Before you go

This is the one thing genuinely worth doing in advance, and the reason is not convenience. A local SIM card takes one to two business days to activate. On a week-long trip that is a quarter of your visit spent offline.

It gets worse. Since March 2025 Kazakhstan requires foreign visitors using a local SIM to register their phone's IMEI, and the SIM binds to that one handset — move it to another phone and it stops working after 30 days. An eSIM sidesteps all of it: eSIM users are not subject to the IMEI registration requirement at all.

Get 3–5 GB from any eSIM provider before you board.Airalostarts around $4 for 1 GB over 3 days and about $11 for 5 GB over 7 days, running on Kcell and Tele2. It is data-only — no local number — but WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage all work over data, which is how everyone here communicates anyway.

Enter the code SANZHA9288 when you sign up and you get $3 off your first eSIM. I get $3 too — that is the only thing on this site I earn anything from, it costs you nothing, and it has no bearing on any coffee I recommend.

Public wifi is genuinely everywhere in the city — cafes, malls, the metro — so 3–5 GB goes a long way. You mainly need your own data for the taxi app and maps while moving around.

Install Yandex Go before you fly and add your card to it. It is the taxi app everyone here uses, it works in English, and having it ready means you are not setting up an account while jetlagged in an arrivals hall.

At the airport, do not go with the men offering you a ride. Walk past them and order through the app like you would at home. The touts charge several times the real fare and the app shows you the price before you accept.

The airport run into the city is roughly $10–15 in the app. Expect more at surge times — late arrivals and bad weather push it up. If someone in the terminal quotes you well above that, you have found a tout.

Yandex Go for taxis, as above.

2GIS is the local one nobody tells you about, and it is better than Google Maps here. Opening hours, whether a place has actually closed down, road works and road conditions — 2GIS is more current on all of it, because it is what locals use and correct. If a cafe on my guide shows different hours on Google, trust 2GIS.

Card payment is normal here — Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay all work in cafes, shops and on the metro. You do not need to arrive with a pocket full of tenge.

You will also see Kaspi QR everywhere — you scan a code to pay. It accepts any bank card, so it is not the locals-only trap it looks like.

Do carry a little cash anyway for the smallest places and the bazaars.

The metro is one line, clean, and costs 120 ₸ a ride(roughly $0.25). You can pay with abank card at the turnstile — Visa, Mastercard or UnionPay — so there is no need to buy a transport card for a short trip. A single-use smart token is also 120 ₸; a reusable smart card costs 180 ₸ on top of the fares.

For everything the metro does not reach, Yandex Go is cheap by European or American standards.

From autumn onwards the rule is layers, and the reason is the one thing worth knowing about weather here: it changes through the day. A warm morning turns cold and wet by afternoon and back again.

So go out with a backpack and a windbreaker or rain shell inside it. That is genuinely the whole trick — locals do exactly this, and it is why nobody here dresses for the forecast.

Summer needs no strategy. It is simply hot.

Finding English speakers is not a problem, especially among younger people and in any specialty coffee shop — the baristas onmy coffee list will all understand your order. Russian and Kazakh are what you will hear around you.

Booking and Airbnb both have real inventory here, so book through whichever you already use. Staying anywhere in the centre puts most of the coffee on my list within walking distance.