The Communist Revolution

Hong Kong, the final adventure.

2009-03-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

All neon like

In another 4 days I'm going home. It is about 9am and I've just getting into Shenzhen off a terrible over night bus trip, even though all over night bus rides are. I'm dropped off at a random bus stop on a highway and told to get on a the number seven. I do, but I don't have a clue where to get off. With my keen travellers eye I eventually see a sign out on the side of the road for a subway station, bingo! I jump off and go to my hostel I'm staying at for the night, a lovely new place out in the suburbs somewhere.

The sad Orangutan at the zoo, so lonely

Shenzhen is right on the border to Hong Kong, and is a special economic zone set up purposefully on the border of China to stimulate economic growth. One of the major benefits of this is it is a great place for shopping. Being on the border of Hong Kong means it is very accessible, and being in China proper means things are awesomely cheap. Having only to travel another 50 odd kilometres with a backpack to the Hong Kong airport meant I was willing to fill that backpack to the brim with the latest fashions. I spent the day exploring dodgy shopping malls, getting some of the best deals in the world. Floors of fakes for basically any price you can be confident enough in asking for. Using the 'take my price or I'll walk out the door' method I achieved some pretty descent deals.

Merry Christmas everyone

In the morning I headed across the border to Hong Kong. It was bizarre how different the place is, only being 30 odd km from Shenzhen. Instantly you notice the large mix of cultures, the english speaking people, and the much higher prices. I picked one of the cheapest places in town to stay at, the travellers friendship hostel. It was very different to Chinese hostels, there were basically only a few tiny rooms in some large cheap apartment block. Not really a great place to hang out, it made up for it by being right down on tip of the Kowloon Peninsula so is super convenient to everything.

All the new gears in the smallest hostel room ever

View out of the hostel window, spectacular....

I had three nights to kill before the big departure home. In this time I did lots, but some of the highlights were....

Gold fish for sale!

Probably the first thing everyone does in Hong Kong is go and view the city from the top of Victoria Hill. I went with a young German man from the hostel, and being both on the cheap we skipped the logical option of taking the cable car up and instead walked. This was a pretty good option as meant we would go past the Hong Kong Zoo, and go through a bit of back door nature before getting to the top. Once up there we went for a walk on the circular route around the top of the hill, giving one of the most magnificent city views available. The high rises of Hong Kong are incredible, all 6,439 of them, and viewing them from up here was spectacular, the only issue being the grey haze over the city, but I'm sure one day they'll sort that out.

View from Victoria Peak, really sweet, although a little grey

Where all the jerks shop

The next awesome activity was seeing the same cityscape from back across the harbour at 8pm every night for the big light show that goes on. This is kinda over the top, but I enjoyed it enough to come back three times to see it. After showing some people back in New Zealand a video of the light show, they suggested that it was an incredible waste of energy. This is probably true, and seeing Hong Kong is mainly powered by gas and coal and a little wind power reducing this spectacular event would probably be a step in reducing the grey shroud covering the 6,439 high rises.

Best view in the city at 8pm every night

There were a few other important things I needed to do before going home, firstly I had to fill the remainder of my bag with souvenirs and then had to get rid of the remaining hong kong money I had on me. Along with my German friend while he was still in town, soon to be screwed over by the protests at the Bangkok International Airport, we went to the night market in Kowloon for a feed and some shopping. This was a great way to spend my last night in town, and was topped off by drinking a beer in the streets which must have been illegal but the German didn't know any better. Plus it was much cheaper than the bar the night before, even with a free beer from a man claiming that the hottest women on the planet are from Colombia.

The tram ride out to the 'burbs

Now my last day away, tomorrow I will be back in New Zealand. Having travelled over a quarter of the way around the world over land and going through three huge nations that have only become accessible to westerners in the last two decades, and not to forget the handful of smaller European countries. But today I just wanted to get it over and done with. Unfortunately my flight wasn't until 10pm so spent the day riding the tram over on Hong Kong Island on a mission to get to a beach, in the hope to possibly go for a swim. Feeling like I was on The Amazing Race, I took the tram right to the end of the line then ran as far as I could to get to the ocean. Unfortunately I was still a while from where I had planned on going, but did make it to the sea. And that there was the last adventure I was to have. From there I turned around and headed back to the hostel to collect my bags and go to the airport, wait around for my flight, then go home.

One of the star ferries make a voyage before sun set

The joy of Hong Kong airport is that you get to go over the world longest bridge on the way there

Soon enough I was back in New Zealand, unfortunately without my bag which got lost in Australia, but luckily it did eventually make it and I was safe at home and all adventure over.

Ah... home time!

