Day 4 Vladivostok - Aquarium and a TRAIN

28 September
Day 4 Vladivostok / Day 1 Train to Irkutsk

Tried to sleep in a little since I had a full day to kill in Vladivostok and really not much else I wanted to do.  I think 1-2 days is enough to spend in this town if you're not going out of the city.

So first thing after I woke up was to play a game of bag Tetris with my new cold weather gear.  Ultimately it's pretty much the same as with the sleeping bag.  The new under layers end up in the sleeping bag's spot and the new jumper just sort of sits on top of everything where the bag closes.  Gloves and beanie get shoved in at the top but I expect they will be living in my satchel or on my body once I get off the train.

Left my bag at the hostel and decided to go out to the Primorsky Aquarium on Russky Island.  According to google maps it's about a 2 hour bus ride to get there but according to the ingress guys taxis are pretty cheap here.  So I ordered a cab and it took about 30 minutes to get to the aquarium and only cost me about $12 AUD which was pretty damn cheap.  I reckon a 30 minute taxi ride back home would be close to $100.

The taxi ride was really nice actually.  A nice clean Prius, got to drive over the bridges I saw on the ship coming in and Russky Island is a pretty nice place.  Drove past the Far Eastern Federal University which looked more like a prison than a university.  Big iron fences, military people searching cars as they enter the facility and not very pleasant buildings.

Got to the aquarium and we had to get on a shuttle bus to get through the security gate to get to the aquarium itself.  The aquarium is very impressive from the outside.  It's a pretty cool building and there's a lot of sculptures and statues of marine life around the place.  Around the back of the building there's a little bay that looks out onto a resort of some kind and a little man-made river with a bridge and some picnic spots.

Once you go inside the entryway is pretty impressive.  Once you get through the ever-present security checkpoint there is a big room with some whale models suspended from the ceiling and a 3 story video screen showing a CGI video of killer whales attacking the other ones.

The aquarium itself is pretty good.

When you first start the path there is a really impressive video showing the formation of the universe and the planets then the evolution of sea life.  Some pretty cool graphics here.

After that it sort of goes through a bit of a museum phase where it shows some fossils then looks at some examples of what they thought prehistoric fish and whales looked like.  Very much like a dinosaur museum in parts.  They work through the history of marine life then start to show some actual fish.

They had some pretty good exhibits.  There was an indoor rainforest with fish tanks at the bottom showing tropical fish (first time I've seen a piranha in real life!), a ship under attack by a kraken, some myths and lore of ancient sea-going humans And a section dedicated to the Arctic and the Bering sea.  There were quite a few interactive exhibits in multiple languages which was good.  No hands-on stuff which I thought was unusual.  Aquariums usually have a pool where you can pick up a starfish or touch a stingray.  Maybe they just weren't allowing it today.

Overall it was a pretty good aquarium with pretty good exhibits and lots of big tanks full of fish.

But it really seemed to lack a wow-factor for me.  I wanted to see some really big fish.  Some decent sized sharks, a small whale, some octopus ... I dunno.  Unless I missed it there were really no BIG attractions.  It was all good but nothing great.  It felt like something might have been missing or it's incomplete.

There was a dolphin show that runs at 11am and 3pm every day but I missed the early one by 15 minutes and wasn't going to be there for the late one.

It was a good way to spend a couple of hours but I really wouldn't recommend more than that.

Since I had a bit of time I decided to get a bus back into the city instead of another taxi.  It took about an hour to get back to the city which wasn't near as bad as I was expecting.  By god that bus was full though.  Once it got to the university students just piled on and filled it to the brim.  After the university stops there were a bunch of other bus stops with people waiting who just had to wait for the next one.  Buses are cheap here (seem to be a flat rate of 21 rumbles - about 50 cents) but they are slow and overcrowded and some of them are pretty poor quality.

I got some lunch and added a thermos to my supplies for the train since it cost the same as a coffee cup and it had a cup as the lid.  Then I just wandered around the harbour area for a bit while I waited for it to be train time.  I had my first decent cup of coffee in a couple of months here this afternoon which was nice.

Finally back to the hostel to pick up my bag.  I got a little farewell gift from the lady at the hostel ... a Vladivostok fridge magnet.  I keep accumulating small gifts.  The sentiment is lovely but I just don't want to carry them around so I think this one is going to go in the bin.

On the way to the train station I added a couple of cans of beer as a last minute addition to my train stocks.  I wasn't going to take any booze but really felt like a couple of beers to celebrate my trip.

