Vietnam - Hanoi for Christmas

Our introduction to Vietnam was at the border when our train pulled in at around midnight and where we were herded off the train with our luggage into the border control room which doubles up as the ticket office, waiting room, staff canteen and duty free (closed).  There were around 60 of us on the train, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese with a sprinkling of westerners.

Yangshuo - Part 3 - Conversations with Chinese Students

We started our lessons with the students the day after we moved in to the school apartment.  We were to spend an hour a day from 4.30 to 5.30pm, which generally comprised two half hour sessions with (usually) a single student but if it was early on in their course and their English was limited, they would attend in pairs.  On one occasion we had a group of 6 students each for the whole hour and they are an excitable lot but we were, on the whole, able to control them (although dragging them away from their mobile phones was a constant battle - it seems students are the same the world over!).

Yangshuo - Part 2 - The Rise and Fall of the Wooky's Cycling Career

Once we had settled in at the school apartment we trundled off to hire bikes from Bike Asia, conveniently situated next to Kelly’s Café (where we were seeming to spend most of our time) on Huigai Lu, the quieter and nicer road which runs parallel to West Street (which is all a bit noisy and sometimes a bit too much hassle constantly fending off the hard sell hawkers trying to sell you yet another bamboo boat trip). 

Yanghsuo - Part 1 - Last Stop in China

Our journey from Zhangjiajie was not without difficulty but given the days we have spent travelling on the Chinese Rail Network, we were genuinely surprised we had encountered few delays, not bought tickets to the wrong destinations (easily done in China), missed any conncections or simply got on the wrong train or bus.  In fact we were always slightly bemused each time we reached our intended destination. 

Wulingyuan - An Other Worldly Place

Just one of the awe inspiring views across
the park

Wulingyuan was stunning.  Cold and damp for some of the time but stunning nevertheless.  It really does live up to the description "other worldly" - there is no better way to describe it.



There was low cloud and mist when we arrived by bus from Fenghuang but it was really atmospheric.  We still hoped for better weather as we would be spending a lot of time traipsing about and we really weren’t equipped for the cold and rain (and didn’t want to buy any more clothes that, we hoped, would be redundant for the rest of our trip).  We were lucky and we did have a few days of clear blue skies and sunshine and no rain.

Fenghuang - A Charming Riverside Town

After the bus trip from Dali we checked in for one night at The Hump Hostel before catching the train to Huaihua the following day.  At The Hump we bumped into an American guy, Benny, who arrived at the same time by train from Dali and who is now our friend.  He was lovely.  He recognised us from The Jade’s barbecue and pool night.  Although he had been staying elsewhere in Dali, he had been persuaded to join in the pool completion and I somehow remembered it was mentioned that he was from Wisconsin.  It’s strange the details you remember you have eavesdropped about other people!

Dali - Warm days and Cheese on Toast




The bus journey to Dali took us through stunning Yunnan countryside – if we had caught the train we suspect we would have missed much of the scenery as when we took the train from Kunming to Lijiang, passing through Dali on the way, the train seemed to spend 90% of the journey in tunnels.  However, the road through the mountains south from Lijiang to Dali was beautiful, marred only by a peppering of heart stopping moments. 

Lijiang - A Quaint Old Town and The Forgery Incident

We arrived in Lijiang after dark.  The railway station is about 15km from the old town where we had booked accommodation.  We caught a taxi no problem and headed through the new city before being dropped off at the east gate to the old town.  Luckily Paul seemed to have some idea where we were going.  Motor vehicles (and horse and carts apparently) are not allowed within the old town so we had to wander through the winding cobbled streets in the dark to try and find our hostel with our heavy rucksacks on our backs.

Kunming - Parks and Markets

It was raining when we arrived in Kunming and we couldn’t get a taxi to take us to the hostel for love nor money.  I don’t know why but they just wouldn’t take us – they didn’t even try to rip us off, they just refused!  And we couldn’t find the public bus that was supposed to take us there so we were a bit stuck.  That was until a random bloke came up to us and offered to take us for 40 yuan which is about double what it should be but we were desperate, and £4 is nothing compared to an hour’s walk with a heavy rucksack, and our principles are a little hazy – quite frankly £4 could probably feed his family for a week and it wasn't going to break our budget so we gladly accepted his offer.

