The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, St.Petersburg

St.Petersburg is a strange melange of an elegant and gloriously sophisticated history mixed with the harsh realities of modern urban decay. At times it seems like a beautiful city and at other times a dangerous hell-hole. The city's police force is corrupt and racially motivated attacks are common here. I felt particularly uneasy walking around alone after dark.




After everything going perfectly to plan from Singapore to Moscow, everything went wrong for me in St.Petersburg. I had a throughly miserable time and buying my onward ticket to Helsinki was an absolutely nightmare. I would have to say that, whilst one should never really generalize, Russians are perhaps the most miserable, rude and unhelpful people I've ever come across. You go into a shop and they almost complain when you actually try to buy something.

The hostel I stayed in was full of mammoth-sized mosquitoes, the weather was atrocious and I got soaked twice (all my clothes and belongings got drenched), my 7-Eleven umbrella, which had been with me since Hong Kong, completely broke in the gusting wind and is now unusable and all the city's ATMs refused to accept my bank card because I'd already used it once earlier in the day (I'd miscalculated the amount I needed before and it seems that Russian banks limit you to one card-use per day), so I had no money to do anything in the evening. On top of that everything I touched I broke and everything I picked up I dropped. It was one of those days where absolutely nothing goes right.

And it's just so hard to get anything done in Russia with its petty beauracracy and inefficient service industry. It's also the most tourist-unfriendly place I've ever visited. For example the subways here (St.Petersburg has the world's deepest subway, incidentally) have no maps in them! And they don't even list the names of any of the stations clearly in the stations themselves. If you miss or don't understand the Russian announcement you just have to guess which station you're in. And everything is written in cyrillic only. Nightmare! And then when you do ask for help, in Russian of course, you're greeted with a flail of the arms, a loud huff and a how dare you trouble me, a subway employee no less, for help in using the subway!

Roll on Finland! Roll on the European Union!


Pedestrians crossing in front of the Kazan Cathedral


I grabbed a quick bite at Subway, one of my favourite franchise eateries


Of all the hundreds of ladas I've seen in Russia, this one is in by far the worst condition

Stage 11 - Moscow to St.Petersburg

The eight hour overnight sleeper-train to St.Petersburg was the easiest leg of my journey so far. The train left Moscow at 1am and I immediately went to bed. I woke up refreshed the next morning half-an-hour before pulling into St.Petersburg. As easy as pie!

Moscow at last!!

St.Basil's Cathedral...just as beautiful as I hoped it would be!


Red Square


Lenin's tomb


There's so much to see in central Moscow and I've tried to do as much as possible in my two and a half days here. It's a crazy place...I have a few stories but they'll have to wait for another time and place!!

Next stop St.Petersburg and then I'm off to Helsinki where I'm staying a couple of days with Lee, an old friend from university. After that I'll be heading down to Amsterdam via Stockholm and Copenhagen before making the short hop across the channel to England. If all goes according to plan I should be back in the UK next week, ready to start my new life in Birmingham! Hopefully there should be somebody special waiting for me there.

Stage 10 - Irkutsk to Moscow

Whoever coined the phrase it's a small world was brutally wrong.

I joined the Trans-Siberian Railway in Irkutsk and travelled west to Moscow, a grand total of 5185 km. It took almost three and a half days and the train passed through six time-zones. I changed clothes four times. Russia really is a vast country.


Long-distance trains in Russia all operate on Moscow time regardless of departure point or destination. Therefore as soon as I stepped onto the Baikal at Irkutsk the clock went back five hours and consequently the first day was a very long one. When it was 1pm on the train it was 6pm outside. And the following morning when it was 7am outside it was still 2am on the train. It was so weird! Russia is therefore probably the only country in the world where it's possible to get jet-lag in anything other than a plane. And it was real too, it took me the whole three days to get used to the time-shift, each morning waking up and having breakfast around 5am Moscow-time and then having lunch around 10am. Of course, my body was still telling me that everything was five hours later than it really was but gradually the hours came off and by the third day we had properly arrived in western Russia where Moscow-time is actually observed. The whole thing was very disorientating.

The journey-time to Moscow, which was a little over 77 hours, was by far the longest single journey I've ever attempted and by the end I was obviously pretty pleased to have arrived in Moscow. I went first-class in China and Mongolia, sharing with only one other person, but the first-class price here in Russia was beyond my budget so I had to take second-class this time. This meant sharing a cabin with three others rather than only one, but luckily I didn't have to share with a trio of loud drunken vodka-guzzling Russian men with 80s style mustaches and retro tracksuits to match.

Unlike many western tourists travelling east who often find themselves sharing cabins with other westerners, my travel companions were all Russian. They were Zerina, a 24 year old policewoman from Irkutsk, Ryocka, a 22 year old army lieutenant from near Lake Baikal, and Oleg, a thirty-something thermal energy plant worker from Novosibirsk. They all had different strategies for dealing with the time problem. Zerina, like me, did everything five hours before she should have done it. Ryocka, for his part, insisted he was on Moscow-time from the start but his sleep patterns really suggested otherwise. Oleg only travelled half the distance so he went the whole time on Moscow + 2 hours, getting off somewhere in Siberia on the second day.

We broke out the beers within the first twenty minutes and Zerina, Ryocka and Oleg all turned out to be friendly, fun people and I had a great time hanging out with them (I believe they had a good time with me too!). Of course, they spoke only about seven words of English between them but with that and my twelve words of Russian we actually managed to communicate easily for the whole three days. And thanks to their great help my Russian vocabulary has actually increased to a massive thirty or so words (and my reading ability is now actually pretty good too). Learning a new language and a new form of writing in this way is almost like being transported back in time three years ago to when I arrived in Japan with no Japanese.


