13.07.2009: and the award goes to ...

The customs official swaggered over to me as I was putting my belt back on, having just emerged from the security scanner. He looked like a man with firm plans to intimidate. "May I see your bags?", he asked in English.

”Sure.” I put my carry-on bags down on a table and he went through them carefully and, I thought, a little roughly.

"And wallet, please?". He thoroughly inspected my wallet, fingers poking into every compartment like little bird tongues feeling inside a flower for nectar.

"Mm-hmmm … mm-hmmm. Where is declaratsia?" (customs declaration)

"Ya uzhe dal v tamozhnu" ("I’ve already given it to customs"), I said. Which would've been a completely senseless answer, were this not my second customs inspection on the way out of Tashkent airport.

The official persisted, moving closer to me, standing a little taller than before and adopting a suspicious tone of voice. "Pachemu u vass nyet declaratsiy?" ("Why don't you have a declaration?"), he demanded.

I repeated my previous answer. This is what we'd been instructed to do: go to the customs desk and hand in our declaration forms. There were three almost identical forms, in fact, and we'd been told off and sent to the back of the queue for arriving at said desk with only two.

"But you have dollarov¹ here in bumazhnik² You no declare it?"
  [1. lots of dollars; 2. wallet.]

"Da, na stole." ("Yes, at the desk.")

This exchange was repeated a couple of times, as though the official was expecting me to change my story. The third time around, when he asked me whether I'd declared my money, I said "Da, kanyeshna. No yesli viy khateete declaratsiu smatreet', viy dalzhnee v tamozhniy stol' idtee." In my full-of-mistakes Russian, that means "Yes, of course, but if you want to see my customs declaration, you'll have to go to the customs desk."

I knew this was a cheeky thing to say to a customs official, but by now I was getting sick of being hassled, and I was conscious of the fact that the bonus inspection was delaying our flight's take-off. I also strongly suspected that it wasn’t a ‘legal’ inspection. My guess: the guy was hoping that, if he could be threatening enough, I’d give in and hand over some cash. In other words, in full view of the security staff, other customs officials and the airline, he was attempting to extort me. Luckily he wasn’t very good at it. I mean, I’m really not that brave, and I know there are customs officials in other countries (e.g. Russia) who would’ve had my entire wallet by this stage!

“Shass” ("Just a sec"), said the not-so-effective tough guy, and then something else that I caught about 70% of ... enough to know that he was saying "Do you mind if I make a call?" I don't know why he was asking so politely, but I guess the politeness was intended to make me nervous. I said I didn’t mind at all.

So, while Mr. Extorto put his mobile to his ear, another customs official came up and asked me more accusatory questions. But I kept watching the first guy, because although I couldn’t pinpoint it, there was something a bit odd about this phone call he was making. Then it struck me: he’d pulled the phone out of his pocket and put it straight to his ear without dialling. Also, he didn't SAY anything - just stood there with the phone and did nothing. This was, in fact, a fake call. How interesting ...

Minutes passed, and other passengers stood at the gate waiting for customs to finish with us, so that we could all get on the bus which would take us to our ‘plane. While the Air Kyrgyzstan hostesses watched and rolled their eyes, I stood my ground in the face of a bit more stupid interrogation. Then the guy finally decided (I guess) that he'd spent too much time on someone who didn't have a lot of money, and he let me go.

Meanwhile, the same thing had been happening to my uncle Gerard at another counter. He had an extra problem to deal with, though: at customs inspection #1 (the ‘real’ one) he’d shown all his declaration forms, and the officer there had noticed that he’d brought US$250 into Uzbekistan but was taking US$300 out. This was apparently illegal. The officer’s solution: fill in a new declaration. Or in other words, a false one. So of course, when customs inspection #2 (the extortion attempt) began, Gerard’s self-appointed interrogator had an extra card up his sleeve.

This, btw, was just the final act in a comedy of errors (minus most of the comedy) which has prompted me to invent a new awards ceremony. It’s a bit like the Oscars, but there’s only one award and it isn’t a little gold statue. It’s actually (if you can visualise it) a clay model of me sitting on a camel with my arm held out in front and my middle finger pointed upwards, as the camel prepares to spit at the recipient.

