Missing post

Hi guys, sorry our post over the sat phone last night evidently failed. It's raining at the moment otherwise I would do it now ;-) so check back for this missing post in a few days. I'm using mobile data so remaining brief. Good driving today.... Huge country. Day 2/90 lol. Whenever I think that it makes me relax a bit to how long the driving takes. We're 20km out (approaching) биробиджан. Yesterday we were fairly despondent and ready to turn back, but now we're so much further, we feel a bit better. How easy it looks on the tv! You don't see the weeks of bone shaking torture of driving! Love us.

Day 1 - Tired

Graeme: We've setup camp in a disused gravel pit which
To summarise today, we're tired.

Driving has been absolutely mayhem. We've done 430-450 kilometers on what has varied from brand new multi-laned hotmix highways, to tracks that there is no way you would drive your everyday car on.
The road is frequented by hired drivers taking brand new cars north. Why it's more viable to put 3000KM on brand new cars on the worst roads, I don't know. That combined with the fact it's had a thorough hiding would make me think twice about buying one.

By the time you read this, you'll have a more accurate idea of our location that we do, but we suspect we're about 50KM south of the 'Kabarovskiy' region border. According to the GPS 2716KM to go... till Yakutsk. Just a side note, I'm not in the mood to spell Russian names in English, I'm just roughing it from here on.
In true fashion, I am down in the dumps on our first night. What's good about it, is it's a travel trend I've spotted over many years so I'm not too worried. As I was doing a video diary, it occurred to me that it sounded a lot like the one I made last trip... reoccurring thoughts consist of:
-What a huge waste of money for something I'm not enjoying.
-How much more satisfying it is watching others do these adventures the actually doing them ourselves... you don't see the hard times on tv.
-We've just calculated roughly 7.5 days at 400 KM/Day to Yakutsk... that's immense and depressing all at once.
-It concerns me that we're not going to relax and enjoy this trip. We could come back from this trip more exhausted than when we began.
-Cassie feels a bit down that she's not able to contribute as much to the driving. She's naturally not as confident driving my car as her own. Mine is heavy, high centred, slow and vauge. She's driven a bit today, but the traffic now too crazy for her. She'll be used to it in no time.

Not wanting to alarm anyone at home, but the driving is really risky. We'd only be doing 80kph, yet the more than ten times we've needed to drive on the shoulder to avoid oncoming traffic. It's awkward enough driving on good roads in Australia, but here with reckless traffic, it's very hard work. We just continue to go at our slow pace.
What's also funny about this traffic, and no doubt one of it's faults, is the different speeds of vehicles. One car/bike/truck will happily do 50-60kph whilst a steam of traffic builds behind it and explodes in a fit over simultaneous overtaking OFTEN three cars wide. And that's on the tar. If it's dirt and everyone is crawling along, the traffic widens further.

On a side note, the traffic in Vladivostok is brilliant. It looks like chaos, but everyone is very capable and it flows perfectly. This traffic however, is a different ball game!

With the length of daylight hours, we suspect it might be better starting later in the day, with the view to stopping about now (8PM) so that there is some shade and the heat of the day is behind us. The sun makes it too hot to stop in the middle of the day for lunch. Others before us buy lunch and breakfast... this could be why.

The point of this blog is to document the downs as well. We're going to soon have a shower, climb into bed to watch some recorded TV and have a cuppa - which will no doubt make me feel good again.

Cassie: We tried to navigate ourselves out of Vladivostok this morning, but it didn't take long before we were lost. Thankfully we had got up and ready early so were on the road by 7am before the peak hour traffic started. In the end we relented, pulled over and turned on the navigation system and we were outta there in no time. Getting lost meant we saw another part of Vladivostok that we didn't get to. We were sad to leave Vladivostok in a way. We had been there since Sunday afternoon and had begun to know our way around, where to go for good food and coffee, even where to do grocery shopping. We were also comfortable with the chaotic traffic in the end.

We're not sure if this disused quarry thing we're staying at tonight is the same one where Jon and Amanda stayed on their first night out of Vladivostok. It would be amazing if it is because we literally chanced upon this place! We were getting exhausted and decided we had better start looking for a place to stop soon before we get too tired. We saw this obscure dirt track off the "highway" and it quickly opened up into this place. It's certainly not the nicest place on earth and we'll hopefully find better camps from here on, but it's a good start considering we're not yet remote enough to be choosy about our camp spots.

On the menu tonight is some marinated chicken and cooked tomatoes. Not sure what the marinade is on the chicken because it's in Russian but it looks and smells good. Graeme's being chef tonight while I type this up. Then later maybe a cup of tea and chocolate.

Today has been quite hot and tiring so it's lovely to be sitting here in the shade with a slight breeze, smelling our food cooking, sipping cold water and unwinding. It was impossible to find water to fill up our water tanks today. No fuel station has a tap or anywhere that allows you to do this simple task. In the end, out of desperation we pulled into a fuel station, I grabbed one of the 20L water containers out of the car along with a little drinking bottle of water. I then asked the station attendant if we could fill up our water containers with drinkable water by miming drinking from the water bottle and tapping the 20L container. He didn't say a word or smile, he just nodded and indicated I should follow him. He took me to the car wash office and asked the guy in there if he would fill up the 20L container for us. I then indicated we had two of them and the car wash guy was too happy to do this for us. He came out with the bottles brimming with beautiful clear water. Ma
gic! We're not taking any chances though, we're still running the water through the filter.

