Medical surprises

One of the things you do immediately when you get home is take your newly adopted kid or kids to the doctor to get a complete workup. There are adoption specialists that you can use but here in Massachusetts the waiting period for an appointment is crazy so we just went to our normal pediatrician.

When our daughter came home she was eating like a horse and could never seem to get enough to drink so we wanted to get to the bottom of it. What we found was that she had a parasite which was likely starving her for nutrients. One cycle of meds and problem solved – she is eating like a normal toddler again. This also likely explains why she was under-weight in the baby house and had a nasty skin infection (since mostly dealt with).

One thing I did learn is that these parasites are hard to test for (so you need to look multiple times and over multiple days) and that there are two tests run – one for domestic exposure and one for international exposure. A US medical lab won’t do the international test automatically (and many doctors don’t realize they need to order it special) so you need to make sure it is included in the workup.

Given how many people we met in Kazakstan who got sick, it would seem parasites and other baddies are pretty common in the water and food. So watch yourself and your newly adopted kids (and any kids you bring with you).

Art Gallery in Petropavlovsk

We had a chance a few days back to visit the local art gallery. It is located in a 100 year old building in the traditional Kazakhstan style that used to be the home of a wealthy merchant. It was renovated a number of years back and turned into an art gallery.

It is small but has a pretty varied collection of more traditional art as well as modern interpretations from local artists. We got a tour from the Director as we were the only people there. It is worth the hour or so it takes to walk through.

Are here it is on Google Maps:

Do not stay at the Hotel Uyut in Almaty, Kazakhstan

I had to take a three day trip to Almaty this past week to sign some papers at the US Embassy and was initially booked into the Hotel Uyut in the downtown area. When I arrived at around 6pm the lobby seemed decent and although I got the normal scowls from the reception staff (who didn’t speak any English) I’ve gotten used to it at this point so it didn’t throw me.

The Uyut has a series of clocks in back of the reception desk showing the time in London, New York and so on. I guess no one told them that putting clocks up like that is supposed to mean that you are an international hotel and the staff speak the corresponding languages.

I paid my $80 for a couple of nights at the Uyut and headed up to the room to try and get some work done. The Internet is 1,000 Tenge an hour (about $6.50) which is a complete rip-off but I’ve also gotten used to that here in Kazakhstan so I sucked it up and pre-paid a bunch of hours so I could be productive. I couldn’t face the restaurant as after three weeks I’ve had my fill of Kazak food so dinner was a yogurt, a chocolate bar and bottle of water from a local market.

Around 11pm I started getting ready for bed, and when I sat down on the bed the thing was hard as a board. I pulled back the sheet and this is what I found:

In furnishing the room they had neglected to include a mattress in the list of necessary items. They put a mattress pad and sheet on top of the box-spring and called it a day. Now I’ve slept on train station floors, second class sleeper cars and $10 a night hotels in the south of Greece but there is absolutely nothing as uncomfortable as trying to sleep on a box spring.

Of course when I complained to the front desk I got a lot of blank looks (no English) and when I showed the security guard what the problem was his solution was to hand me a couple of pads to put down (you can see them above). Demands for a new room were met with frowns and the comment that there were no rooms available.

I suffered through three hours of fitful sleep and then gave up and just worked the rest of the night. In the morning my translator called the hotel from Petro to try and convince them to give me a room with a mattress and their response was that it was a “special mattress that was good for the back”. Needless to say I booked myself into the Hyatt about 15 minutes after hearing that response (wonderful hotel if a bit on the pricey side).

Of course they refused to refund my pre-paid night or give me any compensation for the night I suffered through. Oh yeah, the “free” breakfast in the morning completely sucked – worst food I’ve eaten since I arrived in Kazakhstan.

So the Hotel Uyut gets negative three stars from this traveler even though on their website they claim three stars. Not likely.

