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!!