The Vladivostok train station is beautiful.  A grand old building built in the early 1900s.  There's a nice painting on the ceiling of the main building and you can tell it's full of history.  I was kind of surprised not to see a bit of stuff about the history of the trains Siberian and it's contribution to the greater glory of the Russian Federation.  But it's very much a working train station still with both passenger and freight trains using it.

My carriage attendant's name is Sergei.  He's an older gentleman who (if I got my question out correctly) said he'd done the return trip from Vladivostok > Moscow 13 times.  The next carriage down is run by Olga.  I tried to be friendly and have a laugh with them in the hopes I get some speci

The train itself is fine.  The cabin is about the same size as the Beijing > Ulanbaator train.  It's a little bit better but a bit older.  We haven't even started yet and the toilet smells like people have peed everywhere.  Hoping that's not a sign of worse to come.

There was a pretty nice sunset over the ocean about half an hour after we left.

I am sharing with 2 people at the moment.  Both are Russian guys who speak a very small bit of English.  We had a basic chat mostly about my trip and where they are going today on the train.  You get a meal as part of your ticket and they decided to serve our meal for dinner tonight.  A lady (who turned out to work in the restaurant car) came and babbled something at us and I didn't understand what she said.  One of the guys looked at me and said "chicken" so I nodded and that's what I got about an hour later.

It was a very basic meal of poached chicken and plain rice with ketchup and an orange flavoured biscuit of some kind.  The chicken was boring but the biscuit was quite nice.

After dinner the two Russian guys started chatting away in Russian and ignored me for the most part then they both went to bed.

This is how far we got after 2 hours on the train.

It's not easy to sleep on these things.  The noise and motion are not an issue ... it's more about space.  I'm a biggish guy and the bunks are not huge.  My shoulders only barely fit between the edge of the bed and the table and when I'm lying on my back my left arm dangles down uncomfortably.  I end up rolling around a bunch and never really settling in.

The cabin is also surprisingly warm.  I guess it's to deal with the colder weather later but I was almost sweating early in the evening.  By dawn I had a sheet on me due to a slight chill but I didn't even come close to needing the blanket.

Day 3 Vladivostok - shopping in the big city and some museums

27 September
Day 3 Vladivostok

A couple of random statue pictures first.

I spent a lot of today shopping.  I had planned to get some cold weather clothes in Vladivostok but had found it quite difficult to find anything that wasn't a boutique label.

I'm finding this is one of the challenges of travel so far.  Back at home if I wanted to get something basic (clothes, shoes, coffee mug, cutlery) I'd go to a department store like Target or Big W, or a cheapo store like Cheap as Chips (if I wanted something disposable) and I'd be able to get something that would do the job for a low price.  In another country I have no idea where to go for this sort of thing.

There has to be department stores somewhere right?  But it's been a challenge finding them at times.  Vladivostok was one of those cities where I had a lot of trouble finding something like this.  Maybe they are in the suburbs but the thing they called a "department store" near my hostel was what I would call a shopping centre or mall with a heap of different stores selling mostly fashion items.

So given the trouble I'd had finding stuff I ended up going out to the "Chinese market".  It's basically a flea market with semi-permanent stalls selling all sorts of shit.  They didn't really have what I wanted unfortunately but I did buy a jumper which is a tad tight but will hopefully be warm.  I can tell I got ripped off (despite knocking 35% off the price) because the guy handed me a free pair of socks as I was leaving.  Must have felt pretty bad at how bad I got fleeced.

The market was not as big as I was expecting from what I had read on the Internet and there was hardly anyone shopping there.  Bigger on the weekend maybe.  They have some of the world's shittiest trams here.
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I keep thinking Vladivostok is a bigger town than it actually is.   It's smaller than Adelaide according to some Russians I met.

So because I was starting to get a bit concerned about how I was going to deal with the cold when I got to Irkutsk I decided to throw some money at it. I ended up going to a small hiking / camping / outdoor store in the shopping centre near my hotel and bought some under layers there.  Glad I ditched my sleeping bag as these take up slightly more room so I needed that space.  I also got a beanie, some gloves and a face wrap thing.  I may need to upgrade all this stuff later but I really don't know as I've never had to deal with the type of cold I'm about to experience.  Ah well.  This is a risk money will be able to solve when it becomes an issue.

I decided to finish up today with a visit to some cultural stuff.

