Hey everyone! I had some questions about living in Almaty or potentially Oskemen for 6 months. I am an American university student who is currently doing an exchange program in Thailand, but for a variety of reasons it would be better for me to leave. My wife is originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and if possible maybe some comparisons would be good - not because I expect it to be anything like SPB but because it will give some frame of reference since we have no idea, I hope it's not an offensive thing to ask. The reason why I am looking at KZ is because I am double-major, and one of them is Russian, and I think it would help me improve my Russian a lot. So, I'll get to it:

- I would arrive in January. Is the smog really that bad?

- What neighborhoods are best to live in in Almaty?

- Is Almaty walkable in the winer? How is public transit, would I need to get a short-term car lease?

- Is Almaty depressing in the winter? Does anyone know how this compares to SPB winter? (Where it is always overcast and depressing af in the winter) When does it start to get warm?

I think that's all of the questions I have for now! thank you everyone

Hello everyone, I'm looking for LOI for my tourist visa I've been studying medicine in semey and last year graduated, and now want to visit again so I'll appreciate any help or guidance( I'm from India)

An example would be Пиздеч/Пизда I don't get why My country has the same swear words as Kazakhstan or is it a Russian word?

Throughout history there were many great empires and states with their rivals always forcing them to overcome eachother, Britain-France being a good example, or Russian Empire and Ottomans to an extent (mb Persian and Ottomans) But looking at our history some may notice that we can account ourselves as being rivals with almost everyone at some point in history (Chinese/Turks, Persians/Turks, Kievan Rus/Kipchaks or Golden Horde, Mamluks/Arabs or Mongols, India/Mughal Empire, Dzungars/Kazakh Khanate, 3 Uzbek Khanates/Kazakh Khanate, etc… you get the point) but whom would you consider as dearest close “enemies”? (I am not trying to propogate hate towards them, just interested as who would you consider as rivals and an equal in anything and always wish to best them)

поделитесь, пожалуйста, своим опытом заказов с тему? как часто застревает на таможне? переживаю, что мой заказ не дойдёт до нужной даты в декабре :/

*нахожусь в европе. при смене локации маркета даты доставки меняются с «5-7 рабочих дней» на «7-19» 😭 мы же ближе находимся к китаю чем скандинавия, втф

Why are tours to Altyn Emel so expensive?

I’ve found group tours of Charyn Canyon etc for about $40 but Altyn Emel costs more than $200+, this is incredibly expensive. I brought photography equipment and a drone if anyone knows anyone who would like to collaborate making footage there if that gets me there any cheaper.

Thanks

It's not even 4 PM and i already can't see the sun. And this is in Astana, I can't imagine how it looks like in Semey. And it is only first day of December it's going to be only worse every day.

Is this some experiment going on? Like to see how far they can shove their hand up in our... hole? I already feel it and i don't like it

I highly guess that the song is a sarcasm.

I loved the song and the music video and I tried to find their accounts to watch more of their content but most of them seemed to disappear, where can I follow them?

they also mention "the first rap song" at the beginning of the music video. where can I find it?

and there are some turkish sentences, is it because they used turkish in the song or are they fully the same sentences in kazakh?

there is another post here from 5 years ago and the op is talking about how s/he liked the song but someone was fully offended by it. why?

Hi everyone! I've just discovered new music group called "Naiza". They just dropped their new banger "Jaqyndama" in YouTube. As far as I know they are students of Satpayev university and I know that they are really creative! I've been once on their performance on Arbat in Almaty and it was truly amazing!!

I highly recommend you to listen to this song: https://youtu.be/GKi3NE5VmaA?si=VQj0wc3oUUT1gYcx

The city is packed, and despite all the not-so-legal construction activity and one news RAMS building next to the other, rents have been suffocatingly high.

Almaty seems to have a fundamental geographical problem which is that it cannot really grow to the South and the East.

The only directions to expand left are North and West.

