Brief Summary
In this video, the creator shares the ten major challenges faced while living in Tbilisi, Georgia.
- Driving conditions are dangerous and chaotic.
- Limited shopping options and high import taxes make finding goods difficult.
- Many products are counterfeit, affecting quality.
- Service quality is poor, and customer support is often unhelpful.
- Frequent water and power outages can disrupt daily life.
- Imported goods are often overpriced, with some products selling out regularly.
- The overall quality of meat available is subpar.
- Georgians can appear standoffish initially, and English proficiency is low.
- The healthcare system is outdated and inadequate.
- Lastly, small annoyances like import stickers can be frustrating for newcomers.
Driving in Tbilisi is characterized by a lack of rules, making it chaotic and potentially dangerous. Scooters, bikes, and vans often occupy sidewalks, and the city has struggled with traffic issues, especially following the removal of poorly functioning roundabouts. Crossing the road can be particularly challenging in some areas.
There is a significant lack of variety when it comes to shopping for electronics and goods in Tbilisi. Residents accustomed to Western options may find that only a few local brands are available, primarily from Russia or Georgia, limiting their choices and experiences.
Import taxes in Georgia are high, leading to inflated prices for electronics and other goods. The creator suggests purchasing electronics in Istanbul and bringing them to Georgia and mentions USA to Georgia services, which require understanding significant tax fees for imported items.
There is a notable issue with counterfeit goods being sold as official products. Buyers should be cautious with second-hand purchases, especially big-ticket items, as many may appear new but can have underlying damage or be assembled from subpar parts.
Service in Tbilisi often falls short of expectations. The creator shares a personal experience of receiving rude service at a restaurant, highlighting that staff may be unmotivated and can mistakenly charge customers incorrectly, adding to frustrations.
Residents may experience frequent water and power outages, particularly in older areas. While tap water is drinkable, it is crucial to prepare for occasional shortages and to have backup power options available to avoid inconvenience.
Imported goods can have quite high prices in Georgia, especially for those who desire Western food options over traditional Georgian cuisine. The creator notes that better priced Western items often come from Poland, compared to more affordable Russian goods, which may not meet the same taste standards.
Certain niche products frequently sell out and do not restock, making it necessary to buy in bulk when possible. The creator expresses frustration over not being able to find specific items, illustrating the unpredictability of product availability.
The quality of meat in Tbilisi is generally considered subpar, with the creator mentioning that even in higher-end shops, prices are steep for better quality meat. Overall, common meat options do not meet expected standards, especially for beef.
Georgians may come across as unfriendly or cold to newcomers. While deep friendships can develop once a bond is established, initial interactions with locals can often feel awkward, and language barriers can add to the challenges of making connections.
Although English is becoming more common in Georgia, the overall proficiency remains low. The creator recommends using Yandex Translate as a better option than Google Translate, emphasizing the importance of learning some Georgian to improve communication and social interactions.
The healthcare system in Georgia is outdated and criticized for its inefficiency and poor service. The creator recounts a personal negative experience related to food poisoning, underscoring the need for better medical care and sometimes advising travelers to seek treatment abroad for serious conditions.