It's amazing how closely our experience is mirroring that of people who have traveled this route before us. It's to the point where we feel like we're copying their words and photos but we're seriously not meaning to. We're just telling it how it is.

It's starting to cool down now and that's seemingly one awesome thing about the Russian summer we've experienced so far. Once the morning fog clears the summer days have been sunny and beautiful. The wonderful thing so far is that the evenings seem to cool down nicely. Well, that was the case in Vladivostok, and hopefully that continues to be the case.


Position: 12-06-29 18:39:30 +1100 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=46.01736,133.8516&q=46.01736,133.8516&z=16

A picture tells a thousand words…

This picture we snagged from the computer screen at the custom broker’s office. We never got to see it get packed so this was awesome to see. This photo was taken during the customs inspection. The freight forwarded seems to have done a terrific job securing the car. You see where the money goes. It looks to have been bolstered by timber fixed to the floor. Those straps alone are seriously heavy duty and we are fortunate to have inherited them.
You can see they got it in there with the roof rack on – terrific!

0900 – Late breakfast to avoid the huge crowd
1030 – Irena emailed informing us that the port manager had left for the dock to drive the car out.
1045 – Unable to wait, and uncertain of how we’d get there, we walked from the hotel and discovered a taxi. We’d written down the street name before leaving and showed it to the driver.
”сьрельниковаб, 5” 
1100 – Arrived at ‘The big blue building’ and waited in the customs office. The port manager dropped in and realised we were waiting.
We received a call advising that there would be some delay (can’t recall why) but something to do with port congestion.
1100 – Sat on the wall overlooking the terminal entrance
1200 – Had lunch
1300 – Pacing like an expectant father.
1500 – It drove up the street towards us (video below)

After picking it up, we drove to the next fuel station. The process for fuelling is you take the nozzle from the bowser, place it in the filler hole, estimate and pay for the number of litres you need at the ‘babushka window’ and she starts the pump. I did the car end of this procedure whilst Cassie payed. As expected we hit the “145L – can’t be!… that car over there, are you sure?”.  I hadn’t told Cassie about the ‘dva tank machina’ clue. Meanwhile all this time an irate bunch of cranky tradesmen were furious that I was holding up proceedings (for literally one minute). Oh well, there’s rude people the world over. So, we took 130L and were refunded the rest. For those interested, 27.8R or 84 cents a litre. Hopefully future fills are more relaxed.

So tomorrow morning early we will set off before the peak hour traffic. As far as we can see, there is only two turns between us and freedom (The M60)

We did a bit of driving today around town as we dropped off some gifts to the shipping company. It was easy as! The roads are rough and the locals know where all the pot holes and man-hole’s are.

… and there it is. WOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo! We found a big tree for shade and spent roughly an hour putting everything back together. Easy as. There’s a part in my mind that keeps thinking something should have changed between when we dropped it off and now. Naturally nothing has happened, it’s just been a box for a few weeks!

Quorn jumped onto Cassie when she opened the door and has hung on for HOURS!

It seems we are the Australian record holder for importing a car ;-)
Midday Monday to midday Thursday. I say that entirely tongue in cheek. But really, it’s a credit to the shipping company, and all those who have been before us and helped us to minimise mistakes.

One thing I’m terribly sad about, is that all the relationships we have formed will just be dust in the wind. We’ll all go back to our lives as if they never existed It makes you think; that if this is what happens when you leave a town, the same must happen when you die. It’s all gone and you were nothing in the whole scheme of time. That’s not meant to be a bitter end to an otherwise exciting story, I’m just sad about losing contact with people we’ve shared time with. I’m also sad in advance knowing we’re going to meet some stunning people who will touch us, but even these memories will eventually fade. One last ‘sad-point’ is that everyone we have talked to would love to visit Australia but for a wealth of reasons will never get the opportunity. Why did we land in a prosperous developed country and others not? It’s a shame that even 1% into the trip, I know what we’ve had such good fortune and opportunities that 99% of the people we meet may never have. I’ve very grateful for everyone and everything we have.

This will cheer us all up. (The dust in the wind reference)

Movie: Old School–Will Ferrell

Rough guide

It has been requested a few times for us to provide a rough guide of the direction we plan to travel. Sorry I’ve been so slack in preparing this. Most of this has been ripped off Long Way Round which saved heaps of time locating and specifying each waypoint. We’re starting in Vladivostok and driving up to Magadan via the ‘Summer Road’ then returning to Yakutsk via the new road via Ust Nera. From there we’ll be heading towards Mongolia, but according to our map we’re not certain a road exists. Others have done it, so it must, but it’s not marked.

Make sure you’ve got Google Earth installed, then click and open the link below.

