Weblog » 2005 » April

I left Russia on the 19th of April and traveled via Seoul, Korea (pronounced Sey-oul, not soul like I had thought) to Hong Kong.

Arriving in Korea was quite interesting because the people at the desk in Vladivostok couldn’t access my ticket for Cathay Pacific’s flight from Seoul to Hong Kong. So I was told to check in at a transfer desk in Korea. Well, Cathay pacific doesn’t have a transfer desk in Seoul, so when I arrived I was stuck in the airport in some sort of limbo.

While I waited for people to sort out my predicament in Korean, I read about the brand new airport I was in and how it had more than 12 seperate security zones and was designed to efficiently move people, baggage, and equipment in a beautiful and healthy building. I must add that my actual experience of moving throughout the airport was the best I’ve encountered so far, and the security checkpoints were very good because hey managed to keep me stuck for quite a while.

In Brussels, on my way to St. Petersburg, I had a similar problem. Although the people in England were able to validate my tickets all the way through, they couldn’t send my luggage. Therefore when I entered Brussels I needed to exit the airport with my luggage and reenter and recheck my luggage before going onto Russia. When the immigration official saw this, he said “You have entered and left Belgium in the same day,” and I answered, “It is a beautiful country.”

In Korea, however, that type of solution wouldn’t work. It seems that my luggage had been checked through to Hong Kong, and I had to accompany my luggage. I couldn’t (without paperwork) simply go through customs and immigration and then reenter the airport. Also, by this point, the security officials had sat me down to discuss the situation amongst themselves… no one wanted my suggestions.

In the end, they let me through to the gate and told me to wait for a Cathay Pacific representative. This I did, and when one arrived the first thing they said to me was, “You don’t have a boarding pass do you?” They printed one up for me and were extremely helpful, and the rest of the trip was quite enjoyable. I’d highly recommend Cathay Pacific as the best airline I’ve traveled so far, and the Seoul airport as the nicest airport structure I’ve been in. (They could use a few more airline transfer desks though.)

Arriving in Hong Kong was quite an amazing experience. My dad had mentioned at dinner that his son was travelling around the world and would be arriving in Hong Kong before he would get there. I would be arriving at night, and he was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get in and find a hostel. One of the other guests at dinner told him not to worry and that his company would take care of it (he wanted to meet this world traveller).

Well, my dad relayed on to me that someone might meet me at the airport and take me to a hotel. I was happy that I wouldn’t have to figure my way around the town late at night, but I wasn’t expecting what I received.

At the gate, just upon disembarking from the plane, there were two airport representatives holding a sign with my name on it. They picked me up and whisked me away through the airport in a beeping golf cart. As I passed all of the first class people from my flight staring at me, I wondered what exactly I was getting myself into.

beepbeepbeepbeepbeep went the cart as it swosshed me through vip lanes for health quarantine and arrived at immigration. I went through the lane and my two airport friends were waiting on the other side with my luggage in a cart. Then through customs I went and there they were on the other side as well. As we walked into the arrival hall, there was another person with my name on a card who I discovered was my driver. The airport escorts said their goodbyes and I was off in a Mercedes S500 with reclining back seats for the drive into Hong Kong.

Let me tell you, after 3 weeks in Russia on a train and with sagging cots and no hot water, this kind of treatment was just preposterous. I rode the entire way on that golf cart with a crazy smile and did crack up laughing twice while playing with the various controls in the back of the car. I’m not sure I’ll be able to readjust to the hostel lifestyle after this part of my trip is over.

Now that you are all laughing about my experience on the train, I figured I’d let you all know about Andy and my experiences in Vladivostok, and our final days in Russia.

I think its safe to say that both of us had had our fill of the Russian Experience. There are plenty of places and things we didn’t get to see, and plenty of experiences we never had (like the sauna before jumping into a frozen Lake Baikal) but I think 3 weeks of walking around with a tiny budget and no amenities and 9 days of train rides made us ready for a vacation.

