Joël's Excellent Adventure: Sponsored by the Met

Java & Bali

2007-05-05T18:31:00.000+04:00

(11/2/2007-17/2/2007)

If anyone reading this goes to Indonesia and has the choice of taking a bus run by the Damri company, then take it. This was the company of the bus that took us from Banda Lampung on Sumatra to Bandung on Java, and it was the best bus we had in South-East Asia. It had Winnie the Pooh blankets and pillows for everyone, working footrests,plenty of space in each row, a sealed area at the back for smokers so they weren't allowed to smoke anywhere else, and despite it being a night journey, which apparently is generally considered an ideal time to play really awful pop music really loudly, there was no music at all! As if all that wasn't good enough, we even arrived at our destination almost 2 hours early! As this was at 4.20 in the morning, we were able to skip Bandung completely and take the first train to Yogyakarta (pronounced "Jogjakarta", or just "Jogja"), which was far more comfortable than a bus despite being a couple of hours late. As Sally spent 6 months here when she was doing her degree, for once we had no problem findingaccommodation, places to eat, or places to do our laundry.

The next day we booked our "travel" (minibus) for the next day, then went for a walk around town, visiting the Sultan's palace (the sultan is still in charge ofJogja ), and the Sultan's water palace where he would bathe with his wives and children and meet his concubines etc. It then started to rain, so we got a bus up to near where Sally used to live and stayed in aninternet café until it stopped, and then it was time for a dinner of ayam bakar (grilled chicken and rice, Sally's favourite). We then had time to collect laundry, do a bit of shopping for journey supplies, and then had beer and pancakes at a bar where we met a crazy Australian from Alice Springs, studying in Darwin. The next day was not very exciting as we travelled by minibus toBromo . The lady sitting next to me kept jumping due to the incredibly bad and dangerous driving of both our driver and everyone else on the road, but after nearly 2 months in South-East Asia I was used to it and just slept. The most exciting thing to happen was when we realised that our water bottle which had been on top of the engine and in the sun had got hot enough to make hot chocolate, which we did by adding chocolate flavoured sweetened condensed milk from thesqueezy, screw-top packet that we'd bought. Eventually, after some winding mountain roads, we arrived at the village near Bromo, an active volcano, and due to the lack of tourists were able to get a very nice room in a hotel.

Others in or minibus had been persuaded to go on a trip to see the sunrise, so had to get up at 4am, but we decided to have a couple of days there, so just got up at 9, had breakfast, and then went walking across a volcanic wasteland of cooled lava to MountBromo , which steamed in the middle. We were escorted by a horse guide who wanted us to pay for him to walk us across on his horse, but wepreferred to walk, so he cantered off after a while. It was pretty hot, there was no shelter, and we didn't return until after 1 so we got quite badlysunburnt despite all the suncream we put on. To get to the rim of the volcano there we some crumbling steps, and at the top there was a fence of plastic tubing to stop you falling into the steaming crater that smelt of sulphur, a guy trying to sell us flowers to throw in as an offering (a few minutes later we saw him climbing down to pick those that hadn't reach out again!), and a lady selling drinks and stuff. In theory you could walk all the way along, but the fence only stretched across a few metres, andsome of the edge looked pretty thin and crumbly, so we didn't. Having seen enough volcano for one day, we went down to the Hindu temple at the foot of the neighbouring extinct volcano, and got a ride back on horses after some bargaining. We ended the day by watching the sunset with an Indonesian expat (the lady who'd sat next to me on the minibus), her daughter, and an Indonesian couple, then all had dinner together before we went to book our onward travel and the trip to the viewpoint for sunrise the next day, which we'd been convinced was worth it.

Sadly this meant we had to get up at 3.40am for our drive in a jeep through the dark, occasionally lit by some cool lightning in some clouds which luckily turned out to be behind us when watching the sunrise. It turned out that it really was worth it, as the huge extinct crater containing Mt.Bromo and it's neighbour was filled with mist, so it looked like a scene from Jurassic Park, the clouds didn't hide the sun but there were enough to look pretty in the red light, and best of all was the even more active Mt.Semira which erupted twice in the 30-45 minutes we were there with a huge cloud of smoke. Once the sun had risen, the jeep took us down to Mt.Bromo for other people to climb it, but as we'd already done that with hardly anyone else there, we didn't feel like doing it with a crowd of tourists, and instead stayed at the bottom, Sally joking with the horse guides, and laughing at the tourists being lead on their horses up the 5 or 10 minute walk to the steps, several with their video cameras out.

Then it was back for breakfast (including coffee which we turned into moccha by adding our chocolate condensed milk) and into the local bus to Probolingo where we had to wait for our bus to Denpasar on Bali, passing the time by letting a nice young Indonesian guy practice his English, who told us he wanted to be the next Kasparov. Our bus was OK, although they refused to give us our complimentary meal that all the Indonesian passengers got, but once we were on the ferry across to Bali we got a great view ofvolcanoes (presumably extinct) silhouetted against the sunset lit sky. Arriving in Denpasar was surprisingly hassle free, as the first taxi driver we asked agreed to use the meter, and the hotel the Indonesian expat lady had recommended to us turned out to be pretty nice and reasonable, with a swimming pool, breakfast and all. Dinner was also pretty good as I discovered a mega-sandwich including chicken, pineapple,avocado, mayonnaise, and more.

The next day was more fun, beginning with a swim in the hotel pool, then breakfast, a quick spell on the internet as at the last minute I decided I didn't want to got to Hong Kong, China, and elsewhere on my own but go to Australia with Sally, so I had to activate a visa and buy a plane ticket, and then we went toWaterbom Park. This is a great place full of waterslides you can go on in tubes, on mats, or just on your own (including a great one called Boomerang where you go down a flume in a tube, come shooting out and up avertical wall then down over a bump into a pool), a "river" you can float around in on your tube, various pools, and bubble tea! When that shut we went shopping for presents and stuff, had dinner, and finished with beer and ice cream.

Our last day in Indonesia began similarly, only with dragon fruit for breakfast as well (a large pink skinned fruit with odd scale-like bits, which inside is white with black seeds, and tastes a bit like the seeds in kiwi fruit), then we had to pack and check out as our plane was that evening. We spent most of the day shopping, with periodic breaks for ice with jellies, cocktails, beer, swimming on the beach, and a tasty dinner of chicken and coconut. Then we got a taxi to the airport for all the joys of checking in, finally leaving just after midnight on our plane, meaning that now Sally and I have travelled together on all popular forms of transport (as well as a few more unpopular ones). A few hours later we were in Australia, and I was (almost) done with long distance travel for a while.

Sumatra

2007-04-27T09:45:00.000+04:00

(30/1/2007-10/2/2007)

Despite having to get up at 7 to get the ferry, it didn't leave until 10. It was only a small passenger one, and moved quite a lot in the waves. As the inside was filled with the usual dreadful music, we spent most of the day on deck until it got too hot. It was pretty boring, especially as the journey lasted 9 hours instead of the 4 or 5 it was meant to, so when we finally arrived in Indonesia it was too late to get the bus to where we wanted to go so we had to spend a night in Medan. All the hotels were pretty crappy, so we decided to take the $2 or $3 dollar one, consisting of a mattress on the floor of a room with cardboard walls in a place called Spoutnik, as it was only for one night. To make things better we had a desert of some insanely rich cake/pancake thing with chocolate, peanut and a non-cheesy cheese and Sally being able to speak Indonesian made things alot easier than they had been in some other places, as well as more interesting as conversations weren't limited to basic English.

Where we wanted to go was Bukit Lawang to see the orangutang rehabilitation centre, but we didn't have time to do a full jungle trek as the guides at the hotel tried to persuade us to do, and certainly not one pushed on us like that. So the next day, after having a lie in to make up of being woken at some stupid hour by the mosque next door, with the help of a guide who was going back there anyway (he also wanted to get us to go on a trek with him, but didn't push too hard so it wasn't too annoying), we took first a betchak (kind of sidecar thing), then a bemo (minivan), then a minibus, and finally another betchak to get there. It was a small village by some rapids with several hotel type things, only a few open as tourism has kind of collapsed in Sumatra and Indonesia in general in recent years. We had the usual search for accommodation, taking longer as everything was spaced out along the bank, passing monkeys playing by one of the cafés as we went past, and settled for a room at the top of a two story hut with a basic but clean bathroom, a balcony with chairs, and no electricity but an oil lamp instead. It was so peaceful there in the jungle that the next day we managed to sleep until 4 in the afternoon! We were only woken when a group of macaques (small grey monkeys) came and ate durian (a large, disgusting smelling fruit) on our balcony and the rocks outside out window. Once we got up we walked down to the inn nearest the orangutan centre, although it was too late to see the feeding there, and had breakfast, during which on the opposite bank of the river a mother orangutan came down for a drink with her baby.

Having missed them on our first day, we made sure to get up in time for the feeding of the orangutans the next day. to reach it we had to cross the river by means of a boat pulled across my a rope around another rope spanning the rapids, which was quite fun in itself, and then after paying we were lead up a hill by two rangers to the platform. They called to the orangutans, who soon came to get their bananas, about seven or eight in total including a little young one, a mother and her baby, and one the ranger told us was pregnant, as well as some macaques trying to steal some food as well. The orangutans here were one that had been kept in captivity and had been rehabilitated, so they were semi-wild and came right up to us, one even trying to steal Sally's bag as it thought there might be bananas in it (unlikely, she hates bananas). It was so good that after playing Scrabblecards and having some pancakes, we came back for the afternoon feed. About the same number came, including a male, and this time I was able to play with the baby orangutan, holding it's hand and pulling back and forth. It's mother got very friendly with the ranger, trying to climb up him and get a piggy-back, and when that didn't work because she was too heavy she came all the way down the hill with us and sat watching them build a new rope bridge, which the ranger told us he didn't understand why they were building it "just for the queen of Spain" as then the orangutans will be able to get across the river. We finished the day by renting a couple of tubes and going tubing down the rapids, a much more informal, and certainly more dangerous way to do it than what we'd done in Laos, as the water flowed much faster, but it was pretty fun.

We decided to leave the next day, but luckily when we got up there were some Thomas Leaf monkeys in the trees nearby, which are cool black and white ones with tufts of hair like Mohawks. So that was a good start to an otherwise boring day, as we had to go all the way back to Medan through the rain, changing buses halfway, cross the city to the other bus station where (after reassuring the stall owners that we weren't Muslim, and trying to explain that we had no religion) we had some pork and got the bus to Lake Toba, a huge water filled crater of an extinct volcano. From the town on the shore we got a ferry to the island where we wanted to stay, foolishly listening to what some people had told us at Bukit Lawang and getting off at the Reggae bar, which was full, or just didn't want us to stay, so we walked down to another one called Abadi which only had two disgusting grotty rooms, but as we were tired and had made the mistake of not leaving out bags at the top before coming down the steep steps to look at the rooms, we took one of them. Combined with some ridiculously expensive noodles we had for dinner and our neighbours playing the harmonica badly late into the night, the next morning we almost felt like leaving the island and going to our next destination. However, instead we decided to spoil ourselves and walked to the nicest sounding hotel in the Lonely Planet Guide, Toba Cottages. There they gave us an off-season discount, so for $20 we basically had a house: the room was in a building built in the local traditional style, and was huge, the steps in it up to a platform where there was a mattress and a great view of the lake, the was a four poster bed, a fridge, some seats, a balcony with seats and a hammock, really nice clean bathroom with a bath and hot water, and a buffet breakfast was included, which turned out to be really nice as the place was run by a German and had a German style bakery with (obviously) German style bread, tasting even better after the woolly processed stuff we'd had to eat since leaving former French colonies.

The rest of the day was just a productive: we walked to the King's Grave, one of the supposed attractions of the island, which in itself was not that exciting but we got to see some of the island (which is really big, you could easily spend a week or two going for walks in its hills), and when we got back some other guests were watching Pirates of the Carribean 2, so we did as well, then had tempe (traditional Indonesian food made from soya) burgers, then sat on our platform reading for a while with beers kept nice and cool in our fridge. The next day we got up early to get bus tickets to Bukit Tinggi, our next destination, to enjoy our buffet breakfast and our room until check out time. As the bus wasn't until the evening, we left our bags and walked to the other "attraction", the more interesting stone chairs where judging used to take place, then came back for a swim and to get the ferry from the hotel's garden. The bus was the usual horrible South-East Asian bus journey with terrible music at stupid times of the night, screaming babies, and this time the added novelty of going along mountain roads that only seemed to be half build and so the bus could go at only about 5 miles per hour in some places...

Amazingly we got there only 2 hours late, after crossing the equator sometime during the night, and had a bit of a walk into the city, some some steps to the top of a hill, then down some others again. We had some breakfast and did the usual search for a hotel, finding one where the owner seemed to have taken a liking to us so gave us a discount. It was an OK room, without windows but not too close to the mosque, and the owner made us breakfast of fried chocolate sandwiches and tea every morning. We then went to the zoo not to see the live animals, because I hate zoos, but to see the freaky stuffed ones in the museum such as two headed goats and eight legged cows. From there we walked to the "fort" which was just an unimpressive white building, then on to a park with a view on a canyon and some tunnels the Japanese had forced locals to build while they were occupying, which were not nearly as fascinating as they sounded, and finally we had a look around the market. The day after we had thought of going to a nearby lake, but got up to late, so we had some drinks and played Scrabblecards for a bit then went for a walk, got some fruit and other snacks for the 24+ hour bus journey we had the next day, and had rendang, a local dish of spicy beef, slightly spoilt by an annoying guy trying to practice English, or get us on a tour, or something.

