Russia (July of 2009)

          To extend the sheng canopy to northern Asia required a visit to Russia. Travel is relatively difficult there, with the long distances and low population density in Siberia. There are eleven time zones in Russia.
          I decided to buy tickets on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Most commonly, the American or European visitor travels from west to east, beginning at St. Petersburg or Moscow, and riding to Vladivostok or Beijing as an eastern terminus. Thus it seemed it might be less crowded and more interesting if I took the other direction.
          I left home on June 3, stopping in Taiwan for about a week to help a friend. My plane out of Taipei on the 11th had a mechanical problem in flight, and so had to return to Chiang Kai Shek Airport for brief repairs. When it finally arrived in Korea, it was too late to make my connection to Vladivostok, and so I had to stay in Inchon overnight. I found an inexpensive room not too far from the airport, and close enough from a latent vortex to reach it on foot. There was already a sheng canopy overhead, but as there had previously been no latent vortex opened in Korea, it seemed right to open one.


          The flight next day arrived in Vladivostok about 4PM. I had been warned that taxi drivers might lie and tell me that there was no train into the city -- and that turned out to be the case. Nor did the station attendant contradict the driver, when I appealed to him for confirmation or contradiction. It was a Russian holiday, and the only currency exchange office at the airport was closed. However the taxi driver’s friend exchanged some dollars for rubles for me, at a not good, but acceptable rate. When we got out of the building, I saw a bus quite a distance off, and although the taxi driver objected, saying that that bus did not go into town, I walked over to investigate. It did in fact go into town, directly to the train station, and the fare was much lower that the proposed taxi fare.
          When the bus arrived at the train station, I immediately went to the proper window to exchange the vouchers I had received by email for physical tickets. I was lucky, in that the office was scheduled to close less than a half hour after I arrived, and my train north to Khabarovsk was to leave that evening.
          I had planned to spend a day in Vladivostok, but because of my stop-over in Korea, I only had a couple hours, and there was no latent vortex close enough to reach during that time interval. However, the sheng canopy was overhead. I bought some bread and cheese and sat down on a bench near the port side docks to eat a leisurely dinner waiting for departure time.

          I had purchased 2nd class tickets, which mean a sleeping car with compartments containing four bunk beds: two above and two below. This was the only leg of the trip where I had a fluent English speaking companion in my compartment. He was a surgeon, teaching at the medical school in Khabarovsk, and had been to America in some sort of medical exchange program. He told me that his monthly earnings in Russia were the equivalent to about $1000 per month.
          We arrived in Khabarovsk early in the morning, and the surgeon kindly took me up to the area in the train station called "resting rooms". Not all the stations on my journey, but the majority of them, had these rooms, which contained from two to ten or so beds. For about the price of a hostel bed you could purchase a "resting room" bed for a day, or a day and a night, if you had a ticket for a trip out. The room in Khabarovsk had five beds, of which three were vacant. I choose one near the window, and settled down to rest for an hour or two.
          Once people had begun to move about in the streets, I walked down through the town to the Amur River, where there was a pleasant public path along the bank through the city. A mile or two south there was a latent vortex, so I hiked down there and opened it. On minor problem in Russia is the dearth of free available toilets. There are sometimes pay toilets in public places, but they are invariably locked, and it is not always easy to find where to go to pay and get the key: especially when you don’t speak Russian and you are in a part of Russia where few speak English. Fortunately I could read a bit, but few could understand what I attempted to say, nor could I understand most of what was spoken to me.
          On the way back to the station I found an internet cafe in the basement of the post office, and so was able to let my wife know I had made it to Russia intact.
          There was no sheng canopy over Khabarovsk when I arrived, nor when I left the next morning. The edge of it was visible to the the south, moving northward, when the the train left for Chita with me on it. About a quarter of the way from Khabarovsk to Chita the sheng canopy passed overhead. I was never again during the trip to move out from beneath it, nor to see any sky where it was not present.

