How does one select a ''best day'' from so many years of ''beaut days''? Of years and years of happy, exciting, exhilarating, memorable days as a Kiwi kid, youth, husband, father, Poppa? Of satisfying, rewarding days and decades as a journalist and traveller?
I can't choose ''best''. But ''beaut'' is another thing.
Judi and I had a real beaut one day in Central Asia in 1994 when we were travelling independently and hopefully, sometimes most uncomfortably, from Hong Kong to Moscow, mainly overland, and then on by train to Paris.
We'd taken local trains across China and Kazakhstan to reach the fabled city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Now it was time to continue to Moscow and Europe.
We had no bookings, no visas even. Uzbekistan was one of several then newly-independent states of what had been the Soviet Union. It still had no embassies, little government structure and much disorganisation. Our Russian visas mentioned the non-Russian names Alma Ata, Tashkent and Samarkand and that, luckily for us, seemed to satisfy the border guards en route.
All we had for air tickets was a voucher given us by an enterprising travel agent mate in Auckland who had foreseen we might have trouble. On company letterhead, it ordered the local Aeroflot (Soviet airline) office to provide tickets to get us between Samarkand and Moscow on the following day's flight, the fare for which we would pay on the spot.
I presented the voucher to a young man at the dingy Aeroflot office in Samarkand, entreating ''Moscow, Moscow'', and waving my arms like a bird. He studied it, pencilled some squiggles, thumped it with a large rubber stamp and handed it back.
''Ten o'clock'', he indicated on his wrist watch, gave a thumbs-up and a smile and turned to the next customer.
Judi and I were nonplussed. Our voucher clearly stated, in English, as we'd been told back home, that we'd have to pay for these tickets in American dollars, probably about $400. The guy hadn't asked us for a bean. Was he going to send a bill to Auckland? Was this returned, annotated voucher our ticket?
Hope battled trepidation as we presented ourselves next day at Samarkand's rudimentary airport. Clerks glanced unconcernedly at our dog-eared voucher-cum-ticket, gave us top treatment at the VIP lounge - two chairs and a cup of tea - then eventually escorted us past enormous queues of people and up the front entrance stairs of a massive but empty Tupolev-154M aircraft. Not a word we understood had been spoken to us in two days.
We were shown to row three, seats A and B, apparently the interpretation of the squiggles on our voucher.
Two hours later, the Tupolev, now fully laden with passengers, parcels, boxes of vegetables, two live hens, three baby trundlers, five plastic baths and three huge hostesses, lumbered off the runway. We presumed, and fervently hoped, Moscow was the destination.
Three hours later, just as the aircraft began to descend, we spied the hostesses in the forward galley packing what looked like lunch boxes into plastic bags and divvying them up.
''They're getting freebies,'' said Judi. ''Just like us.''
Moscow was indeed the destination - Domodedovo Airport - and we arrived safely. No-one asked to see our ''ticket'' again; no-one asked us to pay; no-one has ever sent an account to our travel agent friend in Auckland - and we had a real cheap and a real beaut day.
- Robin Charteris is a former editor of the Otago Daily Times and a keen traveller whose adventures sometimes take him off the beaten track.
Tell us about your best day. Write to odt.features@odt.co.nz or ODT Features, PO Box 181 Dunedin. We ask correspondents not to nominate weddings or births - of course they were the best days.