Complete Trip Costs:
China/Hong Kong for a month, including transport, accomodation, food, expenses etc: NZ$1747
Total trip cost for 3 months of outrageous adventure: NZ$9677

Post Trip Analysis:
After travelling round the world for three months to some pretty exotic locations. I feel it necessary to express my view on the world and on travelling. In doing this adventure I found a purpose for life, having the goal of getting somewhere in which the journey would be a massive challenge meant I felt truly alive nearly every day. There were times when I'd have liked to been able to give up, but pressing through to achieve my goals made it very fulfilling. This is why I'd recommend to anyone with the choice of either selling out and buying a house and setting up a mundane life or to go on a wild adventure to definitely choose the later. And I guarantee you won't regret being able to reflect on that decision later in life.

The form of tourism I participated in was not your typical two week holiday to a tropical island, but was a real get down and dirty with very different cultures for a lengthy period. This was way more intellectually fulfilling, as gave myself a much broader view on the world and a deeper understanding of how others live. These are important things one must do to prevent ignorance and give you a good basis to stand on to make some claims such as that which follows in my world views.

There was a very different respect to how the normal person lives in Russia, Mongolia, China between each country and compared to New Zealand. There were aspects I thought fantastic, and others I feel need to change, and fast. Being concerned for the environment, (even though I did fly around the world), saw some major projects that need to be demolished as soon as possible. Large chimneys spilling out pollution throughout Russia and China can not continue. But this all comes at a cost to the people who are far poorer than we are in New Zealand, especially out in the countryside. Solutions must be thought up of soon to save the world from itself and without screwing over the poor. I think we can learn the most from Mongolia on this aspect, the nomads have chosen a simple way of life which doesn't require all the best homes, the fastest cars or whatever. They seem quite happy all living in the same styled Ger and getting around on their horses. Why can't we choose a more simple life in return for a better one?

Since coming back to New Zealand I've taken my thoughts to an action level, I now cycle every day to work, (in an office job I knew I'd have to return to). And am reducing my spending on unnecessary consumer products to hopefully use my money to do something more fulfilling in the future than watch tv every day.

I see the future to be very positive, with numerous opportunites to make the world a great place. Yet at the same time I don't stop living within this world because I'm waiting for it to get better. No I make sure I use all the great gifts nature has for us as much as possible. I think that getting out into the world makes you realise that protecting it is useless unless you are conserving so you can use it. So get out into life! I hope you enjoyed all my blogs, and wish that you'd read the entire lot. If you like it then make a comment or give me a job to be a travel writer....

Yangshuo, the badlands of China...

2009-02-24T23:53:00.000-08:00

Yangshuo's main drag

Mega city after mega city, it was time to head to the country side of China for a quiet relaxing break before the next mega city Hong Kong. Yangshuo is a great little town sort of on the way from Shanghai to Hong Kong, but unfortunately is far from quiet. This town is small, but is one of the major tourist spots in China. The reason it is so popular is that it is in amongst some of the most bizarrely amazing scenery around.

The Yulong River, farmland on the side, karst hills to the back

The Yi River looking north

I spent only a night here, but arrived early in the morning and left late at night so got in two solid days of adventure. Not wasting any time I checked into a nice cozy hostel, the Yangshuo Senior Leader Hostel for only 30 Yuan. As soon as I checked in I walked out to explore the town. The reason I wanted to explore is obvious if you take a look at the photos with this post. The attraction is the Karst landscape, these are limestone formations that have been eroded away to leave unique shapes. These karst formations are a lot what people might think of when they think Chinese landscape photos or paintings.

Reflective tower

An abandoned village

The river flowing out of the middle of Yangshuo

After a short explore around town I went and hired a bicycle, old school of course. Then headed out to explore the karst scenery through the local country side. There is a bike track set up that goes along the Yulong River that can only be described as uniquely incredible. Once out the busy little tourist town, you ride around centuries old farms and little villages that could be imagined to have never seen civilization before.

The track round the countryside got much more narrow than this

Animal cruetly: the bird is tied to this stick, so don't give him money for a photo

Ultimate old school bike, perfect for dirt tracks

Along the track the markings got rather long in between each one, and so it wasn't long till I was pretty lost. But just as I got lost, a young Chinese couple came riding up behind me. One able to speak a small bit of English asked me if I knew where I was going. I was lost, but it seemed not as lost as they were. So decided to lead them further along the maze of tracks until we eventually found the signs marking the main track again.

The expensive way to see the hills

Bike team

It took till about 6pm to find our way back to town. The ride was much longer than what we'd thought and we met others along the way who were giving up and returning the way they came from. But we completed it thanks to my great navigation skills, and also thanks to my new Chinese friends for paying for the raft ride across the Yulong River. Hungry after finishing we went out for dinner. Being with people who could speak Chinese was fantastic. They ordered up the best food on the menu, and got an interesting fish dish that I would have never been able to order with all of my zero Chinese ability. Following dinner we went out for a beer, then once things got awkward after we ran out of simple English things to say we parted ways.

