Dine like Russian empress Catherine the Great in Malaysia

One of the posh dining tables at Catherine the Great’s summer palace in Pushkin, near St Petersburg in Russia. Photos: MELODY L. GOH/The Star

Whenever the weather gets unbearably hot here – like how it has been in the past few weeks – I try to think of the time when I went to Russia during the tail end of the summer season.

It was an 11-day assigment, onboard a cruise ship sailing along the Volga, the longest river in Europe, measuring at 3,531km in length.