From Houston to Sydney 2013

Russian Far East - 2014

It wouldn’t be one of my trips to Russia if it didn’t begin badly.  And the start of this trip has been worse than most.  So bad, in fact, that day 1 of the trip has actually spanned three days.

Seven months ago, when I booked my flights from Sydney to Vladivostok (i.e. three connecting flights), the first sector was a flight from Sydney to Hong Kong with Virgin Atlantic Airlines.  To my disappointment, Virgin Atlantic announced in early February that they would be stopping flights to Australia from 5th May, so I needed to re-book my first sector for this trip.  At my travel agent’s suggestion, I happily agreed to change to a Cathay Pacific flight, and I was issued with a new itinerary and confirmed ticket.

Everything all seemed fine until I tried to check in at Sydney Airport at 11 am on Sunday (29th June).  To cut a long story short, it seems that my ticket (which was issued by Aeroflot) was not accessible by Cathay Pacific (nor, as it turns out, the airline scheduled to fly my next connecting sector, Asiana Airlines).  The airlines could open the original ticket with the Virgin Atlantic flight (which showed all the flights as having been cancelled), but they could not open the new ticket containing all the valid flights.  It was a problem no-one had ever come across previously, not the brilliant on-duty Cathay Pacific Manager Sydney Airport (Tracey, whose analytical problem solving skills and professionalism had to be seen to be believed), nor my travel agent (BYOjet Travel, to whom many phone calls were made from the airport despite the very annoying trend of the auto-queue hanging up on me far more often than it connected).  Everyone was blaming everyone else, and the net result was that after two and a half hours of trying to sort things out, I was not allowed to board the flight.

As you might imagine, it was more than a little disappointing to find myself on a train home from the airport rather than on the Airbus A330 I was expecting to be aboard on my way to Hong Kong.

Whatever the problem was, it did not seem very easy to solve.  After returning home, I spent several hours on phone calls and online chats with BYOjet travel before their office closed for the day (fairly early as it turns out, being Sunday).  BYOjet Travel then referred the matter to Cathay Pacific’s main office in Hong Kong, which fortunately operates 24/7.  Meanwhile, I had no idea when or if I might be flying out on my eagerly anticipated trip to the Russian Far East that had been planned for almost nine months.

Hours went by and I still heard nothing.  Finally I phoned (or more precisely, skyped) Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, and after half an hour of listening to muzak, I made contact at 9:30 pm.  I was told that I had been booked on a flight leaving Sydney at 7:30 am the following morning (Monday), and that the connecting flights (on Asiana and Korean Air) would the same flights as originally booked, just a day later.

However, there was a big “but”.  I was told that although Cathay could fly me to Hong Kong, they could not guarantee that the connecting airlines would not have the same problem accessing a valid ticket number, because although Aeroflot had sent an updated e-ticket profile, Cathay Pacific was still unable to access its details.  The ticket, it seemed, really needed to be re-issued to ensure its validity.  Our conversation concluded that the “but” was so significant that I should not fly until the ticket had been completely re-issued, and so I wearily went to bed, resolving to phone the travel agent first thing next morning to get the ticket fixed.

Thus, on the dot of 8 am on Monday morning, I phoned the travel agent and explained (for, I think, the 15th time since the saga began) the situation.  The travel agent agreed that the ticket should be re-issued and agreed to try and get me on a flight that day.  Of course, there were problems though.  It was a bit late to arrange a seat on the 10:30 am flight, and the 2:00 pm flight (the last one that could connect with the next flight to Seoul) was showing as full.  The agent undertook to phone Cathay Pacific directly to see what could be done.  So I waited.  And I waited.

After two hours an e-mail arrived saying I was booked on the 2 pm flight.  After a very quick change of clothes, I grabbed by bag (still packed from yesterday) and headed to the airport.

When I arrived, the check-in officer greeted me with “are you the gentleman who was here yesterday?”, and glumly informed me that there was still a problem – that my ticket only showed Seoul as my final destination.  He went away, worked on a computer terminal for a few minutes and came back with a sheet of paper with a new ticket number on it.  “This should fix your problems” he said, as he proceeded to issue a boarding pass.  As I left check-in for the immigration desk with my precious boarding pass in hand, his parting words with a smile were “You know, all the Cathay staff in Hong Kong know who you are now”.

The nine hour flight with Cathay Pacific was perfect; a true 5-star experience.  Other airlines’ standards in various parts of the world may be going down the toilet, but the Asian airlines continue to set the top standards for quality.

Our flight arrived in Hong Kong shortly after 9 pm local time.  It was like coming home again (I lived in Hong Kong for seven years).  After a beautifully simple, efficient immigration procedure, I checked in for the second leg of my trip, a three hour flight to Seoul with Asiana Airlines on their first Airbus A380, which entered service just a fortnight earlier.

