Ni Hao China

Our last leg on the trans-Mongolian train took us from Ulaan Baatar through the barren gobi Desert, through a long and tedious border crossing (in which every single carriage was lifted off the tracks so that the chassis could be changed from Mongolian to Chinese rails) and then through some amazing Chinese scenery. The train ran alongside mountains, rivers, farms and also gave us our first peak at the Great Wall. The Mongolian train is a much higher standard than the Russian trains, with televisions and headphones for every passenger. The views and standard of train on this last leg allow you to forget about the tedium of the Russian journey!




It may not look like it, but this is luxury.



First encounters in China

After 31 hours in the confines of a four berth cabin, walking out of the station at Beijing is a complete sensory overload. Your ears are hit by the sounds of traffic and shouting, your eyes are hit by Chinese symbols, colour and neon, and your lungs are hit by smog. We were immediately excited to be in a big developed city.




We had been warned that very few people in China speak English and with this in mind Christian had meticulously copied out the address of our hotel in Chinese symbols. It was a real piece of art (31 hours on the train well spent). Despite how beautiful it looked no-one seemed to know what it meant or where our hotel was. Taxi drivers just shook their heads at us baffled.

In the end we forced ourselves upon a bewildered tax driver and got him to phone the hotel for directions. From the taxi journey we began to get a better sense of the city - traffic, bikes, rich people, poor people, capitalism, noise and pollution.

Our hotel was a traditional courtyard hotel in a hutong (alleyway) away from the busy street. Every morning in the courtyard, we had breakfast with Elvis Presley and Chairman Mao!

On our first evening we walked along to the night market. They mostly sell food at this market. Food in the loosest sense of the term, a lot of the food was fried versions of what you and I might find crawling around behind the fridge.




We didn't try fried scorpion or starfish (we're watching our waists you see...if they had been steamed or poached we would have), but instead opted for some unrecognizable street food. It was very tasty and other than being scammed by a dumpling seller we felt fine for the expeience. Later that evening we had Peking duck at a fancy restaurant (Dadong) where they roast the ducks over four open fires on a stage. It was delicious – and almost as good as yours [Fiona's] dad! On the way home we got completely lost looking for our dark hutong with a restaurant on the corner (note to self: every hutong is dark with a restaurant on the corner). A very friendly couple stopped to offer us help and even walked us all the way back to our hotel. By the end of our first evening we had interacted with lots of Chinese people and had rather mixed views of them, we had been scammed three times (getting a taxi, a Sim card and some dumplings) but had also met some very friendly people. We didn't know what to think of the Chinese and I think this made us a bit suspicious from that point.

Chinese control

Back at our hotel we realized we didn't have access to websites like facebook, youtube, or even our blog. China has very tight control over the press and internet, so much so that it came 165th out of 168 countries in a survey of Freedom of Press. To highlight this point further you may have read recently about the woman who was sentenced to a year in a labour camp for sending a single tweet (Admittedly, the tweet was an anti-government message, not something mundane like 'I've just burnt my noodles').

Another symbol of Chinese Communism is Tiananmen square and that was where we headed the next day. It is of course most recently famous for the 1989 student protests that culminated in hundreds of killings, but the history of the square goes back a lot further, and it was the city's central site for meetings and free speech for many centuries. People still head to Tiananmen to make protests (a young boy headed there about a week ago with a board pleading for peace in Korea), but due to the high security and police presence there, you don't get very far (he was taken into custody). In fact you have to go through airport-type security just to walk onto the square. But when you do get past the X-ray machines and walk out onto Tiananmen, it is an immense space, which makes a nice change from all the concrete elsewhere in the city. It is the largest city square in the world (at 880m by 500m, shouldn't that make it the world's largest rectangle???), and it houses the two biggest television screens I have ever seen. Perhaps to make up for the smog that obscures your view of the square, these television screens show rippling waters, swimming fish and birds in flight... aaah the natural beauty of Beijing.




