Vladivostok

After a week in central Asia, Vladivostok was a big change of pace. It's like going from Thunder Bay to Halifax. The weather was cool and rainy; the smell of the sea permeated the city; downtown was along the Pacific. There was much more tourist activity and activities, and many merchants spoke broken English.

According to our guidebook, it would cost $50 and two hours to get downtown from the airport, yet we found a $3 shuttle bus waiting (1 hour transit). When we arrived downtown, we tried to find our hotel on foot, and it took us about an hour to do so. Partly it was our lack of sleep, but it was also about 500 m from the street, in a stone plaza hidden behind a sheet metal fence. Here is the front. Pretty flash, eh?
It is the Amurskiy Zalif (Амурский Залив), the name of the bay it overlooks. Here's the plaza before it:
Below the highrise you can see the dozens of uneven stairs to get down from the street. Imagine crossing all that with heavy luggage. It gets worse: the colourful front entrance leads straight to three flights of stairs because it's built into a cliff. Overall, though, this was our best hotel: for $80 a night we got a clean and well-equipped room with a view of the Pacific. It was quiet except when there were Sea-Doos in the bay. Here is the view from our room. With private fridge, TV, balcony, and bath and free buffet breakfast! Amazing!

On the first day, we just walked around the centre of the city. Near our hotel is a long beach and boardwalk. Farther afield is the Aleutskaya street, which has the train station, phone/Internet centre, and several museums; Revolutionary Fighters Square (пл. Борцов Револуции) with a large plaza and a cluster of statues; and Okeanskiy avenue, a ritzy shopping street. Here are the statues, "Monument to the fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East" (Памятник Борцам за Власть Советов на Дальнем Востоке). There is a central statue and two smaller ones flanking it (the picture of the second one didn't turn out). Incidentally, Vladivostok means "To conquer the East."

Here is another memorial. Next to it is a cathedral and a World War 2 sub converted to a museum.
I should explain something about Vladivostok at this point. There are a lot of monuments there, and not only because it is a major city. It was founded in tsarist times as a military outpost, and in the USSR it became a "closed city" (ie foreigners were forbidden to visit it, it was removed from public maps, and citizens needed special permission to enter or leave). Under its tourist façade it is ultra-Russian, the antithesis of Canadian multiculturalism.

You can see from the map above that it is much closer to Korea and China than ancestral Russia. In 1917, the population was 80% East Asian. Japan, Britain, the US, and Canada landed troops there to fight for the tsar against the Bolsheviks, and when the city fell to the Red Army in 1922, that marked the end of the Civil War. During Stalin's reign, all non-Russians were killed or exiled from the city. It became closed in 1930 and remained so until 1992. Despite the collapse of the USSR, the population is still almost 100% ethnic Russian, and they are very pro-Russia. It reminds me a lot of the attitude of those who live in the US states which were seized from Mexico in the 1840's: any remaining Mexicans are "illegal immigrants" who deserve nothing but scorn and forced labour. In other words, there is a siege mentality because geographically, historically, and demographically, the territory should be part of Mexico. In the case of Vladivostok, they are keenly aware that they are a few hundred thousand Russians living next to 1.3 billion Chinese and Koreans.

Sorry for the depressing sidebar. Here, look at this bright and shiny arch!

We tried to find a scenic vista of the city, but this is the best we could find.

In our walks, we found many other poor districts as shown in the Urban Russia entry. Outside of downtown, it was very hard to cross major streets. We had to cross in groups of 4-5 people or cars wouldn't stop. Another frequent hazard is open manholes or pits in the sidewalk. Downtown has pedestrian underpasses, which are excellent, although we found one of them that was in disrepair and pitch black. (It was safer to brave the dark than try to cross the road at street level.) We only went out during daylight, so it was never very dangerous. Vladivostok is still a port city, though, so we were careful.

We also found a wonderfully shaggy park:
Several times, we saw a pack of domesticated dogs roving the streets near our hotel. I tried to take a picture, but they run pretty fast.

As in Irkutsk, we tried in vain to take a hydrofoil out along the shore. In this case, everything was ready but the weather stayed cold and rainy.

We found two art galleries, but after looking at the shoddy art in the lobby, we didn't even bother to go in.

Most shops in Russia have a security guard and a set of lockers for bags to deter shoplifters, but Vladivostok had many more. One grocery store had three armed guards and even a bookstore had one. They were always polite, at least to us.

There was supposed to be a giant Friday market in the central square, but either it starts in the afternoon or our guidebook lied to us again.

Our trip out of the city and out of the country was uneventful. Or perhaps I'm used to the eccentricities of Russian travel now. We left at midday and arrived in South Korea around 4pm local time.