Hello Armenia - Day 23

So here at last I write after a really long day on the road , I had plenty of time to reflect between snoozing through my navigation job and entertaining my friend at the wheel with my not so interesting stories haha.

From Tbilisi to Yerevan it was only 290km, roughly 3 1/2 hrs of driving. Little did we know that my phone's GPS had decided the quickest way through, without speed limits , was to go off road.

Our drive took us 9hours :(

The road was broken asphalt full of holes. For 30km, we went at 10-20km per hour, it was one long drive.

We finally got to some lonely little Customs Border Control. We were probably the first tourists to cross that border and as usual I enjoy watching their reactions to my Malaysian Passport. 

The Malaysian passport is the 9th best passport in terms of how many countries we can enter visa free or with Visa on Arrival, so I was pretty confident I could enter, they just had to look through their textbooks first, or in my official's case, make a call to the Head Office.

"You need visa!" Oh yes, we have Visa on arrival.

"Speak Russki?? I no English good." No Russki, English!

So he wrote to explain $15 was for a 21 day entry.

"15 dollars" I gave $20

"I no change..I keep 5$" NO!!!!

At this point we had to rustle through some bags to find some scrunched up one dollar notes.

"Surname no?! Where?!" Because I have a Chinese and English name, My initials are FWMF , the W being my surname, so this always create a bureaucratic jam to an otherwise smooth proceeding.

"Ah Vong Vong,oki"

Dion, my Dutch friend was sitting there,whistling because he breeze through with a little chop onto his EU passport :(

So I watched as the Customs Officer took out little envelope sized papers, and checked through his little book on the steps to making my visa. And finally he sticks the full page visa onto my passport. Now Dion wanted an Armenian visa in his passport haha :D

My passport is now on it's way to being less brand new and more worn and travelled. This roadtrip has taken 4 pages, 3 for full page visas (Russian, Armenian, Kazakhstan) and 1 for Georgia stamps. I should consider going next to go to China, Myanmar, India, Uzbekistan for more visas hah!

Dion asked the Armenian official how the road was, and was told it was another 5km of pot hole riddled road and then a good road all the way. When we finally reached this piece of good road, he was so overjoyed that I barely registered what happened.

He stopped the car.

Got out.

Kissed the road!

Guy moves so fast I couldn't take a picture. So here I took one of the road instead haha 120km to Yerevan!

And then the view, just stunning. It was a much easier and relaxed drive compared to the suicidal driving of Georgians. However our GPS was again showing another dirt road to take, so we had to go old school and use a real map (finally that came in handy!)

                           

We arrived at 9pm. So tired and hungry that we went to a Chinese restaurant. It's my first time eating in a Chinese restaurant in my travels, because I really really DO NOT miss rice ok! 

I generally don't think Chinese food can ever be as good as what you get in China and from my hometown. However just this once, it was just a hell lot easier to choose a stir fry and then crash into bed after. Out of 5, my Chicken Curry rice was 2.5*

But alas, Yerevan, Armenia.

Yay! New country!