Chengdu and the Pandas

It was with some relief that we checked into Sims Cozy Garden Hostel after the last four hotels and their rock hard beds.  China does not do comfortable beds at all and, to be fair, while the hostels are hardly luxury, you do get about 3 inches of comfort between you and the bed base which, when you get to our age, can be the difference between being able to walk in the morning unaided or being laid up with a bad back for a week!

Lanzhou and Xiahe - The Tibetan Monastery

Our lasting impression of Lanzhou is that it is a place to avoid at all costs.  If I can dispense one piece of advice about China it would be that if you ever have to visit Lanzhou (which is possible as it is a major transport hub), plan very carefully, book ahead and spend as little time as you have to there,  It's horrible.

We arrived in Lanzhou from Dunhuang in the hope that we would be able to catch a train straight out to Chengdu and start our journey slowly south.  No such luck.  We had accepted we would have to stay one night so had booked into a hotel opposite the train station.  Again, our room was almost identical to the rooms at the hotels in Dunhuang and Jiayuguan:  completely devoid of character, the same rock hard beds but with the added disadvantage of being located in a city with about as much charm as Basingstoke.

Dunhuang - The Oasis Town

We were still craving cheese, and added to that list was a good old fry up and a roast dinner!  But I digress.

The bus journey from Jiayuguan took about 5 hours and was interesting, if a little nerve wracking at times!  Our preferred method of travel is train as it is largely considered quite safe and you generally won’t go wrong on two rails.  Four wheels, with a 2 or 3 lane road to zoom around on, and a horn seems to give the driver a lot more options and sometimes you think just a bit too much freedom to drive where and how he likes! 

Jiayuguan Fort - The End of Civilisation

It was about now that we really started to crave cheese.  We hadn’t been able to get any proper cheese since Russia (and calling Russian cheese proper is probably stretching it a bit).  We started fantasising about crumbly cheddar, deep fried camembert, a nice stilton with some hot crusty bread spread with lots of salty butter (another thing you can’t seem to get in China).  Don’t get me wrong the food is amazing, but we love cheese and we miss it.  A lot.

Xi'an - and the flowerpot men

For the first couple of days we thought that Xi’an was China’s equivalent of Birmingham.  We were staying in a lovely hostel within the city walls, with an amazing roof garden, but our first impressions of the city were that it was just a dirty (not helped by the appalling pollution), very westernised (mobile phone shops everywhere), unappealing place.  

It was also very polluted for much of our time there, and we viewed an alien sun through a sickly grey haze.

Pingyao - An Ancient Walled City

The train journey to Pingyao from Beijing was without incident.  We had booked hard sleepers and would point out at this stage that a hard sleeper on Chinese trains, whilst perfectly adequate for an overnight trip, is exactly what is says it is.  It is a sleeper and it is hard.  Soft sleepers are one step up in the luxury stakes and we were to find that these are slightly less hard, but only slightly.

Beijing - National Holiday Madness

For the National Holiday on 1st October the hostel arranged a special evening – lots of food and all the beer you could drink for 60 yuan (£6).  The menu sounded delicious, and included chicken, pork and beef dishes along with roast duck. We reckoned we would get our value for money in beer alone whatever happened (beer was 50p a shot!).  We decided to splash out.

There were only about a dozen people from the hostel who took up this generous offer:  a young Sweden couple, a German girl, and an Australian lady (both travelling alone), and a few French and Belgians.

Beijing - Our Introduction to China

We disembarked at Beijing main railway station filled with trepidation.  We had been led to believe that Beijing was chaos at the best of times but that this week it would be absolute carnage.

The mid autumn festival (also known as Mooncake Day) falls on the full moon of the eighth lunar month and National Day is held every 1st  October to celebrate the formation of the People's Republic of China.  This year, both holidays fell on 1st October and as a result there was a week long national holiday, second only to the Chinese New Year holiday.

Heading beyond China's Firewall

We are heading to China tomorrow morning by train, arriving in Beijing Friday afternoon, just at the madness that promises to be the big Chinese autumn holiday (Golden Week).

We will try to update via email but we will only be able to upload one photo per post.

