Foot People
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 25: Foot People
It’s eleven o’clock in the morning and I’m dancing around
in the shower like a freak on heat, massaging shampoo
excitedly into my scalp and humming an annoying tune
that I can’t seem to get out of my head. I feel great, I feel
so very, very great! OK, so I’ve got a banging headache and
my body aches after nearly two months of sleeping
upright, but the pain is almost irrelevant right now,
because earlier this morning I had sex with two beautiful
girls … at the same time! Whipping the shower curtain to
one side, I leap onto the bathroom floor and grab the bottle
of shampoo off the sink. Using it as a microphone, I
spin around and punch the air. I’ve never felt like this
before … I feel so alive!
Last night I had entertained the girls for a couple of
hours, or should I say they’d entertained me, and when
the naughty little chick-a-dees finally left my room, they
bumped into Si in the corridor. His face was priceless. “I
can’t believe it!” he yelled. “Two girls! You lucky bastard!”
Si’s night had been pretty eventful too, though. The
beautiful girl who worked in the bar downstairs, had certainly
performed some magic on him all right – and magic
that had very little to do with white gloves, top hats and
fluffy bunny rabbits. Well, at least as far as I know.
Drying myself with a warm towel, I contemplate
whether or not we should feel guilty about paying for sex.
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In hindsight, I hadn’t actually paid for it as the girls had
visited me as a favour to Artur in return for giving him the
car. Si, on the other hand, had paid a girl for sex in hard
cash … no excuses. I don’t think he felt particularly proud
of himself, because when he got back to the room in the
early hours of the morning he mentioned it straight away.
I think he felt it was wrong in some way, even though she
had told him she only did it very occasionally, and had
only done so because she found him attractive. I’d tried to
console the poor lad by informing him that in Russia they
viewed prostitution quite differently to how we do in
England, but it didn’t appear to help much.
Skidding out of the bathroom, I find Si lying on his bed
spread eagle in his pants. Grabbing a towel off the back of
the chair, I proceed to towel whip him a few times.
‘Fuck off!’ he cries, leaping off the bed. He stands shivering
and confused in the corner of the room.
‘Morning, stud!’ I laugh, messing up his hair.
‘Leave me alone! What time is it?’
‘Just after eleven.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Yes, in the morning, numb-nuts. Come on, we’ve got to
get moving. We have to check out at twelve.’
‘Why, where are we going?’
‘China!’
Si frowns. ‘China?’
‘Yep.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since last night, don’t you remember what we talked
about?’
‘No!’
‘Shit, maybe I forgot to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘What Artur suggested we should do. We’re going to
China, hippie boy! There’s a Chinese Consulate in
Khabarovsk, we can get the train.’
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‘Wait a minute,’ Si mutters. ‘China? As in kung fu, chopsticks
and sweet and sour pork balls?’
‘Yes!’
‘Are you sure we’ve got enough cash?’
I shake my head. ‘Not really, but China’s cheap as chicken
shit, and we’ve got to get home somehow. We may as
well fly home from Beijing or Hong Kong instead of backtracking
to Moscow. Hey, we might even be able to make
it overland to Bangkok!’
‘Bangkok? Chris, you’re talking out of your arse.’
‘I’m not, use your noodle! Flights from Bangkok to London
are cheap. The money we save flying from there might give
us enough to travel for a few more weeks overland.’
A smile appears across Si’s face.
‘You’re right, excellent idea!’ he cries, boxing the air. He
freezes in mid-punch. ‘Hey, but what are we gonna do
about the car?’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. It’s sorted!’
‘What do you mean?’
I scratch the back of my head. ‘Well, I probably should
have consulted you first, but in all of the excitement I kind
of forgot.’
‘Chris! Forgot what?’
‘Well … last night, I sort of gave the car to Artur.’
‘What? What do you mean, “gave”?’
‘He’s a nice bloke, and I kind of felt guilty that he doesn’t
earn much money, so … I gave it to him.’
‘For free?’
‘Uh … yeah.’
‘You idiot!’
‘Come on, Si, what else are we gonna do with it? It’s not
like we were gonna drive it back to England, and we
haven’t got the money to hang around here for too long.
This works out easier all round.’
Si walks over to the window. ‘I suppose you’re right.
Although, I thought the idea was to sell it to him – not give
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it away.’
‘Yeah, well…’
Si looks over his shoulder and eyes me suspiciously.
