Aktobe Tips

These tips are mainly for those of you that are awaiting your trip to Kazakhstan. But they may be interesting to those of you wanting to learn more about this area.

When out to eat the bread they bring to the table you will pay for it. Sometimes you pay for the whole basket and sometimes you pay per slice. Sometimes it is pretty expensive for just plain bread. They just bring it to you and don’t ask if you want it. So you have to be paying attention to refuse it before they set it down on your table.

When a girl orders a beer they bring it to you in a glass with a straw. We didn’t think much of this till we realized that we were being charged for the straws. It seems to be about 15 cents a straw. Not really much money but seriously who wants a straw in there beer anyway??

Public bathrooms – you have to pay to use them plus you only get one square of toilet paper. (Do you realize how small one square of TP is??) I’m not sure how much it costs because I went with Biyanna and she paid for me. Plus I had my own tissues in my bag so I didn’t have to bother with only having one square of paper. I highly recommend for anyone coming here bring several of the little bags of tissues and the hand sanitizer. The bathroom I was in didn’t have any sinks to wash your hands.

Do not go out to dinner all ready starving. Go before you get too hungry. It takes them a very long time to delivery your food to the table. Even when you order dessert that takes a long time. They expect when you order alcohol that you will want to order snacks to go with our drinks. They call these snacks “garnish”, and then they expect you to order an appetizer, then salad, then soup, then your main meal, then dessert. Apparently one meal is supposed to last for hours.

An example of lost in translation: One day we were out in the car running errands. We pulled into a parking lot and stopped then we asked “is this where we are going? Biyanna says “stay”, OK so we all stayed in the car. She then says “What are you doing” We said “staying”. She then laughed and said “get out”. When she said “stay” she meant, “yes we are staying here, get out of the car.” It was pretty funny. We all thought it was weird that she was telling us to stay even though we were stopped in a parking lot.

Super (grocery) Market tips:

1. Go to the super markets during the day if you can, they are packed in the evening. Everyone is really pushy and will plow you over.

2. All super markets have security guards through out the store. They usually are all dressed in black and they have walkies talking back and forth to each other.

3. Nice thing - they have staff in different sections of the store helping and answering questions. (not that this does us any good)

4. The super market employees who are all mainly women wear uniforms with little hats that are similar to nurse hats.

5. I found it strange that the cashiers all sit in chairs behind the registers.

6. Most stores you are required to pack you own bags and you are required to pay for the number of bags that you use.

7. When you first walk into the market there are lockers and if you have a bag with you, you have to check it till you leave. We have avoided having to do this so far.

8. It is advised to double check the expiration date on all food before you buy it.

9. Make sure you pay attention what each item costs so when they ring it up you get charged the correct price. We feel like have been missed charged a few times all ready.