A Train Journey to Beat Them All: Ulan-Ude to Ulaan Baatar, Mongoliaby Randi / July 19, 2017
Our first stop and only city visited in Mongolia (also the only city in Mongolia, from what I saw of the rest of the country), Ulaan Baatar improved upon the food in the eastern-Asia part of our trip, continued the sad tradition of incredibly polluted air, and worsened the car traffic situation so far. It’s hard to say no to this city since it has so many Loving Huts and even better other vegan restaurants (I know! In Mongolia! So many!), but I think the annoying parts of it outweigh my ability to have good food. Luckily, we were there for Naadam, the national annual festival of the Three Sports of Men, dedicated to Genghis (pronounced Chingis here, and ya know what, I’m gonna call him Chingis because that’s the real Mongolian way) Khan. Naadam (for a separate post) was interesting and something big and fun to do. Without it, Ulaan Baatar is a dilapidated city with some temples and monasteries and museums but I quickly got tired of it. Exhausted, really. Maybe because I couldn’t breathe.
Chingissssss what’s up mannnn
After we landed in Ulaan Baatar at 6:30am, we DIDN’T walk with all our bags to our hostel! A first! We had a car waiting for us, thanks to the tour company we booked our countryside trip with. More on that shitshow in a later post too, but at least they drove us to our hostel. Of course the driver asked when he dropped us off if we had money to pay, even though he was from the tour company who offered the ride a perk of the package. We said no and he just shrugged and said goodbye, so yeah. That’s annoying.
He dropped us at the Modern Mongol hostel, which had a sign on the door saying check-in was from 2pm to 6pm, and reception opens at 9am-11am, some time in there. Um. You cannot have a SIGN ON THE ACTUAL DOOR be the only way you communicate to guests that there will be no one to OPEN THE DOOR. I was so mad I was ready it burn it down. Like they didn’t send an email or say on their pages on booking.com or hostelworld that this was the case. You need to make sure your guests know this information BEFORE they arrive. It was freaking 7am! We had to wait at least 2 hours for a person to let us in? Bullshit. Luckily, another guest let us in, and there was a big lobby sitting area so we set up camp, got out our toiletries and camping towels, plugged in our devices, and showered in the pretty big shared bathroom, all before checking in. (This place had many more showers than toilets. Not the right ratio, guys.) We didn’t even care about how we were making a mess with all our shit all over the place. You don’t tell us the details about checking in (not even checking in to the room! Coming in to the place just to leave our bags!) before we arrive, we don’t care about making the lobby our own. We showered so good. It was lovely. I mean it was a shitty hostel and none of the showers had functioning drains (always bring shower shoes) but still.
The day we arrived was Inauguration Day for Mongolia’s new President! We didn’t really see any of it besides this group of army doers in Sukhbatar Square, the main square in UB. With Naadam starting the very next day, it was a super exciting time for the country and capital!
Unfortunately, our beloved friend (and fellow lawyer/travel blogger) Sivani at Ever the Wayfarer was unable to join us for this Mongolia portion of our trip as planned, and we were very sad to not have her around to show us how to fashion a sink out of a twig and some fabric as we knew she could have once we were sinkless in the countryside. However, sorry Sivani but it’s for the best that you weren’t in Ulaan Baatar with us because our ‘triple’ room barely fit one person. We had to put all of our stuff on the bunkbeds because there was no floor space! You would have been sleeping with all my peanut butter and accidentally vegan cookie finds! (Actually that sounds amazing.) Also, we learned that despite appearances (of the lobby), this hostel was not great. It attracted all the crowds I despise: young teenage blonde girls who facetimed their boyfriends all night every night without regard for how much bandwidth they were using OR how loud they were being (so loud, heard them always); dirty older European backpackers who do their laundry in the sinks (despite their being a machine) as a GROUP ACTIVITY so people who actually need to use the sinks for regular usages are forced to stand behind them and give ‘are you kidding me with this?’ looks at them in the mirror as they take over all 4 sinks; older white female Americans who praise themselves for how liberal they are (while praising Bernie) while repeating the same story over and over about the one time they told a white man not to be racist (it was barely a story; do more, white women); and generic other yoots who have no consideration for how loud they are throughout the night. Oh and old Chinese men who shout at each other in the hallway in the middle of the night. Oh and people who play music in the common areas without headphones like they’re doing the rest of us a service. So, everybody I hate. Also, the wifi at Modern Mongol was so bad it was pretty much nonexistent (which is why we are now two weeks behind ughh I hate it I’m sorry). Hard no on a recommendation.