Military fashion is popular in Russia


Reading material for the journey


This obelisk 1777 km east of Moscow marks the official geographical border between Asia and Europe. At last I had arrived in Europe, the greatest of all continents


My clock said it was 23.59, my body told me it was 23.59, yet the daylight suggested otherwise


A few hours outside Moscow a young boy beside the tracks hurled a rock at the train smashing the window in our cabin


Station stops, which can last anything from two to twenty-five minutes, are a major life-line on the Trans-Siberian. Plenty of stalls and shops sell all manner of goods to keep you alive through the journey


Chess seems to be very popular on Russian trains. On the second day Oleg challenged me to a match. He was pretty good, beating me in a little under three hours. All Russians are good at chess, I think!


My cabin-mates get to grips with a crossword and despite my rapidly improving Russian I wasn't much help so I left them to it and sauntered off to the restaurant wagon


Morris (ENG) vs Karpin (RUS). I met Morris in Ulaanbaatar and then surprisingly bumped into him again with his travelling partner Luke in the restaurant wagon. He was offered a game of chess by one of the train's (off-duty) railway policeman who did not take too kindly to me taking this photograph. Morris beat him and he went off in a huff


Oleg was a fan of mini-lobster so he bought us all one at one of the station stops


Provodnitsas are those responsible for making sure order is maintained on the train during long journeys. They work in teams of two with one generally resting while the other works. They are usually middle-aged women with a reputation for dodgy drag-queen-like haircuts but the two taking care of my carriage didn't really fit that stereotype


Балтика (Baltika). This beer has proven to be my favourite in Russia


The semovar (which you can see just through the door) can be found on trains all over Russia and the rest of Asia. It's essentially a big boiler and I imagine it comes in pretty handy during the winter when temperatures hit minus forty in Siberia. Passengers use it for their coffee, tea and pot noodles (the staple of the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian railways). Also, with no showers on trains, it's a good idea to fill a bottle and use the hot water to wash in the morning. You need to get a little creative but it's possible to have quite a good shower if you use a bit of imagination!

The Trans-Siberian Railway is a great way to travel. It's not easy - it can be tough spending often endless days on a train - but it's also not an experience I'm likely to forget in a hurry. Despite all the difficulties I experienced in arranging this journey I'm definitely glad I did it. It's something I have always wanted to do and I'm just thankful that I've been luckily enough to have had these opportunities. Most people in Mongolia for example have never even seen the sea before, yet I've seen more in my short life than most human-beings ever will. For that I'm very grateful.

Now I just have the small matter of negotiating my way home from Moscow to London via St.Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm and Amsterdam. But with the vast majority of my long journey behind me, it should be pretty straightforward from here.

England, England, what doth await me there?

Irkutsk has a slightly grotty, seedy feel to it and almost all of the pavements are either being ripped up and repaved or in a state of terminal disrepair. The large statue of Lenin on one of the city's biggest streets serves as a reminder of where you are, just in case you were likely to forget.


A few observations, then. Ladas, those terribly unfashionable Russian cars from the late 70s and early 80s, are everywhere here. Even the police drive around in them. Incredible. And Irkutsk's public transport looks to be in a terrible state too. Rattling old crumbling buses battle for space on ruinous streets with knackered-out rusty old trams in what looks like a scene from another age and another time. Charming yet bizarre. I also expected to see a little bit of roman script here but I actually haven't seen any anywhere - everything is in Russian only. And had I not learnt some cyrillic before I arrived I would have been a bit stuck. My advice would be that if you ever come to Russia, learn how to read a bit of cyrillic first - it only takes a few hours and you'll be glad you did it! Lastly, it should be noted that Russian women are exceedingly beautiful!

Stage 9 - Ulaanbaatar to Irkutsk

Heneganov is in Russia!

I managed to survive my six days in Mongolia without being robbed which is, apparently, quite an achievement considering the incredibly high levels of petty-crime there, often targeted against tourists and travellers.




So, after a 26 hour 'hop' I arrived in Irkutsk, a large town 70km to the west of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake. Everything is different here, not least the people - from Mongolia it was a journey of a little over a thousand kilometres yet the overwhelming majority of people here are, of course, caucasian - I'm still in central Asia but it feels like I've arrived in Europe already.

The journey itself was fairly easy and trouble-free. The border crossings took a while as security officials tried to root out illegal Mongolian traders smuggling denim from China but other than that there were no problems. I shared cabins with a middle-aged female Russian doctor who spoke about ten words of English. Between us, with her bad English and my bad Russian, we managed to just about have some almost interesting and enlightening conversations.

Next stop Moscow!

The Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, Mongolia

I've spent the last two days in the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park about 90km north-east of Ulaanbaatar. I stayed in an isolated ger camp with a small group of other tourists (two Brits, two Finns, one German and one Greek). We were looked after well by our Mongolian hosts, fed three times a day and taken horse-riding on each afternoon. Contrary to our fears the food was pretty good - with lots of lamb of course, which didn't go down too well with the two vegetarians amongst us. Note: if you are a vegetarian, Mongolia would not be the best choice of holiday destinations.



The ger is the traditional home of the Mongolian nomad and can be found all over Mongolia. Nomads or semi-nomads make up about half the Mongolian population so outside the cities many people still live and work in them. They are made from wood and canvas, insulated with felt and are typically six or seven metres in diameter. They look quite small from the outside but are in fact quite spacious. Some even have modern trappings such as TVs and microwave ovens.


Our ger




The toilet was basic to say the least



These guys learn to ride horses as soon as they can walk and they often ride bareback, especially the kids. To see them ride at full speed is pretty awesome. I quite fancied my chances as a Mongolian horseman but sadly despite having ridden one or two horses in the past I wasn't much good. The saddle cut painfully into my thighs and produced the kind of agonies in certain areas that I didn't know was really possible. I did manage to get my horse, who I'd incidentally named Montesque (pronounced mon-tes-kyew), into a couple of trots but he obviously did not recognize my authority and most of the time refused to go any faster than walking pace, preferring to pass wind instead. There were even times when he wouldn't go at all such was the low regard in which he held his rider.





