The Summer Trip on the Pacific Endeavour in Russia

A Days Work

Yuzhno Town Center
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

By Ieuan Dolby

I had to leave the vessel after two weeks on-board. Unfortunately my wife had miscarried and so the company got me off the vessel as soon as they possibly could. They gave me 'compassionate leave'.

My angler friend the agent drove me from Kholmsk to the "city" of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, this time in a clapped out Lada that certainly proved its sheet-metal as we went vertically down potholes and swerved round corners without use of the brake! He dropped me off after a bone-rattling journey at the unassuming Tourist hotel, climbed back into his now steaming Lada, knocked a road sign over without preamble and disappeared over crest of the hill, leaving behind a cloud of black smoke, three cigarette butts and what looked suspiciously like a fish hook with a head still attached.

The Tourist Hotel in Yuzhno
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

I walked inside the hotel, expecting the worst, and was greeted by a large girl with purple hair. She worked through the large check-in form with a certain degree of stoic ability and within twenty-minutes I found myself in my box and all to myself. The "Tourist" hotel does not go too far with amenities but it was clean, central and the shower worked, although the choice of TV programs amounted to Russian, Russian or silent. The hotel, practical without resort to embellishment or fanciful expression, surprisingly came with wireless internet access! Admittedly this came at the astounding rate of 500 Rouble's (10 UK pounds) for 2 hours, but it had it!

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is currently experiencing some amazing sun with temperatures climbing over 30 degrees Celsius during the day. Whilst this may have been an unusually cold day in Suez, a heat wave in Edinburgh or an average day in Kaohsiung, here it has caused mass disruption through power cuts and water shortages. Most parts of the city have on-average had power for only three hours a day, with many districts without water 24/7! The sole Sakhalinsk Times (English Edition) journalist tried to call the electrical power company for their view but his calls went unanswered. He did though manage to gleam from the waterworks that "due to the 8 degrees above normal temperatures mollusks and other micro-organisms were reproducing at a faster rate and thus affecting the water supply to the power stations.

I did for one small moment assume that the hotel was conserving energy by switching the mini-bar fridge off, but then I found that I had knocked the plug out whilst peering out of the window. Although the power stayed on in the hotel the room temperature was stifling, I thus found it very difficult to sleep at night. This feature is very common during heat-waves due to the fact that 'Yuzhnoites' (a word used by my favorite Sakhalinsk Times reporter) generally try to fend off the cold by fitting heaters! They generally do not to make life easier, when faced with the once in a blue-moon heat wave, by installing an air-conditioning unit that might only be used for ten days of the year.

I went to the Tourist Hotels sole restaurant for breakfast, a large ballroom that was only half used, and the rest empty and hollow! A remnant of some bygone era when the communist regime might have put on shows for the workers perhaps? I walked in the door and asked the matron on her make-up chair if this was the place for breakfast. She responded with a shake of her head, she tapped her pen on a clipboard and being used to abrupt sign language I assumed that she wanted my room number rather than my weight, height and eye colour! I gave her my room number and without further fanfare or resort to expression (fanciful or otherwise as she might have cracked the face-paint) she loftily waved me inwards and onwards to the sole empty table, the one that could only just be seen at the back of the hall. It was okay, the breakfast I mean not the table, nothing special but then it was wholesome and still warm.

After Breakfast, I stepped out to see what the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk had to offer, I stepped out of the hotel door under the watchful eye of what looked like two ex-KGB soldiers and into the heat and bustle of life on a Sunday! I had my camera with me but looked around at the people and the area I decided that lugging around a large SLR camera might be tantamount to dangling a carrot in front of a very large and angry bull. I kept that camera hidden, stepped around the night-before drunk on the steps outside and started to walk down the large road in the direction that most people seemed to be walking - I went with the flow!

Statue in Yuzhno
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

In every place, town, mountain range, house, etc. a photographer or tourist tries to find the center of activity, in other words the heart and sole of the place, the nerve centre from which all else revolves. I walked down this large street and I felt as if I was back home in Edinburgh walking through some 1950's badly constructed council estate, still in-use but with people who had long since given-up caring.

Some Yuzhno style apartments
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

The buildings that I passed all had that drab gray look, the feeling of smallness and cramped families eeking out an existence with a couple of Rouble's obtained through criminal activity, prostitution or drugs! But the people appearing from behind the barely hinged and paint stripped doors, those hanging up the washing on balconies that only just defied gravity and those who were setting off as I was were all well-dressed, not short of a pound or two at the waist and all had smiles, were talking animatedly or had a well groomed dog on a leash.