Our bus journey the next day started at 9am and was to go down half the length of the island to the Southern tip at Banda Lampung, so we didn't get there until about noon the following day. The bus didn't finish there though but continued to Jakarta, so it dropped us at the outskirts of the city, then we had to navigate the complicated system of bemos to get to the area with travel agents where we thought there might be hotels. We went to one travel agent to see how much their tour to the national park we wanted to go to would be, but it was stupidly expensive so we left. After a while of wandering around looking lost trying to find a hotel, an Indonesian guy in a fancy 4x4 pulled up and offered to help us because he was "a good guy", which turned out to be true, even if he claimed that God had told him to help us rather than him doing it of his own accord... He drove us around and found a reasonably cheap but decent enough hotel for us called Hotel Lusy and told us how to get to the national park, said goodbye and left. We spent the rest of the day getting bus tickets to Bandung in Java for the next day, then went wandering for snacks in a supermarket, discovering the disturbing existence of durian flavoured condoms, getting bright coloured cakes and iced tea in a plastic bag rather than a cup, and meeting a friendly betchak driver who wanted his photo taken with us, so we got it printed for him in a nearby photo shop. We finished the day with a tasty meal of pempek, a kind of dumpling.

As our bus didn't leave until the evening and the Way Kambas National Park that we wanted to go to was supposedly only 2hrs by bus, we decided to do that the next day. We got up nice and early, got first one bus, then another to get to the bus station, a third bus to a second bus station where we could get a minibus to a road and there get two ojek (motorbike taxis) to the park itself, so we didn't arrive until about 2 in the afternoon. This gave us time to have a 30 minute ride on one of the elephants they have, wandering through the bush and discovering that riding elephants is actually quite uncomfortable, at least the small type they have there. We also got to play a bit with a baby elephant and watch them bathing, and it was all quite fun even though I don't really like to see animals being used for entertainment like that, but we didn't have time to go to see the Sumatran rhinos which have some kind of rehabilitation centre there, as we had to get the motorbikes back to a small town in order to get a bus back in time for our night bus, but luckily that didn't take as long as getting there had.

Thailand to Malaysia

2007-04-24T17:09:00.000+04:00

(25/1/2007-29/1/2007)

Everywhere was either full or grotty in the backpacker area of Bangkok, so we didn't get a room until 11. We tried to arrange a meet up with Nina who was also there, but we both fell asleep until 3 and then spend 3 hours crossing the city to get to the STA Travel office to change Sally's ticket, only to find it closed, and then that there were no buses so we had to get a taxi back. We walked up Khao San Road, the hilariously tacky tourist strip, had dinner and went to bed. The next day we had more luck, Sally managed to have her ticket changed straight away after trying in several other cities without success, then we bought our train tickets to Malaysia and we finished by 11.30. We played around in a park on the exercise equipment for a while then went to wait for Nina in case she'd got our email, but it seemed she didn't so we missed her again. Instead we got the Sky train to the ferry and the ferry to near Khao San Road to see a bit more of the city and had a tasty pad thai from a street stall followed by mango with coconut sticky rice.

The train to the Malaysian border was uneventful, apart from them making us go to bed at 6.30 in the evening, but the next day after we'd crossed the border some kid threw a rock at the train and it hit our window, which shattered with a sound like a gunshot, but didn't fall out of the frame luckily, so we just had to move away. We arrived at Butterworth where we got a ferry across to Georgetown on Pedang island to find somewhere to stay the night, which took a while, though we did find some crazy guy trying to get us to sleep in a super cheap place which was just a mattress on the floor, but we eventually found one and went to buy our tickets to Sumatra for the next day.

Laos

2007-04-16T14:44:00.000+04:00

(11/1/2007-25/1/2007)

Because there were only four of us going on the boat, it meant we didn't have to get up too early. Once we'd had breakfast we went down to the river to our "speedboat", which was a rickety looking, narrow boat with one of the weird long stemmed motors they have in South-East Asia. With our bags in the front, we sat in two abreast and set off down the river for two hours. At first it was fine, but soon it it got narrower and wilder on the riverbank, trees with huge root systems and all looking as if they were facing a constant strong wind, probably because they're half underwater in the wet season, and the water got choppier. It was probably actually quite dangerous, but pretty fun, and we got to the border in about 2 hours. This part was quite fun too, as on the Cambodian side there was just a small village, and when we gave the officials our passports we all had to slip a $1 note in so everything would go smoothly. We did the same on the Lao side, a half hour walk along a dirt track to a wooden house and a cabin that was the checkpoint. We then had a brief wait before someone came to pick us up in a nice big van to take us to our boat across to the Si Phan Don (Thousand Islands), a group of islands in the middle of Mekong.

More specifically, we were taken to Don Det, the backpacker island, and therefore full of restaurants with western food and stuff, and the entire economy centred around tourism. All the accommodation was in small bungalows, we got one for $3 a night with a concrete bathroom separated from the room by a plastic sheet, the shower consisting of a bucket of water, which was also for flushing, although at least the toilet was a western one. There's no electricity on the island apart from petrol generators at a few of the cafés. Once we'd found somewhere to stay and had something to eat, we went for a walk on the sunset side of the island, almost reaching the other end we discovered later, but it meant we missed the actual sunset, although at the bar we went to see it we met a bunch of people from Perth...

The next day we rented bikes so I could try to learn to ride as there were no cars, but the paths were still lined with barbed wire fences, and we started shortly after noon, so obviously I got overcome by the heat and gave up pretty quick. Instead we went for a swim in the river on the sunset side, as all around the island there isn't a strong current, probably due to all the other islands. After sunset, which was always pretty impressive from Don Det, we had dinner of laap, a local dish of minced meat, then spent the rest of the evening drinking beer in our hammocks on the porch of our bungalow. The next day was pretty similar only without the bikes, just a short walk, we managed to catch the whole sunset for once, and for dinner I had tom yam soup, a kind of sour soup with lemon grass. For our last day we decided to walk to the other island, connected to Don Det by an old railway bridge, the only one the French build during their occupation, which seems a bit pointless. On this island there is an amazingly waterfall, which comes as a bit of a shock on such a tiny island, and also a nice beach where we went for a swim. You can also go for boat trips to see the Mekong dolphins, but we didn't bother. We learnt afterwards that Nina, our Finnish friend from the Mongolian trip, was also on Don Det at the same time as us, but we somehow managed to miss each other.

From Don Det we got a boat and then a kind of truck to Pakse, the nearest large down, which was alright to wander around for a bit, though nothing special. I had guava juice there, but they did something odd, possibly put salt instead of sugar, anyway it was undrinkable. We had to spend a night there and then get a bus following the Mekong (which is the border between Laos and Thailand) to Savannakhet, a nice crumbling colonial town by the river, where we also had to spend a night. If we go back I think we'd want to spend a bit longer there, it was very nice to wander around. The next day we got up very early and managed to get the bus before the one we were aiming for at 6.40 to get to Vientiane, the capital. An hour or two before we arrived, the bus broke down, so we had to all squeeze into a local bus, which had baggage guys climbing on and off the roof as we went along, coming in and out the windows, and walking about on top, we could see their shadows. Once we managed to reach the centre we stopped for donuts at the Scandinavian Bakery, and discovered from other travellers that nearly everywhere was full, so we went straight to the one they recommended. At $10 a night it seemed a bit pricey after where we'd been before, but it had hot water for the first time since Saigon. We had a dinner of chicken and beef hotpot by the river on cushions around a table made of a tractor tyre painted gold. For our only full day in Vientiane (we hoped) we did some washing in our room, then got a bus to Xieng Khuane, a park built by some mystic loon full of statues from Buddhist and Hindu mythology. One was particularly cool as it was shaped like some kind of giant fruit and you could climb up inside it, entering through an open mouth.

Heading north once more, we got the bus to Vang Vieng, even more of a tourist resort than Don Det, with the crazy phenomenon of TV bars, where instead of normal chairs there are kind of sofas to slouch back on, all facing TVs, most of which seemed to play Friends. We managed to find a nice cheap hotel room behind one of them that played the Simpsons instead, had a walk about down by the river (not the Mekong this time) and had beer in hammocks until after sunset before going for dinner at the tasty Organic Farm Café. Vang Vieng's main attraction though is tubing, which we tried the next day once we'd both bought flipflops with skull and crossbones on them. You rent a giant inflated inner tube, get taken by tuctuc to a launch point a view miles up river, then float back to the town, admiring the scenery (kind of similar to Yangshuo again), and stopping at bars on the river bank, some of which have flying foxes and swings landing you in the water. It was great fun, if completely free of health and safety regulations (though it was dry season, so not too dangerous, in wet season it would be), and we met a nice Australian couple from Sydney who like us hung about too long and didn't get back until after dark, and we had dinner with them at the same place as the night before. They even offered to let me stay with them, as at the time I was planning on going to Sydney at some point (not any more though).

Unfortunately or usual tactic of just turning up to get a bus to our next destination didn't quite pay off, as the main bus was full so we had to get a pricey mini-bus. Probably there would have been a local bus soon enough, but the bus station staff were unhelpful, so we just took it. Quite a few people had raved about Luang Prabang, but once we got there and eventually found a (comparatively pricey) hotel, it didn't seem like anything special. It was nice enough, and they had good pancakes with brightly coloured fillings, but I thought Savanakhet was nicer, although I suppose if you have a romantic notion of Buddhism all the monasteries might appeal. The setting was very pretty though, amongst mountains at the meeting of two rivers (one of them the Mekong), it was quite relaxed, with locals playing boule (the French version of bowls or however you want to describe it), and we discovered the delicious Cornetto flavour that is Black Forest Magic. On the evening of the second day we went to the market full of local stuff for tourists, Sally bought some presents for family, but as I'm not going home any time soon I just got a cool monster doll thing, and then chicken and rice, Sally's favourite meal. For our last day we spent a while negotiating with tuctuc drivers, eventually finding an America girl to come with us to bring the price down, and we were taken to the waterfall. In wet season it must be impressive, but when we went it seemed fairly standard really. Swimming in the pools was fun though, if a bit cold, on the way back we saw buffalo who'd had their horns painted pink, and we had a really good meal in the evening.

The next day we'd made the mistake of booking through a travel agent, as we'd decided not to go to Chiang Mai after all but go straight to Bangkok, which meant going through Vientiane and we wanted to make sure we could get the bus to Thailand the day we got to Vientiane, 24 hours of buses in total, but the guy assured us we could, phoning up the office in Vientiane about 8 times to make sure. First problem was at the start. The bus didn't leave until 6.30, but apparently we had to be there at 5.30, the only reason we could see being so we had to pay more for a tuctuc, but we did that anyway, but the bus didn't leave until 8! Once we got to Vientiane we phoned the number we'd been given to get the pickup we'd been assured we would get, but apparently it didn't exist so we had to get our own tuctuc to the office, he then didn't know where it was so we had to ask at a hotel, and when we got to the office they told us the bus had already gone and there was no way to catch it that day. Sally phoned up the office in Luang Prabang, but they were unhelpful, refused to give us any money to pay for the night in Vientiane we now had to or in fact do anything. One of the hazards of travel in the Third World I suppose.

Luckily the hotel we'd stayed at before had room, and they recognised us so let us have a bigger room for the same price as the time before. We spent the next day have beer, coffee and ice cream then went to the office an hour before we were meant to be there just to make sure. 15 minutes after the time we'd got there the day before, someone arrived and took us literally around the corner to another hotel to wait for another half an hour, when someone else brought us around the next corner to the bus, a horrible mosquito infested thing that would take us to the border. only it wouldn't for another half an hour, so how we couldn't have got it the day before we didn't understand. But eventually we did get to the border, paid the Laos officials "overtime fee" and got across to Thailand and our nice VIP double-decker bus. 40 minutes later we stopped for dinner, but finally at 8.30 we were heading for Bangkok, unfortunately with some stupid, irritating, loudmouthed English girl blathering most of the way keeping us awake. At 6.30 we finally arrived, only 24 hours later than we wanted to...

Holiday In Cambodia

2007-04-09T21:47:00.000+04:00

(3/1/2007-10/1/2007)

To start our first full day in Cambodia, Sally and I went to the Laos embassy to get our visas for Laos (pronounced "Lao") as we would be entering at an unofficial border crossing so couldn't get them on arrival. That done we had bubble tea (fruit flavoured cold tea with sorghum ball "bubbles" - I had plum, a mistake as it was disgustingly sweet) in a very strange posh looking bar with blacked out windows, then went to the internet for a bit before having more bubble tea, this time from a street stall where we could only choose the flavour by the colour of the powder in the jars, but luckily I managed to get mango which was much better than the fancy one. At some point I also bought myself a new hat to replace my black cap with red star from Vietnam that I'd managed to leave on the bus when we arrived in Cambodia, a kind of cowboy/explorer's hat, like the ones the VietCong had.

Once we finished these we decided to go to Tuol Sleng, the torture museum in the former school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. It was pretty depressing and sad, most of it left as it was when the regime fell, along with some photo exhibits, although some of the captions rather disturbed this sombre atmosphere, particularly the summary of the life of one of the victims, an actor who apparently appeared in the films "When The Frog Cries, The Girl Panics" and "Tomato With Dried Fish Men". We followed this up the next day with a visit to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, where the prisoners were taken once they'd been tortured to be executed, although generally not with bullets but with the butt of a rifle. The main exhibit is a tower in which the thousand or so skulls that they dug up are on display as a monument to remember the victims, with labels saying how old the people each group of skulls belonged to were. Then you wander around past the trenches they were dug out of, and in the ground there are rags, apparently the blindfolds they wore, sticking out of the ground, an occasional pile of bones and signs on trees saying "the magic tree: where microphones were hung to drown the cries of the dying" and "this tree was used a tool to kill babies". All pretty grim stuff, but apparently our driver who took us there in a tuc-tuc (the kind of motorised rickshaws they have everywhere) didn't think so as he asked us just after we left if we wanted to go to the shooting range. And I still don't really understand the Khmer Rouge. I mean, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, May, Ho Chi Minh, and others, all did things according to a certain twisted logic, that were horrific, but where really just modern versions of Roman Emperors and other scumbags. But the Khmer Rouge seemed to have no logic and were actually completely insane.