So, the Screw You Badly and Cover You with Camel Spit Award for Most Disorganised and Unhelpful Airport Departure Hall goes to ...

... oh, wait a sec, I can’t seem to get the ribbon off this envelope. Er, hold on. Yep, there it is ... right.

The award goes to ... Tashkent!

*canned applause and cheering*

Unfortunately Tashkent airport staff are unable to be here tonight to accept their award, because they’re all learning how to use the computers at the check-in counter from the one and only person who actually knows – while Uzbek Airways customers are standing in frozen queues, hoping that the training session will finish before their flights leave >:-[ So I’ll accept the award on their behalf.

*ahem*

… And now it’s time to do a little Flashback Dance …
(Yes, I do those sometimes before a long and satisfying digression.)

Before my dad left Australia, I remember promising him in an email that “You’ve never travelled like this before”. I had several things in mind: the insane, borderline-suicidal driving of course; the language barrier (‘cause my dad is pretty well-travelled, but he’s mostly been to places where a helpful English-speaker is seldom too far away); the “any car is a taxi” rule; the odd mixture of haughty rudeness and amazing kindness that people in Almaty exhibit to strangers; the grit and the dust; the ongoing challenge of finding edible food; and the general culture shock. But I was specifically thinking about the sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-infuriating obstacles that arise in this part of the world when you try to get yourself from Point A to Point B. If the peoples of the former USSR share one talent in common, it’s their uncanny ability to make any journey eventful. This can be extremely cool and entertaining – or it can be very, very bad indeed.

Flashing forward again to Tashkent airport: our bus took us across to a dimly-lit corner of the tarmac and we saw our plane, looking a bit like an old, exhausted workhorse standing at the far end of the field, leaning sadly on a barbed-wire fence. Suddenly the customs inspection didn’t seem so awful.

Feeling nervous, I got onto the ancient propeller aircraft and sat down next to my uncle. I noticed that my chair was in recline position, so I pushed the button to make it come upright, but instead it fell over backwards. Then, while I was trying to retrieve the back of my chair, the cabin went dark – and by that I don’t mean that the lights were ‘dimmed for take-off’. I mean it went completely black. As we sat in our benighted metal tube, one engine started up, then two or three minutes passed before the second one came to life. (My father later told me that he was thinking “Oh no, don’t tell me the pilot’s forgotten to start the other engine!”)

We took off, and – it seemed to me – wobbled unsteadily into the sky. This was too much for the poor old Word Nerd; I can more or less keep it together in the face of bent customs officials, but dodgy aeroplanes scare the Hell out of me. It didn’t help that my uncle – who knows quite a lot about aviation – said “Don’t worry, this machine’s probably been in service for 40 years”, and gleefully wrote down the plane’s model and serial number so that he could record it in his diary when he got home.

I hate commercial aircraft that are older than me.

An hour-and-a-half later we landed at Bishkek-Manas airport in Kyrgyzstan, and my grip on the armrests finally relaxed. Then an announcement came over the P.A. system. I didn’t understand it, but I assumed it was the usual, ineffectual “Please stay in your seats until the cabin doors open”, or whatever it is they say. On this occasion, though, the announcement had a galvanizing effect: every single passenger sat obediently still, waiting for further instructions. Then, on command, they began exiting in a very careful and orderly fashion, starting with the back row and proceeding one row at a time. I saw lightbulbs go on over my father’s and uncle’s heads. “He [the pilot] must’ve told the passengers that if they didn’t get out in the right order, the plane would fall backwards on its arse”, Gerard explained to me later.

Add to this one absolutely terrifying taxi ride with a complete waste of oxygen who kept veering onto the wrong side of the street and screaming “Fu-khhyou, beetch!” to his friend in the back seat for no particular reason*, and that was our introduction to Kyrgyzstan.

Still ... I s'pose a memorable first impression is important :-)

(*Apologies again to the American people reading this, but I couldn't help feeling that maybe this guy had picked up his favourite phrase from residents of the US Air Base that lies just outside Bishkek. Nice to see a bit of cultural exchange taking place in Central Asia ;-)