Oh money, why do you make things so difficult?


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Europe » Russia » Siberia » Irkutsk
August 29th 2011
Published: August 29th 2011
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Woah long time eh? From now on in my blogs will get more frequent (sorry about that) because I want to blog from each city we go to, which will be every couple of days after leaving Russia.

Anywho, so last week in Mongolia was fun. We met a load of Peace Corps volunteers and mostly just hung out with them for the week. Ralph and I did attempt to do an excursion, 'attempt' being the optimum word. We rented a tent and sleeping bags and stuff and had this 2 day hike planned out to Terelj, but we made it about 10 minutes outside of the city before deciding it was too hot, and our bags were too heavy, and there was a river we could see that looked very inviting for a swim. So we went and camped by the river, had a water fight etcetera, and then went the 10 minutes back to UB the next day! And to think, Ralph i a scout leader... We are utter failures.

The train over to Russia was as fun as train rides can be. Sadly we didn't get to see much scenery because durin the day the train spent all its time stopped at the border stations and only travelled at night! So that was frustrating.

But Irkutsk is pretty, ithas all these wooden Decemberist houses and really amazing orthodox churches. We only spent one day here before getting on a bus to Khuzhir on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal, which (as Lonely Planet informs me) is the world's largest freshwater lake, containing a fifth o the world's freshwater. Wow.

The lake was as beautiful as you'd expect. So vast it seemed like an oceon, it even had tides! Over the water you could vaguely see mountains, and on our side were gorgeous little coves and big rock formations perfect for climbing. We spent about 3 days there, mostly just exploring and climbing and stuff. We met two swiss-greman girls and hung out with them. We also spent a really fun evening messing around with long exposure photography and taking photos of ourselves with light sabres, angel wings and halos and other fun stuff! (A couple of photos are on Facebook if you want to see, I can't put them up here because they weren't taken on my camera.)

We also had our first experience of the Russian Banya, which consists of a roasting sauna, in which you whip each other with some kind of branch (not sure what kind) and then have a freezing cold shower. It was not a pleasent experience in my opinion, however the boys loved it and did it twice, whereas the one time was enough for me! I was also a complete chicken and didn't go swimming in the lake... It was soooooo cold! I did paddle a bit though...

Now we are back in Irkutsk and I have just discovered that my bank card doesn't seem to work in any of the cash machines here... ERK! It's like Tokyo all over again! I'm hoping that when I get to Moscow i'll be able to find a bank with a visa cash machine, but if not, anyone fancy sending me some money via western union? Hint, mum and dad, hint?

My biggest lesson learned from this trip so far is take more than one method of getting money! It's quite scary having no money and only one bank card that doesn't work anywhere!

Finally, I shall leave you with a link to our first video diary (we were going to do them the whole way but kind of forgot until now!) check it out;


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