From Phnom Penh it took us a whole day to get to Siem Reap, the City near the famous Temples of Angkor Wat, so there was no point going to the temples that day. The next day we took a tuc-tuc to the ticket booths and got three day tickets, then walked the few remaining kilometres, past a cool big spider whose web I almost walked into, to Angkor Wat itself. There are about 60 temples in the area, but this is one of the most famous, on a square island on a square lake, a huge palace like complex with those three rounded spire things. It was great to wander around a temple that famous that, unlike in China, and like at My Son, had not only not been obviously restored except to keep it from collapsing, but looked like it had only just been cut out of the jungle. Tucked in little dark corners of the temple were shrines still in use today, giving the impression that it was a religion in it's dying throes (although sadly, it probably isn't). Once we'd wandered around that for long enough we continued up the road, finding one of the smaller temples just off it, which was completely free of other tourists, then got a motorbike taxi back (just the one bike for both of us and the driver: if people there can fit a family of four or five on one then so can we). In the evening we had amok, a Cambodian speciality of fish curry steamed in banana leaves, which was delicious, each bought a hammock and a krama, the thin scarves they have there and in Vietnam (which the VietCong used to blend in with the population - mine was in the same colours as they had, blue and white, while Sally got a black and red one), and then got some cans of Black Panther Stout, a local beer with a great name and the slogan "Feel The Power Of The Black Panther!"

Day two amongst the temples we began with a tuc-tuc ride to Angkor Thom, which used to be a holy city with many temples, surrounded by a moat like Angkor Wat but much bigger, and in the centre is Bayon, a rather chaotic temple covered in faces of Buddha. Other temples there included one which French archaeologists had taken apart, recording where each stone went and the Khmer Rouge then destroyed these records, so it is being slowly put back together, and the Terrace of Elephants, a raised platform decorated with carvings of many-headed elephants and wars using elephants and so on. The were also some little local girls playing the hilarious game of "throw rocks and sticks at the wasps nest until they try and attack, then run away giggling." Then leaving along the North Bridge, which like the southern one was decorated with people pulling on a serpent's tale, an image that comes from Hindu mythology apparently, we came to an old academy, Preah Khan, which was the first temple we saw with huge trees growing out of it, the roots wrapping around walls and through stones, which looked very Indiana Jones. From there we were given a free motorbike ride as far as Angkor Wat by a friendly worker, from where we could get motorbike taxis back to the City. For our last day we decided to rent a tuc-tuc for the whole day, something we'd avoided until then as we didn't want to see too many temples and get "templed out" as we had in China. We decided to only see two that day, Ta Prohm, which had apparently been used to shoot the Tomb Raider film, and Ta Som, both less crammed with tourists and full of trees growing over the ruins. He we met lots of kids trying to sell us postcards for "only one dollar", and one little girl could count to ten in about ten different languages when we prompted her. To celebrate having finished the temples, we had "crumble pie" at our hotel, but unfortunately it turned out to be banana crumble, and Sally hates banana.

The Laos border was technically to the north-eat of Siem Reap, but because the roads are so bad, the only way to get there was to spend one day going south and then another day going north to even get to the border town. After all the night buses in Vietnam, we decided to only take day buses though, which gave us a chance to see the Cambodian countryside (very poor, mostly fields and jungle, nearly all the house were thatched with banana leaves and on stilts) and meant we could actually sleep. Our first stop was Kampong Cham, a crumbling ex-colonial town by a river, where we spent the day drinking, playing Scrabblecards, having fresh coconuts and wandering through a cemetery. Strung Treng was the border town where we had to find some people to share a speedboat up the Mekong once more. Luckily on our bus there was a Cornish guy who looked remarkably like Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons, and next to the hotel we found was a café and tour place run by a guy by the name of Mr T, where we met a German guy also wanting to take a boat, so there we could organise a speedboat for only $3 each more than a bus to Laos would cost (so $13), as he already had to send his boat up the river to collect people coming the other way. And that was the end of our holiday in Cambodia. We didn't see many people dressed in black though.

Vietnam

2007-03-29T09:01:00.000+04:00

(15/12/2006-2/1/2007)

From Nanning the scenery remained much the same, karst formations all the way to Hanoi, although the vegetation was now a bit more tropical looking. Our bus took us to the border which we then had to walk across to another bus after having a health check consisting of us paying a few yuan and getting a ticket. The fields we passed we now smaller, there were plenty of people in conical straw hats, far more motorbikes, less cars, the writing was in western script rather than characters (though we still couldn't understand any of it), there was similarly bad music on the bus, and every now and again we would pass bizarre colonial style building, several storeys high, looking like they'd been stolen from a street of attached houses in the South of France and dropped on their own in the middle of a field. Some were still being built, so obviously this was the Vietnamese style of architecture. Eventually we arrived in Hanoi and for simplicity took the first hotel that was offered to us (by a girl on the bus), which turned out to be pretty good, with hot water, a DVD player in the room (though we found it didn't work), satellite TV and free internet. We had a walk about, and then to make sure our first meal was good so as not to ruin our first impressions of the country, we ate at a fairly expensive restaurant, ordering a delicious seafood steamboat (which everywhere else called hotpot).

Our first day was a rest day, so we did nothing except sleep, internet and eat beef noodles, which were pretty good. Papa had sent me a list of buildings that my great-grandfather (on the French side) had designed when he was the chief architect for the occupying French, so the next day we went looking for them, first following the train tracks that went straight through the streets with no barriers to the station. This had been all modernised so didn't look to great, but as a World War and Civil War had passed through the country, along with decades of modernisation, that and the prison were the only two buildings we could find the first day. There were plenty of other colonial buildings, but their roles may have changed since they were built, and many were embassies guarded by plainclothes agents that told you off if you tried to take a photo. We did see a police station with a copy of Sherlock Holmes on the desk though. Having walked around for a while we went to the park for ice cream and bought a (cheap, photocopied, illegal pirate) copy of the Lonely Planet South-East Asia on a Shoestring guidebook, then finished the afternoon with tea and pain au chocolat in a nearby rooftop café.

In Russia I missed the chance to see Lenin, and in China I missed Mao, so I thought I should try to see at least one pickled Communist leader, but Uncle Ho's mausoleum was closed, so we just had our photos taken outside it. We did see the presidential palace though, which my great-grandfather designed, and then the Temple of Literature that after China seemed refreshingly unrestored and genuine. We followed this with a meal including Christmas pudding and some shopping for our trip to Halong Bay booked for the next day. Unfortunately though we ate at the night market, making the mistake of not eating where all the locals ate, so I got food poisoning and spent the next day in bed, and only felt marginally better the day after. We both posted boxes of stuff home so as not to carry it and then went to the rooftop café again where Sally had "mango macerated with milk". I could only manage eating potato salad that day though.

Two days later then planned then we went on our cruise in Halong Bay. It was a few hours bus ride then we changed to our boat, which was a reasonably sized "traditional" style ship (all done up for tourists of course) with about 10 other people aboard, plus staff etc. The cabin was small but pretty nice too. It was a nice sunny day, there was a bit of mist but not too much, after China it seemed much clearer and warmer. Halong Bay is famous for all its islands, which are basically the same as the landscape around Yangshuo, but in the sea, so it was very nice. After cruising around for a while, having our photos taken with the captain who seemed very friendly, we were dropped on one of the islands to see a cave. This would have been a very impressive cave, if they hadn't ruined it with ridiculous lighting, draining the floor and concreting it and the ceiling, completely destroying its natural beauty. It was quite funny though. From there we went to an area where some people went kayaking, though we didn't because my hand still hurt quite a bit from Songpan, then the boat dropped anchor in an area with pretty much the whole fleet of tourist ships as the sun set. Dinner was almost exactly the same as lunch, which was OK, but then most of the evening was taken up with me and Sally arguing with the crew because we hadn't got change for our beer at lunch, assuming that they'd let us have beer later instead, but they claimed we hadn't paid. It was all pretty daft, especially when the captain got angry as it had nothing to do with him. Anyway, towards the end we just ignored them and played Scrabblecards with some of the other tourists.

At 8.20 the next morning we were dropped off at another island to climb up a hill where we got a 360 degree view of the bay, and then we slowly cruised back to the harbour, passing various rocks that allegedly looked like heads or fighting cocks, or anything else you wanted them to look like, and also floating houses, which weren't houseboats but looked like just houses with verandas stuck on floats. Lunch was at a restaurant in the town, and was very similar to the other meals we'd had, but then they were all included so we didn't really expect anything spectacular, and then it was a minibus back to Hanoi to pick up our luggage and get a bus to our next destination. Unfortunately Sally felt ill now, but didn't want to stay in Hanoi any longer so we got the bus anyway. As we waited for the bus to fill up there was a very loud and annoying American guy, joined by several other idiotic foreign tourists, who complained that the bus didn't leave on time, and then that they were over filling it with people sitting in the aisle and so on. They had clearly forgotten that this was Vietnam.

I don't think either of us slept much on the bus as it was noisy and uncomfortable, as were nearly all the night buses we took in South-East Asia. The bus was a jump-on jump-off tourist bus all the way down the Vietnam coast, which meant that we had to get off at Hue and hang around for a few hours to get the next one to Hoi An where we wanted to go. It was a nice enough town to wait around in, though we saw hardly any of it as we spent all our time sat by the Perfume River so Sally could recover a bit. Apparently on the bus to Hoi An we passed lots of nice beaches, but as usual I was asleep so missed it. Once there we went on a bit of a quest for a cheap hotel with an Australian couple, but ended up getting the one we'd started off at, then we went for a meal by the river consisting entirely of starters: the local dish "white rose" which is a bit like an open spring roll, spring rolls, and wonton soup.

The next day we had to change hotel as they were booked out, and as it was Christmas Eve we decided to pay a little bit more for a nice one with a friendly Chow Yun Fat lookalike guy working there, and then went walking around down. It was all fairly old and rundown colonial buildings, although full of tourist shops, and every other one seemed to be a tailor, so if we go back I'll get a bunch of clothes made. This time though we just both got hats with red stars on and I got a Tintin T-shirt, then we spent the rest of the day eating, as is traditional. There were lots of nice restaurants with good seafood, so we started with crab (I had mine steamed with ginger), and followed it with grilled duck, and finished at another place with delicious French-style mango and chocolate cakes. Christmas Day we also spent eating all day, with a few breaks to phone family and sleep. We started with white rose and spring rolls with mango juice and a coconut, followed by seafood hot pot with cocktails and then mango sorbet and coconut ice cream accompanied by a lime beer and an almond beer, then after a break we had steamed duck and vegetables with beer and wine, and finished the evening with mango and strawberry cakes from the same place we had the night before, with cocktails, then had to collapse on the bed from eating too much.

For our final day in Hoi An we decided to do something more than just eat, so we got motorcycle taxis to the My Son ruins. This is a complex of temples out in the jungle built by an ancient Vietnamese culture, and as there weren't too many tourists and it was still surrounded by jungle it looked very cool, and felt much more like a historic sites than most of the ones in China. After that we found a nice little café tucked away by a fountain near our hotel and had ice coffee with sweetened condensed milk (it's delicious and everywhere in South-East Asia), got some sandwiches in baguettes from one of the little sandwich making stalls they have everywhere in Vietnam, and got on our night bus to Nha Trang. It wasn't quite as crowded as the other night bus, but still not pleasant, so we didn't get alot of sleep before arriving in Nha Trang in the early hours. As we had got in the habit of doing, we left our bags at the office or hotel we were dropped at and then went looking for a hotel, as that way we attracted fewer touts. Once we had a room and had breakfast we set off for a walk.

Nha Trang is an alright city, nothing special really, though it is right by the beach, and has lots of tourist agencies organising diving and boat trips. We didn't bother with any of them, and spent the first day wandering around by foot, first to a big Buddha on a hill for a view and to get pestered by beggar children (I gave one of them the weird Korean thing the Russian girl had given me in St Petersburg as she hadn't replied to my emails since I told her I was an atheist in response to her crazy Christian ranting), then went for a snooze on the beach after lunch. Just next to the beach is the Yersin museum that I visited on instructions from home because apparently apart from doing lots of medical research himself, especially about the plague, Yersin also stole some from one of my ancestors and claimed it as his own. It was pretty interesting anyway, and after that we had ice cream and I got my haircut by one of the street barbers that you find on the corners of Vietnamese cities, as you can see from the photos Sally took. The guy next to me was even having his ears cleaned! For dinner we had blood clams and eel, which was remarkably close to the vegetarian version I'd tried in China. The next day we rented a motorbike as Sally can ride, and intended to go looking for Suoi Giao where my family used to have a house, but no one knew where it was and it wasn't on the map, so instead we went for a nice drive along the coast, coming back in the evening to get our bus to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon as it is still also known as).

The first day in Saigon was spent first looking for a hotel as we arrived really early again and they all seemed to be full, then once we had somewhere, sleeping, eating then sleeping. The next day was a bit more productive as in the morning we'd booked to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels, used by the VietCong during the war. Or so they claimed, but this was a stupid touristy outing, the bus stopped at a souvenir place even before we'd left the city, then our guide told us that they were the rubbish tunnels built for tourists and that there were some much better ones somewhere else, and it generally felt like a kind of VietCong World. Attractions included looking at boobytraps as used by the VietCong, bad moving models of VietCong, a destroyed American tank, some tunnels you could go in (possibly original, more likely recreated), and having a go on a rifle range if you felt like it (we didn't). Once we got back to the city, we had burgers then went in search of the house my grandma and great aunt used to live in when they were children, but all the street names had changed, and most of the buildings looked pretty new, so alot were presumably destroyed in the war or knocked down for modernisation. Anyway, we couldn't find it or the palace we went looking for on our way back, although we did have a nice chat with a student wanting to practice his English. We also passed a park that on the way had old people dancing in, and then later when we came back had people speed walking in a circuit.