[UPDATE] I found the website for the hotel in case anyone is interested in ensuring they steer clear of it:

Improved WiFi at the Skif Hotel

I know this seems trivial to those of you back in the land of high speed Internet access but the Skif Hotel in Petropavlovsk (our home for the last month or so) has finally added a couple of additional WiFi attennas to floors two and three. The previous single, lonely antenna was down on the front desk and every time someone walked in front of it I lost my connection up in our room on the second floor. Plus I had to do calls to home out in the hall to get enough signal for VOIP.

Think about having dial-up speeds for a month and a crummy connection and you’ll feel my pain. Anyway, as of a few hours ago we’ve finally got a solid signal in the room and I’m almost fully functional again. Of course the Internet connection is all of 1 Mb for the entire hotel so if a few rooms get active online things tend to slow to a crawl but hey, this is Northern Kazakhstan after all.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Almaty places #4 in a Business Week survey

Ok…it was the top worst places to work in the world but hey, any PR is good PR right? Almaty got #4 on the study done by Business Week. They commented:

“The remoteness of Almaty, largest city in Kazakhstan, is one of the city’s biggest problems as far as outsiders are concerned. Other significant hardships include pollution, the threat of disease, and poor medical facilities. “Inadequate infrastructure, substandard housing, crime and difficulties with communications are additional drawbacks,” says ORC.”

I just spent three days in Almaty and while I didn’t get to do any sightseeing (the US Embassy was nice…) the city seemed decent. The streets were clean, the trees were coming into bloom which was a sight for sore eyes after the winter weather we’ve been having in Petro and the downtown area looked nicer than a number of major cities I’ve been to around the world. From a glance at the “attractions” list in the hotel it also seemed that there was at least enough to see to burn a few days looking around.

The hotels do manage to ding the credit card pretty hard though. A night at the Hyatt made my wallet about $450 lighter but I definitely recommend a stop to eat at their Grill Room. Yum. Funny thing was that the Hyatt in New York City quoted me $339 for the same night. Competition is a wonderful thing.

The full Business Week article is here.

Kindle2 – My new must have travel gadget

I travel a lot but normally only for two or three days so I can usually toss a paperback in my bag for that period during take-off and landing where they tell you to turn off all electronic gadgets and cell phones (but of course no one actually does). For this trip I was trying to figure out how to bring enough reading material to cover me through two 30 hour plan trips and three weeks in Kazakhstan.

Given the 50 lb weight limit on most airlines I didn’t really want to be hauling books so I sucked it up and bought myself a Kindle2. Actually, I took the coin jar that we’d neglected to empty for the last two years to the local grocery store and fed a mountain of change into a CoinStar machine. They have a deal with Amazon where you can get an Amazon gift certificate and avoid the approximately 8% coin counting charge that they normally levy.

So with all my coins counted I could nearly cover the cost of a brand spanking (just released) Kindle2 ($349).

I must admit I love this device. I had tried the Kindle reader on my iPhone and while it is nice, the backlit screen really wears on you after awhile. Once you get used to the screen flickering when you turn pages, the Kindle2 is even better than reading a book as it is much lighter and you don’t have to hold the pages open. I quickly downloaded a couple of dozen books to my reader and have worked through about seven on this trip so far. Plus they are quite a bit cheaper than the ones printed on dead trees.

I’ve converted. I won’t say every book I buy will be electronic as I still like to add to my ever growing library at home but for most I’m going to be grabbing them wirelessly in a single click to my Kindle2.

Worldwide poverty

If you travel any amount you are sometimes amazed at the level of poverty that exists. You see it on the streets of New York City, in the less prosperous neighborhoods in London and Paris and in pretty much in every country in the world to some degree or another. I was pretty shocked when I first went to Sri Lanka and I can only imagine what exists in sub-Saharan Africa (I’ve not yet made it there)

While there is poverty here in Kazakhstan I’ve actually see fewer homeless and less evidence of it that might be expected given that the entire ex-Soviet union went through a pretty bad spell when it broke up. It is obvious not everyone is living well but generally people seem to be getting by – even outside of the city core where there is less in the way of facilities. The rich natural resources of this country are more than likely helping.

Of course those of us from the West shouldn’t ever point fingers as things are pretty bleak back home as well. From a recent article in The Independent:

“Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.”

