Bumcheeks

a. shout-out to Angus Rae. Sorry you didn’t make it to the Mong with dad; he reckon’d you’d want to do too much ‘stuff’ anyway……. (talk him in to coming in winter, he’s keen to see the snow on the desert. I’ll even take proper Mongolian lessons so I can be a better guide)

b. Russia is great. Ulan-Ude is fab.

c. Russians are not conservatives when it comes to clothing. It’s normal in both Mongolia and Russia for men to pull their shirts half up or completely off (anywhere – supermarket, bus, restaurant). It’s normal in Russia for girls to wear shorts so short you can actually see half their bum cheeks (and I’m not kidding. There’s half a little bum poking outta those shorts!)

4. Eastern Siberia does not equate to cold. Note to self: next time, when you’re going somewhere in summer, pack for the summer. (It’s HOT and I only packed jeans!) Potential get-me-out-of-gaol card: Hack away at my pink nickers to make them short enough to be short-shorts, Russian style.

Above: the receipt for the purchase of my Eastern Siberia Lonely Planet PDF. My Australia credit card coupled with my current location in Ulan Ude meant that it was a bit tricky to purchase this online. I ended up tricking the system (how clever am I!?!) by giving them the above address. FYI, it was my credit card, I’ve got a second card in mum’s name in case I lose mine.

Today was a good day. I slept in, spent some time organising myself and then we walked to the train station to get our paper tickets turned in to real tickets. We lined up for about an hour and got our tickets with ease. Now we’ve got these very confusing pink tickets that we eventually decided were definitely the right day/time/train for what we wanted.

As we arrived on the platform we soon realised why there was so much commotion. The train that had just arrived was heading to Vladivostok. It was a bit of a slap in the face – it’s where we really wanted to go to, but couldn’t really afford the money/time to do so. What did make us feel better was the condition of the train. For a 4 day journey, it didn’t look like a total hoot.

We wandered in to a pretty church where the lady in charge gave us a spiel on Nicholai the Saint that the church is built for (in Russian of course, so I didn’t catch much) and a little laminated card with him on it so we knew who we were praying to. It was very well kept and very well used and had the beautiful smell of beeswax candles hovering in the air.

Below: the vegie garden next to the church; praying inside; the church

 

 

We kept wandering and found ourselves a supermarket (I was desperate for water) that had a beepy thing that wirelessly opened the locked refrigerator door. Wandered some more and found an epic supermarket and I got myself some home-dried apricots, prunes, yogurt, fresh bread and bits and pieces. The smoked fish they were selling looked the same as what dad and I ate on the shoreline of Lake Khovsgol, but it was a buttload more expensive.

Then we wandered to a dead end and we couldn’t bring ourselves to climb under the stationary train (it had just pulled up and other people were just ducking under it like a bridge. All I could imagine was getting most of the way under and then losing my leg and mum saying ‘you stupid, stupid girl’ with emphasis on stupid).

We successfully hailed a taxi and got home – to our front door, might I add! It cost 150 Rubies which is about $5 ish. I proceeded to do nothing all afternoon. For five hours I sat in bed, laid in bed, sat up in bed, slept in bed, played on my computer in bed, Skyped mum and dad in bed…… It was just great.

About 8:30pm we headed out on a photo expedition. There’s a lovely fountain up the road that plays classical music while the water fountain dances to it. I got some cool-ish photos and we kept wandering. Lovely evening – fresh leaf smell in the air, lots of friendly people sharing ice creams and laughing, people holding hands, kids climbing statues – it’s just got the loveliest atmosphere here.

Tomorrow I am hitting the Geological Museum. Bring it on!