Travel | Don’t regret your trip to Kiev, Ukraine (Practical)

Author | Pan Xiaobai

Everything you want to know about Ukraine is here! (Don’t take it seriously, this is just an exaggeration, hahaha~) But I really wrote it with all my heart. I tried my best to tell you everything I know. I put my heart and soul into it. It’s so sincere!

Even if you don’t go there for the time being, you should still get to know a different world. If you find it useful after reading this article, please click "Reading" in the lower right corner of the article to support it, so that more friends can have the opportunity to listen to my ramblings~

visa

Ukraine visa is actually very easy to apply for. The most convenient and hassle-free thing is to find Wanmian Moubao, which costs about 900 yuan and has a stay period of 30 days. The visa issuance is slow, so it is best to apply one month in advance.

In the past, you could sign on arrival, but this year it has been canceled and changed to electronic visa. The application website is http://evisa.mfa.gov.ua and the fee is 85 US dollars. Friends who want to save some money can try it for themselves. It will be a little more troublesome. You need to upload your passport, photos, insurance, proof of funds and proof of accommodation. The review cycle is 9 working days, and the website language does not support Chinese. . . This time we went to apply for a business visa from an agency. There was no actual operation. The above information is for reference only.

Air tickets

For flights, we recommend Ukraine International Airlines’ 10-hour direct flight or Air Astana’s 11-hour transfer. Other airlines basically require more than 15 hours of transfer.

This time we chose Kazakhstan’s Astana Airlines, flying from Beijing to Kiev, with a one-hour layover in Almaty. In fact, I quite like this kind of transfer method with a short stopover. After flying for 5 hours, I stopped to rest. I personally feel that it is more comfortable to rest and then fly than to be on the plane for 10 hours, the price is cheaper, and it does not waste much time.

We booked the air tickets directly on the official website. When it was cheaper, the round trip from Beijing to Kiev was about 4k. We bought it a month in advance for 4.9k, and the direct flight cost more than 6k. There is a Chinese official website. You can search "Air Astana" in Chinese on the webpage or enter the URL "airastana.com" and change the language.

Accommodation

Regarding accommodation, since we mainly went to do business this time, we arranged an apartment and did not choose a hotel. I took a look and found that accommodation here is not expensive. There are many hotels priced at two to three hundred dollars, which look good. However, I haven’t actually checked in, and I don’t have much say or specific recommendations. Friends who want to come can come by themselves. Take a look and choose. If you have stayed at a hotel that you think is good and worth recommending, you are welcome to leave a message and share it with everyone.

Consumption

First of all, the Ukrainian currency UAH, hryvnia, or hryvnia is used here. If you can't exchange it in China, you can bring euros or US dollars to exchange it. There are many local exchange points, usually in shopping malls or near community supermarkets. The U.S. dollars we brought with us on this trip, the exchange rate is about 100 U.S. dollars for about 2,500 U.S. dollars. When buying things, if you want to convert them into RMB, just divide the local price by 3.6. For a rough estimate, just divide it by 4.

The exchange rate at the airport and shopping malls will be lower. The highest exchange rate I got was at a shopping street exchange point in the underground passage of Independence Square. The 100 US dollars was 50 more than the exchange rate in the shopping mall. In fact, it was only a dozen yuan. If you don’t need it urgently and don’t mind the trouble, you can go to a few more places and actually compare them.

In fact, you can also use VISA and MASTER cards to make purchases. I found it inconvenient to keep accounts and was a little worried about fraudulent transactions abroad, so I simply used cash throughout the process. And I think it’s more fun to use cash for consumption abroad. It’s quite interesting when you use those unfamiliar banknotes, especially when you can’t tell the difference between 5 cents and 5 yuan coins. When paying, A little embarrassment might even spark some sparks with the locals. I won’t talk about the little episodes that happened to me. You can experience them by yourself when the time comes, hahaha.

If you don’t want to hit a wall, read this. If you want to experience it on your own, please skip it. To teach you how to recognize a Gerry coin, you can first look at the letters under the numbers. The two O's before and after are cents, and the ending BHI is yuan. In fact, I think the simplest and most intuitive way is to look at the back. The national emblem is divided into points and the character portrait is in yuan. So the top row in the picture below is 1 yuan, 2 yuan and 5 cents respectively. Pay attention! It’s not 5 yuan! The next row is 10 minutes, 25 minutes and 50 minutes. 10 cents is a dime, 50 cents is a dime, and two 50 cents is a dollar. You see, you can also practice arithmetic when spending cash locally. I am so bad at math that I can even do arithmetic, haha.

language

Common Ukrainian is not Russian, but there is a big difference. And this is probably one of the places in the world where English is least spoken. We didn’t encounter serious language barriers in Thailand, Cambodia and even Sri Lanka when we went there before. At least there were English menus when ordering, but in Ukraine I really felt the embarrassment of language barrier.