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/group/gec-travel-information/attach/87090b0c91dd15c9/19990355-7fb3-40f5-bc13-bd3956d20e75.kmz?part=4&authuser=0

Well, all seems to have gone to plan. Customs has cleared successfully, we just need to be provided with a pickup time from the terminal building. It’s a bit convoluted, but at 10AM we’ll receive an email or a call advising when we are to pick up. It’s about an hours walk from here (maybe a tad more), so hopefully we’re given enough time. We are aware of bus links down that way, but we’re concerned if we have a set time, but uncertain transport then perhaps going on foot will be more guaranteed. We would hate to miss the pick up!
If we’re able to pick up the car by roughly mid day, we’ll cancel our remaining hotel nights and leg it! Very exciting.
We then promised to drop by the shipping company to deliver some gifts and pose for photos which although it’s a chunk of time out of our day, they have enabled us this far, we owe it to them.

It’s crazy I know, but we feel so at home now in our smelly room, we’re certainly going to miss it. We bought a heap more groceries tonight, so we’re geared up for tomorrow.

From here out we’re not going to be as connected so our posts will be perhaps more infrequent, but hopefully higher quality. We’ll still be getting all your comments no matter where we are, so keep them coming. Just a reminder, we’ll be making spot messages from here on, so it may make for a good viewing. These are available on the left hand side of this page.

Ok guys – see you out on the road.

Some pictures to share

Stairs in the famous GUM department store. Back in the day you could buy anything from a "needle to a live tiger" in this department store. These days it's a bit daggy really, but with beautiful stairways.

High heel gumboots - only in Vladivostok!

For years and years I've wanted a set of babushka dolls, but only from Russia. I never thought I would actually get them, but here they are! They're so beautiful.

Our laundry drying in our hotel room

This is a "There I Fixed It" moment. I needed a clothes peg and Graeme came up with this idea. Awesome!

Talking with Irina in her office at Silver Wind

Graeme relaxing on the top floor of the Clover House where we had a lovely coffee, a bit of a relax and then to the supermarket downstairs.

And these are the goodies we bought at the supermarket. Couldn't believe our luck that we chanced upon the butane gas canisters for our gas cooker in this supermarket! You can also see in there we bought a portable hard disk from an electronics store down the street to backup our laptop.

These are the little gifts we bought to give to Vladimir and Irina as a thank you for their help with our car.

Shipping update

So I thought I'd provide a quick update as to developments with our car. We're having coffees at Clover House overlooking a busy intersection. We've just come from having tea with Vladimir, the president of the shipping company. He is pictured holding up a prized drawing from Lana, the daughter of our famed adventurers Amanda & Jon who have 'been here, done that'.
We seem so far to have been very fortunate with the process so far. The only thing left is to clear customs which is happening today, and pickup *possibly* this afternoon, but much more likely tomorrow. I appreciate fully that this process could turn sour very quickly and delays could skyrocket.

Since actually seeing cash change hand for shipping costs as opposed to just bank transfers, I'm turning into Scrooge McDuck about the trip costs and am looking forward to the possibility of recouping at least some of our prepaid accommodation. Stingy I know.

Vladimir has asked to see our 'web site', but I'm a bit hesitant to provide, as with any publication, it needs to be written to the audience. This doesn't sit well with me as it would no doubt compromise my reporting.

You'll see my excellent drawing of how the roof rack works, used to explain how it's stored and how it's fixed. A diagram was also drawn to demonstrate the process of starting the car, as for some reason they thought we had some cryptic awesome security system.... Um, nope. Turn the key. When mentioned that the battery may be disconnected, they laughed and said effectively "pfst, no problem whatsoever. Easy. Der!"

Lol to the fake iPhone 4a

Customs process started

This is Cassie accidentally blogging in Graeme's name. After a fairly frustrating day yesterday going back and forth to the Silver Wind office, we were determined that today would be more productive on the customs front. We got up early, went downstairs to get breakfast and there was a massive line up as the restaurant was an hour late opening up and still wasn't open by the time we got there. So, off we trotted towards the Silver Wind office. On the way we bought me some cough medicine to try and shake this damn cold. I had a great sleep last night, and I am getting better.

We then bought some croissants, juice and bananas for breakfast at a grocery store next door to the Silver Wind office, along with some clothes washing detergent. (Hmmm I must get to washing some clothes in our hand basin at some point today - not really looking forward to that!) The only place to sit and have our breakfast was on a stone wall along the pavement. So we perched ourselves up there and this guy came over to us and started speaking to us in Russian. Don't know if we were doing something wrong because that's the second time someone has come up to us and had "words" to us for sitting on a wall. There's nowhere to sit to have a rest so what are we meant to do? Anyway, once we smiled at him and said some random stuff in English he smiled and walked away. Yesterday we were approached by an upset old Russian lady who kept talking Russian AT us even though we were speaking English to her, she then promptly started having "words" with the dog that was barking at her. She was just generally crazy and cranky I think.

Our breakfast on the wall and washing detergent

We walked upstairs to the Silver Wind office where we waited for Irina to get our paperwork together. Then we were whisked away by car with Irina to the insurance office to organise our compulsory insurance in order to begin the customs clearance process. It has been confirmed that our container has been unloaded from the ship and this process is ready to start. They don't place much emphasis on seat belts here and my seat belt was missing the bolt that attaches it to the car. The driver of a car often doesn't wear a seat belt. I've been very well conditioned to wear one so was very cautious and hanging on through the organised chaos that is Vlad traffic.