obviously a picture of the train station should be higher up the post but weebly just does notttt like the wifi here and it’s easier to type this caption than move a picture
Out in the city, I was immediately struck by how bad the air was. It was like how Siberia was very polluted, but the car and traffic situation here is more like Bangkok – long, long lights, exhaust blown right in your face by substandard unregulated engines no matter where you stand, and dangerous drivers. At least in Bangkok there are a lot of overpasses for pedestrians to use on busy streets. This was a bad situation. And despite UB being the coldest capital city in the world (true fact, though we haven’t gotten a clear answer about whether that’s due to extremely low winter temperatures or a low overall yearly average of temperatures), it was hot and dry and burningly sunny most of the time. I felt asthmatic the whole time I was there, like my lungs were screaming and I couldn’t get a deep breath. That’s so awful! It also meant pretty much every time I stepped outside, I was exhausted, not being able to get enough oxygen. I must get a mask for China. I hope all you republicans enjoy when your part of the world has air like this too.
It’s hard to ignore the air when we need that to live, but the city apart from that was okay, I guess. It’s really nothing special, and the best part of it is the various vegan restaurants which we will talk about separately (because there are so many!) It looks clearly third world, and so many city buildings (aside from the skyscrapers) are very dilapidated – and almost every single building in the countryside is decaying or straight up falling apart. Literally half of the country’s 3 million residents live in this city, with the rest spread over the vast open spaces of the countryside. With UB representing so much of the country’s citizenry and most of its wealth, it’s clear that governmental corruption and mismanagement has done all of Mongolia a disservice, to say the least.
Chojin Lama Temple
There are some nice tourist attractions though. We first went to the Chojin Lama Temple Museum, which survived the communist purge of all things religious by being a ‘museum’ of religion. It was really close to the hostel, so an easy first site. That also means it’s right in the middle of the city, adjacent to modern buildings and skyscraper-types. The juxtaposition of this super old temple with the sleek new office buildings was interesting, like how in London the Tower Bridge is like next to the Gherkin. I think I mean the Gherkin; it’s been too long already.
-OH OK – you know how in the Ulan-Ude post I talked about the lama in the monastery outside of town we went to and his body was embalmed for like centuries (or it was a ‘miracle’) but his head was papier-mache and I was like hey where’s your head? OKAY I WAS MISTAKEN. The Ulan-Ude shiny lama corpse was NOT papier-mache (you gotta say it the French way it’s funner) headed; he was fully intact just all head and body that’s been dead forever but still shiny. The papier-mache headed lama was HERE! At the Chogin Lama Temple. I KNOW, we are seeing SO MANY F-ING EMBALMED CORPSES that I’m mixing them up! It’s like I’m back in my internship at the D.A.’s office! JFC if you are mixing up your embalmed mummies you are seeing TOO MANY. And we have more to come in China! Sorry, I will try to keep them straighter but seriously how do you tell mummified lamas apart? (That sounds like the beginning of a joke.) Anyway, guess who has two thumbs and took a PICTUREEEEE? (imagine me pointing to myself with my two thumbs)
forgive me buddha!
The Chogin Lama temple was very pretty, and I enjoyed it because it was our first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. I was not yet very sick of seeing the same faded colorful fabrics and dingy Buddha statues and crazy scary demon sculptures. I would indeed get sick of all this very, very quickly.
Husband made me do a face hole in the temple grounds, as he always does, so here is my reluctant agreement.
We lucked out with the bright sunny weather for these pictures, but we quickly realized that UB, and Mongolia in general, heat and sun are not playing. They are serious, and they are intense. Coupled with the terrible air quality, the immobilizing burn of the sun was pretty miserable. It rained one day and it felt sooo amazing afterwards. There was actual humidity and I could breathe! It lasted an hour. Whoever talks about how dry heat is so great is making shit up.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
I liked this big statue of Chingis Khan (at least I think it’s Chingis…I mean it’s a statue and it’s in a museum in Mongolia, odds are that it’s Chingis) and a few ink drawings about his time, (1162-1227). The ink drawings were like recent, not from then, but still they were cool. Or I saw them in a brief moment of lucidity and that’s why they stuck.
lol right and left wise wangs
Later in our stay, we visited the Gandan Khiid monastery complex, which was kind of far from everything cool (like 45 minute walk from wherever you were, literally, no matter where, like everything in this city actually but worse) and actually not cool itself. It was whatever. Maybe I’m down on it because the bathrooms were locked and the one staff member on the huge grounds was the living embodiment of the shruggie emoji when I said hey the bathrooms are locked. Maybe I’m down on it because the name translates to “The Great Place of Complete Joy” and like no, if you’re not going to let me pee this is nowhere near even partial joy. Anyway, it’s home to the spiritual head of Mongolia, the Khamba Lama. So many lamas! It’s the most important monastery in the country, which I would not have believed looking at it. Originally, the monastery was built on the site in 1785, and newer buildings and temples have been built up since, though we couldn’t go in most of them. The ground is filled with stupas and little temples and shacks that were locked. I couldn’t really get a handle on the place. (I can’t get pictures to load because Weebly is awful and the internet here is too so imagine another temple/monastery.)
