Day 7 of Nate and Kara Buchanan’s Trans-Siberian vlog in Ulan Ude: they continue a DIY food tour (11-item list — previously found 4), try a local Lake Baikal fish ceviche, encounter a small billing dispute at lunch, plan a bus trip to visit a hilltop Buddhist monastery (advice: take bus #97, ~20 rubles; note some confusion about which monastery), enjoy an authentic local monastery experience with mostly locals, observe cultural customs (walking direction/right/never show left shoulder), shop for supplies for a 64-hour final train leg, and reflect on small travel lessons.
Chapters
Today is day seven on our Trans Siberian journey. We are currently in the town of Ulan Udeh, I think is how you say it. And it was much warmer yesterday.
It was. We were walking outside of our hotel in short sleeves because I wore a dress yesterday.
It was like summer, almost 80 degrees.
And the lady at the front desk was like, no, no.
A few days ago, when we were in the town of Irkuts, which is where we stopped, the stop before this, on the Trans Siberian, we made a list of foods that we wanted to try. We had 11 foods on the list, and we only found four of them. So today we are continuing that list and trying to complete our DIY food tour that we started three days ago.
Nate found a place that serves omu. Omu ceviche. You might remember that big smoked fish that we tried at the market, and it came from Lake Baikal. Well, they make ceviche out of that here, and we're going to try some for lunch. This is looking promising.
Cowboy.
What is that about?
Good thing I'm wearing my Tevas today.
Hello. Hello. Hello. My name is Nathalia. This is. Thank you.
We just received our Sagoode, I think, is what they call it in Russian. But we were wrong about the fish. It is not a mole fish. It's two other fish that I don't know what they are, but it looks delicious. I think it's basically Siberian ceviche, and it comes with soy sauce.
Seems like most foods here come with dill.
It's fishy.
Super fishy. The soy sauce on it makes it really, really good. Also, I'm pretty sure the fish came from Lake Baikal. We explored this little area, and then we rode the train five and a half hours to this side of the lake. We're somewhere around here, and Mongolia is right here. Russia, Mongolia, us. And they got a huge plate of pork ribs. I'm not sure if that's Russian, but they look delicious.
Haven't felt taken advantage of as a tourist in a while. It just happened. A mysterious $9 charge showed up on our check. He tried to say it was for the ribs, but the price that was on the menu for the ribs was also on the check. We ordered three things and there were four things, but we don't speak Russian and they weren't going to take it off, so we paid it.
You did get a piece of gum after a meal, though. After all the onions.
I mean, it's like $9, so it's not the end of the world. I just hate feeling taken Advantage of. Oh, it just makes me so mad. I would have rather had like two dollar buns from our hotel or from anywhere with delicious buns, which is everywhere in this city.
Okay. But we're gonna move past that. The plan for this afternoon is to go visit a monastery. So when I think of Russia, or when I thought of Russia, I did not picture Buddhism being a part of the culture, but I think this city is like the capital of Buddhism in Russia. And the main Buddhist dude, monk.
I'm really butchering this. He. The monastery that he lives in is a 30 kilometer bus ride from here. So we're gonna go hop on a local bus and check it out because we're probably supposed to be really beautiful. So we were told yesterday that in order to get to the monastery, we need to come down to the main square, which is where we are now. We need to jump on bus number 97, and it should be 20 ruble. So we're gonna try to find the bus, and then I'm gonna hand the driver 40 ruble that I already have free. So sort it. And then we were just told to take it to the end. They were like, whenever it stops for the last time, just get off. So that's what we're going on from right now.
So about 10 minutes into that bus ride, I was like, according to Google Maps, we're not going in the right direction. And it says it's an hour away.
I got my monasteries confused. So there were two monasteries that we were considering visiting today. One was 30 minutes further outside of town, and it was supposed to be like a really pretty monastery. And there was one that was up on a hill that was supposed to give you a good view of the town. And we've ended up at the one on top of the hill, which is not the one that I meant to go to when we first got in the bus. Us, hey, it was one of the two that we wanted to see over here. The other guy must have been telling me about this one.
I assume it's like an army training base or something. But it does sound like a small war is going on behind the monastery.
It.
Sa.
This monastery is super beautiful up on this hill. I've been spending a lot of time on my phone trying to figure out more information about it, and it's really hard to find any facts. Like, it's not on Wikipedia that I could find. I'm probably just spelling it wrong because it's Russian. But it's been really cool to be somewhere like this where there's no other tourists. There's nothing wrong with tourists. We're tourists. But so often we go to things like this and there's more outsiders than there are locals. And so we don't really know what it's really like because it feels more of like a museum. But there are only locals here and they're using the monastery for what it was built for. So it's just been a really different experience than normal and not what we expected. And there's this huge walking path that goes all the way around. So we're soaking in the view and this sun is coming up and it feels amazing. I'm excited.
So as we've been walking around this path, we've been passing all of these animals in the first, like, couple I was really confused at while they were here. And then I remember last year we were in Hong Kong and they were celebrating the year of the monkey. And then we figured out These are the 12 Chinese zodiacs and they have like one at each little pavilion that dots the trail. They're really funny looking. This is a totally separate thought. But people ask us often, like, what we've learned from traveling. And Kara and I aren't like super deep people. I mean, maybe when we've been done traveling and we like really reflect and look back on it, we will like, have some deep thoughts about what we've learned. But I think what we've learned so far is like, it's just like the little things that we've learned that you don't even realize that you've learned. Like when we came here, we were about to come walking down the path going this way. We realized everybody was coming up. And if it would have been when we first started traveling, I just would have, like, walked down the path that way. There's no arrows. But we've learned that to be respectful when you're walking around, like a Buddhist temple or a statue of Buddha, you never show your left shoulder. So you never walk counterclockwise. And so we walked around this place going right, which is now what we've seen everybody else doing, because that's the respectful thing to do here. So I don't know. That's just one of the really cool things about travel. You know, you just, like, get to learn all these little things about different cultures. I think this little, like, reflection walk thing really paid off for us.
Going by the bus. All of these buses are labeled 97, so I guess we just go get them one.
Let's pick one that's running.
They all are.
You're gonna die.
Maybe you can get on that one. Yeah. Go down open this door for you.
This guy opened his door and he's leaving the only ones on here. I assume we get back on the 97.
We'll see.
I guess we've come back down to the walking street. We decided since lunch was kind of a bummer, we'd go back to a place that. That we know is good and cheap. We are get the buns. I guess they're more dumplings, but since you've already seen those a couple times, actually, we will see you at the grocery store. We are getting on a train tomorrow for 64 hours, finishing our Trans Siberian Railway journey, which means we have to stock up on some instant goodies.
If you can't already tell, we're trying to be a little healthier this time.
We're not being that healthy. Our basket's overflowing with instant meals.
This is funny.
I'd say we did pretty good. We got some more healthy options this time. But we also got enough instant meals for lunch and dinner, and we spent like $20 on food for the next three days. That's pretty good.
No, don't do.
We gotta go through the bedroom. It.
We got it.
They behaved. They didn't fly on me.
Good try. What you think about all the pigeons?
As long as they don't start flying around like that.
I don't like how they make noises when they. When they fly.
Like they're like.
Wait, what do they like?
They like, spaz out.
Oh, the squirrels.
Should I get closer?
That's the cutest thing I've ever seen.
Oh, my gosh.
This is squirrel.
I don't know.
I don't think squirrel's ears, like stuck up that far.