Opposite the square sits the entrance to the Forbidden city, complete with a huge portrait of Chairman Mao (no home is complete without one).Your first steps within the Forbidden city are hounded by people trying to sell you trips to the Great Wall, postcards, and pieces of “genuine Chinese art”, once you get past these the experience becomes a bit more peaceful.

The Forbidden city is thus called because it was the home of Emperors and their households for five hundred years (from Ming to Qing dynasties which ended in 1912), with no-one else allowed inside. It is absolutely immense and covers 178 acres of land.







It is a truly amazing and beautiful place to visit, and you can completely forget you are in the heart of Beijing. If you have seen any of the films shot within the Forbidden city (like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or The Last Emperor) you will be familiar with what lies within its walls, but in short, it is a warren of halls, living quarters, gardens and large open courtyards. Different sections of the city were reserved for the Emperor, his Emperess and also his concubines, of which he could have hundreds. Back in the Imperial days of China, the Forbidden City would have seemed deserted compared with the numbers of tourists that wander around it today. However, if you hang around long enough it becomes quieter towards the end of the day, and you might just catch the sun setting over the roof tiles.



Trying to capture a peaceful part of the Forbidden City, a dumb tourist got into my shot



After tramping for miles around the Forbidden City Christian and I treated ourselves to a massage. We took a taxi to a spa recommended by our hotel owner and whilst I was pummeled and prodded to within an inch of my muscle life by an angry man, Christian fell asleep in the oily hands of a gentle woman. After our massages we went (I limped) to the restaurant next door where we had an amazing and cheap dinner. Over the next few days we ate in a lots of good Chinese restaurants, and learnt the following:

Things we have learnt about eating in authentic Chinese restaurants:

1. You only ever get one menu
2. The waiter will hand you the menu and then wait impatiently for you to make your order
3. The food comes immediately (as if they knew what you wanted anyway)
4. Rice comes last if at all, and you will be considered poor or weird if you ask for it during your meal (supposedly rice is considered a poor staple, and you just use it to fill yourself up at the end)
5. Intestines are frequently in the dishes and they look like tasty pieces of fried bread
6. Intestines are not as tasty as fried bread
7. Meat always has bones in it. You should put it into your mouth eat what you can, and then spit onto the table what you can't digest (see point 9.)
8. Always think about the number of dishes you want and then half it before ordering
9. There is no such thing as table manners
10. Even after abiding by rule 8, you will never be able to eat everything!

The next day we were heading to the Great Wall of China with our Trans-sib friends for another day of “learning how things happen in China”. Read the next blog for an education!

Christian and Fiona

Location:China

Brrrrrrrr at the Gerrrrrrrrrrr

Just the drive out of the city (Ulaan Baatar) was an experience in itself. It is estimated that approximately two million people live in Mongolia and one million of these live in the capital. On Tuesday November 2nd I think all one million residents were in their cars! The traffic in the least visited city in the world is phenomenal, and drivers push past each other like French men queueing at a ski lift. They literally muscle each other out of the way, and some (including our taxi driver) drive up on the pavements to get past particularly bad stand-stills. When you get out of the city, the drivers have other obstructions to deal with in the form of potholes and broken up roads. We were hoping to get some sleep on the drive to the ger camp, but with your head knocking against the window or roof this became difficult.

Ghengis the Menace
Before we got to our Ger camp we made a stop at the Ghengis Khan monument. This is an amazing construction that looks completely out of place in the Mongolian outback; a huge metal statue of the warrior himself. It stands at 130 feet tall and contains a museum to the Mongolian warlord and the times of the Mongol empire (which covered huge sections and China and Asia). We had a walk around the museum and the took the lift up inside the statue to get a view from the middle of the statue. As we arrived at the balcony viewing point, our guide Naki gave us some basic information before pointing out that we were walking out of Ghengis Khan's "pennes". It took us all a while to realise we had just walked out of Ghengis Khan's penis!




The view from Ghengis Khan's "pennes"



Hands up all the girls who love a bad boy warlord!

