We spent one night at Orbita in Shymkent during our trip through Kazakhstan. We had driven from Almaty to the area of Aksu-Zhabagly, and then to Turkistan, from where we made our way back to Almaty in stages, stopping one night in Shymkent before going to Taraz. This hotel is quiet and has charming character and unusual, interesting decor. Supposedly it was built by Japanese POWs during WWII. It has some older elements but each room is different and nicely updated with excellent bathroom facilities. The location is quiet and peaceful. It is outside of the city centre, which make it inconvenient to walk around but makes it much easier to get to the hotel and drive out of the city when you're driving your own car, since you can largely avoid the more intense traffic. At the same time, we learned here how to use Yandex Go to get cars to drive us to and from the city centre, which was easy. Breakfast was very nice and plentiful.