Yum, fish with flavour

Pool takes the place of awkward conversation

Not a ripple on the lake

Unfortunately the next days weather was rather below average with a bit of precipitation. So instead of going on another bike ride up the Yi River, I just walked around town and bought some gifts for the folks back home. Not being able to resist photo temptation I went for a short walk along the Yi River just on the towns side to get more amazing shots.

A miniature karst hill

Yi River

Yangshuo reflects on the town lake

This karst scenery was truly amazing, and worthy of a bit of science, from the good old reliable wikipedia:

Karst landforms are generally the result of mildly acidic water acting on soluble bedrock such as limestone or dolostone. The carbonic acid that causes these features is formed as rain passes through the atmosphere picking up CO₂, which dissolves in the water. Once the rain reaches the ground, it may pass through soil that may provide further CO₂ to form a weak carbonic acid solution: H₂O + CO₂ → H₂CO₃. Recent studies of sulfates in karst waters suggests sulfuric and hydrosulfuric acids may also play an important role in karst formation.
This mildly acidic water begins to dissolve the surface and any fractures or bedding planes in the limestone bedrock. Over time these fractures enlarge as the bedrock continues to dissolve. Openings in the rock increase in size, and an underground drainage system begins to develop, allowing more water to pass through and accelerating the formation of underground karst features.

Somewhat less common than this limestone karst is gypsum karst, where the solubility of the mineral gypsum provides many similar structures to the dissolution and redeposition of calcium carbonate.

A man takes his ox out for a walk

The locals float under a beautiful bridge over the Yulong River

After a pretty long wait, I finally got on my 9 pm over night bus ride to Shenzhen. The final stop in China before Hong Kong, then home. With only a few days left before returning home I was getting more and more excited about seeing friends and family.

This is the over night bus to Shenzhen, they are mental, and only worthy of one ride in your life

Shanghai, Someone Should Inform Them It Isn't 2050 Just Yet

2009-02-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

The classic Shanghai shot

According to that good old wikipedia, Shanghai is the most populous city proper in the world behind Mumbai. That means it is big.

Tomorrow Square harnesses the power of the sun

In this mega city I found out the hard way that there are a few really annoying things. Things that aren't any reason to stop one coming here, but some thing you need to be warned of. First of all, if you are going to the south train station to buy a ticket make sure you have got money on you to buy it. I went there expecting an ATM, well there was one but it didn't like my card even though it has never let me down anywhere else in the world. Luckily there is another ATM a bit of a walk out of the station, but unfortunately it is, at the time of visiting, going through maintenance. Long story short, I wasted about four hours not buying a ticket out of Shanghai. Next really annoying thing is that the subway lines shut down around 10pm each night. So if you go to a movie in town late at night, you might only be able to catch one of the two trains you need to get home. This results in you walking a few kilometres through dark streets in an unknown district of a foreign city to get back to the hostel around midnight.

The reflective Tomorrow Square

But with those qualms out the way, Shanghai was really impressive. A pompous city with futuristic buildings, a real display of what China's cities could be if they continue to push the boundaries of the new age.

The best way of course to see all this is along the Bund waterfront. Here is one of the most impressive city scapes presented over the lovely Huangpu River dividing the main business district from the shopping district. The futuristic buildings were mind blowing, the Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center are beyond nearly anything I've ever seen before. After seeing this, I turned around and walked back down one of the worlds busiest shopping streets, Nanjing Road. I looked around here, but all that was available was big retail brands. I wasn't into that, I wanted cheap knock offs, and I knew where to get them.

Nanjing Road means loads of annoying people trying to get your money

A subway ride out to Qipu Lu, an infamous knock off market aimed towards the locals, hence providing some of the cheapest big label clothes around. Standing out like a typical tourist in a sea of Chinese people I was instantly approached by all the nearby shop owners. They all can spot a sucker like myself to persuade to come in and spend lots of money on their low quality goods. I've turned rather market savvy and realise that you can probably get a better deal by walking around for a while making shops compete against each other, but instead I decided to go in for the 'follow me to my shop' approach. A man lead me a few blocks from the actual market to his shop that was in the back of some large unknown mall of other similar shops. Here he presented me with a fine selection of shirts and ties looking as though they were straight out of an Italian designers boutique. Expecting to make a good load of cash of me, he was fooled when the cheapest man in Shanghai to walk into his shop. So after experiences from Beijing such as getting a pair of jeans down to under 10 percent of the original asking price. I managed to achieve similar discounts after bargaining hard on a combo, which if real, would be worth well over a few hundred dollars.

