Credit cards…not so much

A word of warning to those of you (like me) who hardly ever carry cash and rely on your credit cards to get you by. No one in Kazakhstan seems to take them with rare exceptions. I did manage to charge our hotel to a Visa card but only after being told for three days that the credit card machine was down. Funny thing is that I was told the same thing when paying for our overweight luggage charge in the Almaty airport. Either the credit card infrastructure here is pretty creaky or people just like cash (guess which one is true).

So bring a wad of cash and switch it to Tenge at the first opportunity. You are going to need it. The good news is that there are a lot of places in Petro to exchange money so it is pretty painless.