Vladivostok is the terminus of the celebrated Trans Siberian Railway and I was keen to go to the station and meet a train and see just what the pax looked like after 8 days and nights on a Russian train. Are they met with ambulances and nurses and tea and bikkies, just like soldiers returning soldiers in WW1? But it was the wrong day and I shall never know. The station was impressive looking outside but incredibly small inside. I did go look, as there was a restaurant inside I wanted to see, as apparently it’s on a par with the Le Train Bleu in Paris, but it was closed and you could not see through the doors. Anna had never heard of it. I was tempted to look through the keyhole, but there were several old crones hanging around watching me and if this wasn’t evidence of spying, then you can call me Lenin.

We go to see the Botanical Gardens. My gang likes things like this and I have hopes of some nicely labeled local plants and trees, which will lead nicely into lectures on the taiga and tundra and all that. We do a long uphill walk through the trees, which meet a long way overhead and thus the ground is sparsely covered due to lack of light and I wonder just where we are going to end up. I ask Anna if we are there yet and she says we are, so I turns around and we leave and I write that one off. I did feed quite a few mosquitoes en route. We also stop at a great bleak looking building (they call it The White House) which is where President Ford met with Brezhnev, in 1974 and you are allowed to stare at the big tables and chairs and check the place out for dust and it is a real 100% non starter from a touristic point of view. It did have a nice clean toilet.

Toilets are probably what I inspect most. I am the world’s self appointed expert on these necessities, as when you take a gang somewhere, then they all have to ‘go’. Just multiply your family outings a few dozen times and throw in incontinence as well …. so I wanna see what you have, or in most 3rd world places, more precisely, what you don’t. It’s quite a revelation sometimes I can tell you. I shall never forget a small but posh museum in Sicily, where there were no seats in the ladies’ rooms stalls… why not?   The reply was priceless: “They get stolen”.   I could write the book.

That night I eat in the glory of the restaurant in the hotel and it is not wonderful. The menu is long and most of it looks impossible, but I order a couple of dishes and sit back. The waitress gossips on the phone. Some of the other hotel staff come in and get served HUGE amounts of food instantly. I felt like moving over and joining them as theirs looked good. So I sit and sit and in the end make international ” I shall die from lack of food soon..” signs and the waitress manages to convey to me that basically I have screwed the system. If I was a proper diner, then I would have had all those cold cuts and cheese and then some soup and THEN what I had ordered. I’ve jumped in with two hot dishes and therefore I am guilty of this crime. I shall have to wait. So I do. I order some vodka (I’m still mentally in last night) and this comes pronto, so feel better about things. Then the first dish comes … a so-called Halibut Souffle (I like to give the chef a workout). This is strong on halibut but short on souffle and needs some salt and the salt cellar on the table is empty and I do my “why are you standing around there doing nothing when you could be gainfully employed filling the salts…” act. Oy oy I’m tired after 38 days on the road and it’s time to get back.

So I have the morning to wander around and check the museum, which is not wonderful and then Sasha turned up and off we went. To get out of Russia you have to do a full immigration and customs check. The customs man stared at my form, which was the second copy from my arrival in Domodedovo (had to get that one in again somehow), which I knew should have been stamped but at 4am in DME they had not been interested and I could see a problem looming but he waived me through. The immigration woman stared very hard at my passport and the inbound immigration form inside, as it had had to be stamped off by every hotel I had stayed in. I had spent so long and in many different abodes too, that I was on my third Post It extension, so I am sure she was checking that there was no night not accounted for. Even if you come to Russia and stayed with friends or relations, you would still have to be registered with the police everywhere.

Upstairs my fellow Korean Air pax are sitting. Quite a few Amurricans, as this is just about the only way in and out around here. Two nice Mormon boys in their white shirts and plain ties are looking neatly scrubbed and pressed and I should think will be very happy to be back in Utah soon… must be uphill for them around here, though I heard that the locals are always impressed with their language skills. There was a group of Korean student types, all armed to the teeth with the latest in cell phones and looked like they were talking to, sending text message and photos all at the same time. I felt exceedingly low tech and wished I had thought to bring a nice Victorian traveler’s collapsible writing desk, which I could have set up in one corner. Although our smart looking 737 was sitting just about outside, we had one last thrilling bus ride, which of course took longer to put us on and take us off than had we just walked. Ah me….

