Here are my thoughts, I hope they are useful.

The things I liked

Title – It’s funny, quirky and shows it is a travel type book. Do you end up in Thailand? If so, fantastic as the title starts and ends the book – if that makes sense.

I liked the idea of the prologue, show us your ‘ordinary’ world before the leap into traveling and I liked the last paragraph in particular. You don’t give too much away and let the reader work it out for themselves.

I really liked Sasha’s dialogue, I think you covey his accent cleverly, with a light touch using well-observed sentence structure, rather than laying it on with a trowel.

I liked your convo with Alexsei about what he does. It seemed very real. And was good way to let us get to know you a bit.

I also liked the way you jump backward and forward in time without disrupting your story. I like reading things that do this, as long as they do it well.

You do visual descriptions well, for example ‘Behind the splendour of its show-piece attractions, St Petersburg sags with wear. Its pastel buildings are sick with decay and the smog bleaches them from the foot-up. Massive advertising boards cling to once magnificent stone buildings, shrouded by thick walls of smoke.’

However, I’d like more smells, tastes, sensations, noises etc. For example when you say, “…shivering through the city.’ It really made it real for me again. What did the greasy chicken smell like? What about the noises on the train?

Possible improvements (from my point of view)
I think some bits could do with cutting/editing. Some of the sentences seem overly formal in their choice of words and structure - I am vs I’m, cannot vs can’t, ‘entering a home’, ‘replete with a quilt and pillow.’ Entering and Replete – quite formal.

Also sometimes you put too much info in which slows the pace. For example ‘The problem is each person I ask points to a different one.’ You don’t need the problem is. It is obviously a problem, and if you leave things for the readers to work out (as in the prologue) you make them feel clever. If you spell things out too much it makes them feel dumb.

It all is a bit grim for me. Words like plod, sludge, disheveled, relentless, monotonous, etc. dominate and the descriptions of grimness are very real. However, the moments of light seemed described at arms length. Like the meal with Alexsei (which sounded like it was quite nice?) Or when you said you were getting on with the guys in the carriage better than some friends in the UK, I was surprised as I hadn’t picked up it from your earlier description. I want more of an idea that you were enjoying it in the description rather than telling me you enjoyed it at the end.

Overall a great start, and if you can tighten it up in places and give us a bit more of the good stuff I think it has lots of potential.

Good luck with it all.