The aesthetic French Concession

After a bit of super cheap shopping I headed over to the classy French Concession district. A nice contrast to the grey soul less streets elsewhere around town, I enjoyed a long walk along the tree lined avenues before getting some classic western food, donuts and coffee. Heading back into town I hoped to get into the Shanghai Museum before closing. Unfortunately the down to the letter rule abiding security guards wouldn't let me in only 3 mins after the last entrance time, even though it didn't fully shut for another hour. Rather angry at the world because it must have been the twentieth time I've missed a closing time by minutes in the last few months, I headed over across the city park to catch the subway back to the hostel.

The Oriental Pearl watches the sun go down

While going across the park the sun started to set, so as angry as I was, I stopped and took a photo. Then letting my anger subdue with the sunset I turned around and decided to try my luck on the MOCA (Museum of Comtempary Art) nearby. Being a much more open minded place, it didn't close till much later, and so I finally got to visit a decent art gallery overseas. It was small but of quite high quality. It had two really moving pieces, one a display of plastic dolls showing the amassing of rubbish toys being produced by China. The other a video showing people who make a living off saying a few words over and over. These were street vendors making a minuscule living repeating, “Shoes, watches, DVD's” or whatever every few seconds as a potential unsuspecting customer walked by. I found this moving because I have experienced hundreds of similar real life vendors every day in China.

Plastic dolls by the dozen

Afterwards I got back to the hostel and tried the local streets for some dinner. Not realising the hostel was in the middle of a illegal street market, I walked the busy streets, lined with peoples rubbish they were trying to sell, to a corner with a lady cooking up a storm. For 5 Yuan (~NZ$1.20) I got one of the most delicious street meals ever, full of MSG and all the other good stuff they put in their food in China. So feeling rather chuffed at my awesome dinner, I returned back to the hostel for the night after buying a hair brush off someone along the crazy street.

Mao is hanging out in Shanghai, as he does

All this might not have actually happened on one day, but actually over a few as I spent about three nights in Shanghai. After all that the best thing about Shanghai was the hostel. This was primarily because they put on a buffet breakfast every morning for no extra charge. The hostel was the Shanghai International Youth Hostel, for only $10 a night it was super awesome to wake up to an unlimited supply of really nice food. So if you are a hostel owner and reading this, heed my advice, put on a free breakfast. Seriously, a hostel with a free breakfast compared to one without is a definite deal seal. My last morning in town was an early one, but I risked the possibility of missing my train (I did have to go back another day to the train station with money to buy a ticket out) waiting around until the free breakfast started. Totally worth it.

Wuhan and Nanjing, the slow road to Shanghai

2009-02-03T02:38:00.000-08:00

Wuhan, not really the most beautiful place ever

After finishing the Yangtze River cruise I wanted to get to Shanghai. It was a 700km or so train journey that started in Wuhan and went through Nanjing before getting there. With time running out on my visa and still so much more to see in China I was hoping to get to Shanghai as soon as possible, but unfortunately train timetables gave me a couple of days to slowly meander along the route.

The Chinese version of space exploration, Wuhan

Seeing I got in so late to Wuhan I didn't have an opportunity to get a ticket out of there straight away so was forced to spend two nights in this city of which I've never really heard of, and is a city that doesn't really deserve to be known.

One of the biggest pedestrian shopping malls in China, in Wuhan

It was getting to the end of my second week in China and I had a pretty good idea of how things work, what I like to eat and what to go see. Typically I'd get a few steamed buns for breakfast, but here in Wuhan I got to enjoy a different breakfast treat. The local breakfast was a fried flat bread filled with chili and other delicious Chinese spices. Washed down with my favorite apple milks made it one of the best breakfasts of my trip. The next morning I got two of the breads because they were just so good. Next after seeing hundreds of religious sites throughout every country I was not too disappointed to chop the Wuhan main Buddhist monastery due to them not giving student discount.

As close as I got to the entrance to Wuhans main tourist attraction

The Yangtze following through Wuhan

So apart from that it was rather uneventful. Being one of the only guests at the hostel I had to spend the day by myself wondering around. The night market and the food street I found were alright, but not really amazing. Leaving the city the next day was quite relieving as I was getting closer to the ever elusive Shanghai. I took a hard seater train to Nanjing a good 12 hours away. It was actually a nice soft seat, but 12 hours is a long time to be sitting in one place. I easily finished my book I had and was left to sleep off the rest of the time. One interesting part was when the couple sitting beside me offered me these weird seeds to eat. They came in shells and you had to bite them apart. With quite a complicated method to it I managed to get some seeds, but mostly just made a horrible mess.