On board, so clean, so all smiles and bows and no less than 7, yes 7 flight attendants which was severely overkill, especially for about 50 pax. I just sat and stared and half pinched myself.. it was like coming from Noah’s Ark and Dalavia Far East Airlines was fast becoming like a bad dream. Once we were airborne, the Chief Purser guy came around, all smiles again and I said “I used to do your job” so he says what do you want to drink and brings me a nice g and t and a large glass of red wine from up front and I am sitting there in a daze.

Two hours later we land in Seoul, where it was pouring and the cloud base was about 50 feet above the runway and we came in with much water rushing is all directions when he put on the reverse thrust. It looked like we had gone down a chute at a water park. I go to the hotel desk and a bright young thing offers me a brand new place 5 mins from the airport and the middle aged van driver who came to pick me up, immediately says how great he thinks my white hair looks, which I haven’t heard in a while (well the lady in the red dress may have said it ….) and I am installed in this small but clean establishment. When you enter your room, there is a pair of slippers already facing away from you so you can slip off your outside shoes and not sully their polished floor and then in the bathroom, there is yet another pair ready for you to use. I shall be dizzy just changing shoes.

Later I go upstairs and find the restau. I’m the only person there and the man dances all attendance upon me. I thought I would like to sample a Korean beer and he brings and I taste and it is just about the weakest beer l’ve ever tried. I said I wanted to try some Korean food and he suggested oxtails, which I love very much and had heard somewhere down the line that they do too. They come and it is a big bowl of oxtails in a rather watery sauce, but surrounded by about 10 more little bowls all containing things that looked like they had died unnatural deaths. Could not identify most of them, except kim chi, which is fermented Korean cabbage and which I like.. it is hot and garlicky. (NO Vera, do NOT ask them to get you some of this.. your inside would never recover). I had my meal and I must say that I would not have gone back again for it.

Next day is the long grind home, with crossing the date line so you get the same day twice .. the eternal Wednesday. Took the big United from Seoul to Tokyo – strident Amurrican tones of Madam Purser made sure you knew who was in charge. There I changed to Delta. This meant going to the other terminal and I managed to find my way to the gate where the transfer bus goes from and meet up with the guy who had been sitting opposite me on the UA plane. He is a global warrior and we could both write the airports book. A transfer bus turns up and we go out to get on and suddenly an officious looking Japanese woman stops us and says NO, we have arrived on UA and they are part of Star Alliance and they have their own bus. We say we are more than happy to travel on this completely empty bus, but it is not allowed. Gimme a break we both cry, but she will not be moved. 10 mins later a Star Alliance bus turns up, which is also empty and we are allowed our 5 minute ride across the tarmac.

I am now going to NY via Atlanta. As we say around here, Go Figure, but it was all a mileage ticket and beggars can’t be choosers, so I was going down south first, so after a 12 hours flight I could sit there and wait for two hours and then fly two hours back up north again.

The DL crew was good … of course the warriors and if you added up how long they had all been flying, then it would have gone into several hundred years. But they were cheerful and the woman who looked the worst preserved, facial tick and all, turned out to be the nicest. Kinda the Orient meets Senior Georgia. In ATL, the bags took for ages and the heat inside was just about on a par with outside and one woman keeled over in a faint. I had plenty of time to read the multi language signs about what you could not bring in and in my general state of exhaustion, took a moment to work out that in French ‘ualise’ should really have been ‘valise’ .. that should be sorted out.

I walked miles to find my gate for La Guardia and the flight which had been on time when I started the great trek, was now one hour late due to the weather and I had visions of expiring in a corner of ATL, as was struck down with terminal exhaustion all of a sudden, but in the end we made it and I was HOME.

So there. That’s the end of the story. Hope you enjoyed it. Feed back is always welcome.

Tim