As a minor annoyance, the creator highlights the frequent use of import stickers on goods, which can be frustrating but is mentioned in a lighthearted manner to round out the discussion of challenges.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “The Cons Of Tbilisi, Georgia: What They Don't Tell You!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 this will save your life here and not just for drinking we use it for a bunch of other things and do you know why if you've been here you know exactly why but I'll tell you in this video so I've spent 3 years here in toi here are my 10 biggest cons that I experienced while living here number one is driving the driving is really bad here there's not really many rules it's just kind of drive wherever you'll see scooters bikes Vans everyone driving on the foot path they don't know how to use roundabouts here so that's why you only see one or two of them there used to be a roundabout down the road from where I live and they removed it and just made a triangle because they couldn't work out how to drive around it and it's just causing huge traffic problems so something that you're going to be scared of is the driving it's dangerous driving
0:48 it's scary and sometimes you have to cross the road especially if you live in somewhere like Avari and it's not a very fun experience number two is the lack of shopping so this ranges from Electronics to Goods to everything really it's just there's not much variety here and if you're used to coming from the West such as myself um that's all going to go out the window there's only like one or two brands of things they're typically from Russia or Georgia and Georgia doesn't make a whole lot of things themselves number three kind of goes off number two is the import tax so the fees of importing things here are actually rather High that's why um electronics for example are rather expensive if you want to do any electronic shopping I would definitely recommend especially if
1:34 you're going through somewhere like Istanbul buy them there and then bring them here so you don't have to worry about the Crazy Prices of things because of the lack of shopping and there not being such thing as Amazon you can get things through um forward delivery services there's a thing called USA to Georgia which basically you so you get basically an American address and then you can send stuff over here to to Georgia but then you have to pay huge amounts of tax if it's over a specific amount of money which is about $100 on top of all of the fees that you pay for bringing it here and then paying an extra 20% on top on top of other couple of fees it's just the fees are too high for importing things especially things you just can't get here or that are just too crazily expensive number four is
2:22 fake products so there's a big problem with faked Goods here and they'll sell them as their official so you're just going to be very that if something's cheap especially secondhand you I wouldn't buy anything that's secondhand off anyone here that's of a Big Brand like kind of a big purchase that kind of goes with not not that I'd say cars affect Goods a lot of the cars are been damaged or they've been wrecked and they've kind of just thrown them together with extra parts and they're selling them that and they do a good job at making them look like they're new but they're completely destroyed underneath but surface level everything looks fine so you just got to be careful of fake Goods whether that's just proper fake things or cars or anything like that number five is service service is atrocious here you're
3:10 just going to have to get used to it um people are going to be very rude to you they're going to roll their eyes they're not going to want to do their jobs they would just tell you whatever makes their life easier so one time I got a cold super a rather expensive restaurant I was with my Georgian friend and I said oh I can get them to heat heat us up and she just laughed at me and said okay you do that so they I told them can you please Heat this up and they kind of rolled their eyes at me and then they moved it away and about 20 minutes later they came back with the soup and they gave it to me and I ate it and it was great but then I saw the bill they had charged me twice for it so they even though they could have just he it up the soup I don't know what they did but they charged me twice for it and I spoke to them about it and they said you ordered two soups so this is kind of the thing
3:56 you're just going to have to deal with here so now the fun one is this it's frequent water outages and power outages so this depends on where you live but it doesn't really matter because it's different VAR variations if you live in a really old town this is going to happen all the time don't be shocked when you go into an Airbnb or the place you're renting and you see one of them it's not there for drinking you can drink the tap water the tap water is fine you know there's no issues there I've actually measured the water and it's I think it was 200 parts per million so it's perfectly fine but what you do you need to keep it for is washing yourself so thankfully for example I've only experienced about a day or two days water outage when I moved to a different country my neighbor said that they had no water for 6 days
4:43 in my building so just be aware of that um be prepared and then obviously electric outage just have your stuff charge if you got an external battery have that have a couple of Lights like I have and then just use them and there's nothing much you can do and just hope you don't get stuck in an El elator when that happens so cons is prices for imported goods so this is obviously going to be for people that maybe miss a bit of home but if if you don't want to just eat Georgian food all the time which is typically very heavy and filling lots of butter lots of bread that sort of thing you might just go for some things that you're used to now you're going to pay an insane amount of money for them like anywhere really every country is like that but here I notice the P prices on quite a few