‘Hang on a minute … cocaine … threesome?’
‘Ah, well, yes … I guess in a way that’s what I got in
exchange for the car.’
‘You sold our car for a gram of cocaine and a threesome?’
‘Hmm … I suppose I did.’
Si thinks about this for a second. ‘…Awesome!’
With clothes spilling out of our rucksacks, we stumble
into the reception area and look around for Artur. He’s
nowhere to be seen.
‘Where is he?’ Si moans.
‘If he’s got any sense he’ll still be in bed. Tell you what,
why don’t you go and check us out of the hotel, while I
wait here for Artur.’
Si nods and heads over to the reception desk.
Suddenly, Artur slides up beside me with his eyes halfclosed
and his bright blue shirt buttoned up the wrong way.
‘Sorry I late,’ he pants darting his eyes around the foyer.
‘No problem,’ I smile, ‘we’ve only just got here.’
I pat him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Thanks for sending
down the girls last night,’ I wink.
‘Girls? Oh, no problem. You had good time, Chris?’
‘Absolutely! What can I say, it was a nice surprise.’
Artur grins. ‘You give me car for free, I give you girls for
free. I am man of respect.’
I nod vigorously. ‘You are indeed!’
‘If you happy, I happy,’ he beams.
‘I have the keys for you now, Artur. Do you want to see
the car?’
‘Da. Can you drive car to hill behind hotel? I come in
five minutes. I don’t want boss to see.’
‘Yeah, the hill just outside?’
‘Da.’
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‘No problem,’ I smile.
On that note, Artur sprints off and disappears around
the corner. Si returns with a piece of paper in his hand.
‘That Artur dude was right,’ Si grins. ‘There’s a Chinese
Consulate in Khabarovsk. It’s an eight-hour train journey
from here.’
‘Eight hours! Is it that far?’
‘Yeah, we passed through it two days ago, you numbnuts.
Have you forgotten already?’
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s about five hundred miles, it should be fun,’ Si
smiles. ‘Let someone else do the driving for a change.
Where’s Artur gone?’
I shrug. ‘Dunno. He wants us to meet him on the hill
behind the hotel.’
‘Why?’
‘He doesn’t want his boss to find out about the car. Don’t
know why? Fuck it, let’s go!’
We drive the car up the hill and park over looking the Sea
of Japan. It’s weird to be back in the Sierra again, and it
really puzzles me how the hell we managed to live for so
long in a car in this condition. When we were on the road
it felt normal, we were in the same state as the Sierra – all
filthy and clapped out, and I realise now how close we
were to failing in our mission. The interior is completely
covered in dust and the floor is littered with food wrappers
and empty water bottles. It smells disgusting, and the
thought of having to sleep in here makes me feel physically
sick. How we did it I’ll never know. Adrenaline,
determination and complete insanity can be the only
answer. I walk around to the boot and scribble ‘UK to
Vladivostok’ in the dirt. Even though the exhaust is
wrecked and all four tyres are flat, Artur is one lucky guy.
For a start, there aren’t any Ford Sierra’s in Vladivostok,
so he’ll be driving around in one of the coolest cars in the
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city. Well, maybe not the coolest car in the city, but certainly
one of the most original. In years to come I’d love to
return to Vladivostok and see if it’s still cruising around
the streets. I’m sure it will be. Looking through the paper
work, it suddenly occurs to us that we had signed a customs
declaration form when entering the country. Si
begins to worry that leaving the car here in Russia might
actually be illegal. We persuade ourselves that there’s little
we can do, and that we’ll just have to trust Artur to sort
things out.
Artur meets us on the hill. His eyes light up when he
sees the Sierra, which is incredible considering it looks
like its about to collapse in a heap. He loves the car and
circles around it, peering through the windows. I quickly
take a picture of Artur holding up the car keys.
‘Russia and England, friends!’ he cries. ‘Russia and
England, friends!’
He looks so happy. We show him the customs declaration
form, and he puts our minds at rest by informing us
that his girlfriend’s father is a cop, and that anything can
be arranged in Russia if you know the right people. We feel
a little reluctant to give him the V5, but he insists that it’s
necessary in order to register the car as a Russian vehicle.
Shaking his hand vigorously, it’s time for us to depart
and say farewell to our trusty time machine. Artur leaps
into the car without even flinching at the smell, and
strikes the engine. It roars like a sports car, well, sort of,
and we fight back the tears as we watch our beloved Sierra
disappear out of sight.