The night market was overflowing with everything in Wuhan

Nanjing from a far distance behind a lake

Because of the stupid day train timetable I didn't arrive till 11pm in Nanjing. Here I got another interesting experience of feeling completely exposed to a travellers nightmare much like in Wuhan. This was because the hostel I was staying at, the Sunflower International Youth Hostel, had some fantastic directions being, quote, “From Nanjing Railway station: Take the subway to San Shan Street stop, Exit 4. Ask locals for Zhan Yuan Lu.”. Having to find a local at midnight to show me where the Zhan Yuan Lu was not a fun task. I came out the subway station and realised I didn't even know what street I was on now. I walked a few blocks to see if I could even see any signs, their weren't any locals around to ask anyway. Feeling like it would be a good time to just start crying and give up on everything, I was lucky to run into a lady who spoke some English and quite persistently lead me nearly to the hostel door. These are the kind of experiences that make you believe in humanity and the rewards of independent travel, but at the same time leave you feeling incredibly home sick and just wanting to be in the comfort of a mundane life.

I walk the lakes edge, living on the line of danger

My day in Nanjing was rather mundane too. I went to the train station in the morning and got a ticket on night train out. Being on the other side of town from where I was staying I basically just spent the day walking back to the hostel. My slight down and out feeling at the time was cheered up with an expensive and rather over the top delicious Blizzard shake, full of chocolate and ice cream. Feeling better I went on a black and white photo expedition, capturing the busy life of a Chinese city. As demonstrated here:

Guy on the left has seen way too much

Too many tourists from within China

Too many decorations going on

The guys on the left are actually dressed in yellow

Everyone is doing something

Too much rubbish

Dangerous intersection

Too many cyclists

Too many motorbikes

The train at night was actually something I was quite excited about. It was a bullet train that flew along at over 200km/hr to Shanghai, much different from slow Russian trains. So even though I left at 7pm it only took 2 hours to get to Shanghai, and being a pretty advanced city had a well established hostel with good directions to it. So even though it was the third time in a row that I'd turned up to a city in the middle of the night I had no problem getting my head on a pillow without feeling like I'd be roughing it for the night. Ahh, travelling by yourself, it makes you realise you are alive!

Bullet trains are bad ass

The Yangtze River, Cruising Down The Chinese Water Highway

2009-01-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

The Chinese flag flying over the great Yangtze River

Over the last decade the Yangtze River has been flooded for the purpose of the Three Gorges Dam, in turn taking out countless villages and towns, losing numerous cultural and historical sites. Some people say that the river cruise, which used to be one of Chinas tourism highlights has been ruined forever. The local people who have been evicted from their land are generally annoyed, and loads of officials have been stealing the poor peoples land compensation making it a rather large debacle. These were all great reasons why I wanted to go on the cruise. To be right there in a moment of great historical change.

The sun reflects on the Yangtze River

The cruise ship reflects the steep gorge walls

Being a backpacker with little money, I took the option of going on a Chinese tour rather than an expensive English one. The result was that I was one of about four English speaking people on the whole boat and basically didn't really see those other English people at all. Next I'd chosen to skip going to all the relocated temples because they basically are only a year or so old after being moved, so have lost their historical appeal. Finally I shelled out on a side cruise up the Lesser Three Gorges because they were supposedly more scenic than the main gorges. The total cost of this was around 700 Yuan (~NZ$180), which spread out over three days was a little more than my day to day budget, but was something a little different so totally worth it.

Hooray for Chinese tours

Inside The Lesser Three Gorges, with its vertical walls

The first night was spent riding a bus to the cruise ship four hours out of Chongqing, hoping on the boat and finding my bed. When I found my room, I walked in and placed my gear on my bed, then feeling rather hungry went to open up some food for dinner. In my third class room was another 5 Chinese people, one then took the liberty of yelling at me in Chinese and tieing up my bag of food so I couldn't have any. Rather confused and unable to communicate at all with him, I pointed to the food, rubbed my belly and rose an eyebrow. Not really sure what was going on, I didn't want to cause some big scene so went outside and stood on the deck looking out over the river. But soon enough hunger over took me so I went back in to try getting something to eat again. Same result! I was thinking that maybe there was going to be dinner served soon or something so I shouldn't be eating now, or maybe it was against usual customs to eat before the boat had got going? Confused I went and stood back at my viewing spot outside my room. It wasn't for another hour or so until the ships tour guide, who spoke a little English, came along to tell us about the nights itinerary. She quickly settled the dispute. Supposedly the old man hadn't seen me come in and place my bags on the bed, and being the racist person he was didn't expect to be sleeping with any foreigners down in third class. So when I had opened up my food bag he had assumed I had just walked into the room and tried to eat some poor mans loot. Rather hungry and angry by now I reluctantly smiled as he profusely apologised after finding out I was legitimately meant to be eating my food which was placed on my bed. Wanting to punch him in the face I made myself some noodles and calmed down after filling my stomach.

My third class room, with bathroom through back door. Go number 2310!

Layers of mountain ridges glow under a low sun

Soon fireworks were lit to send us on our way and the rest of the night was spent watching Chinese TV and making friends with the rest of my cabin friends through the two or three words one of them could write in English.