The next day, New Year's Eve, we left on a "cruise" up the Mekong. This turned out to not be a cruise, as we stayed in hotels and got on several different boats. The first stay began in Mytho, in the Delta, and was the worst, because our idiot of a tour guide made those of us going for more than just the day tour cart our huge backpacks around all day, even though we came back to the same place as we had started, including on tiny boats only one person wide. It was also a pretty pointless, typical touristy tour of places built specifically for tourists, although it wasn't all bad, the coconut toffee was pretty nice, and going in the little boat would have been fun if we hadn't had our backpacks. Once we got back to the shore though, we thankfully were put on a different tour with a different guide, a hilariously camp guy called Hung who enjoyed singing to us and made jokes that were actually funny. After a short ride in a crowded minibus we were dropped and had time for ice cream before being put on a different bus with the same guide, which was bigger but a Spanish guy and I still had to sit on the floor (it was Vietnam after all). The day finished rather better though, as Hung took as all to a good restaurant where Sally and I finally tried snake (it was tiger snake apparently, and delicious, like really good chicken), and the town had a cool Uncle Ho statue surrounded by chain made up of stars. Then with the Spanish guy and a Swedish couple we went to a café and sat on the roof drinking cocktails until midnight with the other handful of foreigners in town, including some Germans and some other Aussies. As in Asia they use the lunar calendar, it wasn't New Year for them, so they turned off the lights and left at 11.30, which seemed a little odd.

New Year's Day was much better than the day before, as we got to see a real floating market, which was pretty interesting, and a traditional rice noddle factory that also had a pig, allowing our guide to give a hilarious explanation as to why they eat sows and not boars, involving the phrase "too much boom-boom make the meat smell" being repeated about 20 times. Sadly we then had to say goodbye to Hung as those of us taking the full three day tour into Cambodia got a bus to Chau Doc whilst everyone else went back to Saigon. Once we arrived, the Spanish guy, Sally and I were given a free lift to the base of a "mountain" (small hill) in a rickety motorbike trailer, and claimed it for a pretty stunning view of the Mekong plain at sunset, passing a monk playing foot-badminton (a popular game throughout Asia it seems, where people kick a feathery thing between each other trying to keep it airborne as long as possible).

The next day we got a boat to first a fish farm (not so exciting, people got to through food at the fish so they went wild and it looked like the water was boiling) and a Cham village (a Muslim minority group in Vietnam), then it was a long boat trip to the Cambodian border where we got our visas (and saw some bloody big spiders in the trees) and were put on a new boat. Along the shore of this last part of the boat trip, the settlements got more and more basic, particularly on the Cambodian side, where most of the house seemed to be built on stilts. All the kids here seemed ecstatic to see us, running down and jumping in the river, screaming "Hello! Hello!" and waving. Finally, a little after the sun had set we docked and were transferred to a bus for the 1 or 2hrs journey to Phnom Penh, eventually found a hotel and had a pretty good cheap dinner.

Yangzi River to Nanning

2007-03-20T16:03:00.000+03:00

(3/12/2006-15/12/2006)

Early in the morning of the first day the boat docked at the "Ghost City". Following everyone else up a steep hill we found ourselves in a pretty uninspiring restored temple complex. Once we came down again and took the left fork, we found where we should have gone: the "Ghost Palace". If anything this was even more ridiculously restored, but here there were cool demons , all the souvenir stores had Halloween masks, and inside there was a display like a much more over the top and expensive version of the Chengdu ghost house, although not as fun. We could also see some dark steps leading up to a closed off area that looked alot more interesting and old, but didn't have time to go up to see it. After that we spent the rest of the day drinking beer on the boat, until in the evening we arrived at a temple that had hilariously tacky neon lights adorning it. Back on the boat we were treated to the only film that they seemed to have, which played repeatedly throughout the voyage (when there wasn't any karaoke or tourism trailers): the Chow Yun Fat Hong Kong action classic, "God Of Gamblers' Return".

The next day was gorge day, the first of the three we saw from the main boat, then transferred to a smaller boat to see the Little Three Gorges, which were pretty impressive, although somewhat spoiled by the continuous (really, non-stop, except for when someone disconnected the speaker) high pitched sales chatter in Chinese. Unsurprisingly, we also had a couple of stops at places built specifically to sell tourist tat and you could if you like pay to have a bad photo taken of you at strategic spots. For the last part of this side expedition we were moved to small roofed boats 4 people wide, which meant those of us in the middle couldn't see anything, although apparently there were monkeys, and some Chinese guide chattered away and sang. The Chinese tourist experience was all pretty kitsch and tacky, but you had to laugh, otherwise you'd keep whinging constantly, like the two Irish women on the trip. They were right about alot of the things they complained about, but after a while it got pretty tiresome.

That was it for the day, and pretty much for the cruise. There were more gorges the next day, which we viewed from our room, but they weren't really that impressive. Maybe they were before they built the dam, or maybe I've been spoilt by seeing the Grand Canyon. Anyway, we could have paid to go and see the dam (which a Polish guy encouraged us to see as it is "one of the great engineering disasters of our time") but we decided to just get the bus to Yichang so we could find a hotel and get train tickets for the next day to the Zhangzhajie National Park. Yichang was nothing special, although we did get a great stir fry meal in the street for 4yuan. For both of us. That's about 13p each.

We travelled hard seat to Zhangzhajie City with the two Irish women, arriving at night and having to run the gauntlet of touts who wanted to take us on tours or hotels, but eventually found a hotel. Unfortunately, due to language problems, the girl at reception seemed to tell us that there was only one bus to the village where the park was and it left at 5.30 in the morning, when really there were loads of buses, it was the bus station that opened then. So we had to get up stupidly early to get the bus, and once in the village had to get rid of another load of touts by going to the most expensive hotel and asking them if there were cheaper ones. Luckily a young man working there wanted to practice his English, so phoned up the only other hotel open, then walked us over there, showed us the rooms and negotiated the price for us before going back to work!

Anyway, we then went and got our insanely overpriced (by Chinese standards) ticket, which we then had to be fingerprinted for to enter the park. If anyone wants to go there, don't bother paying, other than the main gates there didn't seem to be any fence stopping you just in, just don't get caught. The scenery was pretty spectacular though, despite the fog and drizzle which really only added to the effect, which was something very close to what you can see in many traditional Chinese paintings, making the huge great limestone pillars look more mysterious. As to be expected, there were some funny signs. One explaining how a particular rock looked like two turtles mating where "one raises its head gladly and the other bears the weight willingly, and you must remember that they are playing and touring" or something like that. Another we thought was a mistake as it claimed the path we were about to walk on was a "bodybuilding" path, but it turned out that this meant it featured stepping stones and other activities.

Later in the day we managed to get lost. After climbing up a bunch of steps, we assumed we could follow the road down, as we had no map, but it turned out that you couldn't. After much difficulty, and with the light fading, we found the only way down was to pay (again) to take a glass lift that they had built in the cliff face (only in China!), which did give as a good view. From the bottom we were told to take first one bus, and then another, but people must have misunderstood where we wanted to go, because we ended up in a different town to where our hotel was. The Irish women, convinced they had been cheated insisted on constantly banging on about this, rather than trying to find a way back. We tried the police, and again they kept repeating they'd been cheated, and when they called a taxi saying they would take us to the village for 100 yuan they decided the cops were trying to cheat us too.

Maybe they were, but we were then stuck in a strange town trying to flag someone down and explain to them where we wanted to go. Eventually a minivan stopped, and although they didn't speak English, they took us to the school where an English teacher could talk to us. It turned out that they were the school bus, and for 200 yuan they would take us where we wanted to go, which turned out to be a pretty fair price really, as they had to go along windy mountain roads in the dark and fog. The Irish women were still complaining, saying they would go to the customer complaints officer the next day or something, but me and Sally decided to lie in and then had a nice quite walk on our own in the park the next morning up and down a mountain (or "fantsatic mounpain" as the poster in the office in Chongqing had called them) before getting the bus back to the city where we had already booked our onward train. Without the women it was much more relaxing, and at the station we were befriended by three Chinese girls who studied English and were going on the same train, who then escorted us to our carriage before running down to the other end of the train to theirs.

As the train approached Guilin the next day, we noticed that the air was a bit clearer, and we could see in the distance the tall, mountain like karst formations the area is famous for, though not as thin as those we'd just seen in the park. From Guilin we got a bus to the little town of Yangshuo in amongst the mountains, the centre of which is a hilarious island of Western tourism. We managed to find a really good room with the most amazingly powerful shower (the Bamboo Inn's new building, if anyone plans to go there), then had pizza and some of the really bad local beer. It didn't taste too bad or strong, but after only a couple we both passed out and woke up with a horrible hangover.

We got up late, so after breakfast/lunch we decided to go for a walk along the river. As we passed through the town though, who should be coming in the other direct but Luca! After 10 minutes of surprised greetings, we let him go find somewhere to stay (he managed to get a bed in a drafty dorm for 10RMB) and continued our walk out of town to some fields and woods where a tiny woman was walking her water buffalo. In the evening we had dinner with Luca and then later in a bar a small boy came in trying to sell us flowers, so Luca gave him a piggyback and ran through the streets trying to sell people flowers.

The next day we went on a cookery course. First we were shown around the local market where they had various vegetables, meats and live fish. There was also an area where they killed and prepared dogs, which I refused to go to but Sally went and had a look. After that we were taken to a farm house where they taught us and 4 others how to cook five very tasty dishes that we then ate: stuffed pumpkin flower, tofu ball and mushroom; chicken with cashews and chili; beer fish (a local dish); aubergine; and green vegetable. We spent the afternoon climbing some of the hills in the park, which also included a "lotus pond" that was just covered in green stuff. We ran into Luca again who was looking for somewhere to warm his bones, apparently.

For our last day we went for another walk in the opposite direction to before, through small villages, fields, past some ruins, to an area where in peak season they did demonstrations of cormorant fishing but not when we were there, although the cormorant guy still posed for us, then along a bamboo lined path that didn't seem to see too many other tourists, up to some huge stadium lights aimed at the mountains on the other side of the river. To finish our stay in Yangshuo we tried to do some shopping, but couldn't get the price of the Mao bags down low enough or decide what else we wanted, so instead we had a party with Luca and the randoms he'd managed to collect around him.

Our final destination in China was to be Nanning, which we reached by a super luxury bus with only three seats in each row, passing more karst formations all the way through the province of Guangxi. Even though we arrived a bit after the Vietnamese Consulate was meant to close, they still let us put in our passports to get visas for Vietnam, which we picked up the following evening. Nanning was actually a pretty nice city. Not a lot for tourists to do, but it as nice and spacious to wander around, plenty of trees, wide avenues, a river through the middle with pleasant parks to walk in, and the air was much clearer than any of the other major Chinese cities I'd been in. We tried to do some shopping again, but here there wasn't any tourist tat, so we ended up just getting some more tea jars (plastic jars that you put your tea leaves in, then on trains or in hotels or anywhere with hot water you add it and there's a gauze thing to stop the leaves going in you mouth and the lids are watertight, so everyone has them) and food for our bus trip into Vietnam the next day. To round off our visit to China nicely, we found an all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffet, which had pretty good food too. After that we went to bed, as the bus the next day left pretty early.

Chengdu to Chongqing

2007-03-13T15:44:00.000+03:00

(19/11/2006-2/12/2006)

When I got to Chengdu at 5 in the morning it did seem warmer, which was to be expected being a few hundred kilometres south of Xi'an, but the temperature gradually dropped and then it started to rain the next day. For the next week I did pretty much nothing, as I was recovering from my cold and on the Monday put my passport in to get a visa extension, which meant that I couldn't leave the city. Luckily the hostel I stayed at, Mix Hostel, was really good: as well as having weird Maoist propaganda themed promotional material and an unexplained obsession with donkeys (which Sally and I found particularly amusing, as once in Mongolia Luca had been explaining what animals he had, and he described his donkey as "she's very funny - and you can eat him!"), it had a DVD room, good food, electric underlay in all the rooms and dorms, and a nice courtyard. I was also not alone: Bart was staying there, having left Xi'an the day before me, and so was Nina in a different hostel.

Sichuan, the province Chengdu is in, is famous for it's spicy food, so as I like chillies I wanted to try the hotpot. Unfortunately, Bart and I managed to find the overpriced place with a ridiculous amount of staff (at one point we had 5 at our table), and it wasn't even that great. The chillies were weak, and the famous "Sichuan pepper" wasn't really spicy, it just tasted weird. After that Nina and I had great difficulty finding somewhere not selling hotpot. We tried the vegetarian restaurant in the monastery near the hostel with Bart, but we arrived late and it had closed, so then had to spend three hours traipsing across town to the Tibetan quarter.

On my fourth day both of them left, so I spent the day watching DVDs, including one called "And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself" which was actually pretty good, while I waited for Sally who arrived that afternoon, having returned from Japan. The next day we also did nothing as it was still raining heavily, but the following day we ventured out to the vegetarian restaurant I'd previously failed at, and had among other delicious dishes one called "eel". There we met a Swedish guy staying at our hostel, and once I'd picked up my passport we went with him looking for an amazing sounding theme ride in one of the city parks. The Lonely Planet described it as involving aliens, cowboys, and ending by going through the mouth of a shark, but we couldn't find it, despite wandering all around the park.

However, we did find something else. A couple of official looking guys stood at the entrance, we had no idea what we were going into but as it was only about 5 yuan we paid and entered. At first it was just some dimly lit corridor, apparently a disused bunker for high up party officials judging from the decor and rubble, but soon we were walking past bizarre ghost exhibits that started when we walked past and emitted crazy noises. There were demons, people being tortured, people rising from coffins, and a couple of rather disturbing ones featuring laughing pigmen. Half of them weren't even lit, but luckily Sally had a torch, so we could wander around Resident Evil style until we finally got tired of them.

