The End of The Line (for some)

Day 83 Thursday 23^rd June 2011 

A rainy day, hooray – something different at last  and also time for me to get a haircut. A brief spell of flicking through the pages of my Russian dictionary found the word for barber/hairdresser with another bookmark against the phrase “not too short please !”. We set off in earnest to find the shop with the right signage, found one but it was more of a ladies salon but we struck lucky a bit further along the road when a dingy shop entrance opened out into quite a modern salon.

The phrasebook was worth its weight in gold because no-one spoke English and my frantic stabbing with my stubby finger against the “not too short phrase” was understood. However, my heart sank when she got out the electric clippers and attacked my golden mop with gusto but even Mark had to agree that the final cut wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it was going to turn out.

So here I was now, newly shorn entering back into the Vladivostok traffic. We followed a familiar route to the local marketplace and then station and port before resigning ourselves to the trudge back up the steep hill to the hotel.

We caught up with Yuri on the phone, still no news of the bikes, so we went to bar where we met Jean, the French guy, and we agreed to meet up for dinner at eight. We know that we now have an evening meal included in our hotel package but a chance to get out was not to be missed.

Later on we got ourselves ready and sauntered down to the bar area ready to meet Jean although we knew that the French are always late so we got ourselves a beer and sat down. A couple next to us was speaking English so we introduced ourselves to Andy from London and Helen from Swindon who had just arrived in Vladivostok after taking the Trans Siberian railway. They were independent of each other but had booked with the same tour. There was also another guy who had started out with them but had decided to stay an extra day in Irktusk and so would not be in Vladivostok until tomorrow by which time they would have left for the airport.

We had a long chat and eventually around 10pm Jean showed up (just a mere two hours late) and we headed down the hill to the restaurant that we had eaten in a couple of days ago with the Fins. A good meal, good company but not a good night’s sleep because there was some sort of noisy party going on in the hotel – no change there then !

Andy from London and Helen from Swindon newly arrived on the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow

Jean Ride eventually turns up for dinner two hours late (notice my new haircut Mwah )