Over 800 monks live there, which is crazy because I didn’t see any.
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, which is down in the south of the city close to the Naadam stadium. Bogd Khan means ‘holy king’, and the palace is where the last holy king of Mongolia lived. The guidebook says it’s ‘full of ghosts’. The various small pavilions house statues of Buddhas of all sorts (who knew there wasn’t just a Buddha? Apparently anyone can become a Buddha, so we were told. Didn’t know!), lots of paintings of insane scenes of Buddha and friends and demons and all sorts of religious and wacky imagery, and random objects like musical instruments and, like, dishware.
There’s also a winter palace (like the Hermitage!) on the site that is a museum of the bog man’s personal possessions, like a lot of his furs and crowns and like, more dishware. Be warned, as I was not, that many rooms are full of bog stomper’s stuffed animals. I do not mean the cute fluffy kind that we all still sleep with. I mean real animals that were taxidermied. Rooms and rooms of them. All sorts. Big, small, birds, lions, polar bears, it was gross and unnecessary. Skip the winter palace.
Our last museum in UB was the unique Intellectual Museum, a private man’s shrine to puzzles. So there’s this genius but probably kookoopants man who the staff refers to as ‘the founder’ which doesn’t sound culty at all who has been making puzzles since he was a child, so he was like why not put all this in a museum along with all my weird baby dolls? A guide takes you around and shows you how to do a lot of them, and gives them to you to try. It will successfully make you feel like an idiot. They are impossible to do without knowing the tricks and stuff, but the guide will do them all in like 4 seconds and it’s hard to remember that it was her job to learn how. Anyway, there are all sorts, from secret boxes that open their compartments if you pull the right pieces apart, to those silver keys that slide apart if you twist them a certain way but your brain does NOT want to ever remember how to twist them, to strings of metal balls that when aligned properly make a sturdy pyramid (this one I can now do! so proud), to wooden rubix cube type things that will just drive you crazy. In addition, there is an entire floor of all the elaborate, and I mean elaborate, chess boards that The Master made. He either made or designed everything in this museum himself, btw. He is an impressive, prolific, probably socially awkward guy. The chess boards range from tiny marble boards with coral figures to gigantic (like 15 foot) wooden boards that are puzzles to make the table and board, and then each of the figures is its own intricate puzzle. I mean. Crazy. The museum offers visitors a few of these puzzles and chess players to try to put together for cash prizes. They range from $1,000 to $100,000, and I don’t think anyone has ever won, they are so difficult. I bet Sydney Bristow could do it but I am just not a spacial puzzle genius person.
The museum doesn’t let you take pictures, but if you have extra time in UB it’s a decent place to visit. You could get the same idea from buying a few of those wooden puzzle type jawns and trying to solve it for years and years until you go crazy because you just can’t, but it was cool to see all the different kinds and all the beautiful chess boards Our Great Leader made. I would have called it just a puzzle museum though, because calling it the Intellectual Museum makes it seem like the ability to solve this puzzles is what makes someone smart when that isn’t the case you just need to learn the trick to it I’m not upset about it at all.
Taraji P. Park
On one of our UB days, we took a day trip (with Sunpath, the company doing our longer trip to the countryside) to see Terelj National Park, which I refer to as the Taraji P. Henson National Park, obviously. I think this was by far our best day in Mongolia – the best natural beauty in the country, fun sites, and none of the whole living-in-the-desert-and-not-showering bullshit. Taraji was beautiful (she is, girl) but the drive was a little hard. Haha, I would have killed for a drive that hard during our week in the desert. Coming soon.
With our teenage guide (they all are!), we hiked a nice hike to a meditation center slash temple that was pretty cool. On the walk, there are all these numbered signs with different sayings (of the Buddha I guess?), and at one point you are supposed to spin a wheel to see which saying you need to focus on. I got #41 (my favorite Dave Matthews song!), and this is apparently what I need to think about for the next year:
girl you don’t have to tell ME people aren’t clean after the month I’ve had
Do all the parentheses mean you can replace words with new words? like Mad Libs?
view from the meditation center
on our hike
Ger camp in Terelj, like the ones we lived in the folowing week
Taraji also included Turtle Rock, a natural rock formation that looks like a turtle. Cute! Our guide said we could climb up it so we did, which was a bad idea. It is a frightening climb up very steep staggering rocks. We didn’t expect such a challenging climb to be the result of the guide’s casual suggestion. At one point, you have to go through this hole. We watched a few people and then said hell. no.
see the turtle?
nahhhh
The best part of the day trip to Terelj was seeing the GIGANTIC CHINGIS KHAN STATUE! It is 40 meters tall, but seems bigger, with Chingis just freaking enormous and depicted riding a horse so the whole thing is just so flipping big and fun and hilarious.
took this from the horse’s head, which you climb up!
