FIRST NIGHT – ALONE IN MOSCOW

GOOD START

Well, an interesting start to the trip!!

My flight was delayed for 2 hours, due to a passenger being taken ill on the inbound flight of the plane I was supposed to board. Having a 2 hour scheduled layover in Moscow before heading to Bangkok meant that I had surely missed my connection.

As the plane landed, everyone applauded. Is that normal??

I arrived at the airport and headed over to the transfer desk and was told my flight wasn’t for another 22 hours, but the airline would at least send me to a hotel.

As it was too late to eat at the hotel, apparently, I was given a somewhat measly 490 Ruble meal voucher to spend in one of the airport restaurants. There were some difficulties with this though.

I had to dance through passport control and security, while trying to explain that my flight was delayed and I just wanted to pop and grab a sandwich and that I’d be backtracking through passport control and security in 15 minutes.

Blank faces greeted me.

A lady at security finally shoved a mobile phone in my face and got me to talk into a translation app. This got things moving.

Another guy who was monitoring my bags pointlessly going through the x-ray machine was interested in my travel tripod and seemed to think at first it was some sort of weapon…

Still they let me through…

THE GATES

When I got downstairs the airport was a ghost town. There were a couple of restaurants open, but with no paying customers. Even Burger King was shut.

I tried to order a takeaway pizza and insisted it would need to be ready in 10 minutes for me to have enough time to do the dance with security again before heading onto the coach to the hotel.

Sadly the 490 Ruble voucher got nowhere near the cost of the pizza.

I left in frustration and grabbed a shitty looking beef wrap from one of the canteens and meandered around to try and find my way back to security.

I did the dance through security and backwards through passport control and waited to be ushered for the bus to the Novotel.

Ushered I was. Back through security again. FML.

THE HOTEL

I was promised at the airport, a double room. When I arrived at the hotel, one of the hotel employees, however, asked if I was on my own and could I share with this other random guy.

I said no. The random guy said no. The hotel employee said that I would have to, as they only have double rooms. I argued that it was his problem. He argued that it was mine.

Anyway, I’m now in a double room, on my own as I write this. I consider that a small victory.

Things haven’t totally worked out as planned so far, as I now will arrive in Bangkok 24 hours later than I’d hoped. Still, it’s a good chance to add another country to the list of those visited on my travels, no matter how brief. Every cloud.

I’ll now arrive on Friday the 13th though….

Oh, and the sandwich was shit.

Until next time.