TigertoThailand & elsewhere: What a difference a day makes!

Day 17 229 km ( total 6284 km)

I had planned a relatively short ride of 3-4 hours for today, along the coast to Batumi in Georgia to allow plenty of time should there be any delays on the border. As it happens apart from the customs guy having a 'dicky fit' at one point the border process was both smooth and fast.

Batumi, a key commercial port for Georgia, like Trabzon was for Turkey, turned out to be a very nice place with a completely different feel to it, as you will see shortly.

It was a somewhat disturbed night at the Addams family hotel as I was woken about 1am to the steady throb of music from the small 'night club' bar in the basement.

When I had turned in for the night a couple of hours earlier this place & indeed the entire hotel seemed deserted. By the small hours half a dozen dark cars had appeared in the car park & an odd assortment of men & a few women seemed to be hanging around. In the morning it appeared that some of the previously empty rooms had been used but were now empty again - hmmm, draw your own conclusions. Not on my 'return' list this place.

After a quick breakfast we were soon packed & ready to roll.

The ride along the coast road was pleasant enough, not particularly picturesque but witha few coastal towns en route that may have been nice, but didnt entice us off the main road.

We stopped at a nice lookng place facing the coast and had a coffee on the terrace, no rain today.

Then it was more coast road and a series of tunnels as the road made its way to the border.

There is a.ways light at the end of the tunnel!

The last tunnel coincided with the start of the border queue, lorries were parked inside

Then it was a short wait to get out of Turkey, a few hundred yards amd then a slightly longer wait to get into Georgia.

Somethimg went a little amiss during my entry to Georgia, which got one of the customs men most upset. There were 3 offices you had to stop at.

The first looked at your passport and noted your registartion number in a computer.

The second looked at your passport in more detail & noted details from it in a computer.

The third asks for your vehicle registartion papers and puts their details into a computer. At this point the customs officer slammed my papers on his desk shouted something, got up stormed around his office, strode outside, slammed his door, kicked the wall, stormed back in, slammed the door again, shouted some more upon which a colleague came over picked up the phone and started shouting something, which I could just tell included my regisration number.

I was getting slightly concerned at this point but non of the agression seemed to be directed at me so I just played dumb and waited to see what transpired. My best guess is that the officed in the first post had typed my number into the computer incorrectly and this had reprecussions downstream. Anyway a few moments later he looked at me and said curtly 'Finished - Go!'

I was in Georgia!

Immediately there was a different feel to the place from Turkey, much more hustle & bustle & more 'cosmopolitan'. We stopped to change some money, and then set off for Batumi a few miles down the coast.

The lodging for the night in Batumi was just outside the city centre, in An eveidently not well off, but nice & quiet area. It was a familyhome with a couple of spare rooms - no English spoken but very friendly & comfortable.