Trans Siberian - Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar to Beijing

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

Ulaanbaator toBeijing

This was last leg of our Trans Siberian journey.  We could not believe how quickly that journey had flown past, how much we had seen and how the landscape had changed as we passed through Europe to Asia and Siberia, and south through Mongolia.  Now we were heading to Beijing, our last destination on this part of our trip, the huge capital of China.

This time we had both bottom bunks but an older Australian couple, part of an organised tour which had started in eastern Europe, also ended up sharing with us so we gave them a bottom bunk, knowing it would be more comfortable.  We are sure not a lot of people would have done this but we just thought karma.

Trans Siberian - Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

 

Ulan Ude to Ulaanbaatar

This train was one of the tourist trains, so called because it is has fewer carriages train and the majority of passengers are western tourists making the trip from Russia to Mongolia. There are an assortment of travellers, independent like us, or those with organised tour groups.  

We boarded the train early again and we soon discovered that there only one Russian family in our whole carriage - the rest were westerners.

Trans Siberian - Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

Ekateringburg to Irkutsk

It was another early start, and this was to be the longest leg of our journey – 2 whole days and nights on the train! We were still a little dazed after the last journey, and our fleeting stay in Ekateringburg hadn’t really given us the opportunity to recover. We boarded the train at about 6.30am and found that we were sharing our compartment with a young couple in their very early twenties. To our dismay, we had both top bunks again, and on this occasion it was the worst possible arrangement.

Trans Siberian - Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

Vladimir to Ekateringburg

This journey was a whole different story altogether.  We boarded the train at about 7.30pm and we were thrilled that we had one upper and one lower bunk, our favourite combination!  This was going to be a long journey of just over 24 hours so we wanted to be comfortable, and also to be able to gaze out of the window.

Trans Siberian - Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

St Petersburg to Moscow

Although we had travelled all the way from London by train, technically this was the beginning of our Trans Siberian/Trans Mongolian adventure. We arrived at the station in St Petersburg at around 11.30pm in plenty of time for our train which was due to leave at about 12.40pm.  All Russian railway stations are manned by police and all passengers are required to enter the station through security gates and pass luggage through x-ray machines although we never saw anyone stopped and searched in all our time in Russia.

Trans Siberian - Part 1 - Introduction

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

The journey on the train warrants an entire story of its own and I have decided devote a series of posts for this part of our trip alone for anyone who has a particular interest in the train journey, or who might be thinking to take the trip themselves.   It also deals with our experiences along the way on the train. 

Warning:  May Contain Alcohol

Mongolia - Ulaanbaatar

Genghis Khan

The capital city of Mongolia is home to 1.5 million people (about half the population of the entire country) and is a world away from the mountains and steppes we had left just outside the city. We had two nights in a hotel in central Ulaanbaatar before catching our last train on the Trans Mongolian railway ending up in Beijing. The train only runs twice a week and we were catching the Thursday train.

As we arrived by car we could see there were building works going on all over the city; huge cranes dotted the skyline and along every road on the way to our hotel they were building houses, apartment blocks, and commercial buildings. It was development on an unprecedented scale which seemed to be taking place at too quick a pace for a country with such a small population. Although Mongolia is a country rich in a variety of natural resources and was reported to be the fastest growing world economy in April 2012, the level of development was alarming. It seemed Ulaanbaatar was one massive building site.

Mongolia - Life in a Ger

Paul enjoying the sunshine

The 24 hour train trip from Ulan Ude ended at about 7am.  Everyone was a little ragged around the edges for a variety of reasons, lack of sleep being the main one, and an excess of beer and vodka a close second.  The same journey from Ulan Ude to Ulaanbaatar can be made by bus in 9 hours but you really can't break up the train trip and say, hand on heart, that you've done the Trans Siberian!  

We had an epic 5 hour stop at the Russian border town in the blistering heat (and yes, we were still in Siberia!), followed by a shorter but no less tedious 2 and a half hours at the Mongolian Border.  I am dealing with the journeys themselves in a separate post which is proving to be a bit of an essay but thought it would be more appropriate to keep those separate, for anyone interested in actually taking the train.

Ulan Ude - Lenin's Big Head

It's Lenin's Head and it's huge

The train trip from Irkutzk was amazing – it is the section of the railway which follows the south eastern shore of Lake Baikhal for about a quarter of its length and the scenery was stunning (although our window could have done with a bit of a clean so all the photographs were a bit rubbish but we enjoyed it nevertheless!).  And we had the compartment to ourselves which was a bonus.

