The Lap of Luxury

After the previous nights traumas, I was thankfully booked into another hotel, one that perhaps had more class and one that certainly came with an atmosphere that did not cause me to jump out of my skin should a pin be dropped. Anyway, this was my new abode until news came of my vessels arrival in port and I could rejoin her.

It, shall we say, is like chalk and cheese! On the one hand are the plentiful and imprinted memories of the seedy, disjointed hotel that I had stayed at the night before and on the other the lap of luxury in the form of the restaurant that I have just had the pleasure of eating at. I have in short just finalised an evening of drink and merriment with my boss (who fortunately for me brought along his visa card) and between leaving my hotel and returning it could have been the same as returning to the Papua New Guinea jungle from a holiday in London!

The restaurant that we attended was called the Marquis restaurant, the main 'eatery' of the much acclaimed and newest hotel in town, namely the Grand Palace and the place-to-be should one have loads of handy bucks and want to be part of the in-crowd! In itself nothing shone, it was just another extravaganza of opulence that one can see extending from Helsinki to Melbourne (excluding the bits between, except maybe for Jakarta and Dubai) but where there is money there is a hotel that has a restaurant that serves food that is superior to the baked beans on toast that one might have been looking forward to on an average day.

Yuzhno is not used to 'laps of luxury, it is simply a town on an Island that is perhaps still living as it did 100 years ago! There are few simpler things in life than fishing and living off the land to keep the fires burning and clothes on the back! Sakhalin is famous for its fresh salmon, its seafood and bears and for many years (despite the influx of imported Koreans to build the railroads, Romanian gypsies who must have taken a wrong turning at St Petersburg and the Japanese who thought they might stay) life has just toddled onwards and one could say happily so.

Yet, one fine day Oil was discovered and the place turned into a mêlée of money making idealists, people whose roots lay in communism but who could shrug that stigma aside without pause, and suddenly an oil boom town was born! Yuzhno is without doubt an oil town on the move! Oil companies like Exxon are building office blocks bigger than the town was ten years ago, office space is at a premium and the average hotel room (one with a toilet en-suite) doesn't go for much less than 200 US dollars, 500 US if you want room service!

Between the few who can see what is required to make money and those who are so deeply ingrained with years of communist oppression a big gap exists! Many oil towns grow the world over, from Vung Tau to Azerbaijan; the original landowners see 'dollars' in their periscopes as the oil rigs move in and they promptly change their jobs from farmer to bar-owner or taxi-driver! Large profits and new lives are made on the discovery of oil! Certainly the old folks have momentary lapses of faith in the new ways, mostly as they watch cultures, customs and the land that they once toiled turned into concrete jungles, but even they stop complaining as the dollars roll in!

No Ladas here: the wealth shows at this oil company car park!
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

And then there's the bus for the workers!!
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

Here in Sakhalin there is more to change than can be accepted by all concerned! Yes, the money is flowing in faster than it can be counted, there are certain riches to be made and fortunes to be had and the future painting is extremely rosy, this is without doubt one of the biggest oil towns to emerge this decade! There is though a massive discrepancy between those who are making the money and spending it and the people who live here and have lived here for the last 50 years or more! In simple terms the people who are making the money are far and few between, they are the elite (and probably the Mafia), the crème de la crème of society and mostly from mainland Russia. The average citizen of Yuzhno is unable to release the bounds of communism or if able, not quick enough to take advantage of, with those who make the money coming in from out-of-town. They swoop in, they build clubs to the exclusion of Yuzhnoites and before the locals know it they have less chance of entering the club than they did have before it even existed.

An Advertisement in Yuzhno for a warmer place
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

In a society where beer is not even classed as alcohol, where three different gauges of rail track exist (from different eras of occupation) and where class discrepancy is so visible that it smacks everybody in the nose before they even step out of the door, this is an oil town on the move with problems. Buildings are springing up ten-to-the-dozen as hotel chains see profits and oil companies require the office space, but between conception, through the workings of bureaucracy and to the finished product are many years of delay, many years of frustration and lost money that is vividly shown in the discrepancy that exist between the restaurant that I have just left and the world that exists outside its door.

I exited the restaurant feeling satisfied and full, the result of an excellent and well cooked rump and a bottle of wine that had meandered down my throat like a new found waterfall. My taxi was a white Lada, one that had not seen a new coat of paint since it was built decades ago and that boasted a back seat that sat on rust! I was extremely unsure about my back seat when I sat down; it rather sprang up to meet me as I placed my behind on the look-a-like fur rug! What might have been more off-putting than the fact that there was no glass in the window was that I could see the road through the holes in the floor between my feet. I was at first unsure as to this view, but by peering down and dropping a 100 Korean won coin through the gap I could hear it hitting the rear axle as we drove onwards.

A leftover from the night before
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

There is a massive class gap, one formed through years of communist prevalence and information passing, dollars may win through in the end but it will be a long time in arriving! There might be six different Mafias operating here, the KGB might have been easily renamed to the FSC when President Putin came into power and the difference between class maybe very pronounced but at the end of the day, this is a town on the move - however invisible the move may appear! As a prime example; I learnt this evening that alcohol was in a short supply on the Island. The Russian government had this month placed a ban on imported spirits, a war against the old USSR states and so all imported bottles had to have a stamp on them to state where, when and how they were produced and bottled. Unfortunately, this rule came in before the stamps were ready and so the only drinks available in the supermarkets and bars were locally made ones! The restaurant that I left though had the full range, from Scotch whisky to Heineken, a simple indication that opulence has no regard for authority!

Those left behind in any oil boom town are those not quick enough to grasp the opportunity presented to them. In the case of Sakhalin there will be thousands left behind as years of oppression and control prevent them from grasping, the only ones able to jump on the bandwagon being the Mafia, the KGB and the criminally minded who either never took heed of communism and made profits from it anyway or those who had been biding their time!

In the end Yuzhno will become a large oil town, fully functional and resplendent with all the trappings of a rich and forward moving town. The taxi drivers will eventually speak English and drive cars that have solid floors and with working meters, McDonalds and Pizza Hut will establish themselves on street corners alongside the 7-elevens and the Holiday Inns and Sheraton's of the world will have overtaken the Yukos and the Tourist Hotel as the places to stay. This will all happen but left behind will be the thousands of original fishing and farming Yuzhnoites who were unable to grasp the change quick enough! However, nobody will see them; they will not live there anymore!

Ieuan Dolby
Author and Webmaster of SeaDolby.com
Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 28th September 2006