15.02.2018
The flight from Harbin to Vladivostok was short with about 1 hr 20 min and it was only about half an hour delayed. One of my friends asked – They have flights there? – Yes, they have! It was a small airplane of Aurora Airlines and it was cheap…..
Arrival procedures in Russia were straight forward and easy, my visa and papers were all in order. Luggage came out fast and Sergey from Explore Primorye picked me up from the airport. It was all part of my package with Monkeyshrine.
The weather was definitely warmer here on the Pacific Coast! From like -20°C straight to -8°C, I was sweating!
When we reached Sergey’s car, I wanted to get in the wrong side first … He has a Japanese car from Japan. That is the Wild Far East of Russia! Some have the driver seat left, some have it right. While in Russia driving is on the – for me – correct side of the road, the drivers here sit wherever the car has the steering wheel. Luckily they all nevertheless drove on the same – correct side – of the road. There are so many cars from Japan around, which mainly came in cheap from Japan, when it was easy to put them on a ferry after the USSR collapsed and nobody really cared about the Wild Far East So at the entrance / exit of parking lots there are actually ticket boxes on both sides. Had me laughing!
Vladivostok – the ruler of the east – has some 600 000 inhabitants and is located at the southernmost end of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula around Golden Horn Bay not far from Russia’s borders to China and North Korea. It is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and Russia’s larges port at the Pacific Ocean.
The Vladivostok Airport is approx. 44 km out of the city and it took a good hour to get to my Hotel Astoria. Check in was quick and I just dropped off my stuff. Sergey took me to downtown, which was about 2 km away, because I needed an ATM and a mobile phone shop to get a Russian SIM. This addiction of being online ….
A lot had changed since I was last here in 2008. Back then I had done the TransSib in summer going east from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, now I was about to do it westbound in winter. Downtown was still sort of the same and once I found an MTS shop and had my Russian SIM going I was happy. Get this – RUB 700 (€ 10) for a SIM with 7 GB data per week (= 28 GB a month!) and there is still some RUB 475 on it to make phone calls (e.g. RUB 10 per minute to Germany). I am in heaven! With all this data I could watch German movies, if the thing would not keep telling me “This video is not available in your country!”… And I had to put the Russian SIM in my old phone – good thing I have it with me! The new one does only take European SIM cards, it said …. I though, Russia was Europe, at least part of it?
I walked around downtown and visited the Square of the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East – they are still standing strong there.
On the way back to the Hotel I stopped at a supermarket. Finally, I could buy deodorant again! And I had to marvel at the Vodka shelf …. The amount of different Vodka brands in Russia always amazes me. I always study the labels – I am weired, I know, I buy Vodka the same as wine – by the lable… I found one pretty one with a king crab on it. That reminded me to have dinner at the restaurant in the hotel which came highly recommended. And I was dying to have proper seafood!
The Ogonëk Restaurant had very nice ambience and I was seated at a small table in the center with view into the open kitchen. The staff spoke English and the menu was in English, too. I had a glass of sparkly rosé from Crimea as aperitif and ordered, of course, a king crab. The waiter brought the crab for my approval, it had 1.2 kg and looked just right to me.
Luckily it came all opened and prepared for the fancy diner and there was no shell cracking necessary. A glass of white Crimea wine went very well with that fantastic food. I love king crab!
Lip smacking yummy that was and I ate every single bit of it – except the shell! I had to have a medicine afterwards, and they had my favorite Becherovka. I was stuffed!
I did sleep very well that night dreaming of more delicious seafood….
16.02.2018
This morning after a good breakfast Sergey picked me up for a city tour. First stop was the Tokarevsky Lighthouse, one of the oldest lighthouses in the Far East, I called it the last lighthouse before Japan (which it is probably/definitely not …).
Here I am! By the Pacific Ocean! Nice view from there and a lot of ice here. The bay was frozen! I did come to see lots of ice on this voyage. We even walked on the ice of the Pacific a tiny little bit. That was even better than dipping a toe in it! Me happy!
And over the bay in the distance – way over there behind the mountains is North Korea … or maybe China … or maybe just Russia … Just, please, let me believe I took a glimps of North Korea!
We did a little city tour, stopped at another view point over the harbor to look at the Golden Horn Bay, the ice free harbor and the 2 new bridges, which had been built some 5 or 6 years ago, they had not been there when I was last here.
We visited the train station as well, after all it is the ending point of the Trans-Siberian Railway! Opposite the train station is the statue of Lenin. And I am sure he points in direction of Japan, this one, 100%, no doubt! There is a Lenin statue in seemingly every town and village in Russia and I made it a tradition to have a photo of each. Call me crazy, but everybody has a quirky habit, this is one of mine! And I have many … quirky habits … and photos of Lenin statues…
It was followed by a walk through the old center of town with some interesting behind the scenes views and infos. I had opted to skip the visit of the submarine museum, because that definitely has not changed in 10 years … Instead we drove over the 2 new bridges to Russian Island, which before was only reachable by ferry.
Now they had built the huge new campus of the Far Easter Federal University there, which opened in 2013, after the buildings had hosted the 2012 APEC summit.
There was a view point at some old bunkers overlooking the bay, the bridge and the campus.
Back in the City we stopped at yet another view point – I love view points! – the Eagle’s Nest Point. It is with 199m the highest point in downtown Vladivostok and offers great views over the City and the harbor.
At the end of the tour I got dropped off in down town and just walked around. My search for a new pocket knife was successful and I even found postcards. The weather was nice and sunny with only -2°C. I found a café with the best blini right in the center. Ух Ты, Блин! is a small self serve place and I took Blini (Russian pancakes) with red caviar and a black tea with thyme. It was very good!