The guy at the insurance office was very efficient and Graeme pointed out he kind of looked like Tom Hanks. He did in a round faced kind of way! He was getting frustrated that we didn't have a "technician report" to say the car is road worthy. We do have the original rego document from Australia and we tried to explain that the car has to have an annual inspection in order to get that piece of paper, so yes, this piece of paper says the car is safe to drive. Rarrr! Not good enough. Funnily enough, when Graeme stuck the new rego sticker on the windscreen before the car got shipped, he stuck the other one to the new rego paper. I pulled that off so the rego paper was clearer to see and the guy jumped up and got very excited at seeing our rego sticker! He was saying in Russian, yes yes this is what I need! Ok, so get excited over a sticker that has the exact same info that is on the rego form you just rejected. Cool with me. We then explained there's also one of those stickers on the car windscreen and he was very happy. So, after finding a bank and having difficulty getting rubles because their ATMs weren't working properly, we went back, paid our fee and then set off to the customs brokers office.

This is the car owned by the insurance guy. He was very proud of it!

One of four broken ATMs at the bank

Thanks to Brett or David, whichever one of you went to our home and picked up the pink slip for the car and emailed it to us. Champions! We're super appreciative.

Customs was fine too. They translated the contents of the car which was a slightly humorous process. Thankfully with the help of Alexey who speaks a bit of English, and good ol' Google, we were able to explain and look up pictures of what was on the form. It was funny because as soon as they saw the picture there was a big "Oh yeah, gotchya" moment going on in Russian. The 3 of them then started discussing something entirely in Russian and I asked them, are you discussing how crazy you think we are for doing this? *laugh laugh* yes they sure were! Caught ya guys! I may not speak much Russian but it doesn't mean I don't entirely know what they're saying. Weird I know, but you get the gist of conversations if you really pay attention.

Alexey at the customs office - notice the pictures of Maxtrax on the screen -  we definitely had to explain those via a picture on Google images!

The only piece of paper we didn't have for customs was the original registration paper for our stay in Russia. We asked the hotel for it when we checked in and they didn't want to give it to us. We needed it for customs clearance so Alexey drove us back to our hotel from his office (the seat belt click things for the rear seats had never been used because they were absolutely buried under the seats but, determined that we both have seat belts this time round, I dug and dug around until I found them!). Alexey and Irina then came in with us and pretty much said to the very annoyed and reluctant hotel staff, just hand the documents over. Then that was that. Irina from the Silver Wind office was with us the whole time and was very good at trying to explain things to us. We are so very grateful to her and to Alexey, the customs broker. We seriously couldn't have done this process without their kindness and help. And there's more to come, so hopefully the rest goes just as smoothly.

We've been glued to our hotel room this afternoon in case one of them calls needing something else from us. But it's been a few hours now, so I think we're about to venture out and see if we can find a road atlas and other provisions we need for the trip.

Miri & Margaret

Excuse the chronologically confusing post, I’ve just jotted down headings and filled in the content. The order is somewhat random. We’re struggling to find the time to prepare posts and videos.

We just finished having dinner on the 4th floor which has a stunning view gently filtered by green construction shade-cloth. All our meals were stunning on all counts. Visually appealing and tasted terrific. Perhaps we are easy to please? We met Miri, an elderly Australian lady when we held the door open for her Sunday afternoon. Monday morning we invited her to our table for Breakfast as she was sitting alone. Monday night, we’ve wound up having dinner with her and her Australian friend Margaret by chance. But after all, she did recommended us try the 4th floor restaurant, so it seemed only likely we’d run in to her there. They have come from Magadan (amongst other places) on an ocean cruise. They told a wealth of stories of their travels, but it was so refreshing to have conversation with English speaking people, let alone Australians!

Unable to shake her cold combined with fatigue has left Cassie feeling a bit out of sorts. Due to the really long daylight hours, I think we’re overdoing it a bit. Hopefully we’re all on top of it tomorrow.

After at least 30 minutes hunting around for the shipping company’s office we discovered the Russian addressing system isn’t [Unit Number] / [Street Number], [Street Name] like we’re used to, it’s actually street number first, then unit number. After we crossed over the rail line we found their office straight away. At this stage, we feel prepared for ‘the rusky way’, in the sense that things always take so much longer than anticipated.
Our first visit to the shipping company was greeted with “Hello - Good, I’ll now phone and ask for [some piece of paperwork] from [some entity]. It should arrive by lunch time, so drop by at 2PM for us to continue'”, so we dropped by at 3PM assuming this would naturally take longer… nope, “the paperwork has not arrived yet. Call us at 4PM and we’ll continue.” We called and left a voicemail, and at 6PM received an inaudible call from the shipping lady. Assuming it was her, we emailed and got the response saying the paperwork had arrived and we’ll continue tomorrow. It should be pointed out that each trip to the shipping office is an hour long round trip. Don’t get us wrong, it’s nice to walk, but we’d prefer to get more done than just ‘status updates’. She did set an entirely unrealistic two to three day deadline of having the car, but I suspect maybe she meant just round one of several. We are certainly not getting our hopes up.