5:28 things are very high so so a little tip for you is typically the better prices for Western goods come from Poland that's the big one and the stuff from Poland is very good it might not be the exact brands that you're used to but it will be a similar taste in general rather than like the Russian Brands which are cheaper but to me personally everything I've really tasted Russian except for a handful of exceptions just don't taste very good to me it's a very different tasting food number eight is things sell out consistently like all the time so anything that is a bit more Niche which isn't specifically designed for the Georgian market and it's more cater towards tourists even if it sells well they just stop selling it I've seen it so many different times you can't see it
6:14 at the moment but the tripod is on one of my air purifier filters I spent over $1,000 on this massive air purifier and they stopped selling the filters just completely stopped so I bought two more and I've stocked up on five air filters and they've stopped selling them again anything that you can think of I buy in bulk just so when it does sell it I don't have to worry about it um AAL cheese I used to love AAL cheese I've bought out pretty much everywhere they don't sell that anymore they haven't really sold it for about a year except for one of them um you name it this the list goes on and on and on this monitor this is the last monitor you can get in Georgia I bought the very last one and I haven't restocked I've had it for about a year so this is just kind of the things you need to expect on living here
6:59 number n is the quality of meat so the quality of meat is not very good here I have had good quality meat I do go to one of the most expensive places here for meats and the quality is good it's very expensive but is rather nice but in general if you're going to just your normal places that you can buy meat the quality is going to be pretty poor chicken is reasonable but beef in particular is not very good here once you leave toy you can get a lot better quality but I don't know what it is in toy I don't know if the import it or where it comes from if it is from here I have no idea but it's just not very good quality and you just have to accept that so number 10 is people are rather cold in comparison to other countries now let me preface this is I think if you make a Georgian friend you have they're the
7:45 best people in the world they will do anything for you and the most incredible people I mean once you got a Georgian friend you got a friend for life but in general in public like trying to meet Georgians they're not the most open and welcoming people okay there are exceptions to the rule but I've gone out so many times and tried to talk to Georgians and they're kind of a bit more standoffish now could be a variety of reasons obviously English could be the barrier even if I just try in Georgian there's not quite that friendly it's more awkward and it's like they kind of just want to walk away from you so I've asked quite a few people this since I've lived here is if everyone's kind of felt the same in general that's kind of what everyone's settled on is they just kind of harder to talk to so if you go to
8:31 some expat pubs the Georgians that are normally hanging around in that those areas are expecting to be spoken to and a very friendly but just in public it's just a bit harder so just something to be aware of number 11 is the low level of English English is getting better over time but the English level is poor and Google Translate is doesn't do a great job so use Yandex translate it is the best one that I've found if you found a better one that and you live here please let me know i' be greatly appreciative of it but yeah you're going to have to try to learn some georan or work around it I've tried Georgian to learn Georgian it's a very difficult language I can understand a lot of the time but I can't speak it there's a lot of different tenses and it's just a very complicated language to learn but if you can learn
9:18 it that would be great you'll probably make a lot more friends George and friends than I have um but be prepared to be learning it for many many many years and number 12 is the health system so if you've seen the health system here it's not very good so I've put a picture on the screen here just to show you some comparisons but it's the technology is a bit out of date here I have gone to the hospital once I got really severe food poisoning for some beef that I bought here and essentially what they had done with me was they basically just thrw you they don't actually know they just want to keep charging you money for tests that you don't need I mean they were even charging me for things as such as STDs and stuff like that tests which
10:06 have nothing to do with it and then they basically said it was because I was standing outside too long and it was too cold like just things that don't make sense it's if you're going to go through the health system here I would honestly just fly to another country it's that bad I have experienced this first time with my best friend she got cancer here and it was was a pretty horrific way that they dealt with her so she actually ended up having to get flown away somewhere else so I just would really avoid the health system here as much as you can obviously if it's an emergency go there but if you if it's that serious and you have the time in the money to get out to a better country I just do that I've seen it firsthand I've experienced it firsthand try to stay
10:52 away from the health system here it's not very good so that's some of my cons I'm just a little fun one for you this is one of my other cons this just a small little fun one they love to put these little Imports when every time they import something over they put these little stickers on it which are really frustrating but I didn't add that to the list I just thought it was funny cuz I saw it out the corner of my eye but yeah there are my cons um if you like this video please like it go through onto my channel I've got a whole list of videos from toi how to live here make your life easier make it simpler and I'm keep adding to it every couple of days so I'm a new YouTuber so the content will keep coming and if you have any suggestions add them in the comments and I'll see if I can make a video on it
