Our 'hood in Shymkent

Within our first 48 hours we managed to walk all over our immediate neighborhood and check out the goods. Right in front of our building we have a little restaurant, a cell phone store, a row of stores packed full of shoes, clothing and other accessories, and a bus stop. Every day there are temporary vendors that set up on the sidewalk too. These may be selling underwear, pantyhose, fruit and veg, or anything else they so desire! Even in the alleyway between the buildings there is a small little shack that sells drinks – water, fruit juice, soda, etc.

View of the bus stop from our apartment

View of the bus stop from street level

Behind us is a large indoor/outdoor market that sells everything you can think of. We walked through one day to get a feel of the place and see what they had. The place is like a maze, you can take twists and turns all inside of it, and could probably be there forever based on the size of it all. Levi had a chance to scope out the place in a little more detail while I was at work last week. He picked up some lunch from one vendor, found packing tape at another, and some outlet adapters at another. He said that he walked all over and could see that several vendors even carry the same stuff, so if you can’t bargain for the right price at one, just walk ten feet and bargain with someone else. I hope to go back soon to peruse the goods and buy some cheap stuff.

One of the many market entrances

If we walk two blocks up from our place that is a park called Ken Baba. Inside it are some amusement park rides, fountains, and restaurants. Our first Saturday in Shymkent we ate at a little café with my supervisor and his wife. The menus are all in Russian and the servers hover over you waiting to take your order. So we had to order quickly that first time, but we have since returned and told the waiter we needed some time. Upon the second trip we managed to order some type of sangria fruit concoction (no alcohol) to drink while we translated the menu. They have a wide selection of salads, pasta dishes, shashlik (kabobs), and other meat dishes. Another restaurant within the park has terrible service and we won’t be returning, but while there we did try the national dish – beshbarmak – that consists of slices of meat and onions on a bed of pasta. The beer at these places is amazing and fresh and cold. We quickly found out that the alcohol content is much higher than our beers at home and two beers is more than enough!

Local beer selection

Beshbarmak

Fountain at Ken Baba

Central Park is only a few blocks away too. It’s very shady and cool, so it’s a great place to walk and hang out on hot days (which it has been!). Throughout the park there are paths and park benches, there are also several plays grounds for kids. On one side of the park is a water fountain. The sculpture in the middle doesn’t look like much when the water is off, but once the water is turned on you can see that it’s meant to look like dandelions when they’ve turned fuzzy and white! It sprays the surrounding area a bit and keeps you cool as you walk by. We’ve mostly used this park as a short cut to Mega (the mall), but I would like to return on the weekend and spend some time relaxing.

The dandelion fountain

Central park

Mega is the nice, new, big shopping mall about 1 mile from our place (shorter if we walk through the park). It’s mostly made up of trendy stores that I’m not interested in, but does contain a good grocery store. On the basement floor of the mall is an ice rink and it can be seen from the third floor food court. It looks like the rink is made of plastic and not ice, but we saw a group of kids taking lessons and it looked like fun.

Outside Mega

Bottom floor of Mega, looking up

Top floor of Mega, looking down

Top floor of Mega, looking outside

Across the street from Mega is Tsum. This used to be the big shopping market before Mega was built, but still contains small shops packed in back-to-back. We’ve only managed to tackle one-third of the first floor (we found a decent deal on cell phones at one shop and that was it so far), so hopefully we can go back soon and check out the rest.

Tsum

 Last night we were looking at a city map of the Shymkent. There are several other large parks throughout the city that we’d like to check out and there is a zoo! At the end of October we have a short fall break from school, so this will give me some time to explore with Levi without the rush of the weekend.