Inside the complex (very nice complex!), there’s a museum that not-so-accurately charts Mongolia’s ‘illustrious’ history, and there’s a boot. The biggest Mongolian boot in the world.
I highly recommend doing the day trip to Terelj and Chingis statue if you find yourself in this country for some reason.
As has been the case all over Asia, we saw some amazing signs, like this club dedicated to our favorite Nicholas Cage movie.
And of course we both immediately realized what our legal professions hold once we return to work:
na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BAT LAWWWW
So, overall UB was okay. We had some good times, but mostly we were glad to be there for Naadam (next post) and some good vegan restaurants (actual next post). Really, we were excited to end our city time and go out for our week in the countryside and the desert, because we heard that that is where Mongolia really shines. Hoo boy. Next next next post. Stay tuned for that carnival of atrocities.
that’s wonderful dear!
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St. Petersburg, Russia: So Much Better Than What “Anastasia” Taught Me
Greetings from Cankt Peterbourg! I wish I could access the Russian keyboard on this little netbook but I can’t/don’t feel like it. We’re having a great time in St. Petersburg, which in English adds the ‘s’ after Peter but in the Russian there’s no ‘s’! Fun! With! Languages! Before this trip, my only exposure to this quite charming city was the song from “Anastasia” that starts: “St. Petersburg is gloomy! St. Petersburg is bleak! My underwear got frozen standing here all week!” But it’s better than that. Well that is a very low bar but St. Petersburg is very nice. Though it has been raining hard a lot which is gloomy, and yes it is cold but like, for the summer, not for the earth, and definitely not cold enough to freeze undies. The city is a very interesting mix of old and new school while still seeming totally European. We are surely easing in slowly to the onslaught of Soviet towns we will be seeing later, because right now it still feels like we’re in Europe.
Well, except for the Cyrillic everywhere! It is so strange and so cool to finally see what we have been preparing for with our Russian classes. We’re doing great, if not at communicating with people (omg SLOW DOWN (oh and maybe could you write it down I’m better at reading kthx)) then at least at reading signs (and menus! Most are in English too! We’re great at that!). They say for all languages you really learn when you are immersed, and I can see how true that would be for Russian, now that we actually are surrounded by it and its alphabet. We’re definitely getting stronger with reading Cyrillic quickly and I have high hopes that that will lead to comprehension. Maybe by the time we get to Siberia we will actually be able to handle the fact that no one will speak English! I dream big.
When we got off the train on Saturday at Finylandskiy Vauxhall (named after the country we had just left? That’s confusing!), we walked around the station to find the giant Lenin statue, commemorating the big speech he gave when he arrived in St. Petey’s in 1917 during the Revolution. We start our sightseeing immediately, even when we have 90-pound backpacks on (and I’m frontpacking too ughhh I have too much stuff but I don’t know what I can get rid of! I really did just bring the bare minimum but we’re going to every season!). We walked the half hour or so to our hostel, The Travellers’ Palace, and it was hot so that was pretty rough because like I said, 90 pounds. I will either break or be super strong by the end of this. The receptionist at the hostel is very friendly and helpful, and even though we can hear every footstep people take at all hours of the night and they sound like gorillas stomping around and even though someone stole my bananas and apples from the fridge (they were labelled!) (and I KNOW bananas in the fridge is weird but I was keeping everything together in the labelled bag (so f-ing ironic!)), we like the hostel fine. The shower is legit the strongest I can remember taking in my entire life, like it was intended for an elephant and I wish I could take it with me. The rooms here are named after famous Russian literary characters, like Onegin and Catherine. It was quite the good omen when we were put in Karenina, considering Anna K is my favorite book (once you pretend that that final section about Levin finding Jesus by talking to peasants (“Life is often so unpleasant / You would know this, as a peasant!”) doesn’t exist)! There’s a little light-up train on my bedside table and everything, haha so morbid. And across the hall is the room called Bolkonsky, like the prince’s family in War & Peace! So it’s like the universe wants me to keep singing “The Great Comet” at every moment of this trip!
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Nevsky Prospekt
Horse Wash!
Once we dropped our stuff, it was already late afternoon, so the best use of our time was to stroll the Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard running through the city that everyone spells with a K even in English so I’m rolling with it. It houses all the big stores, lots of restaurants, a good number of statues and monuments, and lots and lots of people. Walking along it is a great first thing to do in St. Petey’s because you can get a sense of the city’s layout and feel, while seeing both important historical markers and fun Russian chain stores (like the Russian version of Sephora whose Russian name is pronounced like Rive Gauche lol that and Sushi Wok, where the ‘sushi’ is in Cyrillic but the ‘wok’ is in our/Latin characters, crack me up every time. There are also horse statues along the various canals which we liked because it reminds us of our flat in London (those who have been over and have seen what we call the Horse Wash will know why!).