The next day we went to the pandas, the main reason we had come to Chengdu, and in Sally's case, the main reason she'd come to China. For this we went to the panda breeding centre and saw them at feeding time. They were very cute, and also very lazy as they didn't do a whole lot except eat, some not even bothering to sit up to do so, despite having pretty huge areas to roam around in. One we saw was perched in the tree asleep, but woke up as we passed and proceeded to scratch himself for a full 10 minutes. We also got to see the babies they'd managed to breed in captivity. Unfortunately my camera hadn't been mended as it cost too much, and the rubbishy cheap film one I'd bought didn't work either, so I got no photos.

After that we had lunch at the vegetarian restaurant again, this time we tried the fantastically named "Dance of Dragon and Phoenix", a tasty tofu dish. Then Sally went to buy jeans while I spent a couple of hours in the two huge buildings known as computer street, eventually buying a nice little Nikon camera to replace my broken Fujifilm one. I also got a nice fake fur hat, as we had booked to go horse trekking in Songpan the next few days, which promised to be a bit chilly.

So the next day we had a horribly early wake up, left most of our stuff in the hostel luggage storage, and got the bus to Songpan. We were joined on this by an Israeli girl by the name of Ila. The journey took something like 8 or ten hours up windy mountain roads, the air getting steadily clearer the higher up were went until finally we could see miles into the distance, as Songpan as about 4000 metres above sea level. On the way we passed yaks who had been all dressed up in colourful clothes, although I missed this as I was asleep most of the time. Once there the route for the next few days was explained to us: the first day we would trek to the base of Ice Mountain, the next day we would go up to the top of it's 5500m+ peak and back again, and the last day we would come back.

They gave us a room in the hotel and then we went wandering around the town for supplies such as food, waterproof clothes, and poncho blankets. Songpan is quite a nice town, the centre is in an old wall and full of tourist shops, but it is set in the mountains. It was very very cold though. When we weren't moving we huddled in our beds under several layers of blankets, and outside had to wear most of the clothes we'd brought at once. And it turned out we had two nights there, as the next day Sally was ill, almost certainly due to the pancakes from the restaurant known as Sarah's, so we moved everything along one day.

The day after she was better though so we set off, accompanied by a guide each. Again we had little horses like in Mongolia, and these were loaded with blankets, our bags, and other equipment so that our seats were much more comfortable than if we had been on bare saddles. This was lucky, going up snow covered mountains on little horses isn't that much fun, as you're constantly in danger of falling off as they slip all over the place, and Ila did so twice. I did too, hurting my hand (which continued to hurt for a month or more afterwards), although this was more my fault for being too eager to get off the standing horse to go to the toilet and not realising that I was affected by the altitude than the horses.

In some places when we had to go down steeply we had to get off our horses, which is lucky as I saw one fall off the edge as it went down the path. It landed on its feet and trotted on, but it wouldn't have been fun to be on it. The longest of these breaks must have been very high up as I felt very weak and dizzy, trudging down in a daze, so I didn't notice that the two girls fell behind and got lost until I had to wait for ages with one of the guides while the other two went off to find them. The fact that it kept snowing didn't help matters either, so we were all relieved when we reached the small village where we'd be staying the night, although it was very picturesque riding through the snow, I kept thinking of the beginning of "The Great Silence", and the landscape was stunning. The wooden, drafty house we'd be spending the night in was also home to a family, including funny little boy who kept pretending to want his photo taken and then hiding. To keep us warm the guides offered us long, Tibetan style coats, which I tried on but found my coat was warmer. Everything we didn't wear at night we piled on top of the pile of blankets and sleeping bags the three of us would be sleeping under.

The next day we decided it was too dangerous to go up a high mountain with the weather that there was and the equipment we had, so we asked the guides if the next day we could instead just ride around the area for a bit. This proved much more relaxing, as we weren't going up and down too many steep slopes and could stop whenever we wanted to admire the view (so we saw Ice Mountain), look at goats, or whatever we felt like. We were back in time for lunch and were asked if we wanted rabbit for dinner, meaning the dead rabbit we'd seen on the balcony, which Sally and I agreed to. After lunch the two of us went off wandering, looking at the frozen stream and some temple we found, we tried to build a snowman but the snow was too powdery so instead had a snowball fight with the little boy, and also admired the pool table outside the pub. The rabbit was OK, but nothing special.

The trek back was along a different route, which didn't go quite so high up, and no one fell off, so it seemed like a success to me. we stopped at a monastery which wasn't too exciting, although the constantly mewling cat in one of the houses which was tied to a stove was rather disturbing. Back in Songpan we went to a different hotel, as the previous one was too cold, this one with an en suite bathroom and electric underlay., and in the evening we played cards with an English couple and their crazy Israeli friend who were to go on the same trek the next day. While Ila was going somewhere even colder, Sally and I were heading south, back to Chengdu, which took all day and was not tremendously exciting, apart from the bit when some villagers just dragged a pig into the street, killed it and proceeded to wash and shave it by the side of the road, and the amazing horror B-movie "Mosquito" that was shown on the bus between the usual dreadful karaoke pop.

We only had one night in Chengdu though as the next day we had another early wake up to get the bus the Chonqing where we would get the cruise down the Yangzi river in the evening. The city was a typical modern, skyscraper laden Chinese city, built on a hill, but we managed to entertain ourselves for the afternoon, first with (finally) a good hotpot (though we avoided the chicken feet) and then scrabble cards and tea in the park where everyone else was playing normal cards and tea. Scrabblecards, if you've never encountered them, is the same as scrabble but the letters are on cards instead (plus a few other minor differences), and it certainly intrigued the Chinese as we soon had an audience, including a policeman, crowding around trying to work out what we were doing.

Once we'd bought supplies for the cruise we headed back to the office of the tour company, who tried to get us to go on their tour of the Zhangzhajie national park at the other end of the cruise, and then with a handful of others were escorted down to the dock where we had to pay for a "cable car" to the boat, which turned out to be a funicular railway down a slope that had steps running parallel to it we could easily have walked down had we known. Anyway, we got a view of the city at night, which was much prettier than by day, and finally got to our second class cabin. It was quite nice, reasonably spacious with two bunk beds, a TV, sofa and en suite toilet, and we shared it with a friendly Chinese couple in their early thirties. Going out on deck we watched the lights of Chongqing fade away and then went to bed.

Datong to Xi'an

2007-03-08T08:55:00.000+03:00

(8/11/2006-18/11/2006)

The train arrived in Datong at some ridiculously early hour in the morning, and somehow I managed to leave my money belt with my passport in it on the train. Luckily the train terminated there so I went to the CITS (the national tour service for foreigners) and they were very helpful in getting it back for me. I didn't trust myself that day after that though, so I decided to pay for the day tour to the Hanging Temple and the Yungang Caves. Although it was a bit pricey, it turned out to be not so bad, as by public transport it would be hard to fit both into one day, the entry fees were quite a bit, and it included a meal.

The Hanging Temple was quite impressive, being built on a sheer cliff face with narrow walkways to get around, but the main reason I had come to Datong was to see the Yungang Caves. These were caves that over 2 thousand years or so had had thousands and thousands of Buddhas carved into them. These ranged from huge great statues 20 metres or more tall to the decoration in frames and columns around the larger statues, made up almost entirely of smaller Buddhas. Thankfully over-restoration has not yet destroyed these caves, nor had they been too devastated by the Cultural Revolution or foreign looting, so some were well preserved, others with weather beaten, but you could see that they were definitely really really old.

Having seen everything I wanted to in Datong, I got the night train to Pingyao, an old walled city. Since then I have spoken to other people who seemed to think that it was very restored, so maybe it was just covered in dust from the roadworks they were doing (the two main streets completely dug up so you had to walk along crumbling piles of earth and planks next to great ditches with people working in them and even diggers - no public health and safety in China!) but I thought it as a very nice town. It looked alot like a set from the kung fu film Iron Monkey, which is probably why I liked it. Anyway, I spent two days wandering around it, visiting a Taoist temple with another model of hell, this time mostly tortures, old county courtrooms, a few houses of old bankers and took a walk half way around the town on top of the walls. The hostel I stayed at, the Yamen, was very nice, in an old house with friendly staff, and the night I left we made dumplings which we then ate (for free!).

My next destination was to be Songshan, famous for it's Shaolin Temple where Shaolin Kung Fu, subject of many many films, often featuring Gordon Liu, was invented. To get there though I had to go to Luoyang and then somehow get a bus, then find somewhere to stay, which was all rather daunting when you don't speak Chinese and haven't been travelling for too long. Luckily though, Chinese people are very friendly, so I had nothing to worry about. First of all there was a lady on the train who spoke English, and once she knew where I was going, she said that one of the other people in the carriage was going there to visit his son who was training at one schools there (amusingly, while she was doing this the guy sitting next to her was cleaning out his ear with his keys!). Hard sleeper in China is a bit like platzkartny in Russia: each "compartment" is open to the corridor and has a pair of three story bunk beds, and was how I travelled all the time except for very short journeys when I got hard seat - this is very crowded and the seats and too comfy. Anyway, I also mentioned that I was meeting a pen pal there, and she phoned her up to arrange it, and with the guy's help I got to Dengfeng (the main town) without any problems, he even paid for the bus, and met my friend AiLing who had found me a hotel for a pretty reasonable price.

All this help meant that by lunch time on my first day I was there had somewhere to stay, so I went to lunch with Ailing and her friend, then we went to Taishi Shan one of several steep mountains that tower over DengFeng. We climbed as far as the gate where you had to pay to go any further (you have to pay to go up most well known mountains in China) and there met an Israeli girl called Lala (seriously!) and a Swiss girl called Lena. This was handy because it turned out they were going to the Shaolin Temple the next day and AiLing was busy so I'd be able to go with them. They knew someone at one of the schools, and they'd offered to get them in for free provided we got up at 5am and took part in their school's film. it turned out to be a really pointless video, just people posing, and why they needed random foreigners looking confused in the background I don't know.

I had hoped to climb one of the mountains that day, but Lena, the only other one who could be bothered to get up that early, didn't feel like it, so after breakfast in the temple village with some guys from London visiting their friend (the one who got us in for free), we continued watching the filming until I got bored with the obvious fakeness of it so went of on my own. It turned out you had to pay to get into the temple itself, but they gave me a student discount without me asking so I wander around. It was insanely over restored, having been last rebuilt in 2004 or 2005 (!), but I but some random school girls, Yang CuiCui and Hu CuiLi, who decided to adopt me and practice their English, taking me all over the temple again, then to the Pagoda Forest (which was quite impressive) to meet all their friends, taking as many photos as they could with me and them in it, it was pretty funny. Apparently the schools around there take it in turns to have a weekend visit to the temple so they can practise English with the tourists.

After a while though they had to go so I decided to climb up to the Damo cave (the Damo was the founder of the temple) which was up a steep hill. Before I'd got very far another girl, Dong YanYang had adopted me and climbed all the way to the top with me, along with half her school, and then down again where she introduced me to the rest of her class including their teacher Lili, and after having my picture taken with all of them (what they do with these pictures I don't know) they gave me a lift back to the town. The next day I climbed Shaoxi Shan, the tallest of the mountains, with AiLing, which took about 5 hours from the bottom on one side to the temple on the other. Quite a few other Chinese people were climbing the mountain, some in their suits and even some women in high heels! People were very friendly, sharing food and asking about me, it was great fun, and the scenery was pretty impressive, despite the usual haze you get everywhere in China, although the atmosphere was somewhere spoilt on the last 45 minute leg down to the temple by the piped music. Especially near the temple they had the same droning chant playing constantly, it was very annoying.

After that I thought that as I was there I may as well see a kung fu demonstration, but it was rather disappointing, seeming more like an acrobatics show combined with cheap tricks than a demonstration of a practical fighting system. The next day I went to a nearby town to see the Ancient Observatory, which was not swarming with people like the temple, in fact most of the time it was just me and AiLing. In the afternoon I went to the Songyang Academy, which was also pretty quite, and the over restoration was counteracted a bit by the two trees that really did look very old, although whether they really 4000 years old as climbed I don't know.

From Songshan I intended to go to Hua Shan, one of the sacred mountains of China, but when I got there it was pretty wet and miserable so I just got on the next train and went straight to Xi'an. This was a rather disappointing city. I saw the main attractions, the Terracotta Warriors, the Drum and the Bell towers in the first day with a Dutch guy called Bart, but was not too impressed. It's hard to tell if the warriors are original or remade for tourists, and you can't wander down amongst them, just look from above, they not red as they often look in photos, they're grey, and also my camera, which had been getting gradually worse since being dropped in the Gobi desert, was entering its death throes. The evening was much better though as there were two French punk bands staying at the hospital who I had met at the station on the was to Hua Shan, and they invited us to a meal with them. Meals in China are better the more people you have because then you can order loads of different dishes and try loads more, so the meal with 12 people was one of the best and cheapest that I'd had.

Unfortunately though the next day I was ill, so after visiting the other main tourist attraction, the Big Goose Pagoda, and being unimpressed, I bought a train ticket to Chengdu for the next day and missed the bands' gig that evening. Bart did introduce me to a shop with some very tasty baked goodies though.

At this point I think I should have a tea update, as their haven't been any since Russia: in Mongolia there was mare's milk tea, which was sweet and salty. I quite liked it, although Sally thought it was disgusting. Apparently they brew it for ages, which is why there was a weird black sediment at the bottom that looked like earth. Then in Beijing I tried several teas at the hostel with exciting names such as Dragonwell and Maojian (which was the best), in Pingyao I tried green and white teas, the latter being the best, and finally in Dengfeng there seemed to be two types of tea, the yellow flower tea and the one apparently made just of water with nothing in it, both of which were tasteless.

Beijing

2007-02-26T03:03:00.000+03:00

(26/10/2006-7/11/2006)

The train journey from Ulaanbaatar was not that exciting to begin with, as the area of the Gobi it passed through was pretty flat and boring. Again I was travelling with Luca, but Nina stayed in Mongolia and this time were were joined by Sally. The border controls were a lot less strict than those in Russia, just a quick stamping of passports, but the wait was just as long because they had to lift all the carriages up and change their bogeys (the bits the wheels are on) as China uses a different gauge to Russia and Mongolia (who like to be different from the rest of the world...). We knew were were in China though because we were greeted by martial music and there was no more Cyrillic, just characters on all the signs. The next morning we woke up passing through Chinese countryside, obscured by the soon familiar haze of dust and pollution. Nearing Beijing were got our first glimpse of the Great Wall, the train even stopping so people could get out and have a look.