It was really nice to spend a couple of days living like this and to see how rural Mongolians live and work. Spending time in nature surrounded by the sights, sounds and smells of horses, cows, yaks, goats, sheep and even the odd camel was a nice feeling. The lack of a shower or cleaning facilities was tough however, as was the lack of anywhere to purchase water. In fact the whole experience made me realize just how many things we take for granted in our modern lives, such as running water on demand, clean and flushable toilets, shops which sell ready-cut-and-wrapped-meat, motorized transport and so on. The rural people of Mongolia generally have none of these things yet don't seem to miss or even need them. It's a different world and one which I'm glad to have experienced, albeit for only a short time.


A skull, possibly a sheep's, on a rock in the sun

This kid ran over to me as I was taking photos in Ulaanbaatar's Sükhbaatar Square. He was fascinated with my camera and had one of the most fantastic toothless smiles I've seen in ages. He asked me to take his photo (I think so anyway, he spoke to me in Mongolian) and was mesmerized when I showed him the images on the LCD.

Anyway, according to the Lonely Planet:

By no stretch of the imagination could Ulaanbaatar be called pretty. In fact the preponderance of jerry-built Soviet apartment blocks, polluting factories and general urban sprawl make it an ugly scar on an otherwise lovely country.

I'd have to agree to a certain extent as it's not exactly beautiful, but I find it a little more charming than the Lonely Planet suggests. On a similar note one or two people had told me that Mongolian women were supposed to be among the ugliest in the world. However I'd have to completely disagree with that, for whilst they may not be the best dressed in the world, images of a country full of chubby female Asashoryus is way off the mark. The women in Ulaanbaatar are generally beautiful, slim and elegantly turned out, even if their sometimes rather dated western-style fashions can be a touch uninspiring.

I have six days here in Ulaanbaatar, plenty of time to relax before heading to Russia which, according to most travellers I've spoken to who've been there, is home to some of the most miserable people in the world (even more so than in China!!). I'm not sure if this is true, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Better use to the time to learn a bit of ruski.


Oh, and where else would I happen to bump into Matt Ho, current JET and former FGU strike partner, but in Ulaanbaatar of course! Deary me!

Stage 8 - Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

Finally, I was on the Trans-Mongolian, one of the great railway services of the world today. I was a little sad to leave Beijing after only two days, but let's not forget that there is a journey to be done here and the thirty-hour trek across the Gobi Desert to Mongolia promised wonderful things.



The train itself, just like the one I caught from Hanoi the previous week, was rather grand. I have now come to the conclusion that Chinese trains (and indeed the Chinese rail network as a whole) must be among the best in Asia. I had a lovely cabin shared with a quiet Mongolian who rather surprisingly looked nothing like Asashoryu (the yokozuna, Grand Sumo Champion from Mongolia) and who had an earring in the hard gristly part of his right ear.

After leaving Beijing I was fast asleep when we passed through the Great Wall but I woke up around lunch-time to be rewarded with some fine scenery. The Chinese countryside looked spectacular with miles of perfectly cut rice-fields and gorgeous green rolling hills of grass - and plenty of poor peasants in them hard at work. It was a lovely scene. Long live the people's party!



However, nothing could have prepared me for the ridiculousness of the border crossing on the Chinese side. After completing Chinese customs the train pulled away from Erlian station (the last point in China before Mongolia) at a silent crawl as music, which I can only assume to be the Chinese national anthem although I may be mistaken, blared out over the station's speaker system. Chinese security officials lined the tracks and stood staring blank-faced without emotion as the train silently inched out of the station and while bemused tourists leaned out of the windows wondering what all the fuss was. After this silly show, which only proved that China takes itself far too seriously indeed, the train left the station and proceeded at a normal speed to the Mongolian side.

The best part of the journey was yet to come, however. After clearing Mongolian customs and after shovelling down what must have been my twentieth pot noodle of the entire trip I went to bed, tired after a day on the train and two busy days sightseeing in Beijing. Around 5am I awoke to see the sun poking its head over the horizon, gently illuminating the harsh, dry expanse of the Gobi Desert. Because of dust storms the train windows were all closed-tight and NOT to be opened. However, I snook into another carriage, quickly looked around and sensing the coast was clear, I cunningly lifted the blind and lowered the window. There was just enough time for me to reel off a couple of shots before the miserable carriage attendant entered and caught me red handed. 'NO! CLOSE!' he bellowed in a strong and menacing accent. Okay, I did as I was told and went back to bed with glorious images of the Gobi filling my head.


The Gobi at sunrise





By the time I woke again we had entered a more fertile area where small shrubs and wild grasses seem to flourish despite the harsh conditions. Apparently only 3% of the Gobi is actually true desert and it seemed that this 3% is what I'd briefly seen at sunrise. By lunchtime there were large areas of green penetrating the sandy-coloured earth and the odd ger (traditional Mongolian felt-tent, pronounced like the gher in gherkin, not like the Ger in German) could be seen in the distance.







After hours of sparsely-populated countryside we pulled into Ulaanbaatar around 2pm, the ugly cityscape serving as a strange accompaniment to the glorious scenery surrounding the city. Rather bizarrely, the time in UB was one hour later than I'd anticipated. It seems that due to Mongolia (unlike China) observing daylight-saving - and to China maintaining only one time-zone across the whole country - the time in Mongolia was actually one hour ahead of Bejing, making it the only example I've ever come across where you can actually travel hundreds of kilometres west and still have to turn the clock one hour forward, rather than backward.

In the end I was pleased to arrive in Ulaanbaatar but the sheer remoteness of Mongolia made this for me the most beautiful and most rewarding stage of my journey so far.

Meeting good friend and former strike-partner Nick Canning in Beijing was, in hindsight, never going to be easy. We thought it would be a relatively straightforward matter but we soon realized how much we've come to rely on our keitais in the past few years and in Beijing (with no means of contacting each other) we were merely relying on the Gods.

We had arranged via e.mail to meet outside Beijing West station (see picture, above) at 2pm. Well, my train got me there on time but Nick was late. It didn't matter though because the station was so huge and there were so many people hanging around that the chances of us finding each other were slim anyway. I waited for an hour and a half thinking that Nick had either gotten lost, couldn't find me, hadn't arrived yet or was still in bed. So with no sign of him anywhere I decided to make my way into the centre of the city on my own.