On a side note, how awesome is this mobile telephone. I asked ‘Siri’ to set the alarm to 7:30 o’clock. Cassie informed me that 7AM would be more appropriate, so I asked her again. The dialogue is below:

I reckon that’s super amazing! But then again, I am very polite to her, it stands to reason she’s good to me.

I’ve uploaded some more photos from today here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/20120625?authkey=Gv1sRgCNW5mr64-a7QoAE

Probably 75% of cars we’ve seen are all-wheel-drive. It doesn’t seem to matter what it is, even Yaris’s come AWD! And they do seem to have a bit of height about them as well for straddling all that snow I suspect.

 

 

 

For a fuller experience, you can view this on YouTube by clicking the logo bottom right.

Welcome to Vladivostok!

When we arrived at out hotel I was quite despondent. Our room smelt terribly, I was tired and hungry.
I now however feel great, more upset that I’m running out of time to upload goodies to share than anything else.

Today was very photo intensive, so I’ve actually uploaded them here rather than clog up the arteries of our blog. There are comments below each photo to explain a bit about what was going on:

https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/20120624?authkey=Gv1sRgCMmX2MWo9o6NtwE

I’m certainly not a violent person by any means. Surprisingly however, I have an immediate stream of violent flash-forwards, any of which I would be happy to execute on the person cutting in line. At customs Cassie and I were becoming increasingly separated people cutting in line between us. One rude lady, without hesitation or explanation, cut in front of me at customs, followed by another young man who seemed to work for the airport. Obviously the lady didn’t rouse this violent streak, but the several excruciatingly rude male Asian tourists at the hotel reception certainly did.
It’s difficult to describe these people’s persona, but it fell somewhere between demanding and childish. They were relentless in their disrespect for us, our line position or even the fact the receptionists were talking to other people. They would place their room number voucher down, sometimes not even unfolded, whilst tapping and pointing at the slip of paper. The ladies were either dealing with us, or on the telephone, but that didn’t seem to worry these indecent individuals. The staff’s resentment of these individuals was palpable and their only recourse was a smile.

One alternate way to look at it… perhaps it’s not rude in these cultures to push. We, after all are the outsiders. But when in Rome… must you do what the Romans do? I’d rather not push!

Do I dare draw any distinctions between Incheon and Vladivostok? Here are two:

Music the airport shuttle for slow/disabled people:
Sydney – Annoying buzzer sound.
Incheon – A soft melody of ‘Green Sleeves’
Vladivostok – There is no shuttle. You crawl.

Number of screws and door hinges:
Sydney – three hinges, three screws each
Incheon – three hinges, three screws each
Vladivostok – two hinges, one screw each

Safety crew for road works on multi-lane highway:
Incheon – Long strips of flashing lights, multiple strobes, 40kph speed limits.
Sydney – Huge lead up of signs and speed reductions 80Km/h, 60 then 40. Stop/go man, flashing lights
Vladivostok – A single old road cone outta’ do it. That, or just a 1ft high block of concrete in the middle of the road.

I could go on, but they are too hilarious to mention. Finishing with man-hole covers. Who needs them!? No! a gaping hole in the footpath is plenty safe!

PS. Wait… Cassie just had to re make the bed because the top sheet was just sitting there. In place, but not installed.

PPS. Wait… there is a smoke detector in our room… and two ash trays. Something tells me ‘that ain’t right’.

Vladivostok

We've arrived safely in Vladivostok, without any glitches along the way. It took almost a full 2 hrs to go through the check-in and customs process at Sydney airport and we arrived at our gate with only about 10mins to spare before our boarding time. We're very tired now, and in fact Graeme has promptly fallen asleep on one of the beds in our hotel room. Yes I say one of the beds, I'll get to the hotel description in good time.

The process of the overnight stopover with Korean Air was flawless. I'd highly recommend Korean Air for anyone flying to Russia. The staff were lovely and the food was nice enough. I didn't feel well towards the end of the long flight yesterday, but I have been sick with a headcold since Tuesday which still hasn't cleared up. So with a gnawing headache all day long yesterday and feeling congested, I'm not surprised I was feeling a bit nauseous towards the end of the flight. I'm looking forward to getting well again over the next few days with lots of rest and hopefully some sunshine. It's cloudy outside and a chilly-ish18 degrees here at the moment, but my fingers are crossed that clears up by tomorrow. Well, 18 degrees beats the -6 mornings we had in Canberra last week!

Arriving at Vladivostok International Airport was quite the experience. You literally walk off the plane on the tarmac to a waiting shuttle bus which promptly drives you to the immigration entrance a heaps long 10 metres away. Yep, about 10 metres - give or take a metre or two. Hilarious!

The whole airport terminal smells of cigarette smoke and looks like it could use a decent renovation. Going through immigration was weird. The Russian guy in front of us started having an argument with some airport personnel. We think it was about how long it was taking. Meh, get over it mate. While we were waiting a new plane load of people traipsed in to be processed too. I went through to the window (it's one person at a time), Graeme was in line behind me and then all of a sudden this lady and guy from the new plane load just cut in front of Graeme in the line! I had awful thoughts that everyone was just going to keep on pushing in front of him so I looked at the lady, shook my head and pointed to Graeme behind her. She and this guy just gave me a dead look like I wasn't even there. So I gave them a couple of frownie faces to let them know I thought they were being pretty mean. Well, apparently the guy worked at the airport and said the lady needed to go through as "priority". Lol ooops! But if they were polite about it I wouldn't have had a problem, but no-one here seems to give a rats about anyone else. It's unsettling. I hope my perception changes as we get out and explore Vlad some more.

