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.
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