In all I spent 12 days in Beijing, the first day with Sally and Luca, then Sally left to visit a friend in Japan and Luca left to go down the east coast after just over a week, only a few days before Nina arrived. The first day the three of us went to see the Forbidden City, which despite three of the main buildings being under restoration at the time was nice to wander around in and provided amusement with names for halls such as the Hall of Literary Excellence, and signs telling you not to climb a wall because "A Single Act Of Carelessness Leads To The Eternal Loss Of Beauty". The next major tourist attraction I saw was the Temple of Heaven, which didn't impress me too much as it had been restored to look brand new (as many ancient buildings had been, I soon discovered, truly old attractions being something of a rarity in China), and the smog was so bad that day that everything further than a few meters away looked faded.

The hostel we were staying at offered a tour called the Secret Wall, which Luca and I went on. They took as to a part of the Great Wall not normally open to tourists, where it had not been restored at all. near the village that they dropped us at it was fairly ruined, but after walking along it for half an hour or 45 minutes we reached parts with whole towers and battlements intact, but trees growing in the middle of it. as there were only those of us who were in the minibus there on the wall, it was wonderfully empty of other tourists, and when we go back to the village we were given a home cooked meal, which was delicious. The next day we both went to the Summer Palace, which has huge grounds that we only had time to see less than half of. The parts of it that you pay to see (on top of the entrance to the ground) are obviously ridiculously over restored, although we did get a free demonstration of ancient music and dance which was cool, but wandering around the grounds is very pleasant. We got slightly lost and discovered a huge area of unrestored buildings, or at least they hadn't been restored for decades, which was far more interesting than the bits we'd paid to see. As it neared sunset we decided to get the boat across the lake to the island, and as the only foreigners on the boat became the star attraction, having our photo taken with about 30 different people, one after the other, which was pretty funny.

Of the other tourist attractions that you're meant to see, I saw the Drum and Bell Towers by accident while wandering around the streets looking for music shops, the main art gallery, and with Nina visited the Lama Temple (a Tibetan Buddhist temple) and the Dongyue Taoist Temple, which was interesting as it had full colour statues representing the Taoist Hades. I didn't know anything about Taoism before, other than some people had told me it was a nice hippy religion, but it turns out to be more like a Chinese version of Catholicism. The monsters were cool though. What was more fun than most of these attractions though was wandering through the hutongs (the traditional narrow winding streets that Beijing used to be made up of until they started ploughing new roads through them all for the Olympics) and the parks, where we saw girls fishing in a fish pond, an old man practising calligraphy on the flagstones with a giant brush dipped in water, and even visiting African delegates for the China-Africa forum that was happening at the time.

Food was another highlight, from our first meal (Peking duck of course) to our snacks of fried squid and sparrows on sticks for breakfast. After a few days (and a nasty experience where me and Sally ended up with 3 plates of different kinds of stomach when we wanted noodles) me and Luca settled on one restaurant about 2 minutes walk from the hostel, which had good, pretty cheap food, and a hilarious waitress, so we went there nearly every meal. After a while the food being so oily (nearly everything is fried in China) did get a bit boring, but after two weeks of mutton mutton mutton in Mongolia, it made a nice change.

Possibly the most interesting part of my stay in Beijing though, was the heavy metal gig I went to with Luca on his last night. According to the Lonely Planet Beijing had a decent metal scene, so having gone for more than a month without my music and getting tired of Asian pop everywhere, I did a search on the internet and found that there was a night with about 10 different metal bands playing. It took us a while to find the venue, as it was the other side of the city in the student area, and we were joined by 3 other Italians, Fabio (who travelled with Luca after he left Beijing) and a couple of guys in their 50s or 60s. The first band was a death metal band with a tiny girl vocalist who had the voice of a demon, and it just got better from there. At the end of the night I bought 5 CDs of Chinese death metal, classic metal, pop punk and folk rock.

After 11 full days in Beijing, I decided it was time to move on if I wanted to be in Chengdu to meet Sally and see stuff on the way, so on the day that I met both Sebastian (who I'd met on Olkhon Island) and Louise (who I'd met in Moscow) in the hostel, I got the night train to Datong.

Mongolia

2007-02-26T02:50:00.000+03:00

OK, if you missed it on my livejournal blog, here is the account of my travels in Mongolia. Over the next few days and weeks I shall be updating my blog more as I now have time, what with being in Australia and all...

(14/10/2006-25/10/2006)

The unplanned train journey to Mongolia with Nina and Luca, with Miia and Chris the Canadians in the compartment nextdoor, was fairly uneventful, but as I was travelling with others for a change it was not so boring, even the 8 hours it took to cross the 5km between the Russian border check and the Mongolian one weren't so bad. When we got off in Ulaanbaatar we were surrounded by people trying to get us to go to their guesthouse, but we'd already decided we'd go to the Golden Gobi guesthouse as it had been recommended to us, and they had a free pickup for us too.

Once there we asked about tours we could do and discovered that Sally, the Australian I'd met on Olkhon, was waiting for others to go on a 10 day one to the Gobi, so that we were able to have it all organised before the afternoon to start the next day. That sorted, we got our train tickets for Beijing for when we got back, ate, and went to the black market, a huge place full of pretty much everything, although all I got were some gloves, the two girls got some pretty cool Mongolian boots.

The tour was for 10 days with the driver Tsengel and the guide Tsenguné a.k.a. Cowboy Clint in a Russian jeep-van-thing, but I don't have the time or energy to give a blow by blow account, so instead here are some of the highlights: on the first day, and quite frequently afterwards we could see some huge birds of prey, eagles, hawks and condors, not far from the road. Also on the first day we stopped at some very impressive rock formations that would make a good setting for a Western. We'd often see heards of various animals, sheep, goats, cows and horses weren't that exciting, but on the second day we saw some camels, and on the third Cowboy Clint yelled out "Yak yak yak yak yak!". The third day was the first really interesting stop at a place called Bearded Vulture Canyon, and then at a salt lake where we discovered some bones which we could only assume to be the remains of a Ninajoelosaurus Rex and a Sallysaur. After that we had some fun when Tsengel spotted some gazelles a while after sunset and drove of the road to chase them in the van headlights.

The fourth day featured the joys of camel riding. At first this wasn't much fun as the camels were stupid and slow so to reach the sanddunes before sunset they had to be tied together and rushed along so close that my shin kept banging into the bony arse of the camel in front. On the way back though I managed to get mine to gallop, which was great fun. We then saw the Flaming cliffs, where lots of dinosaurs were discovered, a ruined monastery pony trekking in some mountains to a waterfall, and finally Kharakhorum, Chinggis Khaan's ancient capital, although there is nothing left of it. Instead there's a new city and a Buddhist monastery with temples built in Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian styles, and plenty of very violent and explicit paintings that undermine the hippy stereotype of Buddhism as a peaceful religion. And on the last day, as we all suffered from the vile cheap Mongolian vodka of the night before, we saw Turtle Rock and Penis Rock, which looked as you would expect them to.

Apart from one night in a hotel, all the others we spent in girs, commonly known as yurts in the West. They have a stove in the middle which heats it wonderfully, but if you forget to get up in the night and put more wood (or coal, or dung) on it then gets bloody cold. Another interesting experience was driving. Like Olkhon, out of Ulaanbaatar Mongolia has very few real roads, and those that do exist are in a terrible state, so everyday we would have about 300km of rollercoaster like driving. But it wasn't scary because you soon realise that Tsengel knows exactly what he's doing and you're probably safer than on the roads in the UK. Even when things break, such as the front right suspension did on the seventh day, ten minutes with a bit of rope was all he needed to fix it and it was fine right back to Ulaanbaatar.

The main problem in Mongolia was the food, as 4 out of 5 meals included mutton. The food was very nice, even camel (which tastes like beef), but mutton soon gets very monotonous, and I never want to taste it again in my life. The cold was also getting quite bad by the time we left, so even though that was by far the best and most fun part of my trip so far, I was still glad to be moving south to China.

Test post by email

2006-11-17T12:48:00.001+03:00

I haven't posted for a while because blogspot is
blocked in China, this is just a test post to see if
posting by email works. in the meantime, I've created
a LiveJournal blog which is not (yet) blocked here, so
I shall be posting there as well as here. The address
is http://wanderingjoel.livejournal.com.

Olkhon Island

2006-10-28T19:48:00.001+04:00

The journey to Olkhon Island took about 6 or 7 hours. Once on Olkhon, the roads are dirt tracks, which is why it takes so long, although the road to the main village, Khuzhir, is almost a motorway compared to the rest of the island. I stayed at Nikita's, a guesthouse run by the former world pingpong champion, which was really nice, a great atmosphere, you get full board, a heated log cabin room, and the first night there I was given beer and vodka by random guests (and met Sally, the Australian, who left the next day, but who you shall all meet in my next blog entry...). Also, there are loads of cats, especially kittens, one of which sat on my shoulders for about half an hour on my last day there while I was writing postcards.

The first day I was there I took a tour to the north of the island in a Russian jeep, which looks like a dodgy mini-van, but is able to go up and down what seemed like near vertical hills, and over huge holes in the road, which is lucky as there were plenty of those. It was worth it though as there were great views of the cliffs, and from the tip of the island you can see both shores of Lake Baikal. We also so some strange fat goose-like birds, and had omul soup in the forest. For those who don't know, omul is a fish something like trout, and forms the main part of the Olkhon diet. I think I only had two meals without omul, and one was a packed lunch. In the evening I found that Nina, a Finnish girl I'd met in Moscow, and Adam, an English bloke who I'd met in Irkutsk earlier had arrived along with a Swiss guy, Sebastien.

The second day I went for two walks, one to get a view on the village, and another along the coast to the next one. It was strange, because there was a proper beach, and some small waves like by the sea, but the opposite coast was really close. In the evening, me, Adam and Sebastien went to the banya, which is a Russian sauna. First you add water to some stones heated by a stove and sweat like mad, then after about 15-20 minutes you go to the next room and pour cold water on yourself. You're then meant to whip each other with birch branches, but we skipped that bit, and went straight to chilling and have a cup of tea. Then you do it again, and again, though we only did it twice before our time was up, before washing with warm water properly. It was pretty good and warming, but I think I have some serious circulation problems as my feet got cold again less than 5 minutes out of being in the steam room.

For the third day, Nina, Sebastian and I decided to go to Lake Shara-Nur, a lake on the island several people had told me they tried to find and had failed. So we looked at a map that we weren't alowed to take with us, then I set off on my own route by foot, while the other two went my bike along a different route. Despite missing the turning I meant to take, I found it a bit before I expected to, and only 40 minutes after the other two (it took them 3 hours). The walk was really nice, especially before the woods when there was no wind and I was the only thing making any sound. In the woods there were woodpeckers every 5 minutes or so, and not afraid, I could walk write up to them and they wouldn't fly away. The walk back was even quicker as I found my shortcut, so I was very proud of myself...

On the fourth day, it snowed, so I didn't do much, I wrote a couple of postcards, which may or may not get to their destinations, and went for a walk to the pier. Then the next we had the long ride back to Irkutsk, where I was persuaded by Nina, Luca (an Italian guy I met in Moscow and who appeared again on Olkhon), Chris and Miia (a Canadian couple on the bus from Olkhon) to change my ticket and go to Mongolia for longer. How could I resist the lure of desert and camel riding? Then we had some great Russian food at the market, which seems to be the best place for it. Good dishes are borsch and the dumplings whose name I forget. Then we got on the train to Mongolia.

So, finally, my impressions of Russia: it is ridiculously bureaucratic, and those behind counters are often very unhelpful. Few people seem to speak English, and they don't make much effort to understand bad Russian, often those in authority have a similar attitude to speaking to foreigners as the English i.e. say it the same in you're own language but louder and slower, but on trains an so on, people are very friendly. And they have a strange way of making tea: they brew a pot really strong, then your pour about a shot into your cup and add hot water.

Going to Mongolia

2006-10-13T15:01:00.000+04:00

I'm not going to write up Olhon Island yet, because I've got a train to catch to Mongolia in an hour, but it was fantastic. I've decided to stay in Mongolia for a while rather than just passing through, so already my itinerary has changed. I've uploaded most of my photos of the Golden Ring towns to my Yahoo! Photos account though, and I might be able to finish tonight or when I get to Mongolia. Anyway, hopefully I'll be going to the Gobi dessert for a week or more with some people I met, so I won't be able to post too much.

Trans-Siberian Railway

2006-10-07T13:37:00.000+04:00

Ah, at last, the firm ground! The last few days I spent on a train, passing through 5 time zones from Moscow to Irkutsk in Siberia. It was alright actually, not too boring as I had plenty to read, and just staring out the window at the countryside was quite hypnotic. Most of Russia is fairly flat it seems, even the Urals were just little hills where the train passes, but most of it along the route is also covered in woods. I'm not sure if all of it or just some counts as taiga though. It was very beautiful though, with all the autumn colours, the occassional cluster of wooden houses, and from the Urals onwards, frequent sprinklings of snow.

For the whole way I was sharing the compartment with a Ukrainian guy and a Tajikistani (if that's the correct adjective) called Sergei and what sounds like Sultan respectively. Neither spoke much English, but were very friendly, the Ukrainian was even discussing the TV series about Nestor Makhno at one point, from what I gathered. And they hadn't brought any alcohol either, which I was very relieved about after all the stories of Russian drinking alcohol for whole journeys and being very offended if you refused to join them unless you claimed to be an alcoholic. The train wasn't quite as plush as the one from Novgorod, but it was fine, and there was a samovar at the end to keep me well supplied with Earl Grey and Jasmine Green tea.