The interesting thing about Ghengis Khan in Mongolia is that he is a completely revered and admired historical figure: every banknote shows his face, and there are many restaurants, hotels and bars named after the man, there is even a beer in his name. His empire may have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people but he is still consided a true hero by the Mongolians.

Gerrrrrreat

When we arrived at our ger camp, all eight of us (three Brits, three Aussies, and two Frenchmen) were very excited. We had arrived in the real Mongolia! The ger is a traditional Mongolian home (it is called a yert in other countries) which resembles a circular tent. It is made from a wooden framework covered in felt. It originates from the nomadic lifestyles of the very first Mongols, the homes are easy to assemble and take down, and also to transport. You see gers dotted through the Mongolian countryside, you also see them in big camps around the capital city, and also dotted in between modern buildings in the city itself.



At our camp the scenery was amazing in it's scarcity! There was nothing but bare land as far as the eye could see, just barren hills and bright blue sky. Our ger camp was made up of about eight accommodation tents, a restaurant tent, and a few hundred feet away the toilet (long drops in three huts). Walking into our ger was like walking into Doctor Who's tardis. There were four beds around the edge of the circular tent, a small sink, a roaring fire in the stove in the centre and a table and chairs set up for tea.




Home from home - and yes they do look like IKEA chairs!

That evening the men in our group flexed their muscles and chopped some wood for the ger stoves. You could certainly tell they were all city boys at heart!



He saw, he conquered!


Chop chop Christian!

We had been warned about the food the mongolians eat (animal fat in mares milk being a delicacy), but that evening we had one of the best meals of our trip; mutton. It was delicious. We drank the ger dry and had the bright idea of ordering five more bottles of Mongolian vodka from the city the next day.

Although the outside temperature was about minus ten degrees, the inside of our ger tent was toasty and that evening I slept like a bug in a rug, or like a nomad in a hot tent (as Christian and I had now become).

High Ho Farty horse!

The next morning, Christian and I got into our chaps and saddles for a horse ride. Christian looked the part in his sheepskin coat and cowboy hat while I looked like I needed therapy in my bowl helmet. We were able to name our horses and very soon after I mounted my cute brown pony, it became clear what her name had to be - Farty! She liked to be ahead of the other horses, but I'm guessing the other horses would rather have been ahead of her since she farted almost continuously whilst I rode her.



Farty and Fiona


Looking like he was born in the saddle (until he sits in a saddle and the illusion is gone)

Nomads an island

Whilst at the ger we walked to visit a nomad herdsman. He was the same nomad who had taken us out on horses and his name was Bachalad. He lived alone in his ger with only his horses and herd for company. He was forty five years old but looked about sixty and he was a very generous host to us - perhaps a little too generous. As soon as we all squeezed into his little ger home and made ourselves comfortable on his beds, he served up some traditional Mongolian tea that looked as bad as it tasted. We all eyed up the suspicious liquid and each other before politely drinking as much as we could. It was made up of mares milk, salt, and herbs.
He then served up some mutton that had been steamed on the stove. In traditional Custom, the eldest of us started by cutting off a piece of meat with a knife before handing the knife clockwise around the group.
Bachalad leads a very simple life and his only means of entertainment in the tent was a radio. However he seemed happy with his lot.




We said goodbye to Bachalad and his traditions to return to our ger to embrace some western traditions - we played charades and got drunk.

After two nights at the ger camp it was time to leave. It was such a fantastic place to stay and we all agreed we could happily have stayed a lot longer. The appeal of the place was the fact that there was very little to do, other than a basic bow and arrow and some games with sheeps ankle bones, there is nothing to do but appreciate where you are. And so the blue skies, endless hills and fresh air become your entertainment.







Hungover but happy at our ger camp

We then nursed our throbbing heads on the horrific and bumpy journey back to the city. We were all staying in a plush hotel and Christian and I got a huge suite to stay in. We made immediate use of the space by washing all our undies in the sink and hanging them up around our luxury pad! We know how to live the high life. We the treated ourselves to a fancy dinner in a nice restaurant. You could tell I had been out of civilisation for too long because when the waiter used chopsticks to give me a hot towel at the beginning of the meal, I wanted to eat it! Christian had to tell me what it was.