Anytime anyone gets self righteous around me I simply point them to pictures from the aftermath of Katrina. Definitely a case of “fix your own problems first”.

Petropavlovsk Airport

The Petropavlovsk Airport (PPK) isn’t much to talk about – just a single concrete strip and a terminal building that is obviously from the Soviet days. Apparently Air Astana flies jets from here to Astana but if you are coming from Almaty you are stuck with an aging turbo-prop courtesty of SCAT Airlines. Of course if you were Madonna I’m sure you’d just come in on your private jet…oh to be so lucky.

Here it is on Google maps:

Kazakhstan Dress Code

Not that outrageous by the standards here

When we were getting ready to travel one of the things that seemed to be emphasized over and over is how well the Kazaks dress. We were encouraged to leave our faded jeans behind and bring nicer things to wear or we would stand out.

So now the reality. Yes, the majority of women dress up to go out and I haven’t seen a pair of ripped jeans since I got here. But dress up means that if they are under 30 they wear high-heeled boots, tight jeans (dark not light) and lots of make-up and over 30 they look like grandma going to church. There doesn’t seem to be any in-between.

The men wear dark dress pants, pointed (really pointed) shoes and dark jackets – often leather. Think Neo in The Matrix.

So the reality is that unless this is how you actually dress, nothing in your wardrobe is going to make you not stand out. Plus as soon as you open your mouth you are tagged as a foreigner. So my advice is to wear what makes you comfortable and ignore the stares as they are going to happen anyway. If you want to temper it a bit invest in a couple of pairs of black jeans and a wool coat (it is still cold here in April) which is what I did. There is no way they are getting me into one of those pairs of pointed shoes though.

The Skif Hotel, Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan

Since we were not able to find much information on the Skif Hotel on the Internet prior to traveling I figured I’d spend a post talking about the hotel we are staying in. Some level information on this place would have been rather helpful when making our travel plans.

This hotel seems to be the hotel of choice for some adoption agencies as there are multiple couples here going through the same process. It looks like it has been recently renovated with more renovations ongoing but even the newly renovated sections would find it difficult to climb to the level of two stars in a western hotel. I give it a solid one star.

The foyer is large, tiled and kept extremely clean (there is always someone sweeping it). On the lower level is a very large dining room, the tables attractively set with tablecloths and cloth napkins in a royal blue and gold colour scheme.  Breakfast is included in the price of the room and usually has eggs, some type of cereal, bread and with a couple of the options some fruit.

They have one menu translated to English (everyone has to share) and in case you are not inclined to eat horse meat (a meat of choice in Kazakhstan), it is indicated in the menu. The food is quite good and very reasonably priced. Dinner for four the other night rang in at $20 or so. That being said, by the fourth night you are going to be looking for alternatives as the menu just isn’t that varied.

The second floor is recommended since the rooms are outfitted to North American standards. If you need space, the suites are a good choice but are a bit more expensive. There is a fairly large foyer, living room and separate bedroom, a 2 piece bathroom and a separate shower room (some with showers only, others with tub with shower). The suites go for approximately $105 per night with the Tenge at 150 or so to the US dollar. We were offered a 20% discount if we paid for our stay in advance.

The smaller rooms are more like normal hotel rooms and are a bit cheaper.  There is also a fridge. Maid service is rather sporadic but if you tip them you get a good service. Bring slippers since the carpets are not very clean.

There is a workout room with 2 treadmills, 2 stationary bicycles, an elliptical trainer, some weight machines and free weights. The full size gym has basketball nets, a volleyball net and a ping-pong table.  The pool is all one depth and deep so it is not ideal for children. It is a requirement to wear a bathing cap which they sell in the pool area for 400 Tenge. There are change rooms, showers and a sauna but everything looks rather ex-Soviet Union, albeit with a more recent coat of paint.

The hotel is within walking distance to a number of grocery stores, restaurants and a mall. Constitution Avenue, also within walking distance is a great place to go for a walk as it is a car free zone. More to come on the area around the hotel in future posts.