The people of Russia should be commended and respected for the lives they lead. I can only imagine what hardships they must have gone through during Soviet times.

Vladivostok is a perfect example of what Russia must’ve been like during the formative years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The city was only opened to visitors relatively recently, and its lack of proximity to the other major cities of Russia left it to develop at a slower rate. Missing here are the abundance of French pastry cafes and Western food chains so prevalent in Moscow. Also missing are cheap hostels and hotels, and hot water.

In many cities of Russia, hot water is centrally supplied — like cold water. This usually means that hot water takes about 5-10 minutes to get hot unlike in other countries where it might take a minute or two to get from your basement water heater to your shower. The problem this causes in a city like Vladivostok is hot water shortages. Since vladivostok was designed as a military and naval port, there was never a need for vast quantities of hot water (or many of the other modern civic conveniences).

So the cheapest hotel we could find cost US$80 a day, had hot water only during certain periods, had cots which sagged like hammocks for beds, but did actually have electrical outlets (a step up from the hostels). We also could barely find any restaurants — much less economical ones. What we managed to eat was Italian food from a restaurant member of the “American Beef Club” with dishes that were terribly overpriced but gave us something in our bellies.

Other than those issues, Vladivostok was very much like the other Russian cities we visitied. There was clearly a more Japanese and Chinese influence on the town due to its proximity, as represented by the billboards in Chinese characters and the right-hand drive cars on the road. The city also had an interesting view of the ships in the harbor, and there were plenty of sailor-aged couples taking advantage of the romantic views during what we imagined was their shore leave.

Andy managed to get himself a flight out of Russia one day before his visa expired, and decided to take a fairly roundabout way involving ferries and trains to Tokyo but did manage to arrive on time. We both had no trouble leaving the country (unlike what many guidebooks had told us) and on our final day managed to make it to the airport (involving a train and a bus ride for about an hour) without much problem.

On my final day, I said goodbye to Russia. It was a bit sad to be leaving, but part of me felt like I needed to move on. There were no postcards in Vladivostok, so those of you waiting for postcards will have to wait till Hong Kong. Andy went to the post office and bought some holiday/birthday cards to send as postcards, but I felt that was just too bizarre, so I bought some stamps in case I found anything at the last moment. I didn’t, so I might just deliver the stamps seperately.

Hopefully, I can recap much of the Russian Experience in my Travelogue (including pictures eventually) so that you can all see more what travelling through Siberia and the individual cities was like. I am realizing now that writing in detail about each of my destinations takes alot longer than I had anticipated. It is very probable that it wont be completed in full till after I return. Hopefully I’ll get as much up as possible, and at least the text and pictures uneditied. Stay Tuned.

I promised I’d write about the fantastic adventures I had on the train, so here it goes. Sorry about how far behind I am with the log. I’ve had so much to write about and so little time to put it on the Internet.

We managed to buy our tickets and board the train to Vladivostok quite well. I think at this point we had become pros… just as long as we didn’t do anything complicated. We settled into our cabin, both of us on the top bunks, and met our cabinmates, parents with their baby boy sharing the bottom two bunks.

The baby was impressively well behaved, crying only a few times and then for only a sort while. What was more of a problem was that this was to be our longest train journey yet and we didn’t have any food. Since the train left at 7am and we had arrived in Irkutsk late at night, we never had a chance to visit a supermarket like we did in Yekaterinburg and Moscow. When we finally bought some food from the stalls on the station platform, we realized that we had lost our pack of spoons and had to eat everything with our hands… not an easy thing to do when what you bought was soup and meat in sauce.

For those of you wondering, I was finally able to weigh myself when I arrived in Hong Kong. I had lost about 12 pounds since the beginning of the trip and I have no doubt that most of those pounds were lost in Russia.

