Day 387 - Another day, another country

Our only plans for today were to go to the Russian border and hopefully get a glance over into Russia. Last night when we spoke to the girl at our hotel she said a taxi would cost about Y20 (same as the guide said), but with plenty of time up our sleeves we were contemplating walking the 8km to the border when we saw a public bus heading in the general direction. We managed to find a number 6 bus stop on Wu Dao Jie that said the bus went all the way to the border gate - perfect, and only 2 kuai!!At the border gate we tried our luck at just wandering as far as we could go, but were pretty quickly turned away by a guard - upon further questioning from us, it turned out foreigners weren't able to wander along the road that goes to the first checkpoint. Oh well, worth a try. We did get to see Russia and there were so many Russians around, that we might as well have been there! This is a cool little adventure if you're not paying the Y50 return price for a taxi, but in reality there wasn't much to see except the occasional concrete Russian doll statue.Though, on the way you do pass a funny Russian Doll park with really huge dolls and painted eggs everywhere!

Back in town we had lunch, and once again when we were on our way to the supermarket by the square when the heavens truly opened up and a thunder storm complete with lightning and hail attacked out of nowhere! We had been in shorts and t-shirts all day commenting on the heat and sunshine, that the hail was totally unexpected - in the end huddling under a shop's small veranda wasn't enough, and we pushed our way into a fur shop of all places. But the shop workers were lovely, and let us sit on the couches until the worst of the storm was over, and we made our break to do our shopping for the train tomorrow.

When we arrived back at the hotel we found that our room was flooded and we had a sopping wet bed (luckily our electronics were far enough away on the bed so they didn't get wet). The grumpy hotel worker who was acting like it was our fault their shoddy windows leaked semi-cleaned up, and gave us some new bedding, before telling us we had to clean the towels that got dirty from the flood - we politely told them where to go!

On the way to the internet cafe this afternoon, the sun was shining and streets were dry from the heat, under an hour after the hail storm!

Tonight we went with Zhang Cui Cui from the hotel to the night markets, where she took over from us telling everyone we're not Russian!! Afterwards she took us to a yummy chuanr (kebab) restaurant where we chatted the night away. Adlibing it to the Russian border.