Welcome To The Republica Moldova
I had already spent a full day on the bike by the time I reached the border of Romania and Moldova, but I figured I’d cross the border and then find a place to sleep in Moldova before the sun went down.
Unfortunately, the border crossing took forever! It too nearly an hour for the border patrol man in Moldova to look at my passport and check me in. He would say to me in crude and obviously memorized English, “Where you going?” When I explained that I was cycling to Chisinau, Moldova and then on into Ukraine, I could tell that the man didn’t understand a thing I just said, despite the fact that he was shaking his head up and down and trying his best to look competent in his job. Then he asked me, “How much money you have?” I was kind of afraid to answer that question, so I repeated the question back to him. “You want me to tell you how much money I have?” He again shook his head with an expression of understanding (as thought I had just told him how much money I was carrying in my wallet at the moment) and then returned to his patrol booth.
When I finally made it into Moldova it was beginning to get dark and I knew that within an hour all available sunlight would be gone. Unfortunately, there were no hotels in the city I had just crossed over into and there were no wooded areas into which I could crawl for the night. So instead of setting up camp somewhere near the border, I pressed on and began my frantic search for a quiet, secluded location where I could set up my tent and partake in a night of wild camping.
It took me more than two hours of cycling before I finally stumbled across a small orchard beside the road where I felt comfortable enough setting up my tent for the night. By the time my tent was up, it was pitch black outside. I crawled inside my tent, collapsed inside my sleeping bag, and spent the coldest night ever listening to Moldovan rock music blare from a nearby disco.
This route on Google Maps shows the general area I was in. However, it does not show the dirt road I traveled on between Petresti and Toderesti.