On our first of three nights on the train, we decided to eat in the restaurant car. Fortunately they had an English menu (unlike the other train where the waitress took out her 10 year old english phrasebook and tried to translate for us). Unfortunately, they only had a few of the items on the menu and the waitress couldn’t speak English enough to tell us what. So we ordered two completely different things and ended up with two of the exact same dish.

While we were waiting for the food, we met a group of Russians sitting at the next table. One of them could speak some broken English and proceeded to ask us all sorts of things about where we were from, etc. etc. The whole car got involved in he conversation, and along with the party came a good deal of Russian vodka.

Back in Moscow, I had told Andy that I couldn’t come to Russia without trying some caviar and vodka. Up till then, we had stayed away from both because Andy hates vodka, having had a bad experience with Smirnoff (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find anyone who has had a good experience with Smirnoff) and neither of us had an overwhelming desire for caviar.

Well, now we were getting our taste of Russian vodka — Flagman to be exact — and we were getting it in full. Andy still couldn’t get past the taste of it and went quickly back to the beer, but I persisted, not wanting to give Americans a bad name in front of the Russians. (I later learned that our English speaking friend Alex was himself a bit afraid of the vodka and was staying with beer.)

I must have given quite a good showing, because I don’t remember what happened next. At some point everyone in the traincar had an arm wrestling contest and I technically owe my watch to someone as a bet. Our food came and was satisfactory, but it didn’t matter because we couldn’t taste it anyway. A drunk Russian army officer harassed us for our passports which we had left in our cabin. I was carried down the hallway and thrown into bed amidst lots of screaming by some official looking people. And thats about all I can remember.

If only I could say that everything was fine and dandy and I woke up the next day a little hungover but all the better for the experience. Hah. When I woke up, Andy informed me that I owed everyone in the train from my car down to the restaurant car an apology, especially the poor family below me. I would have gladly done this, except I had no idea how to say “I’m sorry” — the only thing coming close being “excuse me”. This I proceeded to say to everyone I saw the next day. I remained fairly sequestered in my cabin for the rest of the trip… not a problem I might add, because I never fully felt well again until we got off the train and I got a real meal in my stomach.

Alex and friends were quite delighted in their new foreign friends and stopped by our cabin to get us for some more drinking and partying in thier carriage. I drank a bunch of coffee while the rest toasted and talked about their jobs. It was here that I found out that we were drinking with former police officers, army officers, and corporate bigwigs, and that these people had managed to get me out of trouble when the police wanted to kick Andy and I off of the train. It was here also that I found out exactly what a disaster I had been the night before, and the reason why all of the carriage attendants glared at me (with one in particular not letting me into her carriage).

Fortunatly for me, we made it all the way to the end of the line without any further trouble. We didn’t see Alex and friends much after that because the providnistas (carriage attendants) ganged up to keep them out of our carriage and us out of theirs. I think I might have learned a life lesson on that train… if you are going to get drunk in a foreign country, get drunk with important people.

Never before had I gotten so drunk, so quickly. For all of you wondering about Russian vodka, let me tell you that the entire “experience” goes far beyond the actual drinking of the liquid itself. It is indeed far better than anything we have in the states (and I might even go so far as to say Grey Goose if only for the quantity). A shot of vodka is more than twice the size of a shot here, and the process of drinking it involves a long series of toasts and small appetizers. There are no chaser drinks here… vodka is all you have. It is for this reason that before you even realise that you are slightly tipsy, you are passed out on the floor.

With all of that said, if you get the chance and are a vodka connisseur, buy some “Russian Standard” or some “Flagman” vodka. Neither of them are actually spelled that way, if your browser supports it, here are the cyrillic words:

Russian Standard – Русский Стандарт
Flagman – Φлагман

Well, I was planning on using the promised abundance of Internet in Hong Kong to catch up on this weblog.

Unfortunately, since everyone seems to have their own broadband, all of the Internet Cafes have shut down. WiFi, suprisingly, is nowhere to be found and my Hotel only offers internet through their Business Center at rates which exceed the imagination.