We went to the supermarket to buy water, but when we opened it, it tasted gassy... We wanted to drink milk, but ended up buying yogurt, which is 100% pure acid without adding any sugar, haha. Because there is almost no English on the product packaging here, sometimes you will make the wrong purchase based on your feelings. Now that I think about it, it’s quite funny and interesting. It’s precisely because of this that I think this trip has a special experience.

When traveling, your mentality is the most important. Don’t complain when something happens, just find a way to solve it. The language barrier is not a problem at all. Looking at it from a different perspective, isn’t it a kind of fun?

Why do some couples fall in love more and more with each trip, while some couples break up because of a little unpleasantness during the trip? Why do some people find joy in hardship and find beauty when they go to barren places, while some couples People obviously go to beautiful places, but they keep complaining that this is not good and that is not good. Mindset is very important!

However, we still use our experience and lessons to summarize a few tips for everyone. Look at the picture below, the far left is milk, the middle is yogurt, and the far right is sparkling water. Remember, what starts with MO is milk, and what starts with KE is yogurt. As for bottled water, the largest row of characters at the top should be the brand name, and the row of small characters in the middle вода Мінеральна means mineral water. But as for whether it is sparkling water, that is, containing or not, you have to look at the small letters in the bottom row ending with 3OBAHA. Be sure to see if there are three letters her at the front. In Ukrainian, it means "without/does not contain". . (Well, I forgot whether it was uppercase or lowercase. Anyway, it’s just these three letters, or it may be a mixture of uppercase and lowercase...)

So if you want to drink the purest water without carbonation, you must look for the one with the her prefix. If there is no this prefix, it must be sparkling water. And it’s really hard to tell from the outer packaging. The receptionist told us that most of the white bottle caps are air-free. This has yet to be verified. If you have the opportunity, you can verify it.

Tourist guide

I suggest you hire a tour guide and translator, because there is really a language barrier. Many people here don’t speak a word of English. When I asked the clerk at a barbecue restaurant about beef or pork, I could only get a wry smile and a shake of the head... And it’s done here. The tour guides who translate are basically local beautiful college students who are studying Chinese. It doesn’t matter that they are all lively and beautiful, but their Chinese is still bad. Our tour guide this time is called Nika, and her Chinese name is Wang Zhaojun. She is beautiful and has a good personality, and is very popular. She also has a little friend named Chang'e, hahaha.

Since we were going to work, there was a local agency to receive us and specially arranged a tour guide and translator, which really helped us a lot and made our whole trip smooth and comfortable. I asked about the price. The tour guide alone costs 120 US dollars a day. If anyone needs it at that time, you can ask me for my contact information. If you think the cost is high, there is another good way to save money. I recommend you to use "Google Translate". You can translate the menu or product packaging in real time with the camera. I compared several other translation software and Google's accuracy is better. First of all, several other models don’t even have Ukrainian in the translation function. . .

transportation

Transportation in Kiev is very convenient. There are three subway lines, No. 1 red line, No. 2 blue line and No. 3 green line. You can transfer at any time. The 8-grid pass system is quite cheap. It makes me nostalgic for the time before 2015. The days are gone when you can just ride the Beijing subway for 2 yuan.

In addition to being bilingual in Ukrainian and English, the site name is also marked with numbers. I think this is very convenient and user-friendly. Even if you can't understand the text, you only need to remember the numbers. For example, the 217 Maidan Nezalezhnosti station on the Blue Line No. 2 is the most famous and central "Independence Square" in Kiev. You can transfer to the Red Line No. 1. Remember 217 and you will not go wrong.

Subway tickets are plastic coins the size of a one-yuan coin. You can just put them in when entering the station. However, you must pay attention to the fact that some gates can only accept local bus cards and do not have coin slots. There are no gates when leaving the station and you can pass directly. By the way, Arsenal Station on Line 1 is said to be the deepest subway station in the world. It is more than 100 meters underground. Other stations are also very deep. Did you see the endless elevator in the picture below? It takes two rides. It takes such a long elevator to get there. . .

The bus also has a space of 8 square meters. There is a small device for rolling holes on the bus. If you give a ticket, the locals will take it and roll it themselves. They do not need to be reminded. This is a civilized detail.