With a huge rucksack on my back and one small one of my front, armies of illegal and dodgy taxi drivers tried to take advantage and seduce me into paying ridiculous prices for a cab into the city. The first guy quoted me 150 RMB for the 8km ride! I laughed, told him he was being silly and I refused to negotiate any further. He desperately tried to get me to name my price but he'd lost his chance. One thing I won't do is entertain or encourage con-artists who try to take advantage of tourists. Accepting their demands or even agreeing to go with them after such outrageous quotes only encourages them to continue behaving in this way and it's not fair.

Anyway, I knew that the going rate for a taxi to the centre was 25-30 RMB, so I was not going to accept anything more than that. However, carrying big bags which clearly screamed to them newly-arrived tourist to exploit it was always going to be hard, in fact impossible, to get a fair price.

So, I decided to screw the lot of them and take the 1 RMB bus instead. I scurried around the enormous train station looking for anyone who could tell me the bus number but absolutely nobody there spoke even a splattering of English and my efforts at first seemed futile. Heaven knows how they're are going to cope when the Olympics come, but that's another issue entirely and one which I'll cover another time. I eventually found somebody who pointed me in the direction of bus no.9, but this only happened after I asked in Chinese for Beijing train station, Beijingzhan.

As I waited for the bus which seemed never to arrive, the inevitable happened and the heavens opened. Everybody in the area, not having anticipated the downpour and consequently without umbrellas, dashed for cover. I, on the other hand, got out my amazing 7-Eleven umbrella which had been with me since Hong Kong (bought to assist me in the monsoon regions, but which had yet to be used) and unfurled it. The enormous diameter of the thing quickly became apparent and I stood there smugly as the rain pelted down on its humungous roof, running down off the sides and falling like cascading torrents to the rapidly flooding ground.

I knew it would come in handy sooner or later!

The bus eventually came and twenty minutes later I arrived at Beijingzhan. The rain continued to pour as I dived into the nearest hostal I could find and luckily I got their last room.


Me and my 7-Eleven umbrella from Hong Kong

I then checked my e.mail only to find out that Nick had indeed been at Beijing West station that afternoon, albeit a little late, and it was just through sheer numbers of people that we were unable to locate each other. No problem, hotmail helped us rearrange and we agreed to meet at 7.30pm outside the five-star Zhaolong Hotel next-door to the hostel where he was staying. Mobile phones, who needs them?

The five-star hotel in question is supposed to be a well-known hotel but initially that didn't seem to be the case with all the taxi drivers I spoke to. Actually, it turned out that they all of course did know the hotel, but I had stupidly made my first tactical error of the evening by not getting the name written down in Chinese. The words Zhaolong Hotel written in roman script meant about as much to them as the following does to most of you: та англиар ярьдаг уу?*

Anyway, I roughly knew the area of the city in which the hotel was located so in view of the fact that all attempts at communication with taxi drivers was getting me nowhere I decided to jump on the subway. Once in the Dongzhimen area I set about the task of asking everybody I could for help. It went like this. I would show them my piece of paper and say Zhao-long Ho-tel two or three times before being met by blank stares and maybe a wŏ tīngbudŏng if I was lucky.

I persisted but I was getting nowhere and time was running away from me.

I spoke with yet more taxi drivers and entered yet more shops and then eventually, after forty minutes of running around like a fool, one man in a fruit shop understood what it was I was trying to say. 'Ah, Zhaolong!' he exclaimed, looking quite pleased with himself that he'd managed to work out what the stupid foreigner was trying to say. He then wrote down the name of the hotel in Chinese characters, drew me a crude map and sent me off in the right direction. I felt a little silly because it must be like when foreign tourists, let's say Japanese for cliched argument's sake, come over to London and ask bemused locals something like Etoo...wey-ah izu Pi ka di ri, pu reez?

'Er, sorry, what?'

Pi ka di ri (no stress on the third syllable, of course).

Blank stare.

One more time. Pi ka di ri.

'Er...no idea mate, sorry.'

The confused tourist then tries and fails with more passers-by and is left wondering why nobody in London knows of this so-called Pi ka di ri which, after all, is supposed to be a famous place.

Eventually some clued-up local gets what it is he's trying to say and bingo!!! 'Oh, you mean Piccadilly? Haha! Well then, why didn't you say so?'

Anyway...

I eventually arrived one hour late and met Nick outside the hotel just as he was about to give up. Quite how we managed to balls-up two meetings in one day is anybody's guess, but we had finally found each other and that was the most important thing.

Our initial instinct was to go and find some beers and this was where my newly-learnt Chinese phrases, in particular the fantastic-sounding liang ping píjiŭ (two bottles of beer, please), came in particularly useful. Nick and I were both in cheap mode so weren't about to be seen spending too much money on anything, let alone beer, so we looked for somewhere cheap and nasty. Our first beers of the evening washed down a ridiculously cheap meal at a grubby little Chinese diner which most tourists would probably avoid like a brood of hens in northern Thailand. Of course there was no English anywhere but armed with our knowledge of Japanese, and hence our knowledge of Chinese characters, we were easily able to order chicken, beef and tofu from the huge menu on the wall by steering our waitress left and right and up and down as she pointed at things with an umbrella.

The food was good, but the beer was better. Maybe it tasted good because it was cheap but maybe also because I'd been travelling alone since Singapore and it was now really quite nice to be hanging out again with a familiar face. Anyway, we necked a couple and it turned out that these 640 ml bottles of local beer weighed in at a ridiculous 2.5 RMB per bottle! We knew we were drinking cheap beer but it wasn't until we did the maths that we worked them out to be a mind-numbingly low 16 pence per 640 ml bottle. Of course, we felt quite happy with ourselves and decided that at this price we really ought to order another. Imagine, you could get quite hammered in that place on much less than one pound sterling! For those of you who think in yen, think 34 yen a bottle!



Anyway, it's hard to sum up everything we did in two days in Beijing so I'll just post here a few photos with captions. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get out to the Great Wall this time but as I've been there before it wasn't such a disaster.