So, Updates will have to wait until at least tomorrow or the day after when I get to mainland china. Then you can all find out about the chaos on the train, my last days in Russia, and a report on the wonderful city of Hong Kong and the first class treatment I’ve received.

Ok, here’s my attempt at summing up Russia. I know many of you are waiting for pictures, and hopefully I’ll have a bunch of them up soon (Hong Kong promises a cheap and fast laptop Internet connection). Also, I’m working on getting the Travelogue up to date… I have Venezuela, Spain, Morocco, and the UK all written up and now I just need to upload them. If you want a more day-by-day look at my trip thats where you should go.

When I last wrote, I had just passed over the border between Europe and Asia. Andy and I were visiting Yekaterinburg where the last Tsar and his family were killed. After 2 days there, we got on a train to Irkutsk… which some of you might remember from the game of Risk.

Irkutsk is an industrial city that really doesn’t have much in itself to look at. However, it does happen to be about an hour away from one of the most beautiful sights in Russia. Andy and I got on a bus and went down to a tiny little town called Listvyanka right next to Lake Baikal.

Listvyanka is indeed a tiny little town. There is one Soviet style run down hotel that charges outrageous rates and fortunately there is a brand new hostel/guesthouse run by, we believe, the Russian Mafia. They had running water and electricity which from what we could tell was impressive for the area. (The town was tiny I tell you.)

The Lake was completely frozen over but was still beautiful. We read in our guidebook that if you stick your feet in the lake you get 5 extra years added onto your life. (If you jump in and survive, you get 25.) We took the dare and found a hole in the ice where we believe people fished through. Suffice it to say, “It was cold.”

After some relaxing time away from civilization in the middle of Siberia, Andy and I decided to pack up and head back to Irkutsk to get the train for the rest of the journey. We spent one night in Irkutsk in a house named “Americansky Dom” or “American House”. We weren’t sure why it was called that, but it seemed the best choice from our guidebook

When we arrived, we realized why it was called what it was. It turns out that years back in the late 1970s, a retired US Army officer was visiting Moscow and met a young lady. He came back to visit many times and long story short, they married. But instead of taking his wife back to America as the story always seems to go, she took him back to Siberia. They built a house, and let the extra rooms.

If you are ever in Irkutsk in Siberia, stay at this guesthouse. The woman who runs it (the wife from above) is older now, but still friendly. The house may not be in the best location, but it is well kept and the people speak English. Best of all, the house is decidedly “American”… even down to the electrical outlets.

We stayed there only one night, upset that we hadn’t found it earlier, and boarded our train destined for Vladivostok… the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway… 3 nights away.

The train ride is a post in itself.

Hey everyone, sorry about how long its been since I wrote last… but well, I was in Siberia you know.

I have a bunch of stuff to write about, and I doubt I’ll be able to get it all in right now here in Vladivostok. I’ll try to write what I can, but the Internet is quite a bit expensive here and we have some things to do before we leave Russia.

Since I last wrote we entered Siberia, rode across it on a train, stopped at Lake Baikal the deepest freshwater lake in the world, got back on the train, and rode it across to Vladivostok (outside of Siberia technically).

The trip so far has been full of excitement including (but not limited to):

• being exactly 12 hours ahead of Eastern US time and therefore being literally on the other side of the world
• Seeing one of the most beautiful and amazing sights (a giant frozen lake surrounded by mountains) just after dealing with all of the other dirty Russian cities.
• Putting my feet through 2 feet of ice into the frozen lake… for good luck.
• Almost getting thrown off the train because I happened to take a little too much Russian Vodka a little too quickly. And being saved from it because we were drinking with a former police officer and an Army Colonel.
• And Arriving in Vladivostok… successfully having ridden the trans-siberian railway.