Singersss
On the Nevksy Prospekt is the famous Singers sewing machine factory, or the building that used to be that and now is a giant bookstore in the most beautiful building along the boulevard. Inside, they had a snack section that had vegan bars (similar to Lara Bars)! Marked and everything! Come on obviously I love books and bookstores but we can’t buy books on this trip (or anything) but we need snacks. We also saw this monument to Catherine the Great (with her laavaaahs).
you can call me kitty kat
So many canals all over the place, so they call StP the Venice of the North and it’s hard to get a handle on streets
The other hugely famous building along the Nevsky Prospekt is the giant department store Gostiny Dvor. Although we are so determined not to add anything to our packs right at the beginning of the summer, we have a necessity exception – and we needed umbrellas so we bought umbrellas there yesterday (after we got drenched in a downpour, naturally). Upstairs at the Gostiny Dvor, the long, curving walkways are nearly empty and provide great views of the Prospekt. What most people don’t find, however, is the INSANE CELEBRITY FIGURE AND ANIMAL SCULPTURE GARDEN around a far bend that no one goes to. OH MY GOD, look, it’s Hagrid and the Harry Potter kids STANDING BEHIND PUTIN! No big deal! Don’t mind the peasants with sickles! OR THE DINOSAUR! Why this isn’t the #1 thing to do in St. Petersburg I will never understand. As it is, it’s pretty much hidden and NO ONE was there or even nearby so I think I discovered some kind of magical walkway.
you’re a wizard vladdy
Ruby Sparks was a very good movie
As for serious things, the Kazan Cathedral is along the Prospekt, a Russian Orthodox church dedicated not to Elia or even Zoe but to Our Lady of Kazan, which I know is very helpful. It’s not a very nice looking Cathedral, kind of the most Soviet and drab-looking thing we’ve seen yet, but it could just be that it is severely outshone by the gorgeous cathedral across the way from it, The Church of Spilled Blood. I know, I know, it doesn’t exactly sound like the most beautiful spot in all St. Petersburg, but it is! It’s real name is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which yes doesn’t really help my case. So it’s built around the spot where Alexander II was mortally wounded and inside there’s a little stone area and canopy marking the exact spot where he was hit by grenades and suffered the injuries that killed him a little later (he actually died in the Hermitage) you know what why don’t I just show you:
no use crying over spilled oooohhhh nm
come at me laser jesus
See it really is soo beautiful even though it’s so dire. But all churches are built around and commemorating dire circumstances. This church, which we went in yesterday, is one of the most incredible churches I’ve ever seen, definitely in my top five. I know I said in a recent Spain post that ugh churches, who can tell them apart after St Peter’s, but this was a great one. I was blown away by how beautiful it was inside and outside. Usually they’re whatever on the inside, full of paintings of oldies and crucifixen, but this one is decorated in 100% MOSAIC. Every painting and image you see is made up of tiny tiles (that is what mosaic means!). See that lady getting lasered from the heavens by a laser-happy Jesus? ALL TILES. How incredible is this?
what happens if the glue stops working rain of tiles |
This canopy covers the actual spot where Alexander II was hit by the grenade/s. They built the church around it. |
this is the most beautiful lavish door to jesus I’ve ever seen
THE HERMITAGE
erma gerd, the hermiterge
On Sunday, we woke up early (lol not) and went to The Hermitage, the endless museum inside the Winter Palace. We read about how crowded it is, especially in the summer, and how the lines for tickets can stretch to a kilometer long. Because of this, we were tempted to buy tickets online, but they cost $18 online and only 700 rubles in person so we decided to risk it. And it’s a good thing we did, because there was no line. We bought tickets at one of several kiosks in the courtyard and went right in. On a Sunday! In the summer! We were so pleased with ourselves and got a little too cocky about it because after about an hour and half the Chinese cruise ship groups arrived ahhhh! It was wall to wall and they really like to push so it got a little rough. But it was still great. The Hermitage has millions of pieces of art, so you really need a plan to make sure you see what you wanna see. The state rooms of the palace and the Russian art are the most important. The Italian and French art is great, of course, but we’ve seen that literally every weekend at museums in London. That sounds very ridiculous of me but when you live in a museumy city like London, it’s important to see stuff that’s different from what you see all the time and feel okay about skipping the same same stuff. So in the Hermitage, we focused on the palace parts, the preserved rooms and furniture and sculptures and stuff, over paintings that have nothing to do with Russian history. And the palace rooms, hoo boy are they amazing. We both love malachite and cobalt shiz and this palace was full of both. It was all so stunning. I especially loved this gazebo.
i wish luke and lorelai got married on this one
We were both obsessed with the library, which was so Belle. And I loved the Peacock Clock, which I didn’t know at first even was a clock. I mean the tiny mushroom thing at the bottom has a clock on it so it’s not like the whole amazing gold artwork is a clock, it’s literally just the smallest piece of it that is a clock, but still, pretty cool. I got in fights with Chinese men who were trying to push me aside when I was taking this picture.