I had time to write some postcards and think about the rest of the afternoon. Another thing I very much enjoy is finding a bar on a roof top or high rise with a view and have a cocktail there overlooking the city. The Sky Bar at the 12th floor of the Hotel Hyundai was my choice, but it opens only at 18:00, so I had some time to spend. I walked around some more and found graffiti, bought some souvenirs and found the post office to mail my postcards.
I then went to the Sky Bar to watch the sunset over Vladivostok. The bar was pretty empty, maybe it was early. I got a nice table by the window facing Golden Horn Bay and the Golden Bridge and what can I tell you, they even had a cocktail called Golden Bridge Ice Tea.
Of course, I had to have it. It was a good drink and the view was fantastic and my internet worked, so I sat and had another cocktail called Russian Island Ice Tea, before walking back to the hotel.
For a late dinner I went again to the Ogonëk Restaurant, but this time I had squid salad with seaweed and the local Navaga.
Apparently it was the Festival of the Winter Fish and this one is the local specialty. So I ordered 3 of those small fish. They tasted very good, not too many small bones, but a lot of work to eat them. I managed and washed it all down with a class of white wine.
17.02.2018
This morning I had to check out from the hotel early and put my luggage in storage for the day. Sergey had talked me into another tour for the day, because my train was not leaving until the afternoon. I usually take pretty much all I get offered, because who knows if I will ever be back. And I had seen everything I wanted in downtown already. So I took the opportunity and booked this extra tour to see Amur Tigers.
We started out at 08:30 and drove out of the city to the Primorskye Safari Park which took about 1hr 15 min. We had to wait for the park to open at 10:00, but that was not a problem. It is a small park, more like a nature reserve where they also care for injured animals found in the wild and brought here. The enclosures are very large in natural environment. The animals sleep at night in smaller cages, but in the morning they get released into the enclosures to roam. This is totally different from the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin, which was like a big tiger zoo. Here the animals are taken better care of and there is no live feeding frenzy like in Harbin.
The walking tour took us through almost all enclosures. The walkways are high over the fences and cages, so there is always a great view and we walked around in a guided tour.
They have 3 tigers here in separate enclosures and we watched them being released and doing there morning rounds to check their territory.
The Siberian Tiger or Amur Tiger mainly inhabited the mountain region of the Primorye Province in Russias Far East. It once ranged throughout Korea, north-eastern China, the Russian Far East and eastern Mongolia. In the beginning of the millennium there were less than 400 adult Siberian Tigers in the region. Now the population has been stable for more than a decade due to intense conversation efforts. A recent census revealed there was total population of some 550 Siberian tigers in Russia’s wild.
They also have a leopard, which is in love at the moment. They have gotten a female leopard a few months ago, which is still staying in quarantine in a cage. But both animals can see and talk to each other and they are clearly in love.
The the female will be joining the male in the enclosure. But so far they only have a platonic affair through the cage wall.
There are also some bears. Unfortunately they did not get released that morning. But we could walk into the deer enclosure. The ranger had brought food to hand feed them and it seemed they knew the drill well. Some waited already for the first treats of the morning and knew exactly in which bag the ranger had the food! Visitors could hand feed the deer, but it was too slobbery for me…. I preferred to pet their soft fur. First time I touched a deer coat!
There was also a goat called Timur, which apparently is famous. It was once released into the tiger enclosure as life food, but the tiger and the goat became friends and lived happily ever after, however, not with each other anymore. Maybe the tiger did not like the goat’s smell anymore, because it really … smells.
The walking tour lasted a bit more than an hour and there were some great photo opportunities. But it was very cold this morning. Even though the weather forecast only said -11°C, the wind chill was much colder and especially the fingers got really cold while taking photos. Even Sergey was cold today! We sat in the car for 12 min before the next walk started to warm up. He had started the car with a remote control so it was already warm and running when we got there. Handy feature, I would say.
The second part of the walking tour took us in the bird enclosure and then to see the small animals. They have some cool owls there which were just being fed and did not really care about visitors.
The ranger even picked one small owl up to give us a closer look and it hopped on his arm easily but with its food in claws. No way was it letting that go! Then it flew with its food back to its favorite spot. There were also birds of prey there and even some huge eagles, which were flying through the enclosure. They all had at some point been injured and either waited to be released again or could not be released, because the injury was not letting them live in the wild anymore.
The last enclosure was for small animals. They were all more or less running around there freely. There were some raccoons there and raccoon dogs, also red foxes and even a black fox.
A wolf and some red wolfs were held in separate enclosures nearby. And they had 2 baby bears which they let out for us and which were very happy about it. One preferred to scretch it’s back on the fence, the other one rather climbed the tree.
We could walk through the enclosure without fences, but had to keep a distance to the many different animals. The little otter seemed not so happy at the moment, because his little pond was frozen, but he found other things to keep himself busy, e.g. bugging some other inhabitant of the enclosure and running after it and trying to play, even though it was ignored. The black fox already had spring feelings and was big time after a red fox and did not care at all about all those visitors watching the show.
Then it was time to go back to the city. We stopped in a small restaurant for lunch and I had the menu of the day – good soup, then cabbage rolls and my favorite – nonalcoholic – Russian drink kompot! It is cooked from fruits or dried fruits and is very tasty, at least for me.
Before we reach the city we stopped at a huge supermarket for some shopping. I was going on a 25 hrs train ride and needed some essentials – chocolate, juice, apples, vodka – all set!
Quick stop to pick up my luggage at the hotel and then we were off to the train station. The trains get only announced and opened about 30 min before departure. So Sergey dropped me off in the waiting area. There was a security check at the train station entrance, but they did not really care. Some checking, but half the time nobody even looked at the x-ray screen. I had about 45 min to wait and plenty time to watch those procedures!
And now begins my Trans-Siberian – BAM – Adventure!