At some point during the night of the 4th I passed over the geographic border between Europe and Asia, so I'm now officially in another continent. Siberia is cold, which I should have expected really, but so far at least my coat is perfectly sufficient. Tomorrow I'll be getting the bus to Olkhon Island on Baikal Lake, the biggest freshwater lake in the world (it has about 20% of the world's freshwater apparently) where I'll be staying until Friday, then I get the train across Mongolia on Saturday at 6 in the morning, so I probably won't be posting again until I reach Beijing on the 16th.

Photos!

2006-10-03T02:43:00.000+04:00

OK, I've uploaded all my St. Petersburg and Novgorod Velikiy photos, and hopefully by the time most people read this I'll have done the Moscow and Golden Ring ones. You can see them here.

Moscow: Part II

2006-10-02T18:59:00.000+04:00

Yesterday I go up late for a change, and went to the Red Square to try and see Lenin, but it was closed off again. Maybe I'll try tomorrow, or maybe I won't bother. Anyway, after lunch I spent to the afternoon at the New Tretyakov Gallery, which houses Russian art from the 20th century (there's an Old Tretyakov Gallery with older stuff, but I don't think I'll be going this trip). It was amazing, I was there for 3 hours, only saw one floor and was still rushing at the end before it closed. There are so many different styles, and nearly all have beautiful works in them, even the Socialist Realist stuff is pretty good. I think I should get a book on Russian art though, I'd only really heard of Kandinsky and Chagall before.

Today I also left late and spent a while at the Sculpture Park. This is where they stuck the old Lenin and Stalin statues, other retired sculptures and some new ones. It was actually very peaceful with water features and so on. Just beyond it is a massive 100m statue of Peter the Great on a ship, although my guide says some people think it's actually of Columbus but called Peter the Great because the columbus statue was refused in several US states on grounds of good taste.

From there I went to Novodevichy Cemetery, where various famous Russians like Chekhov are buried. I tried to find Kropotkin, but gave up after a while. Then I had to do a bunch of shopping for Trans-Siberian supplies, it's going to be cuppa-soup heaven for 4 days I think...

Right, this will be my last post until I get to Irkutsk. I leave tomorrow afternoon and it takes 4 days. I might not even post then, as the day after I arrive I'm off to Olkhon Island for a few days, which doesn't even have a telephone (apart from one satelite one), so maybe not until just before I leave for Beijing, or possibly even not until I reach Beijing.

The Golden Ring

2006-09-30T20:41:00.000+04:00

So, my prrrrrrrecccciouseseses, my trip around the "Golden Ring", a series of towns near Moscow known for being ancient... I was following the itinerary suggested on Way To Russia.

First stop on Wednesday was Vladimir, which at first I thought was a mistake as the outskirts weren't too pleasant to look at, but once I reached the historic centre it was very nice. Ancient, white stone, carved churches and plenty of trees made it very calm, and as it was on a hill top there were good view of the surrounding countryside. I finished the visit off at the bus station café, which was disgusting, but only cost 60p.

Then it was on to Suzdal, a tiny town that has government protection from industrial development, so it is full of traditional Russian wooden houses, several convents and monasteries, and a church for every five houses (or so it seems). And goats. I had a brief look around the outside of one monastery but as the sun was getting low in the sky I decided to find my hotel.

Eventually I found it, and it was pretty posh, my room was small but clean and decorated with painted wood, and having my own bathroom made a nice change after 10 days of hostels. I booked it and accommodation in the other towns through Real Russia, and they're really very good, I just had to present a piece of paper and it was all taken care of, but if there had been problems there were telephone numbers to ring including and 24hr emergency hotline, so that was reassuring. The room also had a TV, but only Russian channels. I watched a bit of some American rubbish though, because it was dubbed in a really bizarre way, you could here the original voices behind, as if it was being done live.

I got up early hoping to see Suzdal as the sun rose, but unfortunately it was overcast so it wasn't so picturesque. Also my camera batteries ran out so I couldn't take as many photos as I'd have liked. I think Fujitsu cameras use batteries far too fast, though maybe this was a good thing as I've been taking far too many photos, I need to cut down. I saw plenty of free-range chickens though, wandering willy-nilly around the backstreets. After breakfast I got some new batteries and walked around the kremlin, which here consisted of a grass covered earth mound, but inside there were more beautiful wooden houses. I don't see how they can be warm enough for the Russian winter.

The itinerary I was following suggested going through Ivanovo as an example of an old Soviet town, though in the end I had no choice as I had to change buses there. I woke up (as I normally fall asleep when put in a moving vehicle) to see razor wire and grim burned out looking buildings, worse than anything from any dystopian science fiction film, you could smell the pollution. So I got out as soon as possible.

In Kostroma I stayed at an old Soviet hotel, which was pretty charmless, but had a great view of the Volga. In the evening I went for a long walk to the town centre, which was all quite old and grand, then along the river. I got a great view of the sun setting behind a monastery on the opposite bank as a sailing boat went past. I had hoped to get a hydrofoil on the Volga from Kostroma to Yaroslavl, but I couldn't find it on the timetable and the ticket office was closed, so I went by bus.

Yaroslavl is a big city, but off the main streets it's pretty calm and quiet. Right in the centre there's a monastery which is very peaceful. Some of it was covered in scaffolding, but it was wooden scaffolding so it didn't spoil the atmosphere. I was only there for a couple of hours though, before having to stand for over an hour on the bus to Rostov Velikiy.

It was worth it though, Rostov seems like a quiet village mostly, with tree lined streets, lots of carved wooden houses, the odd derelict grand looking building with a Lenin statue (the school apparently)... Then, at the centre, just before you reach the lake, there's a huge beautiful Kremlin, enough for a large city. Further along there were several monasteries, I walked to one in the evening along the lake shore as the sun set behind it, it was pretty idyllic. And the hotel was the nicest, in an old manor with a big room, though no international TV this time.

For once it wasn't overcast in the morning, so I had another walk around Rostov, going inside the Kremlin and so on. After that I decided to go straight back to Moscow to have a bit of a rest from churches, churches, and more churches. I went by train in third class, which wasn't so bad, all the compartments are open to the corridor. Unfortunately there was some kind of radio playing, and Russian pop is as dreadful and irritating as pop anywhere else.

2nd Day in Moscow

2006-09-30T18:46:00.000+04:00

OK, I wrote this a few days ago before I left for the Golden Ring (which will be the next post).

The focus for today was the Kremlin. Unfortunately, I didn't find it nearly as impressive as I was expecting, in fact I was more impressed by the outside. Maybe two of the five churches inside being covered in scaffolding had something to do with it though. Costing even more was a visit to the Armoury, so I made sure I got my money's worth. It's where they keep all the booty the tsars used to collect: dresses, thrones, gold and silver dinner services, and anything else they could stick diamonds on. The collection includes some of the Fabergé eggs they used to exchange at Easter, which are pretty amazing. One had a tiny model train only about 10 cm long or less, but minutely detailed.

After that I finally got into the Red Square. I got a good look at St. Basil's this time, and also at the outside of Lenin's tomb, but it was too late so I'll have to go spit on him another day. Well, I won't, because that probably wouldn't be the sort of arrest I could get a nice holiday out of, but it's the thought that counts.

Later I went to the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, because they allegedly have a very good collection of Impressionist, Van Gogh, and other stuff that I like. They didn't tell me that ALL of the rooms with these in were closed while they move. So instead I had lots of the older bleurgh, a decent Egyptian and Babylonian collection, thousands of Classical sculptures, which I quite enjoyed, and a special Rembrandt exhibition. The latter was actually pretty good, maybe I'm getting to like his style from repeated exposure, but also it included a room of just black and white ink sketches, which impressed me far more than his paintings.

Novgorod Velikiy

2006-09-25T19:36:00.000+04:00

OK, my advice to anyone planning to go to Novgorod by train from St. Petersburg is book accomodation way in advance (I think the hostels in St. Petersburg can do this, "All Seasons" certainly can). Then you can take the 3hr express train the night before, instead of the 5hr+ one in the morning like I did yesterday. It stops nearly everywhere, most places don't even look like stations, just a couple of wooden houses in a clearing in the woods (if that), although it did arrive exactly on time. You could take a bus, which takes about 4hrs I think.

Novgorod Velikiy itself is lovely, very calm after the big city. It was the first town of the Russian state, and so has lots of old buildings including the Kremlin (a fort), and a bazillion churches. The churches are nearly all small and simple, which I prefer to the more elaborate ones. I wanted to go inside one, but it was closed. Inside, there are apparently some very rare paintings, by some dude whose signature was putting war-like paint around the eyes and noses. So as I didn't see them, I imagine it looks like the gospel as if enacted by the Norwegian black metal scene in full corpse paint.

Anyway, Sunday was very relaxing, despite wandering when on earth the train would arrive. I ate at the best restaurant yet, call "Detinets". It was inside the Kremlin, in one of the towers and adjoining chapel, with a spiral staircase to reach it and gloomy lighting to make it extra medieval. The food was very tasty, fairly cheap, and I had "kvas" in a goblet. This is basically mead, as far as I could tell, some sort of honey based beverage anyway. It reminded me of some kind of yeasty medicine capsules I had as a child, can't remember what they were for though...

The train to Moscow was very comfortable, only second class but better than the sleeper I went on in France. Didn't sleep to well all the same, so today I was knackered. I managed to navigate the Moscow Metro at 5.30 in the morning, but I'm glad this hostel is only 10 minutes from the Kremlin because it was horrible. St. Petersburg only had about 5 lines, Moscow has about 10.

I'm not so keen on Moscow as St. Petersburg, it's much busier, and half of it seems to be a construction site. Also Red Square was closed off today, so I could only look in from the outside. But there was a good view of the Kremlin from across the river, St. Basil's was even madder in real life, and the hostel is really nice. I'm really, really tired though, I didn't walk around for too long, I'll see mroe tomorrow.

I'm going to try and upload some photos later, this computer is much better, but I'd better let others go on first.

Petrodvorets and the Aurora

2006-09-23T20:58:00.000+04:00

Another two days in one post... yesterday I visited Petrodvorets, Peter the Great's version of Versailles, more or less, passing other pallaces along the way. The grounds of Petrodvorets are lovely and calm, full of fountains, with the main feature a cascade down from the Grand Palace, along a canal into the Baltic Sea. The day started grey and dull, but later the sun came out, so plenty of photos to see once I find a reliable computer.

Sadly my attempt at going to Kronstadt failed today, because I couldn't find the bus. I decided not to try the alternative route and instead visit the Cruiser Aurora, the ship that fired the signal for the start of the October Revolution. You can go on it and inside where there are some displays, all in Russian though. For lunch I went to a Georgian restaurant, Salkhino. The food was very tasty, a bit like Indian food, and came in similarly large partions. The bowl I got to serve myself from must have been metal or something similar, because it stayed so hot the food was bubbling for quite a while.

I'm staying a night longer in St. Petersburg than intended, because Novgorod is full, so I have to get a 7.55 train tomorrow morning. Oh, at the Metro station today someone tried to pickpocket me, but he chose my bag. Apparently my diary and Russian phrasebook aren't worth nicking, so it didn't matter. He wasn't very sly about it either.

Storming the Winter Palace

2006-09-21T20:59:00.000+04:00

I'm doing yesterday and today in one post because I got a 2 day advance ticket to the Hermitage, a kind of Russia equivalent of the Louvre in Paris, based in the Winter Palace and two adjoing buildings.

I began with the Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman collections, which were pretty impressive. I then ran into a problem, which is that to me, with a few exceptions, Europe produced little of artistic value after the fall of the Roman Empire until the 19th Century. Romanticism was alright, but it's only with the Impressionists onwards that there's anything I can get particularly excited about. For people who like religious paintings of constipated looking saints, and the other things they liked painting back then, the Hermitage is paradise.

Eventually though, I found my way to the top floor where there is a collection of French art covering Romanticism to post-Impressionism (Picasso and so on), including some very pretty Monets and Renoirs. Sadly the area with most of the Van Gogh's was closed off, but there were still a few good ones. Then later I managed to locate a special exhibition with even more Impressionist paintings, which consisted of works seized from Germany during the Second World War, and this is the first time many of them have been publicly displayed. So that was most excellent.

Other highlights from the first day included an exhibition of oriental art, mostly from India, China and Japan, a taster for what's in store for me next month I suppose. Also, the rooms that the last Tsar and his family lived in are on display. He certainly didn't shop at Ikea. Or believe in minimalism. In a different collection of old royal treasures is a clock made of polished brass (I think), which looks like a sculpture of a woodland scene with a peackock, cockerel, and toadstool that tells the time. Apparently when it chimes, the birds come alive and the cockerel screeches, though they've stopped demonstrating to prevent wear.

On the second day I decided to see some works by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (ho ho ho), even though I'm not keen on the style. My opinion wasn't changed by either Leonardo or Raphael, although the only Michelangelo piece was a statue of a crouching boy, which was pretty good. While looking for them I saw plenty of pre-Impressionist works, and apart from a few decent landscapes and seascapes, despite my best efforts to appreciate them, they still pretty much all struck me as dull, lifeless and frequently just plain ugly.

There were some good tapestries, although I couldn't find the one of Australia mentioned in the guide, maybe it was in one of the closed off rooms. I'll have to alter my claim from yesterday a little too: it was only after they discovered perspective that art got boring in Europe. The few medieval paintings and ivory carvings were really good, even the religious ones. Also, just before and at the same time as the Impressionists, there was a movement in Germany of which there was a special exhibition (also made up of works seized during WWII). This was nearly all black and white drawings and sketches, but with amazing detail.

I rounded the visit off with another viewing of the two Impressionist exhibitions, the oriental art one, and a display of European arms and armour, including for knights mounted on stuffed horses. Then I had tea and cake, before wandering around Sennaya, the area where Dostoyevsky lived while writing Crime and Punishment, and whre most of the book is set. Also nearby is Yusepov Palace, which I went to see. This is where Rasputin (a mystic who preached salvation through sex and debauchery who was popular with early 20th century female aristocrats) was poisoned, stabbed, and shot several times before being thrown into the canal where he finally drowned.