So after a fantastic time in Mongolia, we had to say goodbye to the train traders, to the nomads, and to Ghengis Khan. It was time to visit the world superpower that is China.

Christian and Fiona

Location:Mongolia - middle of nowhere

Mobile Mongolian Market

Our first encounter with Mongolia came in the form of the little man we were sharing our train cabin with. We boarded the trans-mongolian train in siberia at about five am and saw that although our cabin only had one man in the top left bunk, there were bags and boxes and clothes everywhere. In fact, the cabin was full of the most random stuff. There were two large sausages hanging above Christian's head and a big pot of jam at his feet. When the sun rose and people on board started waking up, the picture became clear. We were part of a travelling Mongolian market!

The train was a throng of activity with the traders preparing for the next stop, stock was moved from carriage to carriage, and a lot of money was exchanged with the man in our cabin, and although we couldn't understand the language, it be became clear that our man was something of an authority on board. For this reason we did our best to stay on his good side. We did a lot of smiling and shared some grapes with him. We were even nicer to him after Christian saw the size of the knife he was carrying, and we heard from some Dutch guys that they had been forced to hand over some beer at knife point.





At the first stop all the Mongolian traders hurried off the train to begin selling their wares to the local Russians. It appeared that lots of locals come down to the station specifically when trains to Mongolia are due to arrive, just to pick up some bargains. The Mongolians were selling socks, coats, underwear, and of course jam and sausages, and God knows what else. We later found out that some of these Mongolians actually live on the trains with no fixed home, travelling to Moscow to pick up cheap goods, before selling them at every stop on the way back to Mongolia.

Back on the train and fast approaching the Russia- Mongolia border, there was a mad rush for all the traders to get their goods hidden before we reached customs. We have no idea where all the swag was hidden (Christian saw the attendant on our carriage hiding some in the coal store!), but it all miraculously disappeared from sight. I thought I had been sleeping on a thin mattress but it turned out to be a pile of shawls that a mongol woman wanted back. And so at the border our cabin resembled some normality and we even had a couple of English guys join us.

The border crossing was long and tedious with Russian and Mongolian officials, lots of forms to fill out, and soldiers with sniffer dogs. In the cabin next door, the customs officials uncovered two boxes of meringues and a huge piece of cheese. Supposedly the Mongolian in the cabin was very nervous when the official found and opened the boxes and looked very relieved when they were full of meringues and cheese, he clearly had no idea what had been stashed!

That night I couldn't sleep. Despite the fact I was in a cabin with three English guys and the door was locked, that was no comfort. The Mongol traders had keys to open all the cabin doors and frequently through the night they would open our door, have a look inside before leaving again. It was very unsettling.

We were really happy to get off the mobile market train at Ulaan Bataar (capital of Mongolia), especially when we met our smiley local guide Naki. Mongolia is the least visited country in the world and we were curious to find out why. After a much needed Japanese shower at a local hotel we headed out for a tour of the city. Maybe it was because we had grown used to the dowdiness and grey of Russia cities, but we took an instant liking to Mongolia, despite the freezing temperatures. The people were friendly, gracious and helpful.


Buddhist monks in the temple square



The city of Ulaan Bataar is an interesting mix of traditionalism versus capitalism, and poor versus rich. There are glassy skyscrapers housing international corporations, and these can sit next to run-down ger tents in which a whole family live around a stove. There are flashy four-wheel drives made by European and Japanese manufacturers hogging the roads, whilst monks in traditional Mongolian costume scurry along dirt tracks which should be pavements.

We visited the local monastery and wandered around various temples (a tip for anyone visiting Mongolia, always walk around anywhere clock-wise, it is local custom, and to walk around a holy place anti-clockwise is social suicide). Mongolia is a Buddhist country and in fact the word on the street is that the Delai Lama has his eye on Mongolia for his successor. However, the Chinese are completely opposed to this possibility and when the man himself visited Mongolia recently they closed all of their borders with the country for two days out of protest.