In good company at the Workers' Stadium. From left to right: Raul, Canning, Riquelme


Going anti-clockwise: Mao, Canning, Heneghan


Nick was pretty keen on trying some disgusting foods so we searched out Wangfujing Street where we knew there to be some stalls specializing in minging things


There were all manner of bizarre foods to choose from including grasshoppers, beetles, snails, silkworms, lizards, snakes and even seahorses


We opted for fried grasshopper, which appeared the least extreme and most edible thing on the menu


Nick went first, devouring his two crunchy two-inch long grasshoppers before handing the stick over to me to do the same


As I crunched on my first one the prickly spikes on its hind legs got caught on the inside of my mouth. Not altogether pleasant. The crunchy exoskeleton became a mashed mess in my mouth as I grinded it down with my molars, but ultimately it took a long time to swallow, especially the hard legs which just wouldn't go down.


We washed our grasshoppers down with a can each of local beer but to be honest, we weren't too impressed with our insect meal. I thought they were too crunchy and rather tasteless whilst Nick observed that they were "...very grassy, not much meat on them. Very disappointing."



The bar scene in Beijing seems to have expanded in the past two years, no doubt in anticipation of the upcoming Olympics (less than two years away). Apart from the fact that the annoying touts outside bars are the only people in China who seem capable of speaking any English, the scene in Beijing is pretty tedious. Bar owners still seem intent on torturing their customers with woeful live music, mainly consisting of cheesy cover versions done really really badly by technically sound but dull and uninspiring musicians. With the expansion of the drinking scene most bars in the Qianhai and Houhai Lakes area and also along the Sanlitun Lu are empty most evenings. It seems that the even though the bar scene is growing, the custom is simply not there. As a result most touts are absolutely desperate to get customers into their bars, especially foreigners who they expect will pay more than locals for the same stuff.

Not us though! We used this situation to our advantage, effectively setting our own price and refusing to enter any bar which failed to give us Tsing Tao, our beer of choice, for 10 RMB (about 70 pence or 140 yen). Any quotes of 30, 25 or even 20 RMB per beer were met with pure disgust by Nick and I as we refused to budge from our 10 RMB mark. It worked though and we drank (and ate) in Beijing for very cheap.

Whilst strolling in Jingshan Park we stumbled across a little tea parlour and thought it would be quite nice to indulge ourselves. The going price was 35 RMB per pot, much more than for a beer, but we thought it was worth it. We ordered one pot of Lychee tea and one of Jasmine and jolly good they were too! The nice young lady who served us, an English student working in the tea parlour part-time, was delighted to get the chance to practice her English with us. Out of all the people I met in China, her English was the best.


We may not have been in Japan for the green tea and onsens but there's no doubting our enthusiasm in China!

As well as her excellent English, our hostess also had some other talents up her sleeve. This game, the name of which escapes me right now, is played with a lightweight ball resembling a large hairy shuttlecock. The aim is to keep it in the air by any means possible without using your hands. We saw some very agile middle-aged men and women playing it just an hour earlier so when we discovered that our tea hostess also played the game, we implored her to let us play with her.



She took us outside and quite frankly speaking, embarrassed us. Nick and I thought that with our extensive footballing pasts this game would be a doddle but it didn't quite work out that way. The 'cock' behaves nothing like a football and our control was shocking. We got a little better though and given a few hours would probably have become quite good. We only had fifteen minutes though so our hostess was left thinking, despite our best efforts, that we were pretty rubbish.

*Mongolian for Do you speak English?

Stage 7 - Hanoi to Beijing

The longest stage of my journey so far, a mammoth 32 hours, was actually pretty comfortable. We left Hanoi in the early evening in an old and battered Vietnamese sleeper which took us the six hours to the Vietnam/China border which, by south-east Asian standards, was relatively quick on both sides. After a mere two hours of Vietnamese and Chinese customs procedure we were ready to leave again. Thankfully while going through customs the old Vietnamese wagons were replaced by infinitely superior semi-luxurious Chinese ones and it was at that point I realized why the ticket to Beijing cost so much (158 USD fixed price).


The Chinese carriages


The train made a three hour stop in Nanning where more carriages were added

I shared a cabin with three Vietnamese students from Hanoi, all from presumably affluent families, and all studying in Beijing. They were all fluent in pŭtōnghuà, the language known to the rest of us as Mandarin, and were more than happy to teach me a little of it to pass the time. In all of the countries I've been to so far on my journey there has been very little need to learn much of the local languages as almost everybody I have encountered has spoken at least a little English, if not quite a bit. But having been in China a couple of years ago I knew things weren't quite the same there and I felt that a little bit of Chinese would actually go quite a long way in Beijing.

Of course, everybody in this part of the world already knows ni hao and xiexie so feeling confident I asked them to hit me with some of the more difficult phrases the language had to offer. Within an hour I had successfully learnt and memorized wŏ tīngbudŏng (I don't understand), duōshăo qián? (how much is it?), liang ping píjiŭ (two bottles of beer, please) and duōshăo qián liang ping píjiŭ? (how much are two bottles of beer, please?).

Needless to say, armed with these useful phrases (and of course the numbers one to ten which were easy to learn, especially 3 and 8) I was just about ready to take on China!

Yes! Merely one hour before leaving Hanoi I managed to photograph five on a bike. Despite many hours of observation this was the only time I saw more than four people on a single bike in three days (I did also see four plus one dog but I didn't have my camera out at the time).

Any idea who's doing the driving?

Today I spent the day in Halong Bay, a very beautiful UNESCO area with incredible limestone rock formations. I went there on an official tour but within ten minutes of arriving in Halong City I remembered exactly what it was I absolutely hate about those things. Adding to that, the whole Halong Bay product is basically just a humungous tourist trap designed to rid tourists of as much money as possible in the quickest possible time. However, if you can see through all the tourist trap crap then the bay itself is actually extraordinarily beautiful.







Well, Hanoi has been fun but three days here has been enough for me and I'm pretty excited now to get back on the road to China. I'm meeting up there with my good mate Nick Canning (AKA Captain Canning of FGU) so it's likely to be an action-packed couple of days on the sauce for us both in Beijing!