Andy was hoping to get a ferry from Vladivostok to Japan (his next destination) but unfortunately they seem to have no ferries for the month of April. So now we are on a quest to get Andy out of Russia before his visa expires. It looks like he’ll be flying to Seoul and then desperately trying to get a flight to Japan.

After all that is settled and I have gotten a good night’s sleep on a bed that doesn’t bounce and rattle and jolt at every turn, I’ll try to write up a more proper day-by-day account of what we did.

Well, today I entered Asia. We crossed the Ural Mountains in Russia and passed this little white obelisk representing the border between Europe and Asia.

We are now in Yekaterinburg. It is a smaller city right over the Asian border. We stopped here for a night because this is where the Tsar and his family were killed during the Bolchevik Revolution. It also happens to be where U2 Pilot Gary Powers was shot down over Russian Soil. They have wreckage from his plane and his parachute and flight suit on display in the local Military Museum. We went in and the nice lady at the exhibit looked so happy to see visitors who were interested that she proceeded to try to give us a complete tour… in Russian.

I can not even come close to describing my joy over seeing an elderly 4 foot something Russian woman gibbering away even though we couldn’t understand a word she was saying. At least she seemed happy… most of the people working in Human Service jobs here seem to hate people… just try getting a hotel room or a stamp for postcards.

But anyway… the highlight of this city has to be that same woman describing a machine gun by going “chugchugchugchugchug” and describing some General’s desk by pointing at the picture of the man in a parade, saying “Big White Horse” and then pointing at the desk and making a gesture of someone happily typing away at a typewriter.

Andy and I have been trudging around the city for a little bit now, and the snow is just starting to melt. It would be a wonderful thing if it weren’t for the fact that there is no drainage, so the whole city is like one big mud-slush puddle… my shoes aren’t looking so good for making it all the way through this trip.

We’re off to Irkutsk next with the deepest freshwater lake in the world… I’ll try to write again for longer then.

Andy needed the internet again, so I wanted to follow up on some questions people asked last time.

I have been going about 4 or 5 days between shaves. I don’t have a giant beard, but I do look a bit scruffy. I think I’m going to get a haircut as well, because since there are no showers on the train, I’ll be walking around with severe bed-head.

Everyone here in this internet cafe is playing CounterStrike and other various internet “shoot-em-up” games. Its kinda weird really… the average age here seems to be around 13 or so.

The computer won’t let me change into the Cyrillic character set, so I can’t write in Russian and show you some of the words I’ve learned (like Internet which is more like Nhtephet with backwards N’s). I’m getting better and better though, and I anticipate that Andy and I will be able to survive just fine in Siberia.

My hat is itching me less and less, so I think it just needs to be brushed a bit. Andy won’t let me put it in his bag though for fear of fleas, and he walks 10 feet away from me when I wear it. I think he’s just jealous. I’ll get a picture of me wearing it as soon as I can.

Well, Fluffy Hat it is.

I went on a tour of St. Petersburg Today and it was great. we saw some amazing things in the tiny backroads and apartment courtyards. It was much more than anything Andy and I’d see on our own.

I asked the guide where to buy a big fluffy haty, and she rolled her eyes but pointed me to a flea market. Unfortunately, I’m afraid they take the word “Flea” litterally here because the hat makes me itch… I can’t tell if it just needs the loose fur brushed off it, or if I’m allergic to the fur or what… we’ll see as time goes on.

The Poker spam I mentioned earlier appears to have been caught by my computer’s spam filter… apparently this weblog software is smart enough to automatically catch messages posted with “suspicious” words and then it asks me whether to approve them. I obviously did not.

Well, Andy and I managed to buy some train tickets and we went to a full blown real Russian Restaurant (or Pectopah here) and ordered food. We are off to Moscow tomorrow, and we are well fed. Even though the Russian’s giggled at us, I felt quite good at being able to manage at least a bit without English or the Roman alphabet.

I’ll try to hurry up on the pictures and the such. Maybe I’ll put up the unedited raw photos so you can see them before I put them in context… stay tuned.