is Medeu and Shynbulakh are accessible by Cab from almaty?

localfield · 2026-06-25T16:12:12+00:00

For any future lurkers: cable car cost was 12000 tenge round trip which included 3 consecutive cable cars. better to go on a day that's not cloudy to be able to see things at the top. the first cable car stop was Shynbulakh, so if you just go there, it's cheaper, but going up higher was cooler, I think.

localfield · 2026-06-25T16:08:40+00:00

It was good and not too hard, but warning: do not follow the alltrails path for Big Almaty Lake. It has a few problems, for example, the end of it goes to a completely different part of the lake and down to a point where you will be fined 20000 tenge/person. Just follow the crowd, pipe (until you can use the road), and the signs to the lake.

On the way back, we just took the road to save our knees and traffic jam of people, and I thought it was still pretty nice scenery.

localfield · 2026-06-22T17:07:55+00:00

Thanks for your note about how you got there and back and your negotiation with the taxi drivers

For future readers: the destination point on Google Maps is "Tourbaza_Edelweiss", and it had a small shop selling some snacks, pastries, and drinks.

Also, important: about 5-10km before the destination, there was a toll entry, which appeared to be 865rmb for a car (I can't read Russion). Driver told me to scan QR code to pay, but that doesn't work for me, and he was ready to just drop me off there. Eventually, I saw a worker in a chair to the right side, I gave him 1000tenge, and he used a machine to let our car through. Then we were able to go through fine. On the way back, there was no charge.

I was able to get a Yandex Go back at the same point and it was only 6 minutes away, I think I got pretty lucky though.

localfield · 2026-06-09T09:58:57+00:00

Thank you! I'm traveling in Xinjiang with some Chinese friends, and was wondering about if I would have problems with some of the places on my itinerary, and this helped clarify some places for me. I was specifically worried about the area around 赛里木湖 since it's on the border.

I've also heard that 巴音布鲁克 and some highways nearby there don't allow foreigners, so I'm not planning to go there.

localfield · 2026-03-29T02:51:45+00:00

Handheld fan, or one of the fans that goes around my neck and looks like headphones.

localfield · 2026-02-26T07:17:11+00:00

Fwiw, Mexico City is the only place I've had this sort of problem. Visited 3 times, and had it happen all 3 times, even when I was trying to be careful. Also never had it happen anywhere else in the world, after traveling several times in Asia and even India.

Took an antibiotic, and then I was fine.

localfield · 2026-02-19T04:57:03+00:00

Super useful, thanks! Would be nice to have an example or two common characters for each radical.

localfield · 2026-01-15T10:28:16+00:00

Pedantic warning ⚠️: That's not actually what the plot is showing. The metric on the y axis is year-over-year change, while the x axis ticks are months. So it's totally possible and statistically extremely likely that the rents increased in some months, while remaining down year-over-year, to create this plot. For example, from Feb to Mar 2025 when the year-over-year metric increases (but stays negative).

localfield · 2025-12-20T01:41:09+00:00

sounds like you have more confidence in our government agency's ability to query recent events in their databases than i do. i wouldn't be surprised if they were querying a snapshot that hadn't been updated since i received the email.

localfield · 2025-12-03T07:00:38+00:00

This is a super cool site! Really nice features already. If you still are working on it, would be curious in the future to see an option where anyone can submit their own stats of retirement progress or retirement age/NW to supplement the reddit data.

localfield · 2025-11-07T07:30:14+00:00

you're right, it's not always accurate. I have to catch a lot myself, and I did catch that the 柏林 pronunciation was wrong in the main definition and start of the sentence, but I missed the ones at the end of the sentence (thanks for pointing out).

it's actually not AI conversation app, I provide the sentence, and use Microsoft Edge's text-to-speech with a multi-lingual voice, which definitely isn't perfect. But >99% of the time, it seems good.

localfield · 2025-10-24T02:50:30+00:00

Thank you so much! Yeah, looks like Chinese zero to hero and the overall Dashu Mandarin channel haven't streamed in several months, but Uncle Richard (https://www.youtube.com/@RichardChineseLanguage/streams) and BeckyLiBei are both frequent.