After a day wandering around the city and enjoying a bit of good old-fashioned capitalism at the State Department Store (they even sell ipads!), we headed away from the city into Ghengis Khan territory - the Mongolian countryside. Here we would be living like the Mongolian nomads at a ger camp. It was the highlight of our trip so far so make sure you read our entry.

Christian and Fiona

Location:Mongolia

Largest, deepest, oldest

After ninety hours on the trans-Siberian, we made a prison break in Irkutsk and headed to Lake Baikal. At our chalet near the lake we had the best showers of our lives, and washed away the dirt and discomforts of four days on the train, before taking a tour around the lake.




Lake Baikal is the oldest (over 25 million years old), deepest (average 2442 feet) and largest lake in the world. Amazingly it contains one fifth of the world's fresh water, and 70% of the 1700 plants and animals in the lake cannot be found anywhere else.

The two days at the village of Listvyanka where we stayed could not have been more different from the four days we had spent on the train. There was more open space and fresh air than our eyes and lungs could take in. It was wonderful. We took a lovely walk along the lake where we saw this delightful local collecting water, we went up to the viewpoint, we ate fish that we will never eat again and we watched the sunset while drinking beer and hooch in a gazebo.

















We were sad to say goodbye to Lake Baikal, and the city of Irkutsk where we stayed for a further night, was pretty miserable. One cheerful thing about Irkutsk was the wedding tradition that we observed. Across all of Russia, when a couple marries they have to cross seven bridges together and on one bridge they lock a padlock with their names on it, to signify their unity.



Love locks

Following a very early wake up in Irkutsk, we headed to the station once again to board the trans-Mongolian train, safe in the knowledge that we knew everything there was to know about the trains, how wrong could we be! The Mongolian train had a few surprises in store for us...

If we are completely honest, we were not sad to leave Russia behind, for every nice person we met, we encountered about twenty miserable ones who seemed intent on making our stay difficult. Saying that, they may have reason to be unhappy and if you are interested to read our thoughts on the Russian pysche and where it may have come from, take a look at the blog entry.

Bye bye Russia, cheer up it might never happen!

Christian and Fiona

Location:Lake Baikal, Siberia

The trans-Siberian - a slow moving prison

We had never travelled through time zones on a train before, but on the trans-Siberian railway we went forward five hours and back about forty years. We left Moscow at lunchtime on a Sunday and travelled east to Irkutsk in Siberia, where we arrived on Thursday morning. Although Irkutsk is five hours ahead of Moscow, you wouldn't have guessed on the train because all of the tickets and timetables (as with television and any other national scheduling) are based around Moscow time, so you have to make all your own calculations to realise what the local time is.

Christian and I had read up about the trans-Siberian train on the Internet, we had an info pack supplied by the our travel agency and I had the lonely planet guide, so together with a true british sense of optimism we felt ready for what was awaiting us. We were not! We should have been suitably worried when a group of Russians we met in Moscow were astonished that we had decided to take a train, asking "why the *#~* are you taking the train? You know you can take a flight to Siberia.". We ignored their warnings until we found ourselves on platform two at Vladistovsky station.

The train itself is a solid soviet machine with no frills. Inside is basically the same but with a couple of patterned frills straight from the sixties, by way of carpet and curtains.







And here you will see the bedroom, compact with a retro finish, and my personal space for about ninety hours.

The class system on board

We had bought second class tickets which meant that we shared a small four-berth cabin with two others. Our cabin was about two metres by one and a half meters with bunk beds on either side. There was storage space beneath the two bottom bunks and a small table by the window. It was very basic, the orient express it is not. A first class ticket is the same cabin but for two people. A third class ticket buys you a perch in a carriage similar to a battery hen shed (see the secret video we filmed walking through these carriages). Walking through the third class carriages was a real eye opener and my heart beat slightly faster every time we went through to get to the dining car. There were feet and hands sticking out at you from all angles and suspicious eyes would follow you. From the sullen expressions on the faces of third class passengers you would think that they were being transported against their will, and as a result we referred to third class as hell (i.e. "shall we walk through hell again?")