The Hermitage is important to visit, I think, since it’s such a well-known tourist attraction, but it’s exhausting. It goes on forever, and the bathrooms are very poorly located. We had to backtrack through to the entrance to find one, when we were like in the middle of the top floor. So dumb. It shouldn’t be that hard! But I’m glad we went and saw the great pieces they had. It’s easy to spend hours and hours there, but don’t.
I expect grander thrones 
how beautiful is this fancy witch’s cauldron 
a clock that is also a giant piece of furntiure |
not sure what this was but i liked it it was like a big like thing 
this was called the boudoir but it was just a lot of velvety chairs so nice though |
Even though we were pretty beat after our day at the Hermiterge, we decided to walk to St. Isaac’s Cathedral next (in the pouring rain! no umbrellas yet!) and climb the 260 stairs to the top of the golden dome! For the view! So pretty! The golden dome you see in the picture is very striking in the skyline. The climb wasn’t that bad at all, and it was worth it for the stunning views. Note that the main Cathedral is one ticket and the entrance for the climb to the top of the dome is another separate ticket. It’s worth it though! Again I’m proved wrong because the insides of this church were beautiful too. Russia keeps proving me wrong about church insides! St. Isaac’s was full of malachite columns which were stunning.
the view from the top of Isaac’s
main altar at Isaac’s |
that’s Isaac! no i don’t know |
The cathedral tour of Russia is only just beginning! After we saw the Church of Spilled Blood, we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of St. Petersburg built by Peter the Great in 1703. It’s a big complex full of various museums, but we skipped the many museums (so many museums!) and went straight to the Peter & Paul Cathedral, the gold spire in the city skyline. This Cathedral houses the tombs of Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III, and there’s a little room off to the side with the Romanovs, including Anastasia, which I was excited to see and then realized how messed up that is. But speaking of, I still haven’t written about the new Broadway musical so maybe I will do that in honor of seeing her tomb! So morbid I’m sorry. It was a decent show, and a decent church. The fortress was best for its views of the Hermitage and other stately buildings from the other side of the river. Luckily today was the one sunny day in the middle of lots of rain so this view on our walk along the riverfront fortress was lovely.
the Romanovs tombs
After we saw all the things Monday, we took the subway (new subway!) down to the Grand Maket Rossiya, which is a private museum of a scale model of ALL OF RUSSIA. It is AWESOME. It shows everyday life in every part of Russia, from St. Petersburg (included the building we were in, weeeird) and all the monuments we’ve seen so far, to Moscow, to Siberia and the Urals and the Sochi Olympics and farmers everywhere and a movie studio with various funny backlots and people on the beach and lots of trains and lots of construction and just EVERYTHING you could imagine in life, they had it on the model. It was so cool, and so giant and detailed that it took an hour and a half just to walk around it once. One of the coolest parts was that the lights would go down every 13 minutes for 2 minutes, gradually to show the sun setting and then rising. Some of the ‘night’ sections there were thunderstorms which was kind of crazy. My favorite part, of course, was that Vinnie Poo (the Russian Winnie the Pooh who is NOTHING like the Winnie we know) was hidden in one of the forests. I also loved the “Bad Husband” section that showed a man in his underwear on the sidewalk as his wife threw all his clothes out the window. Like. What.
Is that Putin riding a bear?? 
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So yeah so far St Petersburg has been very nice! The weather is ploha, with super heavy rainstorms most days. Yay for anoraks! Drivers here are absolutely insane, like super speeding down the Nevksy and no cops ever stop it. Don’t rent a car here! Traffic is really bad too so we mostly walk everywhere. One thing I’ve noticed is how confusing but nice the pedestrian crossings are. Most have green walking man countdown clocks, and most give you a crossing time of well over 30 seconds, some even 90 seconds! BUT, the confusing part, the red man/don’t walk man gets a countdown too, and sometimes they switch red to green/ stop to go without finishing the clock. Like yesterday we were crossing and green man said we had 30 seconds left but then it changed to red man and cars started going. I don’t know about that! I am tired. We’ve done a lot and we still have some museums we haven’t discussed yet! Today we are thinking of going to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia, but again it is super storming and it’s really a good weather type thing. We will see! Last night we saw the World’s Longest Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, which was, well, long. It wasn’t as long time-wise as the Mastersingers but it was longer soul-wise. It also might be as fun to write about as the Mastersingers was so stay tuned! A little more on St Pete’s to come (and food!), and then we’re off literally on a midnight train to Moscow. Byeeee!
