Experience of visit Baikal
1) The main problem is low relevancy of TripAdvisor’s (etc) rating. One hardly could rely on a/the ratings, unless one has a card from Sberbank (and better if one travels by own SUV). That is caused by poor verbalization skills in modern Russian society. Usually (not always) peoples neither understand nor trust each other.
2) Magnitudes of smallest issues (amount and time-flow of insignificant cache-payment’s, beach/room-neighbors-noise, room-cleaning, laundry, casual services) ~exponentially multiply each-other as “chain-reaction“ (in collocaion with perversed official money-account-rules). Such issues you can’t imagine in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapur. Such issues you almost never mention in Thailand, modern mainland China, Turkey, Europe, USA, Canada. Such issues you (or hotel's personnel) would skip/omit in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia (as insignificant). But ad-hoc management from parasitic (criminal-society originated) rentier-landlords typical in Russia, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaisia makes personally-excellent personnel notoriously tired & depressed (and then causes permanent communications' tensions).
3) Hence rational criterion to book a holiday-stay in Russia for ~>1 week would be e-mail with the topics:
- 3.1) you’d better explicitly ask, how frequently “executive director” (or “real owner“ otherwise) visits the hotel (the best situation is straightforward answer that “he/she is the administrator and/or lives there and/or communicates with you right now”);
- 3.2) you’d better explicitly ask owner’s (CEO’s) personal e-mail (and optionally “mobile phone”); hope you never need such a contact; but you’d better to know proven and direct contact-address;
- 3.3) you’d better don’t care about current Russian customs in this aspect;
- 3.4) if you don’t have clean answer for the topics “3.1)” and “3.2)” then you’d better to choose another hotel (in Russia or in another country) for holiday during ~>1 week.
A certain positive recommendation for mild speleology-experience is "bаikalspravka at gmail.com". Ivan Schultz provides ~optimum "ratio" of:
- real and relevant safety;
- ignorance of non-important accessories (unless you pay specific glamour explicitly).
Tageran caves group; Photo by N. Emelyanov
Tageran vertical cave
Quite good quantity/price in Irkutsk:
- "traveller's cafe"
- http://www.bulldog-restaurant.com
Mediocre (average; not bad):
- "Harrat's pub" in domestic airport; (the one in international duty-free looks overpriced).
Breakfast at home