She's off again - Tashkent

[limey]

Thanks Griff, Glatt! I did get some sleep and wrote the last post after breakfast this morning while it was still fresh in my mind.
It seems a bit of a waste but the first day always ends up being an admin day. First stop - get some currency - you can't get this sort of money at Thomas Cook's. I pay the hotel bill by credit card, and mostly eat in the hotel restaurant so all I need is change for taxis and the odd snack, but it's taken me a while to work this out. I do have one of those travellers' debit cards (you top up your account before you go and it's a payment card which is not linked to you own bank account or credit card account so is safer) but I'm never convinced it's going to work in the ATMs in my countries of destination (though it probably would).
So I travel with USD (new notes, any that are defaced in any way are rejected immediately) and first up need to change some. The official rate to the USD here is 2,500 UZS to 1USD. Allegedly you can get a better rate, say 3,200/1, from the sort of taxi driver who does airport transfers for international hotels but I wouldn't know about that. I've changed a hundred, which I'm pretty sure will be plenty. I can't get over feeling very self conscious fishing a big wad of cash out of my bag and peeling the notes off (the largest denomination I've seen is US5,000 = USD2. That's an improvement on my last visit when the biggest notes in circulation were only UZS1,000), but I try to remember that everyone's in the same boat. Last time I was here I saw someone pay his hotel bill with two bulging carrier bags' full of cash ...
Step two - get a local SIM card in my smart phone. I have an unlocked one specially for this purpose. In this town I have to go to the head office of one of the two mobile phone operators (one Uzbek, one Russian) which is a taxi rode (UZS 5,000, there is a mater but no receipt) from the hotel. It's a ten minute walk back - the taxi driver explains the route to me. There's a pretty efficient electronic ticket queuing system so I take a ticket and wait about 20 minutes to be served. The mobile company has to take a copy of my passport, visa (which I had to get before I set off) and local registration card (drawn up by the hotel for me) and UZS40,000 later my phone is bulging with 1,100MB of data and about five dollars worth of calls at 2c a minute.
On the walk back to the hotel I noticed a café/canteen busy with local office workers and such getting their hot lunch, and a little tiny corner shop next to it.
You do have to watch your step because not only are the pavements pretty uneven, but I'd never trust a manhole cover or drain cover in this neck of the woods and often alongside the roads the "gutters" are gullies a foot wide and eighteen inches deep ...
And then the afternoon is spent making phone calls because few people seem willing to make a definite appointment time until you're actually in town.
It's pretty hot (25C) and humid today - rain would be good. Sunset is at 7pm and because we're nearer the equator than dear old Blighty, dusk-to-dark happens pretty quickly.