Splendid!

The Streets of Hanoi

One


Two


Three


Four

But as hard as I've tried and despite the many many hours I've put in, I haven't seen any fives yet!

Typical conversation on the streets of Hanoi between local goods-seller and tourist:

Seller: Hello sir! How are you?
Tourist: Fine thanks. How are you?
Fine thank you. Where you from?
I'm from the UK.
That's nice. I have friend there. You wanna buy book?
No, thank you.
How about Hanoi Lonely Planet?
No, thanks.
Rough Guide?
No thanks, I don't need any guide books.
And how about Graham Greene novel?
Er...no. I don't need any Graham Greene novels.
So how about Vietnam history book?
No, I don't need any books. I have hundreds of books. I don't need any more.
OK, you wanna buy Hanoi street map?
Er...no. I don't need a Hanoi street map. Actually, I don't need anything right now.
Well then, why don't you buy some small souvenir, sir?
No, I'm fine thanks.
So you got everything then?
Yes, I have everything I need.
Ah, but you don't have lady sir! Good-looking man like you need lady! You want I bring you one?
No, I don't need a lady. And anyway, if I wanted a lady I'm sure I could find one without your help...
Haha, it's OK, I know many beautiful ladies. Cheap. What kind you like?
No, I'm fine thanks. I don't need any ladies or anything else [tourist tries to cross road]. Thank you, goodbye!
[Seller gives up, spots another tourist passing by] Hello sir! You wanna buy book?

Stage 6 - Vientiane to Hanoi

After a 24 hour death bus ride from hell, I have arrived in Hanoi. The journey, in an old Korean bus packed-full of cargo and with more passengers than the bus could accommodate, cut through dangerous mountain passes which have claimed more than a few vehicles in the past. In many ways the journey was as painful as the third-class train ride up to Bangkok from the south of Thailand, but this time at least the seats were reasonably soft. However, once again the border crossing was a nightmare which took the best part of three hours and which of course required plenty of unofficial fees to be paid to border security staff.


The Vientiane to Hanoi death bus has a very bad reputation in south-east Asia and its name is probably justified


Boxes of toothpaste, blankets and bags of rice, sugar and flour filled the aisle and the space where your feet are supposed to go. With not enough seats for all the passengers, some made the aisle their home for the duration, even sleeping there on the cargo when tiredness finally took its toll.


Vietnamese like to squat when doing everyday things like chatting, drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes. At any one time approximately half the population of Vietnam can be found in this position.

I have a couple of days to relax here now before the two-day international train to Beijing leaves on Friday. I need the rest.

Stage 5 - Bangkok to Vientiane

After the horrors of the 23 hour third-class train ride up to Bangkok from the south of Thailand, the first-class sleeper to Nong Khai on the Laos border was very welcome indeed. But of course when you're in a private sleeper there are far fewer stories to share afterwards, but I did manage to have a good drink before bed-time with almost the entire train crew whose sleeping compartments were located in the same carriage. They seemed pretty delighted to have the chance to use their limited English with me (and have a good laugh at the foreigner at the same time).


Thai beers, all sampled on the train to Nong Khai

The border crossing at Nong Khai was particularly tough, as expected. It took over an hour to get the visa-on-arrival (30 USD) but then once through I got a very cheap tuk-tuk ride to Vientiane, 25 km away, with a small group of large middle-aged female market workers, three Vietnamese lads who spent the whole time laughing at me and one young woman in her early twenties who seemed to be selling a lot more than just a basket of fruit, if you know what I mean.


Nong Khai, not the easiest of border crossings



On arrival in Vientiane I headed straight for the Morning Market where for a dollar fifty I had a fantastic rice dish, a bowl of soup and a 640 ml bottle of Beer Lao. In this part of the world you drink beer with ice and whilst it might sound a little strange and maybe even a touch sacreligious, it actually goes down rather well!


Vientiane's Morning Market, slightly ghetto


Getting around by tuk-tuk


And these local boys were all too happy to pose for a photo (but only one) in exchange for 10,000 kip each. Of course, the flash made one of the boys close his eyes which was a pity. I should have taken two but fair's fair, the agreement was one!

Next stop Hanoi!

Well, well, well, would you believe it but who else would I happen to have the fortune to bump into at Bangkok Station? - none other than the man himself, ex-Fukuoka JET PA Ian G who, like me, is currently on his way home from Japan via the most direct route possible.

A local cameraman was on hand to capture our mutual surprise!

Stage 4 - Sungai Kolok to Bangkok

In Kota Bharu I stumbled upon a RM 7 per night traveller's inn. At a fraction over just one pound sterling, I was pretty happy even in spite of suffering yet more mosquito attacks during the night.

The border crossing into Thailand yesterday morning was simple, straight-forward and surprisingly non-stressful. So too was finding the Sungai Kolok train station on the other side. But I was left pretty frustrated when I discovered that of the two trains going to Bangkok yesterday, both had only third class seats left available. I had no choice but to buy one and I entered the carriage with trepidation.

Now I'm not one to complain too often and I am a pretty hardy traveller, but this was a tough prospect even for me. Had it been a mere four, eight or even twelve-hour journey I wouldn't have minded too much, but the journey-time from Sungai Kolok to Bangkok was scheduled as a mammoth 21 hours! In third class this is just about as unbearable as it gets.



For those of you who have been to Thailand you will probably understand the horror of this situation without further explanation, but for those who haven't been, let me explain. The seats are rock hard, very close together and the seat-back is dead straight. The seat itself reaches up to the just around the neck-line so there's nowhere to rest your head. If the train is full it can be horrible as there's no place to stretch in any direction. And there's no air-con either, just noisy mal-functioning fans.



First of all, despite the no-smoking signs and a threat of a 2000 baht fine there were dozens of people smoking in the carriages. Surprisingly, ticket-inspectors, train-crew and even the railway police did nothing to stop them. Added to that the train set off at 11.30am, the hottest part of the day, and of course it was sweltering! After about two hours, sitting up cramped in a boiling-hot, smokey carriage I was at the point of giving up and throwing myself from the train, it was that painful! Add to that the prospect of another 19 hours of this made me do the only thing I could - buy some beer.