First night on board

After a solid five hours of reading and gazing out the dirty window into endless trees we wandered up to the dining car, via hell. It was pleasantly spacious compared to our cabin with a bar at one end and six tables set with lace table clothes and vodka glasses. I went to pick up a menu from the bar and had my hand actually smacked by the evil waitress. We took this to mean table service and so took a seat. The hospitality from the waitress continued as we ordered from the menu. Unlike the two French men across from us who pointed at other people's food and held up fingers to indicate how many they wanted, we actually put some effort into speaking Russian. Even with these efforts, we were still met by "nyet" at every request.
Eventually we were able to choose food that she agreed to serve us and when it eventually arrived it was surprisingly tasty.

Later in the bar we met a fellow Brit Dan, and also a huge Russian man named Vladinkee. He was set on getting drunk and keen for us to follow. After toasting Winston Churchill and Roman Obramovich, the two guys (Christian and Dan) were challenged to an arm wrestle with the Russian giant. Since his arm was twice the size of theirs put together they declined the offer until a few drinks later. The vodka glasses shuddered as British arms hit the table, and Vladinkee roared with laughter. After the British were truly defeated by the Russian, we made a swift exit before any more drinking or wrestling was thrust upon us. Christian learnt from this night of vodka drinking, and continued to drink vodka every evening before bed, claiming that it helped him sleep (in fact as I write this entry, Christian is drinking vodka... And it is not even bed time).






After a dreadful nights sleep in my upper bunk we were woken by the evil waitress bringing round a selection of donuts filled with sausages, meat or cabbage. This was unfortunately the staple breakfast on board.

Life on board

Days on the trans-Siberian are pretty laid back and consist of reading, napping, writing and gazing out the window. Highlights that break up the monotony include making a cup of tea, changing your watch to local time, and going to the toilet. Another highlight in the train was when people left our little cabin to be replaced by new people. You never knew who was going to poke their head around the door, greet us with "strasveetye" and then practically sleep next to you for thirty hours in silence until they left with a solitary word "dosveedanye". Trans-Siberian flings!

We weren't completely captive with our prison mates on the trans-Siberian, at certain stops along the way we were able to get out (for good behaviour) and stretch our legs.




We shared our cabin with a couple of polite middle aged men, an ice hockey enthusiast who tried to share his enthusiasm for the sport with christian (unsuccessfully), a computer geek (who gave us a jam donut), a well to do couple, and the most cheerful man in Russia (we suspect he was from somewhere else).

Unsaid rules of the shared cabin are that you and your posessions must not cross the invisible line that separates the left from right side. That line also extends across the table. If you are the last person to bed you should lock the door, and if you are the first awake in the morning you should piss off your cabin mates by opening the blinds, regardless of how early it is and how late they might have gone to bed. Rules on your carriage are enforced by a pair of women called the Provodnistas. They are as scary as they sound and one seemed to take an instant dislike to me, shouting at me in Russian whenever I ventured out of the cabin. From what I could gather I wasn't allowed to use the toilet, wasn't allowed to use the hot water, wasn't allowed to pour water away, and was generally a nuisance.

Outside of Moscow the city thinned out and wooden villages took over. As we travelled further east into Siberia, the towns and villages grew further apart and there were huge expanses of of open grassland or forest.



On the Tuesday we crossed into Asia which looked absolutely no different, on the Wednesday morning we woke up to snow and on Thursday morning we eventually stepped out of the train into Siberia. It was very cold, but boy was it the most welcome cold I had ever stepped out into after four stuffy days in our moving prison. The travel agency we booked through entitled our tour the "trans-Siberian experience", and we couldn't agree more. It would have been false advertising to claim it to be the "trans-siberian pleasure" or the "trans-Siberian adventure", but an experience it certainly was.

We made it!

Christian and Fiona

Location:Moscow - Siberia