We've been down the street to have a look see and go to a supermarket to get some essentials like bottled water, chocolate and chips. You know, just the essentials really.

Now, about the hotel room. It's a bit of a dive really but we're getting used to it. The only thing we're struggling with is the cigarette smell that's been absorbed by everything in the room. Neither of us smoke so to us it smells gross. We're leaving the window open despite the cool weather. There's only two single beds in this room which is a bit weird for us too.


The other thing is the hotel is being renovated so there's literally windows, bits of ceiling and ripped up stuff strewn in the corridors.

Our room is further down the corridor on the left

Oh my gosh, there's so many little stories to tell already. I know Graeme wants to blog some things too so I won't say too much more.

Just something cool to share with you guys, I've always wondered what it would be like to arrive at an airport and have someone holding a sign with your name on it. Well, I no longer need to wonder because I organised a transfer from the airport to the hotel back in Oz. When we got through customs at the airport today there was a guy standing there holding up my name typed on a sheet of paper! Haha cool. It was our taxi driver there to whisk us away to our destination. And what a white knuckled ride that was! I'll let Graeme explain further. He spoke about as much English as I speak Russian which equates to not a whole lot. He was really nice though and took us on a detour through these twisting backstreets. When I saw the dead dog in the road I thought oh my goodness, where the hell is this guy taking us?! Then we get to the top of this amazing lookout that overlooks the entire harbour and over to Russky Island. He was encouraging us to walk away from the car and we were reluctant to leave our bags in there. But he then locked the car, walked ahead of us and lead us to the other side where the handrails were covered in hundreds of padlocks. People had written messages of love on them and locked them to the lookout handrails as a symbolic gesture of their unending love. Nawww.

Padlocks at the lookout

That'll do for now. Such a massive blog post and I'm sure Graeme's going to add his stuff in too. The sum of it is, we're here, we're safe and we're starting our journey! Off to the Silver Wind office tomorrow to begin getting our car back!!

Jumping jack flash

Quick post while we're on the airport wifi. We have lots of stories but I fear if we don't upload them when we have the chance, we may forget them.
Our sporty bus driver pictured in this post was zooming towards a toll gate on our way to Incheon airport. The sign said 30kph but we seemed to be doing 110-120kph. Under breaks he gets a bit of a wobble up as he shaved the speed to maybe 100kph. Like threading a needle, we flew through the concrete dividers at a huge pace. 'Beep beep' of the e-tag and the gates flew open. It was so impressive yet seemingly pointless. There wouldn't have been more than 50m room for error! Amazing and hilarious all at the same time.

Breakfast was again terrific. Hash browns, fresh fruit, you name it, they had it.

The haze over the city is no longer possibly cloud or fog, it seems more likely to be smog. The sun rise this morning was suitably disappointing for this reason. You can pretty much stare at the sun without being blinded.

There is a Caucasian looking guy behind us on the airport gate seats who is snoring, burping and gawd knows what else. I wonder if he knows how filthy he is. Cassie bought some throat lozenges (not sure if that's spelt correctly) and has just returned with some coffee, but that's the extent of our purchases thus far. We must remember to hit an ATM at the airport and get some rubles.

Photos

Today’s post is going to be somewhat of a photo stream… purely because we’re so tired. Once we settle in Vlad over the next few days we’ll be able to populate decent stories to the pictures.

Feel free to click on the photos for larger ones.
1) a great representation of the differing daylight hours
2) of the 30 wireless networks, only one was ‘available’ for us to use… it was of very poor strength so it required standing by the window like a waiter.
3,4) mmm breakfast. It was some kind of stirfry, but certainly lovely
5) Full plane.
6) View from level 15 of our hotel… scrumptious dinner, amazing place.

http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Hotel_Review-g297889-d1748580-Reviews-Harbor_Park_Hotel_Incheon-Incheon.html

Face mask man

W00p! In Sydney

So happy! It may come as a surprise to some but I get really anxious anticipating some events. Most things no problem, however airports do get me on edge. I love flying... just waiting at the airport stresses me. Weird I know. As you can imagine, I'm pretty private about such things, so count yourself lucky that you now know ;-)
However tonight's flight went without incident. I'm so relieve!. Its been my only worry about the trip! Ahh so relaxed now. I should probably stop talking about me now! I'm just ecstatic!

Leaving work today was really weird. I left with nothing but my phone and wallet. No keys, no work car. The guys at work are so capable individually, but together they are unstoppable. Like a sea of calm came over me as I was driven away from the office. I know they've got it all under control. On several occasions I thanked the gents, as without them, there is no way I could do this trip. No ifs or buts.

It was lovely to be seen off by Cassie's family.

