Not expecting the border crossing between Georgia and
Armenia to be too painful or time consuming, but as always choosing to leave
ourselves plenty of lee-way, we camped only a few kilometres from the border. Not
too imposing, yet brand new and state of the art, the Georgian side of the
border couldn’t have gone more smoothly. With its restaurant, ATM’s and Duty
Free shopping opportunities, we really feel very far away from Asia now. We
drove upto the window manned by a policeman in his dark slacks and under-stated
“police” spray jacket, had our passports stamped, our faces photographed
through the car windows and a few car details entered into a computer. Once
again very satisfied with the efficient Georgian service we progressed through
no man’s land to Armenia.
Suddenly we went from a modern European style border, to an
all too familiar Soviet type set up. The immaculate coloured suits adorned with
lapel pins and badges, true to the Soviet fashion, and the old buildings lying
abandoned next to the new ones, reminded us once again of Central Asia.
We parked at the visa window where we filled in basic
application forms and handed over our passports. I fed a US$50 note into the
conveniently located money exchange machine to receive my first batch of
Armenian Dram, allowing us to pay for our visas in local currency. At 3,000
Dram per person ($7.50), we could hardly grudge the 10 minute process. Yet
another page in our passports taken up with a full page visa, we drove on to
the passport window.
It took a bit of persuasion, but we managed to convince the
man in the window that our Carnet is in fact our “car passport”, issued by the
Australian government. He entered the necessary details into his computer, took
the required photos of our faces through the car windows and stamped us into
Armenia. Thinking for a moment that we had actually managed an entire border
crossing from start to finish in less than 40 minutes, we moved on to enter the
country. Much to our disappointment though, a smug looking guard who we had
just spent 10 minutes humorously observing as he eyed up some women in high
heels, waved at us and addressed us through our open window. Apparently all was
not yet well, and we were required to make a stop at one of the dilapidated
Soviet era buildings to speak with a “customs broker”. Far from chuffed at this
concept, we followed his directions to a dirty grey brick dwelling just up
ahead.
Inside we were greeted by a middle aged woman with
artificially bright blonde hair and pink lipstick covering at least double the
surface area of her actual lips, a Soviet-uniformed man who should surely be
retired with green ink all over his hands from the stamps he was carefully
cleaning with toothpicks, and a slender young man in a pleather jacket. Well,
by greeted I mean Pink Lipstick was on her mobile phone, Pleather Jacket was
engrossed in some sort of music playing device, and Stamp Man was pre-occupied
with his stamps; all much too busy to acknowledge us in any way of course.
A few frustrating minutes passed until we got the attention
of Pleather Jacket who wrote down some numbers on a scrap of paper and told us
to pay him. Well, we don’t just pay money to people without some sort of reason
as to why, so we tried to ask what we were actually paying for. This is a
concept that was way beyond the training of this particular man, so he made a
phone call and a few minutes later a man appeared, who after shaking hands with
everyone else in the room, addressed us in perfect English. Apparently we were
paying “to drive around in Armenia”, but we weren’t very content with just
handing over a bunch of cash (21,500 Dram/ about $54) with nothing more than
some guy’s scribbling as documentation.
The English speaking man took us to the ATM where we
withdrew the necessary cash and we returned to Pleather Jacket. Apparently the
“bank” would give us documents, so we went to the desk in the corner of the
“customs” room which was supposedly the bank, but the man there just stamped
the desired figure into his calculator and also had no comprehension of the
fact that we wanted some sort of proof of what we were paying for and that we
had paid it.
Some tense toing and froing ensued until eventually Pleather
Jacket showed us a print-out which had been hanging on a notice board behind us
this whole time. It outlined the individual charges which sure enough added up
to 21,500 Dram. It was all in Armenian of-course, but that was enough to
convince us that it wasn’t just some guy making up an amount that he wanted the
tourists to pay. We handed over our payment to the “bank teller” and were told
to continue on and “go either left or right” to purchase insurance.
We went both left and right to compare all the available
options. Most places quoted 8,000 Dram ($20) for 10 days, but one man actually
entered some details into a computer and came up with 3,200 Dram ($8), or 4,800
Dram ($12) for 12 days. Obviously we were pleased with the much lower price,
but we also greatly approved of the fact that that he had followed some sort of
system to come up with this figure, as opposed to just punching random numbers
into a calculator. We decided to purchase 10 days, waited while he printed off
the sticker that goes on the front window of the car, and entered Armenia
almost two hours after leaving Georgia.
It’s very interesting to see how Georgia has completely
abandoned Soviet bureaucracy for their immigration and customs procedures, and
Armenia has started to follow suit but hasn’t quite made it yet. The Armenian immigration process was very
concise and smooth, but the reforms obviously haven’t quite trickled down to
customs and the importation of a car.
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