Day 381 - Russian - who, us?

Today we made our way to Wudalian Chi city, yet another day spent on a bus headed even further north. The reason for coming here is to go to the Nature Reserve better known as a Volcano Park because of the 14 or so volcanoes in the region - some of which exploded a couple of hundred years ago creating 5 lakes, a number of craters, and huge lava fields. When we arrived we quickly found a hotel rested, and found a driver to take us around tomorrow - not exactly adlibing style, but its the only way to get around. In fact, the tout is so keen on us going with her driver tomorrow that she's waiting outside the internet cafe for us right now!! The only thing we wish we did before coming here was getting (or looking on the internet at) a map to get an idea of places to go to etc.

It was actually quite funny, after chatting to the woman for a while, a teenage boy came passed and starting jabbering away to us in Russian! It took us a few seconds to realise he was speaking in Russian, not some weird Chinese dialect, or very poor English! We guess this is something we need to get used to as we head closer and closer to the Russian border.

All we have left to do now is sort out the specifics with our driver, whose initial quote is too high for us, and find dinner!

Adlibing it to the far north.

ACCOMMODATION TRAVEL TIP: The lonely planet makes it seem like accommodation is really expensive here, but we found a nice, clean double for Y100 just around the corner from the bus station: turn left at the first corner (down Xi Dao Jie) after coming out of the bus station, about 300m down the road, the first building past the Traffic Police Station (ph 0456-7292888 or 0456-7292777). No English but they know what you want! There were so many cheaper places around too - as low as Y20 each for a bed but no bathroom.