I started at the Arsenev Regional Museum which was small but had some interesting exhibits.  They had some information about early russian explorers, some art, a bit about early Russian cultures and an exhibit dedicated to Lenin.  The Lenin room exhibit was a bit odd.  Both rooms were painted bright Russian red and they had some famous Russian song (I've heard it before but don't know what it was - not the national anthem) played by what sounded like a heavy metal band repeating on a loop.  They had a couple of panels explaining Lenin's life and rise to the top and then it was basically a ton of sculptures, posters, pictures and painting of him.  I'd almost call it a shrine.

Next was the Primorksy Picture Gallery.  This turned out to be a tiny art gallery (only 1 floor of pictures) but they did have some really nice paintings, a few sculptures and a vase.  I gather they were primarily Russians artists but they were across a variety of styles and I thought there were some good ones.  I didn't take any pictures because I just didn't but I probably spend an hour wandering around looking at them.  I'd say there were probably half a dozen I'd consider hanging a copy of in my own home.  Mostly landscapes but there was a picture of Hercules throwing some dude off a bridge which was I really liked and a portrait of a Russian girl with very piercing eyes wearing a head scarf.

Next door there was a free exhibition from some local artist which was tiny but interesting enough.  A big wall painting which looked to me like it was a strip of the colours of every flag in the world themselves arranged into a giant rectangular flag.  There were also a bunch of tiny sculptures reflecting people doing various jobs and a big table seating 60 or 70 people under a white canopy.  I'm not entirely sure what the point of the exhibit was and the artist only spoke Russian and she didn't want to explain using google translate so I left pretty quickly.

My last stop for the day was the Fortress Museum.  Essentially the old gun emplacements protecting the harbour it's mostly just a shitload of big guns from ww2.  There were permanent gun emplacements, missiles, cannons, rocket launchers, machine guns ... you name it.  Good if you like guns but otherwise pretty boring.  Took me ages to find it because Google maps had the directions completely wrong.  It took me to the back fence where there was no entrance so it probably took me 20 minutes longer to get there than it should have.  Ah well.

I did a little grocery shopping for the train on the way back to the hostel because I wasn't quite sure what time the train left.  All train tickets in Russia are printed using Moscow standard time as the departure time.  Very useful if everywhere shared the same Timezone.  Vladivostok is 7 hours ahead of Moscow.  So while my ticket says 12.10pm departure it actually departs at 19.10pm.  I had the lady at the hostel clarify this for me and it turns out it was actually written on the ticket.  All I had to do was use google translate to take a photo and I would have known.  Ah well.  Looks like I have a whole day to kill tomorrow.

It's difficult to know what to bring on a train journey like this in terms of food.  There is always a dining car but apparently its opening hours are somewhat unpredictable.  Since I'm mostly going to be sitting around I assume I'm not going to be that hungry but I also want to take some stuff to share in case I end up with a good carriage of people who do the picnic thing you hear about in guides for the train.  There are supposedly vendors on the platforms of many of the train stations selling food.  So I don't want to overcater but I'm sure I won't go hungry.  I also don't really know what the drinking water situation is going to be like on the train.  I know there is always an urn of boiling water supplied but not sure about cold drinking water.

In the end I settled on a couple of things of cup-noodles, a 1.5 litre bottle of water, a couple of packets of teabags, bananas, apples, some small cured sausage and a packet of some donut shaped biscuit things they had at the hostel for people to snack on.

Tonight I caught up with a few of the local ingress players at the same craft beer bar I went to on the first night.  Really nice people and a couple of them had good English so we were able to chat which was good.  Like all cultures I've met so far on the trip Russians are very friendly people.  They do have a somewhat stern demeanour but once you smile and have a laugh they are very friendly.

One of the interesting things Farooq and I noticed was that Russians walking around tend to always look down.  They don't like to make eye contact or smile at people on the street.  According to the ingress guys this is mostly because the Russians want to make sure people are friendly first.  Check first then smile.

It was a fun night anyway and didn't have too much to drink since they were all working the next day.

Day 2 Vladivostok - touristing and dinner with the lads

26 September
Day 2 Vladivostok

I started off this morning with a little planning of the coming day then headed off to do some touristing.  I've also got a few things I need to shop for before I get on the train so I'm looking for stores which will have what I want.

I was looking for a bank to start with to do some currency exchange.  I've still got some Japanese Yen and Korean Won to get rid of.  The dude who picked Farooq up from the ferry station recommended a specific bank because it had the best exchange rates so I headed to the closest one of those on google maps.  Unfortunately that turned out to be their head office and they didn't have a branch there.