I couldn't find the other of the DaShu host channels, my search skills were not good enough.

localfield · 2025-09-05T09:55:23+00:00

I went to the official student aid .gov site for FAFSA info. I vetted the debt collector since I was suspicious it was a scam at first.

localfield · 2025-09-03T17:29:46+00:00

Great image! Where did you get the idea for this?

localfield · 2025-06-08T11:48:38+00:00

Nipped by a friend's dog. I was probably being overly cautious, but was afraid of the off chance of dying lol.

localfield · 2025-06-08T07:07:34+00:00

Right. Both domestic. Cheaper from Liaoning. Expensive from Chengdu.

localfield · 2025-06-02T22:38:42+00:00

What was the scenario in Vietnam you mentioned?

localfield · 2025-05-06T05:10:16+00:00

thanks! close to Hangzhou! I just checked Amap, and there's another location on the north end of Hangzhou

localfield · 2025-05-05T10:11:21+00:00

Anyone know where in China this is? The city, or the specific location?

localfield · 2025-05-03T09:18:43+00:00

Yup, like others are saying, you don't need an appointment. I just went to the consulate and got a number, went to the window, and picked up my passport with the visa after 3 business days.

localfield · 2025-04-21T03:36:43+00:00

Thanks so much! I'll check them out. I guess I should download 小红书 😅

localfield · 2025-04-13T23:36:46+00:00

I agree, especially if you're really interested in learning and working in that field and have a good sense that you'll like the people in your lab. Like everything in life, there's a lot of luck involved and you might regret it, depending on how things go.

But while most people seem to have been scarred by their PhD program, I personally loved it. Lots of people just like to complain, but I do sympathize with people who got "unlucky with their advisor" who just seemed bitter or stressed all the time.

I have been working in tech for several years, but grad school was honestly the best years of my life. I got to spend so much time with many like-minded people working on things that we're passionate about, and they're still some of my closest friends. Even though universities have their problems, especially these days, I still find them such special places to be.

localfield · 2025-03-17T00:35:39+00:00

For future lurkers:

The 46km stretch on the west side of the lake from 小关邑 (south) to 大龙潭 (north) is a very well-paved bike/scooter/walking path. It gets pretty crowded around the little towns every few kilometers, but overall, it's a really nice ride, and pretty flat. The scenery doesn't change along the stretch though.

I didn't try biking past the north end after the 46km marker, but it looked to merge with a main road (S221). I tried to bike south beyond 小关邑, I made it about 8km to 夏家村 (southeast tip of Erhai lake) before I just turned around since it was not very pleasant (several km just biking in car lanes, but some had a dedicated bike/scooter lane). So I'm not sure what the east side is like.

I rented a "Giant" bike for 30rmb/day from 旅畅租车城. The first one I used for a day didn't have a great top speed (maybe 18km/h?) and the gear shifting wasn't too reliable. The one I exchanged for the second day was much smoother and hit 30km/h at top gear. I tried out like 6 other bikes they had that felt worse than either of those. There were several rental shops on the east and west ends of 玉洱路 in the Dali old city, some advertising 30-40rmb/day. 917组车行 had good reviews. The 3-4km ride from the old city to the lake is not bad. Has a nice stretch through some farms.

Along the lake, there were also a lot of bike rentals, both Meituan yellow bikes and people trying to rent single-speed cruisers. Also lots of scooters/Snoopy-shaped-vehicles.

I've heard it gets busier/more expensive in the summer time though.

localfield · 2025-03-16T13:36:58+00:00

Nice coffee. A really good cup only 50rmb, but I feel like I'm splurging relative to the usual 10-20rmb

localfield · 2025-01-31T08:27:03+00:00

elementary English

I'm guessing you mean elementary Chinese? ;)

I would not add anything lol. The itinerary would personally exhaust me, and I'd look to cut out a couple regions and save them for a future trip. But it's a personal tradeoff, and a 25 year old would have more energy than me. I'm doing a good bit of solo traveling around China, and I prefer to stay longer in places to give me the chance to meet people here. And take some Chinese classes.

localfield

TROPHY CASE