Trusting his advice we booked a flight to Khiva for the next evening. We also booked a flight further on from Kiva to Bukhara, but we later noticed that the dates were not correct. The travel agent had booked and printed 19th June instead of the 16th June. We went back to correct this mistake, but in the meantime all flights before the 19th had been cancelled. Because of high-ranking politicians visiting Tashkent we were told, apparently. And of course, as this was clearly our fault, we had to pay a cancellation fee for this flight.
The domestic airport was yet another weird experience in Uzbekistan. The lady at the check-in could not speak a word of English, but was happy to assist us in choosing our seats by showing us her pre-historic two-color computer screen. It displayed the airplane in a combination of the letters x, i and o for free, occupied and whatever seats. With such systems it is no wonder everything takes ages to get processed by the authorities! The lady would also have been of assistance for changing dollars into sum and giving us quite a good exchange rate. When it comes to money, and money changing Uzbekistan is particularly funny. There is a black market where you get pretty good exchange rates. But this market is not as clandestine as we imagine it; in fact everybody seems to be participating except the travel agencies. Even the lady behind the official money exchange bureau in the airport (next to the police station) is surprised that she gets customers and that they want to change 200 USD in the official way. Uzbek Sum is worse than Lao Kip! For 1 USD you get about 1,725 to 2.400 Sum depending on the nature of the change (official or otherwise). And the biggest note is 1,000 Sum. This leads to literally carrying around bags of money. And money counting is an art that we are slowly mastering from the locals who are extremely fast at it.
Also not so lucky was the attempt of Boris to book the missing air ticket from Kiva to Bukhara at the airport. We wrote down all the details for the agent, she checked for availability, nodded and made us pay. Five minutes later finally understanding what the paper ticket actually stated we realized that she had booked Kiva-Tashkent for us and it took Boris another 20 minutes to resolve this error. We decided to catch the train for the way back:)
In the end all worked out well and we boarded a new Airbus A320. Great flight with friendly hosts.
In the end all worked out well and we boarded a new Airbus A320. Great flight with friendly hosts.
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