Amazingly, it’s now on booking - at 7.6. Honestly, every aspect of it was comically bad - just four or five rooms (with padded leather doors) around a barren concrete courtyard with several wrecked cars and a bonfire in it. Oh, and they tried to distract us with a song and dance about passports, but I watched them evict the girls from the rooms before ushering us in - same sheets, of course, but we had sleeping bags. Still both got a skin infection. The air con was great though, which was why we were there, and arriving at 5am - it hits 56C in the steppe at that time of year, within a few hours of sunrise. Sleeping in the car out of the question.

Man, another Kazakh hotel story - stayed at a “premium” hotel in Shymkent, which they advertised as having a pool, which sounded just amazing having spent the previous night in said amusing hotel. Got our room, my god, it’s great, let’s put the AC on and crash for an hour before hitting the pool. Wake up 20 minutes later, REALLY hot. Decide to see if the heat exchanger for the AC is obstructed, as it’s blowing lukewarm rather than cold air.

I open the curtains. It’s dark. Which is weird because it’s 3pm. I go to open the balcony door - and the handle is almost burning hot. As is the glass of the door and windows. And then I realise they’ve bricked up the balcony, because that’s of course where they’ve built the pool - and is where the heat exchanger lives, doing its damndest to pump even more heat into what had already become the inside of an oven.

So, we get a new room, after noting that the lobby is full of dozens of huge freestanding AC units and their heat exchangers, and having some trouble explaining the problem to the staff. New room is fine, and has a nice view of the … still under construction pool. 8.4 on booking.

We got so drunk that evening. Thoroughly recommend visiting Kazakhstan. Lovely people, and there’s never a dull moment.