‘I can’t believe it’s gone,’ Si sniffles, swinging his bag
over his shoulder.
‘Yep, it looks like we’re on our own again. Back to being
just simple foot people.’
We both smile and glance out across the ocean.
Walking over to flight of steep steps that cling to the side
of the hill, we’re just about to make the journey down to
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the train station when Si suddenly sees something making
its way up the winding road.
‘No way!’ he cries. ‘It’s the Germans! We Beat them!’
Their unmistakable huge bright orange truck skids into
the hotel car park. With massive smiles on our faces, we
watch the excited couple leap out of their truck and swing
each other around in celebration of their arrival.
I turn to Si and raise an eyebrow. ‘Shall we go down and
say hi?’
‘Nah … let them enjoy their moment. They’ve come a
long way, they deserve it.’
‘Where’s the fun in that? I think it’d be rude if we didn’t.
Come on, let’s go down there and surprise them.’
Si smirks. ‘Yeah, but how much cooler is it that we
know we got here first. It’s almost too perfect.’
‘Uh … fuck that!’
Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shout at the top
of my voice. ‘Guten tag, amigos! Helloooooo….!
The Germans stop hugging each other and look up in
our direction.
We both stand proud and wave.
‘WE BEAT YOU!’
They glare at us in stunned silence. We wave one last
time before disappearing down the hill in childish fits of
laugher.
* * *
Looking like a right couple of backpackers, I follow Chris
through the busy city streets. Feeling extremely vulnerable
without the safety of the Sierra, we join the chaos
inside the train station and look up at the departure board.
Khabarovsk is nowhere to be seen, so we race down the
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main stairs and join a long queue at the ticket desk. As we
slowly inch forward with our rucksacks between our
thighs, a guy dressed in a mustard coloured military uniform
pushes through to the front of the queue. The people
behind mutter under their breath. We eventually make it
to the window, and I peer through the glass and smile at
the woman sat behind the desk.
‘Khabarovsk?’ I smile.
‘Adeen?’ she sternly replies raising a finger.
‘Uh … nyet, dva,’ I reply, raising two fingers.
She nods her head and proceeds to print out two tickets.
She circles the price on one of the tickets with a green pen
and slides them beneath the window. We rummage
around in our pockets and collect the cash together. She
throws the change at us, and wrestling with our bags we
haul ourselves to one side.
‘Shit, we didn’t ask her when the train leaves?’ Chris
yells.
‘It must say on the ticket.’
Chris begins to scan his ticket. ‘Ah, it leaves at seven
forty-five.’
‘What time is it now?’
‘Nearly five.’
‘Perfect! Let’s grab something to eat in the restaurant.’
Sliding our heavy bags over to a small crowded cafeteria,
we ignore the stares and order a selection of dry boring
rolls, which appear to have absolutely no filling. We
wash them down with a couple of beers and clock watch
until it’s time to go.
Feeling a little tipsy, we head for the platform and find
the correct carriage. The Khabarovsk-Vladivostok express
train is surprisingly quiet, which is great because we have
the whole cabin to ourselves. We sit on the bottom bunks
and stare out of the window as the train pulls out of the
station. The journey to Khabarovsk is relaxing, but I feel
detached from what’s happening outside. The landscape
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and the villages flash by at great speed, and I smile in satisfaction
that we know what it’s really like out there in the
depths of the Far East. We call it a night after a bite to eat in
the buffet car, and collapsing onto my bunk I fall quickly
asleep to the awesome sound of the clattering carriages.
The door to our compartment slams open and a deep
voice shouts “Khabarovsk”.
‘Chris!’ I cry, reaching over and shaking his dead weight.
‘Wake up, we’re here!’
He groans and turns over.
‘Come on, we have to get off!’
Chris sits up and looks around the carriage. Still fully
dressed, we quickly gather together our belongings and
shuffle off the train. We stand for a few moments on the
platform, feeling incredibly dazed. Hoards of people make
their way quickly towards the exit, knocking us to one side
as they rush by. It’s just after 6 o’clock in the morning, and
even though I slept like a baby last night my eyes refuse to
open.
‘What do we do now?’ Chris asks, his face greasy and his
eyes swollen.
‘I haven’t got a clue.’