The new temples have lots of neon, just like an old traditional one

Old meets new, with a swallowed bridge being replaced by a new super bridge

The next morning at the crack of a 5am dawn we were woken to be introduced to the first of the three gorges. A spectacular sight even after flooding it. I enjoyed it for a short time before I fell asleep again to wake up at a normal rising time. Later that day the lesser three gorges tour took place. This was an exciting little trip up a smaller river through a narrow set of gorges with vertical walls running right down to the water, monkeys running about in the surrounding jungle, and a forced ride on some little raft which was enjoyed until I was made to pay 10 yuan for it.

Going through The Lesser Three Gorges

The Wuxia Gorge dwarfs a distant cargo ship

Later that night, we cruised through the next gorge, the Wuxia Gorge, another stunning natural wonder where the water has cut through the mountains over millions of years giving life to one of the most populous places on earth. Another night was spent in the third class cramped cabin, waking up in the morning we were getting ever closer to the dam. From here, just above the dam in the Xililng Gorge, the evidence for the destruction of the environment was getting clearer; signs pointing out the change in river depth were showing a 175m rise in the river level. The murky water could not stop my imagination from thinking about what had been buried underneath, but at the same time brought marvel at the capabilities of man to harness nature's power.

The river is only metres from being at its full 175m rise

The hazy sun sets over Wuxia Gorge

Sediment build up above the dam, environmental concern?

The cruise concluded with a tour of the three gorges dam. Disappointingly, the mist was so thick that I could only see halfway across the dam, therefore I had to make sure I got round to the other side of the river to see the other half. This viewing did not justify the additional cost of the tour of the dam, but was something that had to be done and would be good on a fine day. As annoying as the mist was, I was still well impressed by the grandeur of this monumental construction project and could almost believe the myth that the development has created a lake so large that it has shifted the earth from its rotational axis.

My viewing point from on the cruise ship

The Three Gorges Dam, in all its misty glory

The whole cruise ended with being dropped off at a bus stop in a random town. Not knowing where I was, I asked my new Chinese friends, ex-cabin mates, where the bus to Wuhan was. My hesitation meant I hoped on an all-ready full bus and was forced to wait for the next bus. Unfortunately, this did not leave for another hour and a half, which was about 6pm, and proceeded a five hour bus ride. Arriving in Wuhan, I only had a small hostel brochure that had a map of the surrounding three blocks of the hostel and that was all the information I had on the entire city. Rather worried that I may end up getting lost in a huge unknown city in the middle of the night I was fortunate enough to be going to the same hostel as a Spanish man on the bus. Together we asked, through a difficult language barrier, the Chinese bus driver where the hostel was. He was kind enough to take us off the main highway and on to a street on the corner of the little map on the hostel brochure. Arriving at a hostel at midnight is never fun, especially with no booking, but resting in bed, I was thankful it all worked out.

The locks running alongside the dam

A paradox: the widened river is meant to reduce carbon emissions from trucks winding round highways, but the boats cargo is coal...

In reflection of seeing the Three Gorges Dam I am left to ask myself was this right to build such a project, especially seeing I studied electrical engineering at university. There is a range of possible solutions to the problem, the alternatives that were available at the time of projects beginning were to build fossil fuel power stations or a nuclear plant. Neither of these are any good for the planet, so the dam is probably the best option as is using renewable energy. But the real problem is much larger than what kind of power plant to build. Fundamentally over population mixed with modernisation is causing the need for such projects. At this point in China's history, population growth has saturated the land available, and people are only now beginning to see the plight of modernising without caring for the environment. So the real question is how to solve the issues at the root?

Chongqing The biggest city you've never heard of

2009-01-19T02:20:00.000-08:00

Another alley way mazes its way up into the centre of town

In the future I'd expect there to be trains that run along tracks set in the sky, through uncountable sky scrappers, with the ground barely in sight and the journey length shortened by the fact the track would run in a straight line with mountains or rivers being no obstacle for the tunnels and bridges man can make. Well the future is out there, its a place called Chongqing, a municipality of 31 million people in the heart of China. That train ride was my four hour pleasant journey from Chengdu into the heart of Chongqing city proper. This is the start of my controversial exploration of China.

The ever watching eye of the law

Chongqing, pronounced Ch'ung-ch'ing, is Chinas solution for the problem of having too many poor farmers in the country. The need to modernise the area resulted in the forming of the municipality in 1997 and has resulted in over ten years of huge economic growth and turning out one of the biggest industrial, economic and inhabited cities on earth. This sudden growth also accounts for the fact that no one from outside of China has heard of this place. But all this city growth has come at the cost of a lot of peoples freedom. The urbanisation from farmers, which is greatly contributed by the flooding of the Yangtze River for the Three Gorges Dam, means forcing people from their homes and placing them in the city where they face unemployment and poverty from having none of the skills needed for city life.