Wadi Shab is Gorges: My Favorite Place in Oman (+ Bimmah Sinkhole!)
I can’t even begin to explain how nervous I was to trek into Wadi Shab. Before our Oman trip, we’d found a very detailed blog post from another travel blogger about how the hiking route through the cliffs to get to the wadi is completely unmarked and so they went the wrong way, and ended up at the top of super steep sheer cliff face that they had to, terrifyingly, scale down as people yelled at them to ‘go back!’ but there was no way back. I mean. I was pretty sure I was going to die, and all because of idiot other travel bloggers. (What have I BEEN SAYING about the quality of other travel bloggers. I am throwing so much shade right now my head hurts. SHAAAADE.) Seriously, this was one of the easiest hikes, and for the G-D LIFE of us, neither Z nor I could figure out how you could possibly take a wrong turn. These other travelers almost scared me away from my very favorite experience for no good reason. LE. SIGH.
Now that we’ve established that other people are the worst, let’s talk about the magical Wadi Shab, a place so beautiful and so fun that it’s one of the most popular attractions in Oman. It’s about a 90-minute drive from Muscat (which you learned all about yesterday), on really nice modern roads that were never crowded. You’re probably asking right now, “What is a wadi? Also what is a shab? Also what is a wadi shab?” A wadi is a valley, and sometimes it means a dry riverbed that fills with water during the rainy season. A shab, I don’t know, I think it’s simply the name of this wadi. A Wadi Shab is a magic land of gorges and canyons and caverns along a river that culminates in 3 freshwater pools in the middle of the canyon, and the last pool you swim to is inside a cave, and it has a waterfall. It’s magical wonderfulness. A cave of wonders, if you will. I’ll tell you everything you need to know!
Before you leave your hotel/house, pack a small backpack with snacks, water, sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses, and water shoes (which we happily picked up at the Dubai Mall!). Bring enough rial in cash to cover the boat fees (below) but not much more, because you’ll be leaving all your shit out in the open at one point (below too). WEAR A BATHING SUIT under your trekking clothes – there is no place to change – and wear sneakers or trekking shoes too. Leave a dry change of clothes in the car if you can.
NO NOT ME TO THE RIGHT OF ME!
okay I guess it’s technically Wadi al-Shab but everyone and everything calls it Wadi Shab so I am not a bad person
To get to Wadi Shab, you either rent a car (which honestly you should be doing anyway for sightseeing around Muscat or anywhere else in Oman, unless you’re staying the entire time inside a resort which like, why) or you can book a tour with a group, but that means other people and other people’s time frame which sounds terrible. There are road signs for it, and any GPS/google maps should know the way (yes our google maps finally started working the day after we arrived; it just wanted us to have that initial nighttime terror leaving the airport). Once you arrive, you park in the small parking lot along the riverbank.
Guess what they have in the parking lot area: TOILETS! HERCALEES HERCALEES!!!
Leave your change of clothes and any other money and any extra phones and cameras in your car! Bring your day pack with water and snacks and water shoes, your car keys, and one photo-taking device, just in case your shit gets stolen you don’t want to lose all your phones. (It won’t get stolen though; everyone leaves all their stuff by the pools it’s fine.)
Sitting on the bank will be a group of locals. They’re in charge of the river crossing. So, you park on this (left) side of the river, but the attraction part is on the right side of the river, the canyon hike and the magic pools, so they bring you across the river in a quick little boat ride (you can see the quick little boats in the picture). If I recall accurately (lol watch me be wrong and pulling a total Josh’s college girlfriend saying “um I think I recall Hamlet accurately” and BEING WRONG UGH), it was 1 Omani rial per person per way, and that’s all you pay for the whole shibang, there’s no ticket office or anything to go explore nature, so it was 4 rial total for this BEST DAY EVER. This parking side of the river has a food and drink stand with bottled drinks and snacks.
So you pet the dog, you say yo what up to the goat (you gotta read the captions), and you cross the river in the little boat. Oh we’ve got an action shot:
And then you’re on the other side (I’m on the east side, I’m on the west side!) ready to start the hike. It takes about 40 minutes to get to the interior canyon pools (do these phrases sound right), and the first 10 minutes or so are totally flat, just walking along the river and along the base part of the gorges. Then it starts to get freeeeakay! But in a completely doable way, not in a scary or difficult-to-maneuver way like inferior blogs would have you believe.