          My train had arrived in Chita at just before 2AM, and Chita Station had no "resting rooms". So I had to sit up in a chair until daylight. About 7AM I checked into a hotel, so as to get my entry card registered. It rained most of the time when I was there. This was uncomfortable since I had no rain gear, but the bad weather made it easier for me to open unobserved the latent vortex I found off in one quarter of the city. That night my train left at 1AM, and I wanted to walk to the train station in the daylight, so I had about a 3 hour wait before departure.

          After waking in the morning, and very haltingly greeting my sleeping compartment companions in Russian, I realized that I was likely going to have many hours of time on the train by myself, without conversation.
          The scenery was interesting from time to time, but for long stretches the tracks were lined with birch trees, and it was not easy to see the countryside behind them. I found it singular that in Siberia, especially eastern Siberia, nearly all farms and settlements, and even towns, were surrounded by solid fencing. It made me appreciate somewhat why the original meaning of the English word town, was fence.

          The next stop was Irkutsk, and we rode a considerable distance alongside spectacular Lake Baikal on the latter part of the trip. The train station lies on the one side of the Angara River, and the city on the other. Coming in on the train, I espied a latent vortex on the town side, and after checking in at a youth hostel, went out and found, and opened it. I then sat down on the river bank, made myself a sandwich of bread and cheese, and "splat": a direct hit from a bird above in the middle of the sandwich. I am not quite sure of what that was a confirmation.

          From Irkutsk the train took me to Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisey River. Here I was able to find another "resting room". Coming in on the train I had seen a latent vortex down river, but after about a two mile walk from the station, I found that the approach road was heavily watched by guards. Hence I headed back up river, and eventually found another latent vortex in a park within the city. It was a gray day, and early enough that few people were around. I was able to open it with little difficulty.

          Boarding the train the next day, I inadvertently dropped a wallet containing my entry card, but little else. When I discovered it a couple minutes later, I rushed out to try to recover it, but it was already gone. For the only time in Russia, I spoke to a policeman, but he seemed only annoyed that I should be worried about something so petty -- he said I could pick up another when I left the country. I did not quite believe him, but was to find out at the end of the trip, that he was correct. This train took me to Omsk, where the Om and Irtysh Rivers join. Here again I was able to stay overnight in a "resting room". The vortex in Omsk was downtown, and I had take a bus several miles to get within walking distance. It was on a river bank, as all the vortices I opened on this trip, except for the one in Chita.

          From Chita I journeyed to Yekterinburg, known as Sverdlovsk in Soviet times. There I stayed in a youth hostel, and opened a latent vortex in a park on the Isel River.

          Thence to Kazan on the Volga, where there was a latent vortex not far from the train station. The river was beautiful, and there was a beach not far from the vortex, where young and old were soaking in the sun. I did not spend the night there, having arrived in the morning and being scheduled to leave that night. Shortly before dark I went back to the area of the vortex, where I witnessed a curious phenomenon. In a radius of perhap a 100 yards or meters, the qi was flowing circularly about the vortex. Furthermore around each of the telephone poles in the area, qi was flowing circularly in a radius of about a yard. For most of the poles, the flow was the same orientation as that around the vortex, but for a few it was opposite.

          The final stop was the capital city Moscow. I had reserved a bed in a hostel within walking distance from the railroad station, and after a little trouble, found it and took a shower. I could feel a latent vortex in the general direction of where my map indicated the Kremlin was located, and so set out on a hike. After going some way, I found that it was not in the Kremlin, which was probably just as well. It was in the Moscow River some way off, and I had to be a bit careful to open it without exciting notice. When the job was done, I walked along the river bank, crossed the river on the Bolshoi Moscowretski Bridge, and took a look at Red Square and the buildings about.

          Russia is a huge and interesting country, and I have here said quite little of what I saw in it. But after all, this is a report mainly concerning the etherial, and there are many other sources treating the wonders of Russia.

          The trip back was rather uneventful: Moscow to Prague to New York to Seattle to home -- everywhere under the sheng canopy .