and chips I have ever had in my life!!!!! Melted in my mouth just so good!!!!! We bought some completely legal and dirt cheap DVD series and headed back because our bags had arrived by 2:30pm, we raced back and found our three beautiful backpacks waiting for us....mine minus one chest strap, ah well easily fixed. I've never been so happy to see that Kathmandu scuffed up bright blue beauty in my life. We immediately took over the lounge room and tore everything out, shouts of "that's going and that's going, that's staying, that's going" were flying around repeatedly. It took us a good hour but we sorted it all out sending a grand total of *drum roll* 20kg between us home to Sydney via shipping for AUD60, see you in two months camel mug.....hoping the chocolate we all sent will survive :/
It was already around 4:45pm when we were at the post office so Mel called the guide when we arrived back at the apartment to pick up our bags and we jumped in a taxi to the Xihua Jade Youth Hostel, finally we got there and got set up in a room on my own!! Shock, Horror!!! Honestly I was a little bit out of sorts not having the girls with me but I'm glad we had a little bit of space I suppose.
We met up with our first Honcho, Snow  and the two other girls in our group, Alison and Talitha. Snow told us all about what we would be doing and how everything worked. Aimee, Bec and I decided the next day we would go to the Great Wall of China on a full day tour for about AUD50.00 each including lunch, transfers and three hours on the wall.
We grabbed a quick bite for dinner, we had a surprise dish which was supposed to be beef but instead was goat......I really enjoyed the goat actually and of course duck pancakes again :) We all strolled around Wangfujin street where the shops were and some of the night market before heading back, sheep testicles on a stick anyone? Don't worry you get three so it's a decent meal if your hungry *vomit*

Note: Beijing at first was not what we expected, I suppose we all thought of Paddy's markets and China town and at first it almost felt like no one was around.

Time for bed......

Dasvidanya Kazakhstan............ Ni Hao Beijing!!!! 19.08.12

Wow, what a fun day this was....we woke up, had breakfast packed our bags as tight as possible and went downstairs and waited for our driver. He came at 2:30pm and we headed out to the airport, when we arrived our flight had been pushed back an hour which meant that we wouldn't be able to make our connecting flight from Abu Dhabi to Beijing. The supervisor talked to us and gave us the alternative to hang around Almaty airport until 11pm and catch a direct flight to Beijing that only took 4 hours, we were fine with that and went to check in. Once at the check in desk guest the supervisor suddenly changed his mind and said that we could catch our original flight and make the connection as the times had changed. He tagged our bags as priority connecting flight and off they went leaving us with 30min before the plane took off. We skimmed through duty free getting a couple of bits and pieces using our last Tenghe as we couldn't use it anywhere else.
We got to Abu Dhabi and raced through the airport until we reached our second flight, last call was announced and we were the last ones on the plane. Seven hours later we reached Beijing to find......no bags......crap.
I already had the feeling that their was no way the bags could have made it from one plane to the other if we had to sprint not to miss it. One random note Beijing airport is HUUUGE!!!! We had to take a train from the arrivals to the baggage collection point and it was not a short trip, a good 5 minutes by train inside an airport is a long time.
The lovely Mel met us at the airport once we had finished filling in the details of our missing bags and we headed to their place to freshen up after a yelling match with a 'farm boy' taxi driver and headed to the markets to buy some fresh undies and other essentials to last us at least a day.
Mel made up this feast for lunch and I had not slept a wink on the overnight flight from hell so I was just about to keel over, I was in the mindset of deal with it now sleep later, I'm definately glad I didn't nap or I would have not been a happy camper for the next part.
Mel and Scott have twins a boy and a girl, now the chinese love twins double happines double luck or something like that. Imagine walking into a market with two sets of twins with people poking and proding and taking photos and crowding around whilst we were attempting to quickly buy the essentials and of course some non esssentials before 7pm for dinner.
We finished up close to 7pm and rushed back to change and re-freshen up due to the humidity,  and headed to dinner at a nice little place which had the most amazing duck pancakes.......yummy!!!!
After we finished eating we stayed and chatted, Scott joined us and the twins were fast asleep in the double pram. We headed back and put on House of Flying Daggers before pretty much passing out to sleep.