However, we arrived at our last stop in Russia a little weary after the 8 hour train trip and, to be honest, not looking forward to another homestay or another guided city tour. 

Lake Baikal and Olkhon Island

Our trusty wagon

This part of the trip was something we had been looking forward to for some time.  I had never heard of Lake Baikal a year ago but now knew it was the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, mainly because of its depth.  It is enormous and breathtakingly beautiful.  The photographs just do not do it justice.  But it is not only the beauty of the place, it is the fact that it is so unspoilt and despite all this, relatively unscathed by tourism.

We had elected to add a 3 day 4WD excursion to Olkhon Island as part of the whole organised Trans Siberian trip which was a bit pricey but it was a bit of a treat.  We both wanted to spend some time there because it looked a bit special, and it seemed like the best way to do it.  We are now glad we didn’t choose a hiking trip!  There was a lot of ground to cover and we have spent hours traipsing round cities.  It was nice to sit back in relative comfort and rest our legs a bit.

Hot and Sunny in Siberia - Irkutsk

The geezer who founded
Irkutsk 350 years ago

Once again, we had an interesting journey from Ekateringburg to Irkutsk, our longest trip so far of over 48 hours.  Once again, this journey warrants an entry of its own and I think is best written, with the benefit of a little perspective.

The first thing that struck us when we arrived in Irkutsk was that the weather was amazing.  It was hot and sunny and we were in the middle of Siberia! 

When you’re on the train you’re in a bit of a sealed bubble – on the newer trains the temperature is displayed in each carriage showing at 20-21⁰.  No more, no less – the provodnista (the carriage attendant - usually female, always formidable- in charge of bedding, keeper of the samovar, and your mum for the duration of your journey, whatever your age) would not allow any variance from this.

Ekateringburg and the Romanovs

Paul said at Vladimir that he wished we were travelling straight through to Irkutsk because there wasn’t a lot to see in Ekateringburg.  Well, apart from the fact that I could guarantee there would be a lot of churches (no longer a selling point), I was glad we were splitting our journey and I was interested to see this city, the industrial capital of Russian on the border between Europe and Asia.
Of course Ekateringburg is infamous as a result of it’s connection to the “demise” of the Romanovs but more of that later.

Vladimir, Suzdal and more churches than you can shake a stick at

Our little guest house

The day we headed to Vladimir did not get off to a very good start.  We arrived at Moscow Kazansky Station a couple of hours before the train was due to leave and Paul was despatched to get coffee.  He returned with a pained grimace holding two plastic cups full of what can only be described as sweet boiling water the colour of wee.  It was disgusting. 

The real tragedy was that he had gone to the trouble of purchasing this rubbish and as the plastic cups were not designed to hold boiling hot water, they had virtually collapsed as he was carrying them covering his left hand with boiling water and scalding himself quite badly.  We established where the toilets were and after first protesting that he would be fine, he finally trotted off to find a tap to run cold water over his hands. 

Moscow and Whistling Policemen

One of the Stalin Skyscapers seen from inside
the Kremlin walls

Our overnight journey from St Petersburg to Moscow was uneventful.  Our cabin mates were an older couple (by that I mean older than us but younger than our parents)  and as we hopped on the train at about 1 o’clock in the morning and arrived in Moscow at about 10 o’clock we mainly slept.

We were met at Moscow Leningradsky Station by a rather stern looking young lady called Irina who spoke very little English and who was to drive us to our homestay in a suburb of Moscow. 

The first thing I noticed on leaving the station, following Irina to her car, was one of the huge Stalin Skyscrapers. 

St Petersburg and the Russian Adventure Begins

Church of Spilt Blood

Our first stop in Russia was probably not an introduction to the real Russia.  There is no denying that St Petersburg is an incredibly beautiful city, built along the banks of rivers and canals, full of exquisite cathedrals and palaces designed primarily by Catherine the Great who was in fact a German!  

I should mention at this early stage that no reliance should be placed on the historical accuracy of anything I say – there has been a lot to take in and I have dozed off and/or glazed over on more than one occasion.

St Petersburg to Beijing is the only part of our trip which was pre-organised through an Australian travel agent and each stop includes a half day city tour with a guide.  Neither of us are particularly fond of such rigid planning but as we only have limited time in each place we thought it would be quite useful.