Four hours later the weather had completely turned, with monsoon rains lashing down and cool air breezing in through the opened windows. Then the atmosphere on the train began to change as I sunk into my fifth can of Beer Chang, and everyone on the train had started drinking. By 8pm the scene was one of utter carnage. Almost half the passengers were drunk, there was crap all over the train floor, cigarette butts, plastic glasses, spilt whiskey and left-over food and gnarled chicken-bones. It stunk. One guy called Wiki took me under his wing and with that began a night of extreme torture.

Speaking only a splattering of English he made me his new best friend and began bombarding me with gifts. Every time a food seller stepped onto the train at a station, he would buy whatever it was they were selling and try and give it to me. He tried to give me so much stuff it was really difficult for me to turn everything down. It soon became apparent he was more than a little crazy and then in the space of twelve hours he managed to drink two whole bottles of rancid Thai whiskey.


The architect of my torture

Around 12 midnight the party was dying down and people were beginning to drift off, despite the fact that the harsh, bright lighting was left on all night. My new friend woke me three times to offer me yet more food he'd just bought from station sellers. Each time however I successfully refused his offers citing the time as not conducive to eating.

By 6am the whole train was awake and my friend was back on the bottle and had started harassing all the other passengers too. He bought me some 'bird flu' chicken which I couldn't really stomach that early in the day so once more I politely refused. Then came some coconut cake which looked kind of edible so just to appease him, I accepted and tried to eat as much of it as I could. Still the barrage continued, tamarind juice followed by a foul milk-drink, a bag of cashew nuts followed by yet more chicken-legs. Then a hot spicy soup and a hot coffee. All this before 8am. As we approached 8.10am, arrival time in Bangkok, it was clear that we were still nowhere near Bangkok. The agony continued. Groggy from beer, tetchy from not having slept, frustrated from having to appease my drunk friend all night with his constant barrage of generosity, I desperately tried to focus on making it to the end. I smelt bad, looked awful and felt atrocious. At 10.15am, twenty-two and three quarter hours after departure, the train finally pulled into Bangkok Station.

I cannot stress how relieved I was to get off that train. I have undertaken some pretty long and uncomfortable journeys in the last few years, but that one from Sungai Kolok to Bangkok must rank as the most uncomfortable, excrutiatingly painful journey I've ever taken in what can only be described as the most rancid, putrid and despicable train carriage I've ever had the misfortune to set foot inside.



The scenery was nice though and as a reward for my efforts I've bought myself a first-class sleeper ticket for tonight's 12-hour dash up to Laos. It set me back a gargantuan 1200 baht, about 32 USD, but after last night I think I've earned it.

Stage 3 - Gemas to Kota Bahru

The Jungle Line was a bit of a disappointment. The scenery was beautiful at times, but the train slow and cumbersome, uncomfortable and basic. Even though the seats were softer than expected, the 14 hour journey was painful and the last four hours were completed in total darkness because the carriage I was in had no interior lights. I had to get the torch out to read my National Geographic.


The dense vegetation was a splendid sight


My pitch-black carriage rushes past a rural station

Although there were plenty of good points about the journey, such as the sight of immense green blankets of lush tropical vegetation, the Jungle Line was probably not worth taking two days out of my schedule and going completely out of my way for. I saw little wildlife except for a one-and-a-half-metre long monitor lizard basking in the evening sun and a few birds. And my arms got completely destroyed by mosquitos and are now full of mountainous bumps and bloody craters which make me look like some sort of scabby hobo. Still, I'm glad I did it and it if nothing else it was an alternative route to the Thai border and a different one to the one I did on my visit to Malaysia last year.



One big negative point though, I could not believe how many passengers and even Malaysia state railway personel threw rubbish out of the windows. I know it's unfair to expect people in developing nations to hold the same principals as those in developed ones, but if Malaysia really does aspire to become a fully-developed nation, which it clearly does, then I cannot help feeling that this blatant disregard for the environment will have to change before any real progress is made. It's hard to change the mindset of an entire people but if the Malaysian government is genuinely serious about the country's progress then this is one issue which will have to be addressed in due course. The amount of littering I saw going on in beautiful and remote jungle areas was an absolute disgrace. Tourists are in a position to lead by example which, rather than telling locals how to behave, is just about the only thing we can do.

Stage 2 - KL to Gemas

Gemas is a small town in southern Malaysia conveniently located three hours south of KL at a fork where the railway heads north-west towards Petang in one direction and towards the lesser-travelled north-east in the other. I stayed there overnight in order to take the early-morning train on the lesser-travelled north-east route, known as The Jungle Line, up towards Kota Bahru near the Malaysia/Thai border.

I stayed at a small Chinese inn with small grubby rooms. My room came with a fan and an old TV for which I paid extra. The total cost, RM 25 (about 6 euros or 1000 yen), more than makes up for the inflated price I had to pay in KL. Of course, you get what you pay for but I'd much rather be paying less than more as the cost of six weeks travelling when you figure in train fares, food and other expenses quickly adds up.

I like Malaysia but I think the people in Singapore are generally more polite and mild-mannered. I got quite frustrated with people in KL at times, particularly when trying to board and exit trains. Despite the fact that it's obvious I'm carrying a large, awkward and heavy load almost nobody made any effort to help me out by sidestepping me or allowing me to enter or exit trains more easily. The Singaporeans on the other hand were pretty good at getting out of my way and giving me leaway on the street or allowing me to go first through train doors. Some even opened shop doors for me when it was clearly hard for me to get through with my bag.

Anyway, I shouldn't complain. I've had no problems so far on the trip and most people I've encountered have been helpful. Hopefully this will continue all the way back to London!

Stage 1 - Singapore to KL

As is typical in this part of the world, my train today left Singapore nine minutes late. A family of Germans and a couple of Japanese girls were none too impressed with the delay. Neither was I (too long in Japan I reckon), but I must admit to having kind of expected it.

