Aktau, Kazakhstan

I flew into Aktau at 5am on Thursday morning. Flying over the Caspian you can see the offshore rigs lit up in the dark.

Aktau is where the desert meets the Caspian. The temperature is pretty mild and the beaches are supposed to be some of the nicer ones along the Caspian. Give me Galveston or Corpus any day. I tried to go swimming and got knee deep, but decided to get out since the water must have been about 60 degrees max and it was raining. It's also famous for its cliffs along the Caspian like the white cliffs of Dover, but not as white, nice, famous, or worth a visit.

When I got to Aktau I walked around town for an hour looking for a cheap place to spend the night. After an hour plus I found it for 100 USD.

Aktau sucks. It's what I imagined a Soviet holiday spot in Kazakhstan would look like (concrete buildings with covered in peeling pastel paints, crappy beachfront, wannabe Western restaurants), but the people were nice. Nazerbayev has said that Aktau will be a major resort town by 2010. Good luck with all that!