May 31: Horgos to Almaty

Our first border day was a drag. We woke up on Kazakh time 3 hours later than usual and spent the first 6 hours of the day crossing over. On the other side, the western world returned to us in a large wave of relief as we found a great coffee shop and payed with our credit cards, speaking in english the whole time to the barista. You don’t realize how much the little inconveniences of travelling in China affect you until you leave. It’s irritating not knowing if you’ll be able to pay or translate to someone because the government has decided to cut your internet for 10 minutes. We promptly deleted Alipay off our phones as we arrived in Almaty. The city is gorgeous and the mountains frame it beautifully but the traffic was awful. On top of that, a rattle has developed that shakes the car at low RPMs. We are going to check the exhaust later tonight to see if that’s the issue. Thankfully we won’t need to drive tomorrow.