Would you like to hang out in a small hotel lobby with older british guys while they get completely wasted on beer and then as the night comes see them schmooze it up with Russian and Kazakh prostitutes? Would you like to listen a live band do covers of cheesy rock songs from the 70's, 80's, and 90's? Would you like to witness a good old fashioned bar fight in a hotel lobby? Then this is the place for you! Stayed for a couple of months. The place was nice and fresh. Hotel is located closed to River Ural, which make is good for having walk along riverside in summer.
During extreme Winter you can walk on Frozen River. Prizes in Hotel is quite reasonable and good. Nice food Very good service and staff Nice location Good atmosphere for vacation They have fairly clean rooms with air conditioning, tv and hot water. Good food served by the restaurants. Bar facility is also available. I have just spent 3 weeks staying in the Chagala Hotel in Aktau so was quite disappointed to see my taxi continue past the Chagala in Atyrau to the Tengri Hotel; I don't like surprises.
The Tengri Hotel is the sort of place where you need to check that the maid has left, for example, a bath towel and toilet paper before you need to use such items. A place where if you are not the first down to breakfast you have to collect cutlery and napkins from other tables. Breakfast is disappointing. The waitresses do not believe in eye contact and providing service.
It is very difficult to get a hot drink without shouting 'chay' or 'coffee' which seems to be the Kazak norm. Breakfast is buffet style, where you serve yourself from luke-warm serving dishes where everything is swimming in oil, which does stop the flies landing on the food. You do not need to worry about the sausages looking anaemic and being uncooked as I doubt there is very little meat content. I consider myself a young 40 something but to play gangster rap at breakfast with expletives every other word is, well, just wrong; although I did hear similar sounds in my local Rohan shop recently, so maybe it is just me!
For lunch and dinner there is the same style buffet with a choice of beef, chicken and fish. They serve the food with different names at each sitting but it all tastes the same. The chef uses cuts of chicken that I have never seen before, which only starts you thinking. The rooms are tired but they are clean with working air conditioning. Some rooms have a kitchenette and sofa area. You can smoke in your room, bar, restaurant - anywhere you want too. Another positive is that the lifts are fairly quick, though one of the lifts has a ritual of attempting to close its doors three times before doing so.
