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The Russia Experience

Main, Detailed Itinerary & Expenses, Statistics, The Russia Experience

Over-all, the travel agency we used, The Russia Experience, was good and we would recommend them to others. They took complete care of my visas, answered our many questions and handled our many alterations to the itinerary before the trip, and all services and bookings were delivered as promised. All hotels were expecting us, all train tickets were delivered, and all agents we there to greet us when expected.

At any given time, we only had train tickets for the next immediate leg of the journey. We would pick up the next tickets either from their local agents or directly from the hotel.

Our first contact with an agent was the Moscow "buddy tour", Lena. She was waiting in our hotel lobby exactly at 11:00, as agreed. She was excellent: knowledgeable and helpful.

We had an agent meet us off the train in Irkutsk and Vladivostok. We had to admit that this was quite luxurious and freed us from dealing with local taxi drivers and figuring out how to get to our hotels. In Irkutsk, the agent held up a "Russia Experience" sign. In Vladivostok she just seemed able to pick us out from the crowd. They would ensure we got checked into our hotels, give us their number in case we needed anything, give us our train tickets for the next leg, and ensure we got back onto the next train, right to the exact car. In Irkutsk the agent and the driver took us to Listvyanka, about an hour's drive, and back to Irkutsk again.

In Harbin we met no agent, as the hotel was right across the street from the station. Our tickets were waiting at the hotel. In Beijing we were on our own. The Russia Experience had given me the number of their contact in the Beijing office of CITS (the national travel agency). The lady answered the phone and, as our hotel was just up the street from her office, she had my Hanoi train ticket delivered to me.

Everything worked out. There are, however, two small complaints. The first is that the agents in Irkutsk/Listvyanka and Vladivostok really didn't provide any more than the bare minimum contracted. We thought, for example, that it would have been nice for them to point out the sites and provide tourist-type commentary as they were driving us around, and maybe suggest must-sees while we were in town.

The other issue was their lack of flexibility. Before the trip, we couldn't make up our minds about Irkutsk and Listvyanka. We had to get off the train for either two days or four, and we chose four (three was what we needed). The question was, then, do we spend two days each in Irkutsk and Listvyanka, one and three, or three and one? We asked TRE to just book the first night in Listvyanka and the last night in Irkutsk, and we would deal with the two nights in between on our own.

They resisted this. They told us about how we must have stamps from hotels covering each night in Russia, or there would be problems with Immigration. We we were aware of these requirements but, after reading many travellers' reports on-line, we figured we could play it loose just for two days without any problems; this seemed quite normal in our research. TRE wouldn't budge; we must have each night booked, so we went with two nights and two.

While Listvyanka was pleasant, after seeing the three sites, relaxing in the coffee house and empty bar, and snowmobiling; there just wasn't anything to do. We decided we had to get out of there after the first night, no matter what we had to do to accomplish this. Irkutsk was no great tourist centre, but at least it was a city with bars and Internet. We contacted our TRE agent, who resisted our idea. We persisted and she gave in. She and the driver picked us up and drove us to Irkutsk a day early, and checked us into our hotel a day early. This proved we could be flexible in Russia and the hotel in Listvyanka hadn't given us any stamps anyway, so TRE was definitely pushing a weak point. We made the change but we never got our money back from the second night at the Listvyanka hotel, in spite of giving them 24 hours' notice.

In spite of this, The Russia Experience delivers what they promise, and we would probably use them again.

Eric - from London