Shoe shiners take it to the streets. Job satisfaction guaranteed.

Protest, a daily activity in Jiefangbei Pedestrian Street, see it at the People's Liberation Monument

Technically everyone's homes where all government property a few decades ago under communist rule, so they have some legal right to move people into Chongqing at will. But ethically is it alright? In a place such as New Zealand where overpopulation is not a problem this would never be allowed. But in a place where there is a huge number of people rapidly being made relevantly poorer compared to the rich, something like this is needed to be done. Part of the solution does require more infrastructure such as the Three Gorges Dam, which comes at a more than monetary cost. From reading urbanisation plans while in Chongqing I came to understand somewhat that the government is trying its best to answer the problems faced, there just isn't any magic bullet that doesn't leave someone screwed over. Then there is the problem of a corrupt upper class which causes the lower to lose their voice, but this is a greed issue that lies at the heart of capitalism which has a western world to blame for. If only communism worked out the way was dreamed of.

The People's Liberation Monument is towered by their liberation into commercialism

This is my map I had of Chongqing, this is why I got lost numerous times

Anyway, I stayed two nights here organising myself onto a cruise down the Yangtze River, eating food, getting lost and being overwhelmed by the scale of everything. There is another fantastic hostel here in Chongqing which I stayed at being the Yangtze River International Hostel. Well worth the 35 Yuan a night, I got a free personally escorted taxi ride from a lovely hostel staff member off the train to the hostel which cost about the same as the first nights stay. The location being right across the road from the Yangtze provided the perfect view to accompany 3 Yuan beers bought from the man running some form of shop downstairs (they are 10 Yuan from the hostel). My highlights from the city were the renovated old town where some incredible food was bought, and sipping on the cheap brews with an English fella who'd had an 'eye opening' experience down in Thailand which involved getting into trouble with prostitutes.

A lovely poo brown Yangtze River as seen from the hostel

Jialing River at night, surrounded by office space

Otherwise I didn't do too much in Chongqing apart from walking round taking photos. Despite its controversy it is a pretty cool city that deserved more time that I could give it, and I'd love to come back and see it again in ten years. From here I'm joining a Chinese tour down the Yangtze to the Three Gorges Dam. Right into the depths of controversy.

The new old town of Chongqing

Panoramic of Jialing and Yangtze River confluence, marked by a new mega building

For those who have no idea where Chongqing is:

View Larger Map

Chengdu, it's not in the earthquake zone!

2009-01-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

Buddhist garden statue

The train from Xian to Chengdu was one of the oldest and worst kept trains so far. This was multiplied by the fact I was now all alone in a country of one billion people and the old train meant people didn't care about spitting on the floor at all. So by the time the overnight train arrived in Chengdu there was a solid layer of phlegm on the ground. But because this is China you can't get worked up over it, so standing all through it I walked on out the train into Chengdu.

Everyone is driving these things, no wonder it is so dangerous these days

Here I was nicely greeted by a hostel staff member who gave me and some other backpackers on board the train a free taxi ride to the hostel we were staying at. This was a fantastic service and although driving in China is pretty mental it sure bet walking. I was staying at Sim's Cozy Hostel which possibly could take out the best hostel award for my entire adventure. The location wasn't amazing, a half hour walk to the centre of the city, but inside the hostel it was perfect. Set in a renovated apartment block, which now contains a traditional looking courtyard garden, complete with pigs, chickens, fish and lots of other animals. The rooms themselves were large with individually curtained off bunks and a bathroom for each dorm. There was also a bar and social area with a pool table and everything. This was all fantastic, plus the price of 30 Yuan a night (NZ$7.50) is ridiculously cheap, which is like about half the price of my old flat and even better to be at.

Mao stands outside the science and technology museum pointing out his great countries flag

Steaming dragon statue

Enough about the great hostel, it was time to explore Chengdu. I had received a message from Arnika that she was out and about somewhere, and that I should go to the Wenshu Temple, so I did. It is one of the busiest Buddhist temples around so trying to enjoy a peaceful green tea in the tea garden was passed up on. But apart from the tea garden the place wasn't too full of people so was enjoyable. It was actually really well taken care of, and I got to enjoy watching a weird ceremony where people would be chanting something while walking around in circles. There was also a peaceful nature garden full of frogs and turtles which was a good peaceful alternative to the busy tea garden.

