Kazakhstan｜Almaty Super Delicious Valleys & Travel Tips

Few people might associate a city under the Central Asian snow mountains with Japanese anime culture, but sometimes the more unlikely it seems, the more surprises there are. Guess the total price of all the grains in picture 1️⃣? 20 RMB❗️❗️❗️ Almaty has a weekend second-hand market (picture 2️⃣) where supposedly you can buy anything. Netizens have mixed reviews. With a mindset of "even if I get scammed, I want to experience it myself," I took a 1-hour bus ride here. Upon arrival, there was a surprise: an unobstructed view of continuous snow-capped mountains and grasslands🏔️. Although I didn’t spend a single cent here, just wandering around was super interesting. I began to rethink the value of so-called "junk"; I felt I gained a bit more understanding of local life; occasionally looking up at the snow mountains, I felt poetic. Next door at Jalan Jalan Japan, the purchasing power of the tenge is equally amazing. It is an overseas branch of Japan’s 🇯🇵 chain second-hand store Book Off. Items that can’t be sold in Japan are shipped here and sold at further discounts. For example🌰, a small card sold for 100 yen at Book Off is about 10 yen here. There aren’t many figurines or plush toys, but stickers, folders, postcards, and small cards are abundant, piled in boxes. Because it’s so cheap, no one organizes them, so you need to spend time searching carefully. I spent about 2 hours going through these boxes. While enjoying the joy of finding great bargains, I thought: with this patience and perseverance, I can succeed at anything, right? Besides grains, this place has everything from second-hand clothes and bags to camping tents, with goods updated quickly. I was lucky to find a whole pack of small volleyball long stickers! Many grains even still had Book Off’s hooks and tags not yet removed! Other tips for the area: 1. The prices of items that attract tourists at the second-hand market are not low, so you might leave empty-handed if you want to buy something. 2. There is another supermarket inside the Jalan Jalan mall, with lots of chocolate🍫 and tea at cheap prices, a great place to buy souvenirs. 3. 🧭 Navigate to Jalan Jalan Japan, but ⚠️ Almaty has 3 locations, only the one in the northeast corner of the map is the right one. I spent a total of five days in Almaty and left reluctantly. I think this place is a crossroads of human civilization, very suitable as a city travel destination for a short holiday. About other spots: 1. Koktobe is great for watching the sunset🌅. In picture 3, the sunset restaurant & tower at the farthest cable car direction has people driving away📸 tourists, beautiful but not comfortable. Actually, after getting off the 🚠, walk down to the right (picture 4), it’s perfect for overlooking the whole city at dusk & photographing the snow mountains and tower. 2. Art Museum (pictures 5-6). Tickets🎫 cost only 7 RMB, and the museum has stunning exhibits ranging from traditional Kazakh handicrafts to avant-garde art. See picture 10 for more.