Goodbye Astana 17.08.12

A very sad day indeed leaving Astana. Our lovely driver took us past the Palace of Peace the big pyramid in Astana which at night would have been changing in bright colours but unfortunately was a bit too far to walk at 10pm, we happy snapped and jumped back into the car to the airport. We trudged around souvenir shops on blistered toes, Aimee being the worst off "you're running again!!" as in slightly faster that strolling.
We found a little place to have brunch burgers and grilled vegetables...much needed and jumped back on the plane. I am now apparently a Kazakh citizen as I bought a beautiful soft leather passport cover for 1500Tenge which says 'Kazakhstan passport' on the front.

We arrived back in the blistering heat of Almaty to a balmy 33 degrees no humidity, Aussie summer style. Got back to our little Turkistan hotel and found alas the air conditioner did not work..........it stared at us teasingly all afternoon and all night. On a happier note the hot water worked this time around however the taps were backwards and I with my godzilla like strength kept flipping the stupid faucet head off the tap every time I used it.
We walked down to 'TsUm' an out of nowhere shopping centre with a large selection of souvenir shops (cheers guide book!) found a Kazakhstan shirt similar to Aimee's that I had regretted not buying in Kok-Tobe and a Kazakh camel hair hat with cotton on the inside and beautiful embroidery perfect for winter. We went back to the room did some touristy happy snaps in our three matching t-shirts on the balcony and had our last dinner in Kazakhstan a Doner kebab and hot corn from the lovely street vendors washed down with some ice tea...YUMMY!

Aimee and I people watched from the balcony for a while and a lovely girl in a white dress walked past looked up and smiled. Aimee waved back and a little boy she was with maybe 3 years old with his Ben10 hat on intrigued by what the girl was doing looked up and waved, he continued waving and we waved back to this gorgeous little boy all dressed up in white. When they were nearly out of sight he turned around and blew a kiss, to which of course we returned, he smiled and proceeded to nearly trip himself over, the girl waved again and they disappeared around the corner. Just a really beautiful moment that Aimee and I will cherish forever. I love it here.

After that things went a little sour across the road, a bit of local drama with some official and his group of friends who did not appreciate the non-legitimate street vendors. I'll leave it at that as it was not pretty and really not something to blog about, let's just say everyone in our building was looking as was half the locals around the area.

Packing was a bit more difficult today.....I don't want to leave this country :'(

The lights of Astana 16.08.12

Hmm bit of  rough night last night everyone was a bit tired and cranky, Aimee thought she had lost her Swiss Army Knife from Switzerland.....and Bec was tired cranky and craving. I kept to myself and we went to bed, woke up much happier after a good long nap and many thanks to Norma for her words of motherly wisdom :)
Today we explored city park and visited the memorial hill dedicated to the victims of the soviet repression era. City park is beautiful just like the rest of Astana it had been thought out so well and planned to impress.
Astana seems to have been built on the celebration of freedom and the opportunity to design and choose how they wanted their new capital to be presented. It's the most beautiful city I have ever seen, every single detail has been thought of right down to the floral design of EVERY single garden in the city.
City park also had a huge map of Kazakhstan in miniature, literally every main tourist attraction or important icon in Kazakhstan has been covered there's so much to look at that it does take a while to get around it, a little bit run down though it would be spectacular if it was restored. The Astana city section was particularly good much newer and under cover do less sun damage. It gave us a pretty good indication of where we had walked the day prior and how much further we had to walk....a bit daunting to look at if it was at all to scale. Which we later found out it was :/

We did a big loop around the opposite end of the city closer to where we were staying we continued past city park over a huge footbridge, not sure of the name but it was a very modern design. At the other side there was a good find, an old english pub called The Guns and Roses. We decided to have lunch there I had lamb chops, Bec had a burger and Aimee had a chicken schnitzel which was not a schnitzel rather a chicken breast with giant croutons on it all dishes came with a giant puff of something bread with a stalk of rosemary in it.