Northern suburbs have a terrible reputation for their crime. Going West, public transport is insufficient to accommodate for reasonable commute times. The metro is tiny compared to other cities of that size and not really fast, roads get congested easily and busses are crammed at rush hours.

It may be cheaper to move towards the West, and there is plenty of space, but you'll be so far away from the action.

Tourism is likely to increase, as well as business activity.

With all of this, do you believe that the city is pushing its limits, or will these challenges be overcome by improved transport and/or the formation of new sub-city centers that are just as attractive as the Golden Square?

View Poll

Thank you

Sorry, guys, this might sound a bit weird to ask, but if I turn 27, there won’t be any mandatory military service, right?

I want to graduate in the ninth grade since I see no point in staying, and I'm planning to be an illustrator, or an artist at the very least. MKI is the only college that has something to do with arts in Aqtau, is it worth it? My art teacher told me that it's meh, but there's no other choice really (please do tell me if there are any other options), I'd love to know more about it. What's good and bad in this college? What are the requirements to enroll? How much do you pay for it?

Hi, I've been trying to find this march for such a long time but I haven't had any luck. Would be great if someone here do know this march since I like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4DOzFoXwO4&t=2561s
at 42.17

Edit: алдын ала рахмет!

If you have any recommendations I’d love to give them a listen! :)

Нужно для дз..В интернете есть только русская инфа,а про казахские толком найти не могу,в переводчике выходят обычные слова,что вызывает у меня сомнения(а мне хочется выполнить дз идеально)

So, recently I was wasting time watching shorts on youtube and saw ad for some tube hotels somewhere in mountains with 1 day cost 65000 tenge. And a lot of comments were saying that is their half monthly salary and some saying that it's almost all of salary. Also I remembered that there are some stats that say quite large percent of people are self employed and almost all of them make less than average salary.

I'm not good with economics and I'm trying to understand 1 thing, are we basically doomed. What I mean is all we have is natural resources, but only western and may be chinese have enough knowledge to reasearch them and have enough capital to develop and extract resources from there. Which means that we just lucky to own that land and in this picture there is no place for average Kazakh, because (I might be wrong here) this industries don't require millions of employees.

So we can go full social justice and start just giving away this money to everyone and make most things cheap, which government already is doing by subsidizing a lot of things like gas, electricity, etc (Last time when it was cancelled, poor masses rebeled). So, people want some kind of prosperity, but is there even a potential for that? Like isn't it naive to believe that some Kazakhstan company would build or invent anything that could compete with foreign products?

Another way would be agriculture, but in modern world isn't that like the cheapest thing you can do in terms of returns. For example we export about 1 billion dollars of grain while our GDP is 261 billion, so it's just tiny drop in ocean. We can't even become slave factory workers like in some Asian countries, because we have no access to ocean trade and even literal slave labour would be negated by the cost of logistics. So, is our future to just become low wage workers in Russia, South Korea, Turkey?

As a kid I always heard complains about corruption, but even we remove that what would be the plan? Like what we have that can be competative in global market other than producing more humans which we are doing successfully?
And back to original question, what jobs would all of that poor rural people do, they usually don't have profitable skills and it's not even clear what kind of skills could be useful in the economy where only small minority actually create wealth by selling resources

https://preview.redd.it/8suqqwyfc14e1.png?width=1542&format=png&auto=webp&s=845906f615e2548c671c076cf7b3d2852bceeb09

https://preview.redd.it/fk21awugc14e1.png?width=352&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca4197b4de69e3f517c0022915e6b89342f5b376

When is this gonna stop?

been in kz since september. anyone else get waaay more car sick here?? what’s up with that

Hello, im currently in turkistan. Can Someone help me to buy local made jackets and boota in turkistan/chymkent.

I find the quality of the winter gears very attractive.

Also, appreciate if you could suggest few names of restaurants to try out local cuisines, which wont break my bank.

Thanms for your help

How much, if at all, will the implosion of the Russian Ruble affect Kazakhstan?