Sleeper Trains and Russian Border Guards

We glossed over our first experience on a sleeper train for no other reason than it’s taken us almost a week to get over the whole experience.  And frankly this did not bode well for a trip of several months which has been planned around travelling by train.

When booking our tickets from Cologne to Warsaw back in the UK we had settled for a couchette which is effectively 3^rd class – up to 6 berths to a cabin – mainly because we couldn’t really understand the booking system. 

Warsaw and Vilnius

Warsaw is a beautiful city.  However, we should warn you at this stage that if you are looking for a visitor’s guide to any places we visit, you may have to look elsewhere (we recommended Lonely Planet – other guide books are available). 

Leaving London - Baggage Issues and Train Seats

We finally said all our goodbyes last week and are on our way.  We do however have limited access to the internet and it really does feel like we have left our old lives behind for now.  We are currently lazing about in our hotel in Cologne waiting for the rain to stop before dumping our baggage at left luggage and exploring the city before catching our overnight train to Warsaw this evening at 10.28pm.

The Fear....

Paul is currently sleeping for England!  If it were an Olympic sport he would definitely have had a place on the podium!  It will be the last thing he does for his country before we head off and I am somewhat relieved that he practically collapsed from exhaustion following his last day at work.  Enforced relaxation is the only way with him.  Better that he sleeps now than when we are travelling across Russia, missing everything that he has worked so hard for.

We have moved everything we are keeping into storage - we squeezed everything into 35 sq ft and now just have a few things to sort out in the final week before we set off - I'm hoping this will help relieve the boredom and also keep us off Amazon searching for last minute "must haves".

It is a strange feeling waiting to embark on this adventure, not knowing exactly where we will be heading, how long the money will hold out, where we will be living in a year, and when we will be back in England.  It is a giant leap into the unknown and with that brings a certain amount of trepidation.

Visas and Vaccinations

It has been a while since we updated our blog but, to be honest, we don't really think much of what we have been doing over the last 6 weeks or so will be of interest to anyone (even us!).  However, we have been busy and are ready to go.  It's just a shame we have still to wait another 5 weeks.....

Visas

We applied for our visas in order of need and so once the Russian letters of invitation were received, the online application was completed and I duly trotted off to the Russian Visa Application Centre near Old Street.  The process was painless and I returned 5 days later and picked up our passports with our Russian visas firmly glued inside.

Booking Trains with the Germans and Chinese Visa Issues

The 90 day deadline before we depart London has been reached and we have therefore been able to book the trains for our journey to Russia.

After much research on an increasingly overheating laptop, we booked our tickets through the Deutsche Bahn website - incredibly easy, much cheaper and, as you would expect with Germans, very efficient! 

We leave London St Pancras on the Eurostar departing at 10:57.  This means arriving at the station just before 9.00am to check in and is much more preferable to hanging around all day like excited puppies, eager to be on our way!

Multi-lingual in 9 months?

We began learning Russian in the middle of January and our Russian is going from strength to strength.  Although we are making progress with the Chinese it is so much harder but it was always going to be a challenge!

We have our homework organised for the first three months of the trip which takes the form of learning the basics of two more languages: Vietnamese and Indonesian.  We have "Basic Conversational" level courses from Pimsleur and they are ready to be downloaded onto iPods.  We hope to complete the Russian course by the time we leave London but think that we will still be tackling Mandarin as we travel through Russia and Mongolia to Beijing on the Trans Siberian.  We won't even attempt the basics of Vietnamese until around October, so that's something to look forward to(?).

All things technical... and a note from the Wooky

After grappling with Twitter, Facebook pages and finding my way around the blog, most of the teething problems have been ironed out.  The Facebook page is talking to Twitter but not vice versa.  I think Twitter are having technical issues.  Either that or I'm just not doing it right!  Hopefully all this work now will make updating and uploading photographs much easier once we're on the road.

And so it begins

Our preparations are well underway.  We are learning Russian and Mandarin in preparation for the first 3 months of the trip.  My Australian visa application is (almost) complete and what a marathon THAT has been!  We have booked the Trans Siberian Trip which will take us through to Beijing.  And, as we are arriving in China just before the National Day holiday celebrations kick off, we have booked a week at The Red Lantern House.