I sit down on my rucksack and fish my contact lens case
out of my pocket. Balancing the white plastic case on my
knee, I manage to rinse out each lens with solution before
forcing them into my eyes. Chris fishes a bottle of water
out of his bag and pours half of it down his throat.
‘Ah, water tastes so good when you’re thirsty,’ he gasps.
‘OK!’ I cry, leaping to my feet. ‘We need to get ourselves
a Chinese visa. Time is against us.’
Wrestling with our bags, we make our way out of the
train station and into the street. Studying a handy street
map of Khabarovsk in the guidebook, we decide to grab a
taxi to the Hotel Intourist, which is close to the Chinese
Consulate. After a twenty minute ride through the back
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streets, the taxi driver pulls up outside the main entrance
to the hotel, and in true ‘you’re-tourists-so-I’m-going-tocon-
the-shit-out-of-you’ style, the hard looking dude vastly
over charges us. We reluctantly hand over $15, and feeling
cheated we step inside the hotel and make a beeline
for the tourist desk. We wait patiently for the girl behind
the counter to finish talking on the phone. She lowers the
receiver and looks blankly in our direction.
‘Dobry den,’ I smile. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘A little,’ she sulkily replies. ‘How can I help you?’
‘We’d like to go to China, please.’
‘China?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must go by boat,’ she sighs.
‘By boat?’
‘Da.’
‘Can we arrange this here?’
‘I must ask, please wait.’
The girl makes a call and before she’s replaced the
receiver, a smartly dressed middle-aged woman with
bleached blonde hair appears from an office across the
foyer and walks over..
‘Good morning,’ she smiles. ‘Please forgive me, my
English is not good.’
‘That’s OK,’ I reply. ‘My Russian is probably a lot worse.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘We’d like to go to China. Can we arrange a ticket for the
boat here?’
‘When would you like to go?’ she asks.
‘We were hoping to leave … well, as soon as possible,’ I
smile.
‘Did you know the border has been closed for sixmonths?’
‘No, we had no idea!’
‘It re-opened two days ago.’
‘Really? That’s a bit of luck,’ I smile. ‘Why has it been
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closed?’
‘You know SARS?’
‘SARS?’ Chris replies.
‘Yes, there was an outbreak in China. We are very angry.
Not many Japanese tourists come now. Very much problems
for just a stupid flu.’
‘That’s terrible,’ I mutter.
‘Where are you from?’ she asks, sounding keen to
change the subject.
‘Daventry,’ Chris grins.
She frowns.
‘England,’ I smile.
She looks suddenly excited. ‘You are the first English
people I have met. I thought you were Italian. What are
you doing here in Khabarovsk?’
‘We’ve been travelling across Russia,’ Chris replies. ‘We
drove here by car.’
‘Wow, this is big adventure!’ she beams. ‘You put your
car on the train at Chita?’
‘No way, we drove on the new Amur Highway,’ Chris
announces proudly. ‘Well, that’s if you can call it a highway.’
‘You must be very brave.’
Chris drops his gaze and turns red. ‘Nah, not really.’
‘Please allow me to welcome you to Khabarovsk.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I grin.
‘OK, so you go to the Chinese border town of Fuyuan
tomorrow on day trip?’
‘No, we would like to depart Russia from here,’ I reply.
She frowns. ‘You do not return?’
‘No, we want to travel into China.’
She looks serious for a minute. ‘This is not normal. I will
have to make a few telephone calls. Please wait here for a
moment.’
The woman quickly disappears into her office.
Pacing around the reception area, we wait for over halfan-
hour for the woman to return. We begin to wonder if it
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might not be possible to go to China after all, and on top
of this we begin to worry about the threat of SARS.
She immerges from her office and marches over to us
with a piece of paper in her hand.
‘I can arrange everything for you,’ she nods, ‘including
the boat to Fuyuan and a bus transfer to Harbin, but it will
cost sixty dollars each.’
Chris looks uncomfortable. ‘Why does it cost so much?’
he asks.
‘I will be honest with you, we must bribe the officials to
let you cross the border.’
‘Wow, sounds exciting,’ I smile.
‘Yes, my contact in China seems to think it will be OK,
but there is a risk they might not let you in. As far as I
know, no tourist has crossed this border into China since
1996. It was a Ukrainian man who came here. He never
returned, so I assume he managed to enter China on the
other side without problem.’
I throw Chris a look of concern.