We went on after lunch to visit the largest souvenir shop in Astana 'Tumar and Talisman' quite large with a lot of desirable and not so desirable souvenirs such as Lynx furs and Grizzly Bear heads,cool to know what a bear felt like though I don't agree with shooting them, stuffing them and selling them. Others may feel different but that's just me. We eventually decided to splurge on three identical eagle pendants, as these represented the beauty of Kazakhstan and our memories of driving through the steppe and seeing golden eagles soaring high above us. However they were a bit on the expensive side as usual we justified all the reasons for buying them and paid our 43200 Tenge total. No guilt there still well under budget :)
After emptying our pockets we explored the nearby parks and saw some old men playing chess with one of those giant chess sets, and some kids riding battery powered 4wd toy cars around a fountain chasing pigeons.

We made our way back to the guest house and took some time out before we went to see the lights of Astana at night.

At around 8pm (still broad daylight) we made the trek back to Astana city to see Bayterek at night and singing fountains. Every night at 9pm the fountain behind Bayterek is lit up with classical music in the background and a beautiful fountain display. It was so much fun to watch and there were so many people around enjoying the night air, maybe not so much the blood thirsty mosquitoes!!!!!! They were out in force!!!!

We strolled down past Bayterek which was spectacular at night changing colours every minute or so absolutely gorgeous. The atmosphere in Astana after dark is peaceful and romantic, we walk all the way to the presidents palace which was stunning, the area around the main strip is spacious and again well though out. After we reached as far as we could go we made our way back to the guest house to pack....again :(

Gobsmacked in Astana

First day in Astana and we are home by 3pm?!?! Probably due to the amount of walking we did today....twins complaining about my antelope legs forging ahead most of the time...completely unintentional obviously, they're just longer I can't help it.

This morning we left around 9am and came across what on the map said Astana Circus which we weren't too excited about. Low and behold a completely random fountain with a golden clown on a unicycle!!! Not only that but surrounded by a beautiful garden filled with circus animals and performers. The edges of the fountain were lined with bears, donkeys, camels, elephants, clowns and acrobats. Hedges cut into elephants and giraffes near by, quite amazing but completely unexpected. We treid to find out what it was there for but to no avail.

We followed the neverending straight street to Khan Shantyr the oddly shaped shopping centre in Astana only a year or so old it was quite interesting just to look at almost  following the circus theme it looked like a lopsided circus tent. We and half of the city so it seemed had arrived early so we waited until it opened. Once we were inside it was incredible and confusing, rows of shops lined the outskirts of the inner building and then two floors up an arcade level and with rides and a full size merry go round. On the next level was a water park, slides and a lagoon area to relax. Definately something Sydney should think about investing in.....it's pretty awesome. We shopped a bit bodught some much needed 16gb memory cards for our cameras and continued down the 'strip' to Bayterek tower dedicated to ancient Kazakh legend the Bayterek was 'the tree of life'. 

The roots of this tree lay in the subterranean world, it's trunk in the earthly one and it's crown in the heavens. Each year the sacred bird Samruk laid a golden egg in the crown of this tree, only for it to be consumed by the dragon Aidakhar, which lived at the base of it. The annual routine of egg laying and destruction symbolised the switch between summer and winter, day and night, good and evil.

Quite a beautiful legend I'd say, Bayterek is impressive similar to the likes of the eiffel tower in design and individuality. You will not see this anywhere else in the world, anyone can see the care and consideration that was taken in selecting the location and the planning of the entire plaza and the many kms of planned path, floral gardens, fountains and with statues and sculptures lining the path up to the tower, continuing in all four directions beneath the tower for kms.