Despite the high numbers of tourists who also have this on their to-do list, it didn’t feel overly crowded at all. In fact, while all the visitors on the day you go will likely convene at the main swimming part at the same time (as you can spend however much time you want there), the hike to the interior of the valley plus parts of the swimming holes (“I call it my swimming hole” – Mindy St. Clair in Oman) were empty for us, which added to how incredible it all was.
Once the flat part of the hike through the canyons is over, you start climbing up and around the rocks, but none of it is very tricky or difficult if you are in average shape and don’t have mobility issues. The path is marked by painted black arrows on the larger rocks at times, but at other times the path is straightforward just by using common sense: “Hmm, there’s no arrow here. Do I go up this set of rocky stairs or DOWN INTO THE RAVINE?” Seriously there was never a moment where the right choice was unclear.
Because it’s a wadi, some of the walking path surrounds water, as it’s traveling to the main part of the river you start at. Oh a good rule of thumb is to follow the black pipes.
You do this climby rocky bit for about a half hour, and then, and then, and gentlemen and then, you are greeted with this:
You come around a rocky bend and voila! You’ve reached the magic swimming pools inside the gorge! After a mostly solitary hike, you’ll be like ‘oh HERE’S all the people!’ As you can see, they are all leaving their bags and shoes along these side rocks, and you do the same. There are enough people – and enough tour guides who do this everyday telling you it’s fine – that you shouldn’t really worry about your belongings. Leave your packs, your hiking shoes, and your clothes (you have your bathing suit on already right?? this is where’d you would have to change), put on your water shoes (you really want water shoes for the rocky bottoms of these pools) and get to swimming for however long you have!
Since this is where the swimming begins, this is where the photos end, sadly. You’ll have to go to see what it’s like in the rest of the pools and the cave! (Or find someone who wisely took a waterproof GoPro. I’ll get one someday okay.) This first pool is fairly deep, as you can see. You can stand for some of it but you do need to know how to swim to go any farther. The second pool is mostly walking through shallow water, which is why you want to bring those water shoes – it’s all tiny rocks which really hurt our soft Western feet (as a guide in Burma once told us we had. She wasn’t wrong.)
The third pool is the magic wonder shiz, though. It’s quite deep – you have to swim – but you are swimming to a cave! There’s a small hole that might be scary if you have claustrophobia or ya know any run of the mill fear of drowning, but you swim through the hole and then you are in the cave with a waterfall! It’s so freaking cool. There are some ledges and hanging rock bits around the cave to hang on to when you need a rest, so don’t worry about getting tired out. If you want the opposite of a rest, there are ropes hanging down the rocks of the waterfall, so some absolutely bonkers adventure seekers among you can try your best to climb up it, land on the slippery rocks up top with the water gushing over them, and jump off into the pool of the cave. Someone tried this while I was there and it seemed terrifying and painful, so, yeah. This guy also had his phone with him in a ziplock bag. Fun fact, he left Wadi Shab with a totally forked phone.
At one point, we were completely alone in that cave, which sounds kind of scary but we knew more people would be swimming in soon. But during that time, it was one of those ‘holy crap are we really here experiencing this?’ kinds of moments. It’s absolutely wonderful.
When you’re done (be mindful of the opening hours so you don’t miss the last boats!), you do it all in reverse, say goodbye to the animals, pee again, and – if you’ve planned your day properly – you drive a short distance to the next swimming adventure.
BIMMAH SINKHOLE
About a 20 minute drive from Wadi Shab is the Bimmah Sinkhole, a water-filled sinkhole by definition but a shimmering turquoise underground lake by mine. It’s back towards Muscat, which is perfect. It’s best to hit the sinkhole after Wadi Shab, on the way back to Muscat, since you’ll already be in your wet bathing suit, rather than on the way from Muscat, since if you swim in the sinkhole first you’ll have to do the Wadi Shab hike all wet both ways.
Fun fact: the Bimmah Sinkhole ALSO HAS A TOILET! What is this amazing new world! It’s also in a sort of park looking jawn, with children’s playground equipment randomly here and there. There is fencing around the top of the sinkhole so lots of people will be taking pictures of the swimmers below. When you’re ready, you leave all your stuff in the car this time (all of it; there’s really nowhere to put anything), climb down the stairs and get in that water! It’s such a beautiful place to swim.
The water was filled with those little biting fish which was funny, if weird. Despite being pretty well-known and touristed, the pool itself was never too crowded.There were all these little nooks and crannies in the rocks to explore, like little caves and enclaves. It was a lovely swim!
So that’s my favorite day in Oman! We got back to Muscat tired but happy, and ready for an amazing dinner at my favorite restaurant in Muscat: a falafel stand called Arax. More on that in the next travel post, all about the food and hotels in Muscat (including our own little resort stay! (yes I talked shit about staying in resorts but I mean ONLY staying in resorts, clearly we did all the things first!)).
