Sakartvelo - Georgia

Georgian food is boss. Khinkali's are great, khachapuri is very good.

There was another reason I was in Georgia, but that's not public info. All sorted anyway.

We stayed in Tbilisi for about a week, then headed to Kutaisi for a couple of days as the flights are better from there.

Taxi Scam

Ok so taxi scammers are worldwide, kind of - not really in the UK, but a lot of places.

When you get out of the baggage reclaim part of the airport, taxi drivers sprint up to you like you're giving away free money - and you are in their eyes.

I knew the price of a taxi was 40-60 Lari, so there was no chance I'd be paying more than that. I asked a few of them for their price and they didn't really want to give me a price, because they were going to try to rip me off later. I found a guy who wanted to use a meter, which was an app on his phone that he said was Bolt. This is what you need to avoid. He seemed friendly, showed me the "bolt" app working.

We arrived and it was nearly 200 Lari. That's like $80. He then got extremely aggressive, to the point where I was considering knocking him out. What he didn't know is that I knew there was a police station about 20 metres away from where he stopped. So I offered to go to the police station with him, as he said I was ripping him off. He got even more aggressive, but it's just for show, he wasn't going to do anything, because he wouldn't have stood a chance - and he knew that. A couple of passers-by stood and watched, I think they were on our side, as they ignored him completely and just spoke to Tanya in Russian.

Anyway we got him to walk with us to the station, when he started to rapidly drop the price. I've actually got a video of this part, taken by Tanya of me laughing at him saying "why are you running away."

Anyway, use Bolt, it works, it's safe, they're not scammers. Download it in the airport if you don't have it, pay through the app - it's like Uber but Estonian.

It puts a sour taste in your mouth if this is the first thing you encounter in a country. I am calling out the authorities here too - move these morons away from the airport. If you don't, it's pretty obviously you're being paid off. Dickheads.

Summary

Overall, Tbilisi was cool - the support of Ukraine is fantastic. People are cool in general, however, big but... The price of shoes is phenomenal. It's over $300 for a standard pair of Nike Air Max. I have never seen prices like this before, for basic stuff.

I'll go back to Georgia at some point I guess.