Holly's on the left with new
friends!
by rw-bigfootfriends!
check the weather right before you go. I packed a gortex rain jacket perfect for June rained a few times and was nice in the cool mornings and evenings, you can stuff a light weight jacket into your shopping bag. Don't take umbrella. Wear good walking shoes and some clothes that will serve more than one type of outing. Women take a scarf with you to get inside the churchs there! All married women have to wear a scarf in the churches. I took a none wrinkling skirt, light weight capri pants were my favorite, and a pair of jeans. I over packed with lots of clothes just a few essentials and a few different tops, a dressy one, tank top, light weight sweater , and 2 regular everyday shirts. When you pack everything unpack it all and repack lighter! You can buy anything you want over there if you forgot something and or need something else to wear, buy it at the Central Market at one of the blue/white tents, even nice sandels for just a few dollars are there so don't over pack!
antiseptic, small brown bottle of red iodine less than 2.00, bandaids, travel packs of kleenex tissues. Don't use or trust the medicines there, bring extra medication heard of diabetics using more insulin from stress, alka-seltzer great! unsented baby wipes, tyenol 3's for the plane, the long train ride took the stress off us and helped us get to sleep. Had a prescription for antibiotics, that was a life saver! The first day being there our noses & throats burned from the pollution, We took acidophilus (good bacteria, found in yogurt also), buy that is shelf stable no refrig. needed, we ate a few times food that upset our stomachs but we never developed intestinal worms (traveler diarrhea). But do pack something for diarrhea. Advil for headache
bring a few disposable cameras you'll be glad you did to take in places where you could get your good camera stolen. It may not even be an expensive camera but they don't know that , and don't carry it around your neck or in a camera bag you'll have tourist written all over you! Also be careful on charging up your camera with electric plug converter, I took over 200 hundred pictures and still had charge left in my battery. We used a digital camera. Check at home first how many pictures you can take with you camera. I wouldn't have taken my charger (more weight in my luggage) if I had known how many pictures it would have taken without a recharge. and taking a few extra disposables would give me more pictures if my camera battery would have died. We could have put our pictures to disc. if we wanted to while we were there if we needed more space on the cameras memory card, but they didn't have any disposable cameras they didn't know what they were.
take good bug spray! we used full-strength deet OFF! it's in a little bottle in the camping section of walmart. A little went a long way! the bottle was less that 3 inches tall so it didn't take up much space
You can buy the same things that are in the U.S. over in Russia. they have all the same product made by american companys just written in Russia you will reconise the packaging. Everything from candy bars, toothpaste, gum, pepsi and coke products everywhere throughtout the country. The bottle water we bought was bottled by pepsi company didn't have any trouble finding it was with all the other pepsi products throught the city at street side vendors. cost about 32 rubles for a 2 liter.
