The Uzbekistan currency is the Som. For the first few countries on my route, I had hoped to arrive with some local currency already in my pocket to provide flexibility, but you can't get Uzbek Soms at money changers in the UK. In fact, you can't get Kazak Tenge in the UK either, but my passage through Kazakhstan had been relatively painless, helped in no small part by their fully functional NCR cash machines. No such luxury in Uzbekistan, whose capital city, Tashkent, a city of at least 2 million people, only has cash machines in the really high end hotels, but, as I discovered on my first night, none of the machines work!
In both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Dollars and Rubles are accepted and easily exchanged, but I didnt' have much of either to minimise how much I could lose or have stolen. On entry and exit of Uzbekistan, you must declare, amongst other things, the value of US Dollars and Russian Rubles in your possession. The necessity of this declaration is no doubt due to the thriving currency black market in Uzbekistan... most likely just one of many black markets. The government is presumably to blame for the farce, because it's official exchange rate is US$1 = 1500 Som while any Joe on the street corner can give you a rate of US$1 = 1800 Som... not an insignificant difference and the street price must still be some way off the 'real' rate for it to be worth the risk to 'Joe' of being reprimanded. It was my understanding that, on exiting Uzbekistan, I would have to present receipts of money transactions during my stay and so, as I was there only a short time and not wanting to run into 'complications' with Uzbek border officials, I found a bank as soon as I could after arriving in Samarkand. Though they didn't accept travelers cheques, they did accept a VISA withdrawal, which was just as well because I was running short of options that didn't involve pawning possessions... Of course the VISA withdrawal carried a fee from the bank and had to be in US Dollars which I would then have to change into Soms at the government rate. When I eventually had my fists full of Soms, they really were full! Not because I was rich, expected a spending spree and changed loads of money, but because the biggest Uzbek note is 1000.... and 1000 Soms buys you....
a 2 Litre bottle of water.
The result is that I had to re-evaluate my approach to carrying money as I now I had two big slabs!
On the bus to Samarkand, while we waited to depart Tashkent, a man across the isle from me had stashed literally bricks of cash in plastic carrier bags and now I understood why.
Every hotel desk has an electronic note counting machine, not that they really need it since everyone in Uzbekistan can count large stacks of cash at lightning speed!
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