Finally, reading my guide, I found out why some of the stations have those industrial doors, and also why they're so far underground it seems to take 5 minutes on the escalators to reach the platform: they were built to double as shelters in the event of nuclear war.

Exploring St. Petersburg

2006-09-19T21:34:00.000+04:00

Today I decided to follow the walking tour in my Lonely Planet guidebook, only as I didn't know where I was when I got out the Metro, I ended up doing it in a different order, but it was still good. As well as various grand, continental European style buildings, bridges and canals that make up the historical centre, I saw the following: St. Isaac's Cathedral (not inside, because I'm not keen on the insides of churches, but there was a good panoramic view from the top); Church of the Savious of Spilled Blood - so named because it is built on the spot where the People's Will group blew up Tsar Alexander II - the outside is obscenely lurid and the inside (I went inside this one as the guidebook recommended it) makes Catholic churches look almost tasteful by comparison, although at least there was less gold, just mosaics... So let that be a lesson to all propaganda-by-the-deedists: all you'll achieve is tasteless architecture; the shop where Fabergé of jewelled egg fame used to be; and the Peter and Pauk Fortress.

After that I was pretty hungry, so I walked back to Nevsky Prospekt (the main street). On the way I met a Russian girl called Zheyna (the zh is pronounced like a French j, so the Russian equivalent of Jane). I wasn't entirely sure what she initially was trying to talk to me about, but apparently it was this: .www.worldcarp.org. Anyway, I didn't stop to talk, because I was very hungry, and also I didn't want to fall for one of those "help me practice my English@ scams where you end up paying stupid amounts of money. She wasn't one of those though, just very friendly, she kindly showed me the kind of Russian fast food place I was heading for, and helped me order my bliny (pancakes). Apparently she'd been all over the place, including 9 months in Korea. So that was cool, she even gave me this funny little Korean toy thing with eyes that change.

Oh, and I almost forgot: the great tea mission, to find new teas in other civilisations, to boldly drink tea as I have never drunk tea before. To begin with, for lunch I went to a posh looking café, which wasn't too expensive, and had smoked tea. This tasted a bit like drinking a bonfire, but in a good way. Then with Zheyna I had a cold tea with mint. At least that's what I thought I was ordering, but it tasted more like a syrup, so maybe it was fruit tea. It was nice anyway.

Last night I made a great discovery. At the airport I bought a world radio, mainly so I can listen to comedy programs on the BBC World Service. I've not found that yet, but what I did find whilst listening to see how bad Russian pop is, was... black metal! Glorious blast beats! Wooo! etc.

And finally, it turns out that not all Metro stations are designed as I described yesterday. In fact, so far only the two I saw yesterday are like that, the rest are like normal underground stations, but still not too many signs to tell you where you are.

Welcome to St. Petersburg

2006-09-18T21:07:00.000+04:00

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to Jon and Kim. As a few of you know, I was dreading having to wait 9 hours at Heathrow for my flight, as my coach arrived at 21.25 when the flight was at 6.55 the next day. Luckily, they live near the airport, so instead I had a very pleasant evening of beer, pizza and youtubing, a comfortable place to lie until 3.15 when the txi was due, and tea and fruit to steal. Which was grand.

Secondly, I'd like to scream obscenities at whoever is responsible for the travel agent and BAA airport websites telling me that I needs to be there 3 hours before departure, so that I couldn't get anything resembling sleep and had to get the bus the night before instead of the one early in the morning, paying 2 pounds to change the ticket. Was the check in open 3 hours ahead? No, it didn't open until 5.15. Grrrr...

Otherwise the trip went well, fairly uneventful thankfully given how knackered I was. It took about 3 hours of actual flying, as apparently Russia is 3 hours ahead, not 2, with a brief glimpse of misty Swedish woods at Stockholm, then the first views of Russia: a fishing boat, what must be one of the palaces of Peter the great, then fields and woods, a huge long straight road disappearing into the horizon, and finally the airport.

The instructions to get to the hostel "All Seasons" from the hostel website and the guidebook were fine, I had no problems. The Metro is a bit wierd: there's no platform, everyone just waits in a corridor down which there are big metal doors like for lifts, which the doors of the train line up with, very grim and industrial. Then there are no signs to say what station it is, just an announcement in Russian. Generally, it's not that different from Western Europe, most things seem a little old that's all, though the plague of SUVs seems to have reached even here.

The hostel is alright, only just over 3 pounds 50. Not spectacular, and you'll have to wait for photos because this PC they've got is way to old for me to trust plugging my camera in to it, but comfortable enough. For some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to paper the dorm with bara-brick-effect wallpaper, so it looks worse than it is.

Thanks to the airport debacle, I'm knackered, so when I got here they took my passport to be registered and I had a nap for 3 hours, exploring the city can wait until tomorrow. When I awoke the pleasantly warm temperature had dropped to something pretty chilly, so I'm glad I lugged my big coat around with me already.

Just now one of my new dorm mates came in, a half-Belosusian half-African guy here for a breakdance competition. Apparently last night he and some friends almost got beaten up by some skinheads, but luckily he got away, though they managed to nick his bag with his passport and helmet for headspinning. Welcome to St. Petersburg I spose!

PS: For anyone going to Russia, the immigration card you have to fill in is not like the example on the Russian Embassy London website! It asks you for the name and address for your inviting organisation and the invitation number, and has no English translation, though luckily Scandinavian Airlines provided their own.

The Masterplan

2006-09-13T20:58:00.000+04:00

Greeting everyone, this is my first ever blog post. I thought I would start by telling you all my intended itinerary so that you know roughly where I will be, and also explain some of my preparations for anyone else planning to make a similar trip. First of all then here is my route, as illustrated on the map:

Russia:

18th to 23rd of September: St. Petersburg
23rd to 24th of September: Novgorod Veliky
25th to 26th of September: Moscow
27th of September: Vladimir, Suzdal
28th of September: Suzdal, Kostroma
29th of September: Yaroslavl, Rostov
30th of September: Rostov, Pereslavl-Zalesskiy
1st to 2nd of October: Moscow
3rd to 7th of October: Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk
8th to 12th of October: Olkhon Island
13th to 16th of October: Trans-Mongolian train to Beijing

China:

16th to 22nd of October - Beijing and around
23rd of October - Datong
24th to 25th of October - Pingyao
25th to 28th of October - Beijing and around
29th to 30th of October - Tai Shan
31st of October - Qufu
1st of November - Zhengzhou
2nd of November - Anyang
3rd of November - Kaifeng
4th to 6th of November - Song Shan (Shaolin)
7th to 8th of November - Luoyang
9th to 10th of November - Hua Shan
11th to 17th of November - Xi'an
18th to 24th of November - Chengdu and around
25th to 27th of November - Chongqing and Yangzi river cruise to Yichang
28th to 30th of November - Wudang Shan
1st to 3rd of December - Nanchang and around
4th to 5th of December - Lushan, 2 nights there
6th to 7th of December - train to Hong Kong

7th to 23rd of December - Hong Kong & Macau
24th of December to 7th of January - Taiwan
8th to 15th of January - Hong Kong

16th of January - Guangzhou
17th of January - Foshan
18th of January - Zhaoqing
19th of January - Dinghu Shan
20th to 24th of January - Guilin
25th of January - Ping'an
26th of January - Sanjiang
27th of January to 1st of February - Kaili and around
2nd to 4th of February - Anshun
5th to 9th of February - Kunming
10th of February - Shilin
11th to 15th of February - Lijiang
16th to 24th of February - Dali
25th to 26th of Febuary - Nanning
27th to 28th of February - Beihai
1st to 2nd of March - Guiping
3rd to 5th of March - Jingdezhen
6th to 9th of March - Wuyishan
10th to 11th of March - Xiamen
12th of March - Quanzhou
13th of March - Fuzhou
14th to 16th of March - Yandang Shan
17th to 18th of March - Ningbo and Putuoshan
19th of March - Shaoxing
20th to 21st of March - Hangzhou
22nd to 23rd of March - Huang Shan
24th to 25th of March - Juihua Shan
26th to 27th of March - Nanjing
28th of March - Yangshuo
29th to 30th of March - Suzhou
31st of March to 4th of April - Shanghai
(total: 75 days)

Japan:

5th to 9th of April - Okinawa
10th of April - Osaka
11th of April - Himeji-jo
12th to 14th of April - Kyoto
15th of April - Nara
16th of April - around Nara
17th to 18th of April - Kyoto
19th of April - Takayama
20th to 21st of April - Alps National Park
22nd of April - Jigokudani Yaen-koen
23rd to 27th of April - Tokyo and around
28th of April - Aizu-Wakamatsu
29th to 30th of April - Sendai and around
1st of May - Kanazawa
2nd to 3rd of May - Okayama & Kurashiki
4th of May - Hiroshima
5th of May - Tsuwano
6th to 7th of May - Kirishima-Yaku National Park
8th of May - Nagasaki
9th of May - Fukuoka

Korea:

10th of May - Busan
11th of May - Seongnamsa
12th of May - Tongdosa
13th of May - Tongyeong
14th to 16th of May - Jirisan National Park
17th of May - Gwangju
18th of May - Unjusa
19th of May - Yeosu
21st of May - Dadohae Haesang National Park
22nd of May - Duryunsan Provincial Park
23rd of May - Jeonju
24th to 26th of May - Moaksan Provincial Park and/or Daedunsan Provincial Park and Maisan Provincial Park and/or Gangcheonsan County Park and/or Naejangsan National Park
27th of May - Songnisan National Park
28th of May - Chungju
29th of May - Danyang
30th of May - Haeinsa
31st of May to 2nd of June - Gyeongju and around
3rd to 4th of June - Andong and around
5th to 6th of June - Juwangsan National Park
7th to 8th of June - Taebaeksan Provincial Park
9th to 10th of June - Samchoek and around
11th of June - Jeongdongjin
12th to 13th of June - Odaesun National Park
14th to 15th of June - Seoraksan National Park
16th of June - Chuncheon/Gangchon
17th to 26th of June - Seoul and around

27th of June - fly home

This may all change as I go along depending on money, chance, how I feel, the movement of the Earth's crust. But that's my plan at the moment anyway. Each stay includes traveling time from the last place or to the next, just so you don't get worried that I'm spending too long in one place and traveling 1000 km in no time at all.

OK, this next bit is just explaining how I prepared for the trip, so if you're not interested, skip it, it's probably quite boring.

Essentials:

First of all I went to the doctors and found out what injections I would need. You need to do this a few months in advance, as the vaccinations can take a month, and some aren't available at the normal doctors. it cost quite a bit too, over £180.
Next was visas. I needed Russian, Chinese, and as I am going through Mongolia, a Mongolian one. The Chinese one would probably be quite easy to get yourself, as the itinerary you give is not one that you have to stick to, just a general idea, although you can only get it a maximum of 3 months before you intend to enter. But for the Mongolian one, and even more for the Russian one, the process is more bureaucratic, so I decided to go through a travel agent. The one I used was RealRussia.co.uk. They have offices in London (which I went to in person, just to check they were real and not run out of a hotel room or something), and they got all three visas sorted for me in time, and were very helpful. It costs a bit more to do it this way, although not much more if you include the cost of traveling to and from each embassy.
I looked around for a reasonable travel insurrance. there's a few for backpackers, which is probably what you would want for this kind of trip.
Money - apparently the best thing to take to Russia is dollars, although Euros are easy to change too. So I have some dollars to change, and also some travellers cheques (in dollars as well) for emergencies. Even if getting the currencies for all the places I'm visiting was easy, I wouldn't want to carry around enough money for 9 months in any currency, so I'm mostly relying on getting money out with my Visa card. To do this, I got myself a Nationwide account because they don't charge a commission for drawing money out anywhere abroad.

Planning:

To decide where to go once I'd chosen the countries, I bought Lonely Planet guides for all of them, and phrasebooks. I then spent ages planning a route based on them. It took ages, so it was lucky that I had plenty of free time when I went on holiday to Italy. I also used Way to Russia quite a bit. I also aimed to be where the weather is at least comfortable, so mainly this means moving gradually south for the Winter and then moving up to where there are beautiful blossoms and so on in the Spring.
For accomodation I'm mostly going to be staying in youth hostels with my internation youth hostel card. Actually, booking through the official YHA website (HIHostels) charges you a booking fee, but HostelBookers doesn't, and seems pretty reliable as well, although I still tried to stick to booking ones that appeared on the YHA one as well. Some places don't have youth hostels, so for these I will either find one when I get there from the lists given in the Lonely Planet guides, book through one the youth hostels along the way, many of which have travel desks (and I try to stay in those which do), or through either SinoHotel or AsiaHotels, both of which are recommended in the Lonely Planet one. Real Russia (see above) have also booked 3 for me in towns near Moscow.
I also used RealRussia to book my trains in Russia, which is especially important for the Irkutsk-Beijing leg, as that train is often fully booked in advance. Train tickets in Russia go on sale 45 days before departure, so I thought it was worth getting them in advance even if it cost a bit more. In China you can only get them 5 days in advance normally, so I'll do that myself or through a hostel travel desk. Buses I will also have to get myself, but the Lonely Planet guide is a great help. Seat61 and this site can also be of help when planning train journeys, working out journey times etc.
Flights: I found a cheap flight to St. Petersburg just by searching (it's with a Scandinavian airline and stops off in Stockholm). Other flights that I will be taking I haven't bought yet, in case I change my itinerary, but the prices don't seem to fluctuate much, so I will get them a few months before I intend to make the journey, but later once I've travelled a bit. Expedia seems the best place to look so far. Try different days of the week when looking, often the best flight only seems to fly one of two days.
I got three long sleeved "wicking" t-shirts. These apparently dry much quicker, which should be good for travelling, I hope.

OK, I can't think of anything else to explain. I hope that's of some use to someone.