‘Most people who cross this border are Russians buying
products from the market in Fuyuan, to sell here in
Khabarovsk.’
‘Right, so nothing is guaranteed,’ Chris smiles.
‘You will be part of tour group, so I think it will be OK.’
I turn to Chris. ‘What do you think?’
He shrugs. ‘I dunno, maybe it’s worth the risk. What
about visas?’
‘You can get a tourist visa from the Chinese Consulate
today,’ she replies.
Excited by the challenge, a devilish grin spreads across
my face. ‘OK, we’ll do it!’
She nods. ‘Are you staying here in the hotel?’
I look down at our dirty bags lying in a heap on the floor.
‘Yeah, I guess so. We haven’t sorted anything out yet.’
‘I will have your tickets ready by this afternoon, so
please arrange your visas and I’ll give you all the infor-
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mation you need when you return from the Consulate.’
Checking in at reception, we grit our teeth and pay $100
for a double room. Entering the large suite, we dump our
bags and look out of the window over the Amur River.
Chris tilts his head and looks up river. ‘China here we
come!’
‘Yeah, do you think this SARS malarkey is a problem?’
‘Best not think about it.’
‘Maybe we should think about it?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it’s pretty serious, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t worry about it, Si. I’m sure it’s all media hype.’
‘I bloody hope so! What is SARS, anyway?’
‘SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
It’s basically a killer virus that’s not dissimilar to the virus
that causes the common cold, except, we don’t have any
immunity to it.’
‘Sounds nasty, what are the chances of getting it?’
Chris shrugs. ‘Pretty slim I would imagine. I mean, as far
as we know only a handful of cases have been reported,
and there are over 1.3 billion people in China. I’m sure
we’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t count your dirty chickens, fat boy! The Chinese
Government is notorious for covering things up and hiding
the facts. I’ll bet there have been thousands of cases that we
haven’t even heard about. What are the symptoms?’
‘High fever and headaches.’
I press my hand against my forehead. ‘I feel a tad feverish
right now.’
‘Nah … don’t worry, Si. That’ll be the vast quantities of
alcohol you consumed in Vladivostok, and a perfectly
normal reaction to getting your end away for hours in a
hotel sauna.’
I try to hide my smile. ‘Pleasure in the face of danger,
isn’t it ironic?’
‘What is?’ Chris replies.
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‘That we can be stood here looking death right in the
eyes, and yet simultaneously feel so fantastically alive.’
Chris glazes over. I can tell his thoughts are back in the
hotel room in Vladivostok with the two girls. ‘Yeah…’ he
smiles, ‘I know what you mean. It’s true. I really have
never felt more alive.’
Exiting the hotel, we follow a path that leads around the
back of the building and down some steps. We cross a
pleasant tree lined park that runs alongside the river, and
pass the impressive Lenin Stadium with its large statues
of a boxer and an ice skater outside the gates. The next
building along is the Chinese Consulate. A group of people
queue up outside, so we grab a ticket and wait patiently
in the sunshine. It takes about three hours and a further
$60 to get a one month visa glued inside our passports.
Returning to the hotel via the banks of the river, we
admire the blue piece of paper with Chinese characters
printed on it, like it’s some kind of certificate of achievement
for making it this far. Dropping by the hotel tourist
office, we’re presented with our tickets for the boat. The
woman informs us that the hydrofoil departs tomorrow
morning at 7am. All the necessary arrangements have
been made, and we’re to be met on the boat by a Chinese
tour operator called Yut. Feeling completely exhausted,
and utterly relieved to have sorted everything out, we
thank the lady again and crash out in the hotel room.
I lie paralyzed on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. The
night sweats take hold of my body and I’m tormented by
a feverish sleep. Images from our journey flash through
my mind and I struggle to remember where we are. I
replay the scene of the horrific car accident we saw on the
road, and I see the ghostly figure of the dead driver lying
stretched out on the tarmac. I pass through the remote
Siberian villages that are locked in time. I see children
playing with rusty metal hoops – a pretty girl dressed in a
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pink party frock with ribbons tied in her hair sings as she
rocks backwards and forwards on a swing hung from the
branches of a tree. Chimneys bellow smoke into the air as
we pass through concrete city suburbs. Flames reach out
towards me from the forest fires and I can feel the
immense heat on my face. My mind races and we’re driving
along a dusty potholed track. We pass hunched over
figures who turn and look at us, their faces like masks, carved from dark wood.
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