Wedding Bells

Day 71 Saturday 11^th June 2011

Looking out of our window at 6.30 this morning I could hear some clanging in the car park but it was difficult to make out what it was because the fog was quite thick. Through the mist though I could clearly hear English being spoken and as the fog cleared a little it revealed an overland SUV kitted out for rough travel.

Duncan and Kay's Overlander

Fog Burning off

We got ourselves dressed and went down to the car park and introduced ourselves to Duncan and Kay who were Scots on their way from Australia, where they had lived for the past two years, to the UK via Russia and then they were making their way back to Oz again. They had just got their vehicle out of customs the previous night after a five day wait but they were having problems getting diesel and had also heard of the troubles in Mongolia about diesel shortages. We pointed them in the direction of the Horizons Unlimited website to get some more information – Horizons is our encyclopedia of overland travel information – and we sat and had breakfast together before they set off in search of some calor gas for their journey.

We set off on our own journey down to the station terminus where we took a few pictures of the trains and stood and people watched before taking a walk down to the marina frontage which, we discovered, was not accessible so the inevitable uphill walk loomed heavy (Vladivostok is very hilly and these hills are pretty steep in places). But at least with all the roads and pavements dug up and building work going on overhead the Russians have done away with the namby pamby system that we have called health and safety – they do it the old way (as it should be back home in my opinion) – you use your common sense and avoid having an accident and if you do, tough, because you ain’t gonna sue anyone.

Vladivostok Station - end of the Trans Siberian Railway

Strange man at the station

Another stop at the shop had us stocking up on food and drink ready for the holiday weekend – Monday here is Russia Day and a public holiday – so, together with the hotel breakfast, we will self sufficient for a few days except for tonight when we met up with Yuri Melnikov, our clearing agent, and went for a beer and a Chinese meal.  Yuri helped fill in some of practical stuff that we wanted to know about such as the fuel situation in Russia, how to get insurance for the bikes (he will sort this out for us) and he is going to take us to a shop to get a cheap pay as you go nationwide mobile as he says we should carry one (I gave my Blackberry to Gina to take back to the UK with her). We are meeting Yuri again on Monday to pay a visit to the local motorcycle museum.

We walked back to the hotel and the wedding party that had arrived during the afternoon was now in full swing and it spilled out onto the car park where a heart shaped hot air Chinese lantern was lit and sailed away across the harbour much to the delight of the drunken noisy guests – these being the same ones that had earlier drunk a champagne toast in the car park and tossed the glasses over their heads some of which smashed into parked cars with the remainder smashing on the car park surface. Not to worry though because the hotel sent out a cleaner straight away and the evidence was removed immediately – don’t you just love a Russian wedding. The party carried on full swing into the night luckily drowning out the sounds of us two old men snoring in our cots.