A small market in downtown Yuzhno
Photo Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 2006

It can only be presumed that this 'block after block' of gray colored housing is a legacy of the communist era, a house for all that left no room for decoration or identity, communities were formed by numbers, names or bribery with no affiliation between one house to the next. Everybody got a house in those days, the construction maybe as boring as a sheet of corrugated iron with a door in it and the same as millions of others but hey, you've got a roof over your head! My favorite editor, who also functions as the sole reporter at the English Edition of the Sakhalinsk Times informed me, through an article in his paper, that the unemployment rate on the island of Sakhalinsk was standing at 0.2%. One can wonder at the seemingly low figure but with the current oil and industrial boom overtaking this island there are many jobs available and money is at a premium. One Russian mate on the vessel had previously told me that he rents out his one bedroom, square box for 300US dollars/month! In a place were the average wage is below 500, this only goes to show that money is around and willing to be paid!

In other words these 'Yuzhnoites' may live in matching gray boxes but the lifestyles behind the four walls goes allot further.

Another article in my favorite newspaper (written by guest reporter Andrei Osadchi) talked about fashion trends in the city. Certainly, having looked around at the people going shopping, to play, to wine and dine on this fine Sunday, all were dressed well and although slightly overdosed on cheap nylon's and with a few too many men baring their chests and posing, the average person took time and some money to make themselves presentable. Andrei's article talked about the fact that people in Yuzhno tended to be six months behind the mainland in their fashion trends and that cheaper skintight tops and trousers certainly was "in" at the moment. He did go further to say that many people aspired to clothing made by Benetton and Underground, "those outlets make sure that Yuzhno's rich dress like their counterparts in London or Berlin". I agree with most of his article but am not sure if Prince Charles or some hoity-toity Berliner would be caught in a matching set of polo shirts and shorts from Benetton!

Armed with the knowledge that people in Yuzhno have money, that they dress well and like to show it, I must now move onto the "hair". It is quite an eye-catching sight, to see a large and buxom homemaker of say 50yrs old and worn by years of keeping the family together, setting off with her woven and wheeled basket following faithfully behind her, to have bright red or green hair. Apart from this anomaly she will be dressed like the hundreds of other housewives around, be stretching some dress with her ample girth or trying to make herself younger by wearing a top that went out of fashion at the same time that communism was cast aside in favor of capitalism. Yet on top of all this normality will be a glaring example of the misuse of hair-dye "how not to dye your hair", but from young to old and through all the colors of the rainbow these bright hairdos abound and are seemingly accepted as part of society.

Every so often, whilst meandering along and looking for a photographic situation to present itself to me, I would pass or have to move around a well 'over the limit' youth! In fact many of the well-dressed and presentable persons going my way had bottles in their hands and if going by the smell alone it would not be water inside of them. Yep, I had found the downfall, the hidden secret behind the city; 'Yuzhnoites' drink and more than their fare share. In fact, once noted and looking beyond, hundreds of bare-chested youths were hanging around street corners, blocking up the only statue around and freely swigging from a variety of green or white colored bottles - and yes, it was only 11am on a Sunday morning! Some staggered, others had only just started, some were sleeping the effects of the night before off in some doorway or other and others still just meandered peacefully along in no set direction, oblivious to all except the occasional swig and the placement of one foot in front of the other.

This is a city running on fumes!

I must say that nobody blinked an eye or attempted to draw me into conversation. Many lifelong drunks in Edinburgh assume that by shouting vile language to passerby's they will receive coins and notes from heaven, but here the drinkers just carry on without disturbance and life goes on around them. I make no claims that this remains true at 1pm, or at 2am but at this early point on a hot Sunday morning all was peaceful and the drunks withdrawn and ignored by those around them.

Just another badly parked vehicle in Yuhzno

I found the town center! It is in some ways indistinguishable from the rest of the buildings around, although one large blue building did stand out, a railway museum and further on more shopping malls and supermarkets sprung up. It was very busy here, maybe all were stocking up on bottles of vodka as Italians would on wine, the Brits on lager and the Americans on fast-food but it was time for me to go back to the hotel, back to my silver colored, modern yet extremely drab hotel that might have been built to blend in with those older buildings around.

It was time for me to drink and join the club!

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