Another travel day, another gratuitous picture of Cindy eating. In a swift change of plans, we’ve decided to go to Dubai and Oman. The decision was made due to our proximity to the Gulf, and because we found an obscenely cheap ticket to Dubai from Tashkent. In fact, it became cheaper to go to Dubai and then Southeast Asia than directly from Tashkent to Southeast Asia. Kind of a no brainer.

The only catch was that we had to have an overnight layover in Almaty. No worries, not like we hadn’t been there before. Our Air Astana (I think this is our fourth Air Astana flight) touched down in Almaty around 5 PM. We booked a hotel three minutes away from the airport. It was crappy and super Soviet, but it served its purpose. Having done precisely sightseeing in Tashkent, we decided to continue the trend and not do anything in Almaty, though obviously we had seen much of the city a few weeks back.

Quick sidenote, the passport you hold can indeed be a massive privilege. Just the fact that we can enter and re-enter Kazakhstan, even if only for transit purposes, and do so free of charge, is amazing. That cheap ticket we found from Tashkent to Dubai could not have been accomplished otherwise. If your passport grants you a privilege like that, do not forget how lucky you are.

Since we had been in Almaty, we knew that the ATMs required us to withdraw 10,000 Tenge minimum. Since we were only there overnight, we didn’t want to be stuck with a few thousand leftover Tenge the next day. The only place within walking distance that accepted credit cards, however, was the airport. So that’s where we went for dinner. Of course we spent more than 10,000 Tenge in overpriced airport food charged to our credit card. Lesson learned, any decision one makes will frequently turn out to be wrong.