This was my second flight for the day that could not be faulted in any way, apart perhaps from the timing (just over three hours in the air, with departure at 40 minutes after midnight and arrival at 5 am with one hour lost due to the time difference).  It brought me to Seoul’s ultra-efficient Incheon Airport, one of my three favourite airports in the world (the others being Singapore and, my number one airport that I had left just a few hours earlier in Hong Kong).

I had a five hour transit in Seoul, which gave me time for a much-appreciated shower, and at a little after 9:30 am, I was boarding my flight to Vladivostok – this time a Korean Air Boeing 737-900.  Apart from a delayed take-off of half an hour, this was yet another flight that could not be faulted.

We touched down in Vladivostok half an hour late at 3:10 pm, which made me a little anxious about the possibility of catching the 4 pm train into the city (the next AeroExpress train was two hours later at 6 pm).

I need not have worried.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Russian immigration was a breeze – fast, efficient and courteous – and the luggage arrived on the conveyor belt within minutes of the plane arriving at the air-bridge.  I had cleared customs, bought my train ticket, and walked to the station platform by 3:40 pm, and thus had quite a leisurely 20 minute wait for the train.  The train was a real bargain at just 200 roubles for a ticket (about $6) compared with 3000 roubles for a taxi or 2000 for a shared minibus.

The train arrived at Vladivostok’s main railway station right on time at 4:48 pm.  This is the same railway station that marks the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the buildings are beautifully maintained examples of classical Russian architecture.  It is easy to understand why arriving by train in Vladivostok is quite a special experience.

My hotel was a quarter of an hour’s walk up a steep hill and down the other side to the water’s edge (most walking in Vladivostok involves either going up or down steep streets).  As I emerged from the railway station, I was greeted by the huge statue of Lenin which I think was supposed to be inspirationally pointing out to sea, but rather less majestically his arm today was providing a perch for some weary seagulls.

The walk to the hotel was a little more difficult than it should have been because one of the wheels on my suitcase, which has been wearing down for a while, finally shredded itself.  Wheeling my suitcase around Russia over the next few weeks won’t be much fun now, I think.  Nonetheless, the walk (steep though it was) was a great introduction to Vladivostok’s elegant streets.  Vladivostok is a thoroughly European city with beautiful Tsarist-era buildings and tree-lined streets; not what one might expect in a city whose longitude places it east of Korea and in line with Japan.

My hotel, like all the hotels on this trip except one, was chosen by a travel organiser (unlike most trips I do, where I make all the arrangements).  The hotel chosen was the Azimut Hotel Vladivostok, and it is fairly typical of Soviet-era hotels, being massive in scale but with fairly basic rooms.  Nonetheless, it was clean and everything worked – so maybe it was not so Soviet after all.

Because I had arrived a day late in Vladivostok, my sightseeing had to be accelerated.  Fortunately I had been to Vladivostok one before (twelve years previously, in 2002), and I still had quite an accurate mental map of the city.  I was keen to see how the city had changed since my previous visit, but I was constrained because the tour organiser had called a meeting of the group at 7 pm to discuss arrangements. 

And so it was that in rather overcast conditions, I condensed my sightseeing of Vladivostok into about an hour and three quarters.  Although I would have loved to have wandered more extensively and to have had the luxury of lingering, I was able to cover many of the highlights of the city centre fairly comprehensively, notably the railway station, the monuments in Central Square (also known as Bortsov Revolutsii Place), the grand buildings on Svetlanskaya Street, the S-56 submarine memorial and the general views across Golden Horn Bay where the Russian Pacific Fleet sits proudly.

Interestingly, very little had changed since 2002.  Several old buildings had been renovated and the overall condition of the city looked more prosperous than twelve years ago.  However, the biggest change was the construction of the huge Golden Horn Bridge, a suspension bridge that links Vladivostok city with Russky Island.  Twelve years ago there was no hint of the bridge that now dominated Golden Horn Bay, and picturesque little ferries carried people and vehicles across the harbour.

I wish I could describe more about Vladivostok, but after losing the planned day my visit was far more superficial than I had hoped.  I remember saying back in 2002 how much I liked Vladivostok and that I must return to see it properly one day.  I guess I am saying much the same thing once again in 2014.

With a latitude of 43 degrees North (almost the same as Hobart is to the South), Vladivostok is as close to ‘tropical’ as I will get on this trip.  We leave the hotel tomorrow at 5 am to travel north-east through two time zones, and so after being awake for some 40 hours, with just a few very brief naps on the flights, I was glad finally to climb into bed in Vladivostok at 10 pm, just as the sun was touching the horizon to set.  I lay in bed listening to the symphony of sounds outside - the cars on the road below, and the seagulls and MiG-29 fighters above, glad to be in a bed.

Day 1 - Sydney to Vladivostok

Tuesday

1 July 2014

Key to airport codes shown on the map: SYD is Sydney, HKG is Hong Kong, ICN is Seoul-Incheon and VVO is Vladivostok.