Singapore is one of the most advanced cities in the world but the moment I stepped foot inside its Keppel Road international train terminal I knew that I was entering the other Planet Earth, you know, the one where things don't get done and where timetables don't seem to mean very much at all. The station itself is colonial, old and crumbling, a remnant of past times, and looks strangely out of place in Singapore's modern, affluent city. I just can't work out why such a fantastically efficient and clean city has such an awful train station. Anyway, the train and the service itself turned out to be Malaysian rather than Singaporean so that went part of the way to explaining the delay (and the rather poor train service).


Singapore's Keppel Rd station


The ticket office harks back to days gone by

A funny thing happened before boarding. Passengers were forced to go through an illegal customs (as it was described to me) at the station in Singapore in order to gain "access" to Malaysia. But international law apparently stipulates that a country can only have a customs on their own turf, so the Malaysians get around this by not issuing any stamps at this customs checkpoint. Instead your passport and immigration forms are scanned by Malaysian officials on the station platform and you then nter Malaysia without actually getting a stamp in your passport. When you finally leave Malaysia I'm not sure what happens but as far as anybody looking at my passport right now would know, I haven't even entered Malaysia yet. It seems the authorities just turn a blind eye to this kind of thing.

And just for the record the train arrived at Kuala Lumpur 28 minutes late but, as the guy in the seat next to me explained, the timetable is only a guideline and nobody ever actually expects the train operators to stick to it. 'It's usually between one and two hours late arriving in KL!' he added.


The buffet car was not the hive of activity I was hoping it would be

From now things are probably going to get more difficult. I'll take the train to Gemas tomorrow afternoon, a small town in the heart of rural Malaysia (I'll stay there for one night, hopefully there's a hotel) in order to take the Jungle Line train up to the Thai border the following day. It's a fourteen hour slog in an entirely third-class train with extremely hard seats. Doesn't sound much like fun, I know, but it goes through some of South-East Asia's best jungle so it should be a memorable experience either way.

This is my second time in Malaysia and I have to say that as much as I enjoy it, it's a puzzling place. There's no doubt that even though the economic fortunes of the Malaysian people as a whole are steadily rising, real poverty still exists here for much of the population. This is evident in rural areas and on the streets of KL. The exchange rate for the Singapore dollar to the Malaysian ringit is 1 SGD = 2.2 RM. Back in 1965 however, when Singapore left the Malaysian Federation (or were chucked out, depending on who you're talking to) the two currencies shared the same value. So in the space of forty years the Singapore dollar has become worth almost two and a quarter times what the ringit is worth. And despite the awesome sight of the Petronas Towers and KLCC Mall in KL, there's no hiding the fact that Malaysian is still a long way from being considered a truly developed country.

But one thing that's so interesting about Malaysia is that, just like Singapore, it has an extremely diverse ethnic population. The three main groups, the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians, have all contributed greatly to what is modern Malaysia and in terms of religion it's diverse too, with Islam the main one and Christianity, Buddhism and Hindu all well represented. And despite some problems back in the sixties and seventies, the religiously tolerant Malaysians all seem to get along well with one other. I'm sure we Europeans could learn a thing or two from the Malaysians and Singaporeans (the Northern Ireland situation springs to mind here, to name just one).

Okay, so that's it from me for a few days. Despite the short delays I had a painless first day today and hopefully (but not likely) things will continue in this vein. However, I have no idea how long it will be before I'll have internet access again, so if you don't see anything posted here for a while then don't be too worried.

You just can't be sure of anything in this, the other Planet Earth.

The journey starts here!

It's unbearably hot and sticky but I love Singapore! It's one of the most racially diverse countries in the world and that makes it a fascinating place to come to. I just wish I had a more time here because even though this is my second visit, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.


One of the best things about Singapore is its great variety of food and drink. The curry found in Singapore's Little India district is among the best I've had in the world (and good value too - the above set including mango lassi cost me under SGD 8, about 500 yen)


Little India is dirtier and more ghetto than the rest of Singapore but has plenty of charm


And this fresh papaya juice ice-drink was just what I needed after an afternoon of photography in downtown Singapore

So tomorrow morning, after months of planning and preparation, my long overland journey from Singapore to London will finally begin! I have my visas, I have my reading material, I have my cameras, I have everything I need. The first stage, Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, is a relatively short and easy one compared to some of the stages I will undertake later.

From Kuala Lumpur things will get more complicated as I plan to take the slow but scenic Jungle Line route north up the east coast of Malaysia to Thailand. Once I get into Thailand and up to Bangkok I want to get out as quickly as I can and head to Laos. Having been to Laos before I know what a potential mine-field of problems it can be (no pun intended), so I need as much time there as possible to get across the country and into Vietnam. The fact that it is now the monsoon season and that many of the roads are reported to be unpassable may make the journey there even more difficult than it otherwise would be. Just to be safe I bought a really huge 7-Eleven umbrella in Hong Kong which will hopefully prove useful in Laos and Vietnam and help prevent me and all my gear getting drenched!

Once I eventually get into Vietnam I must head directly to Hanoi. From Hanoi I have to catch one of only two weekly international trains to Beijing, China. This is one of the most vital parts of the journey and I cannot afford to miss this train and arrive late in Beijing.

From Beijing I will take three Trans-Siberian trains across China, Mongolia and Siberia before arriving in Moscow at the end of August. From there I will head back to the UK via Scandinavia and reach home in the first week of September.

It's going to be a long haul but I'm really looking forward to getting it under way!

That's all for now, I'll write more when I get to Malaysia!

It was hard to say goodbye to my good friend, work colleague and musical partner, Shannon, at Hong Kong airport yesterday afternoon. It's always sad when you have to say goodbye to someone who has been an integral part of your life for a considerable amount of time, but I always prefer to think of these things in a positive light. Good friends will always remain good friends no matter what the distance or the time apart. And with the modern world being what it is, with internet communications making it even easier to chat to people on the other side of the planet, I think it's much easier to maintain long distance friendships than it ever was before.

Good luck in Montana, Shannon!