Day 8 Moldova - Ukraine (Kiev)

We woke up in a world of sorrow cleaned ourselves up until we were safe to drive and headed towards Ukraine.




There is a part of Moldova that is currently seeking independence called Transnistria and thus know have there own separate border. James and Rob had tried to go through yesterday but had some paperwork issues. Basically their car is a company car and james owns the company but because they didn't have a letter from James saying that James could drive the car they weren't aloud through.


We paid the relevant fees and got through this bit fine no issues. It was leaving Transnistria that the headache began.


As we approached some of the guys spoke little english and told us to take everything out of the car and i do mean everything!! Bearing in mind we have pretty much our life in the back thats a lot of stuff packed. Things got quite tense all of a sudden when they found a small pot of cooking herbs which they thought was cannabis.


One thing led to another and after almost getting arrested the conversation got steered onto football which they were ecstatic when Joe said he supported Manchester United as they did as well. With this knowledge we were all best friends and know they wanted to sign our car with pens which they did (were not joking there signatures are still on the car) and then next thing they know we were having pictures with the border guards we did have to pay a bribe to get out CRAZY!!


We made our way to the Ukrainian border which was relatively pain free the only issue was trying to sort our Green Card. The woman who spoke in Ukrainian has put My name (Jamie) as the owner of the car with Joes address on which don't match up with either passport or the V5 document, we were keeping our fingers crossed we don't get stopped.


Ukrainian roads are Awful!! The highways have cars doing 70mph with huge potholes everywhere, needless to say these issues caused our roof rack to slide off the car about 5 minutes into Ukraine not good!!! It also pulled the cable out of our spot lights more good news.


Anyway we persevered and found our hotel in Kiev which turned out to be a big boat and got some sleep as this had been one of the longest days so far!