Up the road however I did find a nice little park that had another outdoor library.  This one was in much better condition than the ones in Seoul.  The books were dry and the there was no mould or anything.  Someone must actually take care  of this one.  I really like this concept and there was actually a dude who wandered up and browsed the books looking to borrow one.  I obviously could not read any of them.

After that was a lookout which was supposed to have spectacular views of the bay and the bridges.  Unlike most other cities this was just the top of a hill rather than a viewpoint at the top of a tall building.  It was about a 30 minute walk from the hostel.  And the views were rather spectacular.  Today was overcast so the clouds provided a lot of drama and a completely different picture of the harbour to yesterday from the boat.

The statue at the top was of Saints Cyril and Methodius - the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet.  Who knew this was named after a dude called Cyril?

I then tried to get down to the memorial to the drowned sailors which was somewhere down by the riverside.  On the way there I went past a few parks and a bunch of nice statues.  It's a pleasure to be looking at stuff that isn't Buddha sculptures, tori gates or Asian temples for a change.

The style of art and sculptures seems pretty distinctive.  It's all very martial and very focused on Christianity but there are a lot of pop-culture references as well.

It turns out that I walked about a kilometre too far for the drowned soldier memorial.  I had already passed it and taken a couple of photos without realising it.  Whoops.  There are tons of sculptures and statues around here and they are all really high quality.  It would be a pleasure to walk around the area if it wasn't for all the traffic, crumbling buildings and terrible quality roads/footpaths.  They seem to have spent a lot of money creating a nice waterfront area but they didn't finish the job.

For example there was a series of old red brick buildings that are falling apart.  And right next to them are a set of brand new red brick buildings with a plainclothes security guard wandering around them.

I had an entertaining morning just walking around seeing the sights and playing some Ingress.  It's great tourism weather.  Cool enough to walk for ages without sweating but warm enough that you don't need to wear long pants or a coat.

I just happened to be walking past a naval base where some destroyers were moored in the port and there were a few people standing there with cameras and phones out.  There were a bunch of naval personnel standing around checking their watches and it was about 11.58am by my watch so I stuck around to see what would happen at midday.

So midday hits and all the soldiers come to attention.  One of them starts to play a little song on his trumpet and 2 guys standing next to a cannon raise red flags. When the guy finished his song they fired the cannon letting off the loudest god damn noise I've ever heard.  It was pretty awesome.  A bunch of car alarms started going off in the nearby car park which was funny.  The Russian national anthem started to play after that and everyone (including civilians) stood up a bit straighter while that played, then trumpet guy did another little song and it was over.  I thought I had heard a gunshot coming into port yesterday but I assumed I was wrong so thought nothing of it.  Guess I heard the cannon shot!

Met up with Farooq for lunch since I was nearby.  He'd just got his bike out of customs and we managed to find a place where he could park the thing in eyesight of the place we ate.  Just a small yiros/burger place outside the station but the food was ok.  I thought the taxi driver he parked the bike in front of was going to have conniptions at the angle the bike was resting on the kickstand but it didn't fall over so it's all good.

I'm not quite sure what I did after that.  I think I just walked around the surrounding streets for a while playing some ingress and just rubbernecking.  Eventually ended up back at the hostel for a quick shower and a sit down before heading out for dinner with Yong and Farooq before we all headed our separate ways.

We tried to go to a traditional Russian place recommended by the Hostel and Lonely Planet but it was closed when we arrived.  Looked like they were doing recommendations on the place.  So we ended up at a European bistro I guess you'd call it that Farooq had had recommended to him.  It was pretty shit.  Bland food that was pretty uninteresting.  Not helped by the fact that we were catering to Farooq's eating things (no pork or seafood).  It must be hard having certain things you just can't or won't eat for some reason particularly when they are pretty major items in some parts of the world.

We ended up with a Greek salad, mutton sausages with potato, a mushroom and potato dish and some sort of chicken with with pear and pineapple.  Pretty standard stuff from my perspective (meat and veg on a plate) but interestingly Farooq said he'd never eaten this way before.  Only really eats Pakistani style food at home and fast food (burgers/pizza/sandwiches) when out.  Goes to show that what I consider "normal" western food isn't that for everyone.

After that we went to a cafe/bar a few streets away and Yong shouted us a drink and a pizza.  The pizza was much better than the other food.  Both had planned to get an early start the following morning but both had decided to delay a day to do some last minute shopping and preparation.

A pretty quiet day all up but it was nice to hang out with those guys for a couple of hours.  Yong and I may cross paths again in Irkutsk but I don't think I'll see Farooq again with his path into Pakistan.