Sunday May 18th - Vladivostok,
It's cold and cloudy. I am staying in today. May go out later on.
Yesterday I walked around town. Visited Golden bay Horn where I saw real submarine on side of the road on display class C 56. right next to this is Russian orthodox church where there were wedding going on every 10 minutes. it was good day for weddings. I enjoyed the beautiful brides. Everybody carried huge bottles of beer whole day long. even you can visit museum with bottle of beer. it's to get a beer then water.
There are also Russian navy on this harbor. when to down town and guess what God Bless them but saw bunch of Hare Krishna spreading the good word of lord in this ungodly country. I followed them to their place as I heard before on my reading that they have good food and I could use some good Indian food. Well the place I 've been looking all over for at least an hour asking lots of people but couldn't find it. So I followed the group and place happens to be on main street busy with design clothes shopping. there is small door and bunch of cement bags all over the floor as if the earth quake has just hit this place. there is small stair case going in basement and i went down and found of bunch of Russian converts messing at bottom. I was greeted with Hare Krishna and offered mixed vegetables in plastic container. there was Krishna Cafe but it was closed down. One young Russian convert named Sergei spoke brilliant Hindi and even wrote nicely. I felt bad that e knew more than I did. (see photos)
Tomorrow Monday and it's my D-Day. We start at 9AM to hassle with Russian Custom. Everybody wishes me good luck and I am not sure what that means. I know they have huge back logs of car waiting to be cleared. I will need that good luck. They are lazy people. They stop working at 3Pm and take a long lunch time. I will have to buy car Insurance before I go to Custom. no one seem to know what the real procedure is.
By the way talking about bureaucracies, we need to register our visa at every city we visit. What this means is that they give you small piece of paper at immigration which you need to carry with you all the time. Every hotel you stay they need to stamp that. Some hotels don’t so then you need to find tourist agency who will charge you $30 for the stamp. Russian authority need to know where you are all the time. If you miss any days then when you exit the country they can create a problem or at least an opportunity for bribe. I have heard it could be as big as $900 fine.
As we going to camp out in some areas, we need to figure this out.
By the way there are no maps for the city. I looked for map store yesterday, found book stores but no maps.
The Airport is about 50 KM from the hotel or town. Ami will be arriving at 2:00PM so I need to get the car before that and start looking for airport. The city is flooded with Hondas and Toyotas. I also saw some Suzukis too. Japs are all over. Few Audi and Mercs. Even one Hummer and couple of Fords. They say here that if you see an expensive car here – like that hummer- chances are that belongs to Russian Mafia.Talking about the cars. Only about one car in a thousand there was left hand drive. Since in Russia (unlike Japan) the cars travel on the right side of the road, having right hand drive cars makes for an interesting situation