We paid our 500Tenge and ascended in the lift to the tippy top of the tower for a 360 degree gobsmack!!!! Honestly I have never seen something so perfect, a beautiful modern city planned to the T and as you look over you can see where the city stops and the endless wonderment that is the steppe begins.......I have never seen anything like it a city in the middle of nowhere. 

At the very top is the highest platform within the golden dome. Here stands a green malachite plinth, on top of which is a disc made of 5kg of solid silver. Resting on this in turn is a triangular-shaped 2kg lump of gold , into which is pressed the hand of President Nazarbaev. Visitors are encouraged to place their hands in that of the president and make a wish, which of course we did along with countlless others.

On another note I cannot stress enough how beautiful and lovely the people are here......kind and patient and always smiling.

Once we left the tower we made our way back stopping at the Nur Astana Mosque which was quite stunning with its pure white walls and golden dome. I could have probably stayed there and just looked for a while, not just because my feet were in some serious pain, as were Bec and Aimee's.

We made the seemingly endless walk back to our guest house were the lovely girl at the desk was waiting to welcome us back......time for a cuppa.

Astana Intro

Just a quick post to catch up, we arrived in Astana at around 2:30pm yesterday and met our driver who spoke some english ...hoorah!!!!!!! 

Flying in you can't even see the city literally it's in the middle of nowhere, completely surrounded by steppe. 

Driving through it's beautiful the architechure is so modern and every building is designed in a different way, a different shape......incredible.

There were huge bilboards of the gold medalists from the olympics lining the main street driving in. There's an obvious difference between Almaty and Astana and I for one am glad we went to Almaty first because it would have been a let down doing it the other way around. 

Up this morning to explore the city and so far we are well under budget at $180 total roughly each so $60 a day. Our budget was around $100 or 15000Tenge or there abouts, were well under and that means we may splurge on a couple of gorgeous bracelets towards the end :)

The sun started setting last night at around 9pm!!! Definately a weird feeling and then we went to sleep at around 9:30pm, so weird. I'm always the first up though usually around 6:30am pottering around waiting for the girls to wake up half and hour later.

Today we shall explore and most likely shop with our limited space......posting it all from Beijing along with other non-necessities that we ALL packed and are now regretting like a 

2nd pair of jeans, who would have thought I would have so much hatred towards a pair of jeans and a jumper.

Charyn Canyon with Alfiya :)