Anyway, lots of love from us, and thanks to everyone for your support.
Photo taken Hotel Ibis, Mascot NSW...... Australia

Can’t sleep

The upside of sleep alluding me is that I’ve finally finished closed captions for the half hour long ‘Cameron Corner’ video. They will no doubt be inaccurate and terribly spelt, but they will no doubt help someone out down the track.
It’s raining sporadically outside which sounds terrific.

The circle of thoughts that wake you up are often amusing in retrospect. I was concerned that I wouldn’t have time to wash Cassie’s car before we put it in the garage tomorrow afternoon. And that even if I had time tomorrow afternoon, I wouldn’t want to put it away wet. Also combined with how the delicate operation of getting the car in the garage, at ‘peak hour’ could be troublesome. That and the fact most my tools are in the Troopy, how would I disconnect the battery?!
These photos were from a test run a few weeks ago.

That, coupled with the realisation that I nearly forgot our new video camera had me up in a heartbeat. It’s a funny human trait how we must ‘tie up loose ends’. Finishing those closed captions, cleaning my desk at work. In saying that, the joy we get from severing ties is usually worth it.

It was funny today, a gentleman in my work circle casually assumed “oh that trip sounds great. I’ll be emailing you some things in a few weeks… you’ll be right to get them… yes?” um… nope! I don’t care that technically I’d be able to check work email, I have no desire to whatsoever. I need a break! Around seven years and I’ve only had one decent month long break. It’s our turn now! As well, surely I’m going to be a better worker after being well rested.

I’d like to reiterate how lovely it is to have everyone call and wish us well. Everyone has been so positive and supportive. I just hope we can live up to their expectations. One of those ‘oh crap’ moments where the blaringly obvious comes to light, came up in discussion over dinner with my brother Paul. He said, “ah ok, so at work tomorrow, leave Canberra tomorrow evening, then Sydney to Seoul on Saturday, then Russia Sunday?'” Um, yep. HOLY CRAP! - When everyone else in our world will be heading to work on Monday, we’ll be in the shipping agent’s office in Vladivostok having tea. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN SO FAST?! On foot, we’d be lucky to make it to Goulbourn over a whole weekend, how we can be on the other side of the world in the same amount of time astounds me!

Wow, it’s getting late. I probably should try go to sleep. That and I’m shivering from the cold. Ah, only a few more days and we should be warm as!

Saying our goodbyes

Wow what a full on couple of weeks this has been. We've visited with lots of family and friends and we've had phone calls from friends wishing us safe travels. It puts into perspective that we're very fortunate to be surrounded by such wonderful people.

I haven't been well at all this week. I've come down with a horrible headcold which has knocked me for six mere days before our flight out. My hope is that Graeme doesn't catch it. He's a tough cookie and very rarely gets sick, so my fingers and toes are crossed he'll dodge this one too! I had to cut my last day of work short yesterday because of this cold which was a bit annoying, but I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better. It was weird saying goodbyes at work yesterday. It just felt like I was saying goodbye before going on a weeks holiday or something.

I can't get my head around the length of time we're going to be away. My trick has been not thinking too far ahead. I'm focusing on just getting to Vladivostok and how we're going to spend time there while we're going through the customs process. We have a list of things we want to source before we get the car so it'll be fun traipsing around trying to find these things there.

I received an email from our shipping agent today advising that the connecting ship from Busan to Vladivostok has been delayed by two days and it's new arrival date will be Sunday 24th June. We will now be arriving the same day our car arrives! So we're still on track to start customs on Monday morning. He also told us that Vladimir in the Vladivostok office is very interested in Australia and would be keen to talk to us. We've already had an email from Vladimir to say he'll definitely be in the office on Monday and is "happy to meet our guests from Australia". Awesome.

I'm also looking forward to meeting Bolot in Yakustk. It's lovely to have made these connections before we've even left our shores. How amazing is technology in connecting us the world over. Speaking of these connections, I hope Jon and Amanda from Three In a Truck enjoy reliving their adventure during the first part of our journey.

I started cleaning our house and packing our bag today. There's still a little bit to do around here and some errands to run before we leave tomorrow, but other than that everything's sweet to go. We have dinner with family again tonight which will be lovely. Mum and Steven will be dropping us off at the airport tomorrow evening for our flight to Sydney and will be taking our plants to look after them while we're away. Thanks you two for doing this for us. I'm going to try really really hard not to cry when we wave them goodbye! There's really nothing else to say at the moment. I have no doubt we'll have more to say during our stop over in South Korea. Exciting times are ahead.

Till then, до свидания! (Da svidanya - Russian for 'Goodbye')

Less than one week to go…

Cassie and I are both fluctuating between, sadness, anticipation, nervousness all the way back to sheer excitement. We do find ourselves having silly ‘last’s about everything. Like last Friday at work, last time we drive down the coast, last time I’ll put fuel in the car, last Saturday morning breakfast etc. Cassie also put into perspective how long our trip is: if we were arriving back home now, we would have left mid February – that’s huge!

We again have been sent more pertinent information about the road of bones which will be invaluable. We’re so grateful to all those who have contributed in some way.

I’m loading my phone with the top 1000 songs of all time which should be a welcome treat on our long roads. Oddly enough, ~1400 songs is still only 25 days of music listening four hours a day. I hope its enough. I wonder what local radio is like? If there is any?