When you go out and want to go, you can use Google Maps to search directly. It will provide subway and bus routes, which is very convenient. If you want to take a taxi, use Uber. You can set it to cash payment. The price for about 6 kilometers is basically within 100 GBP. However, please note that it will double on rainy days. We took a taxi when it rained. The same route only cost 90 GBP before. , but that day it was 180 miles. There are more Uber cars here than taxis, and the location is very accurate. The driver follows the navigation and there is no need for language communication. Most of the drivers don't speak English anyway.

weather

Summer in Ukraine is relatively cool and comfortable, but ultraviolet rays are very strong, so be careful about sun protection when going out. However, I didn’t see any girls holding umbrellas on a sunny day in Kiev. I even asked our tour guide, Miss, if you are not afraid of being exposed to the sun when you go out on a sunny day. I didn’t see any of you girls holding parasols?

She said we only use umbrellas when it rains. We like to bask in the sun, so we should wear sunglasses at most. also said that they rarely apply sunscreen, but she has never applied it herself. They think that having too white skin means that you are not healthy and do not like to exercise. A darker tan means that you are healthy from the sun. It may also mean that you are a rich person, because people who often go to the beach for vacation will have darker skin. Hahahaha okay, you win.

It feels like it's exactly the opposite of what we think. The word "white, rich and beautiful" perfectly illustrates our pursuit of skin color. It’s funny to think about it. Due to our physical constitution, we focus on whitening but it’s easy for us to get tanned accidentally. The Slavs admire the sun but they don’t get tan easily no matter how much they tan. Isn’t it true that the less we can get, the more we want to have it? Woolen cloth……

Ukraine has a large temperature difference between morning and evening, and it can be very cold when it rains. It is best to bring a light jacket in summer. It is said that winter will be very cold, just like in the Northeast, and it will often snow. If you come in winter, dress more tightly, but it is also good to experience the snow scene. Next time we come back it will most likely be winter.

There don’t seem to be many mosquitoes here in the summer. Anyway, we stayed there for more than ten days in August and didn’t see any. We didn’t even encounter one at the park lake or in the woods. I remembered that we were attacked by mosquitoes while walking through the woods in Cambodia last year. Biting all over my legs. . .

jet lag

Ukraine implements summer time and winter time. Summer time is 5 hours behind the country, and winter time is 6 hours behind the country. For example, in September, it is 12 o'clock in the middle of the night in Ukraine, and it is already 5 o'clock in the morning in the country. So when I first came here, I took off from Beijing at 6 am. After flying for 11 hours, I arrived in Ukraine at 12 noon. I felt like I had made a lot of money.

Others

Regarding the touching prices in Ukraine, the previous article mentioned that the price of coffee is less than one-third of the domestic price, so I won’t focus on it in this article. I will let you feel it from beginning to end in the text of the next travel note, haha .

The power plug needs to be converted. You need to buy the European standard one, which is the kind with two thin round tips. You can buy the phone card in advance at a certain store or buy it at the airport.

There is no subway from the airport, so it is recommended to book a pick-up and drop-off in advance. However, there are quite a lot of taxis at the airport entrance, or you can call Uber yourself. If you want to take a taxi to the city center, I asked the agent specifically and they said it would be about 300~400 Gr, RMB It costs about 100 yuan and takes about 40 to 50 minutes by car. Fortunately, we have an agency to help prepare and provide airport pick-up and drop-off, so it saves us a lot of worry.

By the way, another interesting discovery is that very few of the handsome guys and beauties here wear glasses for myopia. I asked our tour guide, Miss Meimei, and she said that they think wearing glasses is unhealthy and unattractive, (well... I'm lying~), so they pay more attention to protecting their eyesight, and even if they are short-sighted, they usually choose to wear contact lenses for the sake of beauty. I rarely wear glasses.

In fact, this is also inseparable from daily behavioral habits. Here you rarely see people playing with their mobile phones with their heads down. No matter whether they are young people on the subway, buses or on the streets, they are either chatting happily or wearing headphones. Listen to music quietly. (Believe me, it’s really not for taking pictures of my little brother, haha)

In contrast, in China, on the subway and on the bus, everyone is looking at their mobile phones with their heads down. They are even looking at their mobile phones while crossing the road and riding bicycles. . . The proportion of people wearing glasses is getting higher and higher, and there are many colleagues and friends around me, including myself. Especially the student group. Once I was walking on a university campus and saw a dozen students walking towards me. I was surprised to find that everyone was wearing glasses!

Well...it doesn't seem to be a good phenomenon...it's also quite helpless. We can only pay more attention to protecting the eyesight of our own children in the future. Everyone should also pay attention to the cultivation of good habits and health management for a better self and a better future.

What else... That's all I thought of. Oppa already thinks I'm verbose enough, haha. Or is there anything else you would like to know? Click on the lower left corner at the end of the article to read the original text and leave me a message! I will tell you everything I know~

Thanks for reading. The next article will be the text of the travelogue with tons of beautiful pictures~ I will try to publish it as soon as possible, so look forward to it~

Travel | Don’t regret your trip to Kiev, Ukraine (Practical)

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