We were picked up at 9am by our guide and driver and headed out for Charyn Canyon. Our guides name was Alfiya and she was quite lovely she taught us more about Kazakhstan in a three hour drive than most guide books would tell you. Alfiya was Russian and moved to Kazakhstan when she was young, she spoke so passionately about the country and it's history you would think she was born here.
Driving out of Almaty and through the outskirts of the main city was quite interesting the scenery kept changing from tree lined streets to markets and farmlands then finally to what we had expected to see from all that Googling prior......the steppe and the endless stretching border of the Tian shen mountains bordering us with China and Kyrgyzstan.
I did ask about why there were so many Mitsubishi Galants around (my poor car that had been scrapped 24hrs prior to leaving) and Alfiya said they were cheap to run and it was easy to get parts........hmmm maybe I should have kept it then and sent parts home ;)
I never see them in Sydney maybe two or three if i'm lucky but here they are EVERYWHERE!!!!! Every second or third car is a Galant all different year models and the first one I saw when we arrived was identical to mine 94 model white but in much better condition :/
As we drove through the winding landscape Alfiya told us about why the apple was a symbol of Kazakhstan and Almaty in particular, there is a special tree that in endemic to Kazakhstan, one that grows wild up in the mountains. On these trees you will find wild apples just like the ones you buy at the markets they are pink on the outside with the typical white flesh inside speckled with pink dots, quite delicious. Scientists believe that as they were found nowhere else in the world growing wild that they were unique to Kazakhstan and became a national symbol, they were then exported throughout Europe and around the world and modified to the apples we have today.
She also told said that it was a little known secret of Kazakhstan that the Cathedral of Ascention in Panfilov park did in fact have nails and that it was a local legend that had spread because it had survived the soviet period and a huge earthquake. During the soviet period the pictures in the catherdral were painted white and covered. Currently it is now partly restored and the public are once again welcome there.
Truly the landscape here is a marvel, unbelievable beauty and it just keeps going! We continued winding through the mountains onto the steppe, we could see the heat rippling off the earth and dancing causing mirage like figures on the horizon.
When I say winded we only winded once really the way that Almatys design during soviet rule was similar to this symbol # straight lines everywhere this was so that should they be invaded or attacked this would be a better defence.....hmmm maybe Sydney should take some pointers. Another note for the parents reading in the lack of interest in seatbelts or more like they exist though there's nothing to clip them into.....our driver and Bec had one up front and Aimee had one sitting in the back middle so she didn't fly through the window, Alfiya and I had none though that appreared to be the norm really, it's like they just took the buckles out.......safety first!!!
We continued through the endless landscape past the Tian Shen mountains that bordered us with Uzbekistan and China. Apparently Uzbekistan's prices were three to five times less than what you would pay in Kazakhstan.....I don't understand how on earth they would make any money though.
As we drove there was one man on horseback rounding up stallions churning up dust, was quite beautiful to see. Alfiya told us that there were not many people still living the nomadic lifestyle however they still existed up near the mountains. As there is no water available for hundreds of kilometres on the steppe it's a hardly liveable place even for animals which is why it appears so desolate so isolated. All this landscape was only 100km from Almaty city, quite incredible that the landscape just continued to change from tree lined streets to forests and farms then onto the mountains and finally just steppe as far as the eye could see.
We reached the 10km road to Charyn canon........RUTTS RUTTS RUTTS!!!!!! Oh the poor driver's Camry being shaken to pieces slowly, break accelerate break accelerate. We did see a family of five with montrous packs on WALKING to Charyn Canyon in the searing heat in midday, mum and dad with two young girls probably aged 10 maybe twins and grandma bringing up the rear....CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!!!!
We reached the canyon finally and because we were feeling like an intrepid trio of explorers we decided to attempt the 2nd hardest descent......mistake. Slowly we crept down on the loose stones, I had had enough of the hard stuff by the second point and slid down like a surfer on my converse with my butt low to the ground.......much quicker!!!! The girls crept down slowly and we finally reached the bottom.
Charyn Canyon is approximately 14km long a baby compared to the grand canyon though I'm glad we saw this one first. Absolutely beautiful with rock formations millions of years old, we trekked down the path admiring the colours and the constant changing scenery. Alfiya told us that there was also a section of the canyon that was known as the white and yellow parts due to their colour.
We reached the river about half an hour later and desperate I used a free standing drop hole shed.....*vomit* .....I have used outhouses in my time but that one was something else entirely!!!!!
Alfiya led us to a pagola where we ate our little packed lunches and listened to the sound of the river rushing past below. After lunch we had to brave the trek back up the canyon....I used my powers of mind of matter and burned through the pain whilst behind me I could here Bec having a winge about sore legs and chopping them off, with some muttered profanities from Aimee :) It was not an easy trek up we clambered back up the steepest part where we had descended and 'Kooeed' as triumphant Aussies when we reached the top. Worth it? Absolutely!!!!
On the way back up the bumpy road we passed that same family again three hours later still a good few kms to go  :/ We took a few steppe happy snaps and made the long journey back, the girls fell asleep and I chatted to Alfiya the whole way back. Once we arrived I dashed upstairs and retrieve a little clip on Koala with a boomerang for Alfiya which she really liked....Alfiya if you ever come to Australia please let us know!!! :)
We said our goodbyes and Aimee ad I ventured out to find dinner.....mmmmmm Doner Kebab!!!!!
Then we settled for a night of attempting to repack our bags for Astana the next morning.