For the last year we’ve been not watching the latest releases of our favourite TV shows so that we now have a huge collection of TV shows to gradually watch on rainy days, or to help us wind down at the end of the day.

I feel like there are so many little things I need to get done, like the iPhone thing, uploading a few videos to YouTube, do some lame homework rubbish I’ve been handed on Friday – ugh. I really should write a list so I don’t get overwhelmed.

We waved good bye to my family last Monday (a small sample pictured below), and we’ll do the same with Cassie’s parents this weekend. We’re finding that everyone wants to see us in some way or another before we go. It’s amazing actually, I didn’t think people actually cared so much.

Our last weekend with my brother. He has a gold panning YouTube channel, so this was a how-to video for his channel.

Our ship has somewhat dropped off the radar. Literally. We figure it’s sank and our car is at the bottom of the ocean. I do say that with much jest, but there is a part of me which wishes I bought marine insurance. Oh well. Early this week we casually asked the Melbourne based shipping agent as to what ship our container would be on from Busan to Vladivostok… no response. My cynical side has me thinking now they have our money, there is no interest in entertaining us. I hope I’m wrong. We have heard some horror stories but I think we’ve learnt from everyone before us, so hopefully we get through easy.
As promised, please find below a really quick and dirty cut of my trip to Cameron Corner. I had several hours of footage cut down to just one hour, enough to tell the story…. and this is even smaller cut!
I’ve started the upload for this video, but it’ll take all night, so if it’s not instantly available, check back tomorrow.

My quick trip to Cameron Corner and back. Sorry it’s taken me so long to eventually upload this.

Perhaps now I should stop procrastinating and do the stuff I really must do?

Two weekends to go...

I'm now counting down in weekends. So we've got this weekend which will be spent down the coast saying goodbyes to our family down there. Here's a shout out to our "coastal" family! Next weekend we'll be spending time with some family here - so here's a shout out to our "Canberra" family! I'm going to miss everyone so much! I'm going to miss our humble little home. I remember last time we went overseas I was dreaming about being at home, sitting in the sun on the lounge, eating vegemite toast with a hot milo to wash it down with, all whilst watching Seinfeld or something equally silly and mind numbing. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy our last trip, it's just that you realise just how easy it is when you've got a comfortable home where you can just...be. Where if you're hungry or thirsty, you just go and get something from the kitchen a few steps away. If you're tired, you just go to bed. There's a shower and toilet handy when the need arises. We take all of this for granted which is only natural really, but it's nice to be reminded sometimes just how fortunate we are.

Graeme's days of being our visa courier are over for the moment. He collected our final visa for Mongolia the other day - very exciting! So now there's only a few straggly emails to send, an airport transfer to organise in Vladivostok, bags to pack, house to clean, pantry and fridge to clear out and that's pretty much it really. Oh, and then a few planes to catch! But other than that, we're all organised really. I don't even have the feeling that I've forgotten something. Maybe I have forgotten something and I'm in blissful ignorance!

We're slowly eating our way through our fridge and freezer so I think we're going to have some interesting meal combinations over the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday we received the documents we need to begin customs in Vladivostok, and with that our shipping agent sent us a DVD to deliver to Vladimir in the Silver Wind office in Vladivostok. I'm going to email Vladimir over the next couple of weeks to introduce ourselves and to give him a heads up we'll be bringing the DVD for him.

Worse things happen at sea

"Worse things happen at sea" is one old saying that we often come out with when something doesn't go very well. I said it a couple of days ago, after our car had started its oceanic journey, then I paused and said to Graeme, Ok, we can't say that again until the car is on dry land!

Ship docked at Port Botany

So this picture is a Google maps image of our ship docked at Port Botany from the Marine Traffic website. If you following green line with the arrows, where it ends is exactly where our ship was docked on Monday/Tuesday of this week. It's now off the radar, it's next destination is in Japan before heading to Busan in Korea. We won't be able to start tracking it's GPS location again until it gets closer to Japan.

Ship docked at Port Botany

Here's a satellite picture of Port Botany from nearmap.com. It's an awesome satellite image of the docks. "Our ship" would've been docked at the same spot as the one on the very left. "Our container" would've been sitting in one of those neat rows on the docks. All those diagonal lines on the very left of the docks are actually massive trucks waiting to have containers either loaded or unloaded. They're dwarfed by the even more massive ships!

Graeme dropped off our Mongolian visa applications today. Unfortunately, the Ambassador who would normally deal with this sort of thing was away today and so the person who accepted them left our valuable passports and visa applications sitting on their coffee table! Eeek. I hope they find their way to the Ambassador's desk instead. I tried sending them an email today to let them know the applications and passports had been hand delivered to their embassy, but the email bounced back because their inbox is full. Oh well, I'll call the embassy on Monday and make sure they're being processed. I'm honestly not concerned, I just like to cross my T's and dot my I's.

We have three weeks from today until we fly to Sydney for the start of our adventure, and I've got two and a half weeks left of work. I'll take a couple of days off prior to our flight to tie up any loose ends, or if everything's nicely organised by then, I'll just enjoy spending time at home and taking everything for granted because I'm going to miss that.