The pagoda is run by an elephant

A frog chilling out at the temple's lake

Turtles are the boss around this lake though

Upon leaving the temple area (which might I add was only 5 Yuan to get in which is awesome value) I came to realise the need for such places in Chinese cities. I decided to walk into the centre of town and explore the heart of Chengdu. It is a great city, but it so busy and full of people. Also the city like most other Chinese cities in that it lacks any real character and soul, this comes from all the heartless buildings around trying to contain the masses of people. Although it is a double barrelled problem, the ex communist, now socialist China can't really get away with making awesome cities that screw over the millions of people, especially the millions of poor. But hopefully if China can cut away that corrupted middle management layer it has, the futuristic dreamers that have made Beijing such a success could hopefully inspire more throughout the country.

This is hot pot, it is awesome!

Meeting back up with Arnika at the hostel, she informed me that she had been able to make friends while on her own for all of two days. Jealous that she had had a pretty fun train ride into Chengdu on which she had happened to be sitting right beside an english couple, I was introduced to Ross and Alice over a night of real Sichuan hot pot and drinking terrible Chinese alcohol. The hot pot was fantastic to say the least, and of course spicy. We ended the night out at a pumping Chengdu nightclub which was showing a football game that Ross had to see (good old english and their football...). This became an interesting viewing once a young man clad in leather came onto the stage with a pole set in the middle and began to dance similar to that of Britney's 'toxic' music video.

Hot hot hot!

The following day I thought about going to see the pandas which you are basically required to go to by travellers law of what to do when in Chengdu. But I chopped it in return for sleeping in after seeing the human panda at the club last night. So instead spent the day going around Chengdu finding some cheap deals on electronics for everyone else and then eating food. The nights meal was sure to be great, we headed to this little lane I had came across and got an amazing soup dish for 5 Yuan the day before. But unfortunately we chose a restaurant which got off on making fun of our useless Chinese skills. So somehow we managed to order a pig offal soup and a fish complete with head and fins. The pig snout was slightly reminiscent of when Kazaks fed me pig fat in Russia but wasn't accompanied by vodka so was rather horrible. Unable to eat even half of the dishes we left disgusted and burned by the overly expensive bill of 120 Yuan. But upon reflection it was rather funny that those sneaky staff got away with serving us there most disgusting and most expensive dishes without us even thinking twice as they laughed their heads off while helping us order.

Sichuan fashion statement

Our final day in Chengdu was spent going up Mt Qingcheng a taoist holy mountain with a giant golden cow at the top. Arriving on the most packed bus ever, we were welcomed into the holy mountain by a group of chinese women beating up the staff. It was rather bizarre as we had no idea what the fight was about because people don't fight in english in China. Feeling I should break the fight up, I realised I couldn't because I had no way of saying stop fighting. So instead took some photos and proceeded to buy our entrance tickets. Here travelling tip #1 comes into play, always ask for a student discount, even if you don't have a student id. Instant half price reduction to 45 Yuan, even the english couple just showed a english drivers license and got the deal. I do have a illegitimate student card, but the glory of being in a foreign language country is they don't know what a english student card should say.

Round 1, Fight!

A small gorge in the mountain

The mountain had steps up it, so wasn't that bad a walk

Somehow we convinced Arnika to walk up to the top even though she is solidly opposed to walking up things, which was totally worth it for the mountain temples and especially for the giant golden cow at the top. Having no idea that there was going to be a giant cow at the top was an added bonus. It was one of those amazing things you stumble upon while travelling without having any pre-knowledge of it. This made up for the fact that the typical Sichuan misty day meant we had no view, and that the supposed lake had been drained after the tragic earthquake a few months prior.

A covered part of the walk, accompanied by peaceful music coming out of hidden rock shaped speakers

An awesome view of mist

This is the giant golden cow, about 20 odd metres tall

A pumped up team after seeing the giant cow in the building behind

The last night in Chengdu was rather non eventful and in the morning we were all departing our different ways. Saying goodbye to Arnika and to our english friends I jumped on a bus to the train station which took me away to Chongqing. Now I was truly on my own, this was actually pretty good as although having a friend around is good, I was now able to do whatever I liked and meant that things were a lot more rewarding due to being accountable for all challenges faced. Here in Chengdu I also came to realise that I would be going home as originally booked in to at the end of my Chinese adventure. Ideas such as going to Japan to go snowboarding, or going to south east asia had been chopped to the ever present economic crises which had devalued my savings a considerable amount. I decided it best to return home with some money in pocket instead of like my last trip to Canada where I came home broke and in a lot of debt.

Xian is pronounced she-aan

2009-01-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

The overnight train to Xian from Beijing is rather nice seeing it is along the new controversial Beijing to Lhasa, 'Tibetan population dilution' route. A brand new carriage made the third class sleeper seem like first class compared to the Russian and other Chinese old timers. But unfortunately the Chinese aren't quite into drinking like the Russians, so nothing really interesting happened on the ride we just slept, woke up and got off at another incredibly busy Chinese train station.

The Bell Tower, all lit up and looking impressive

Off to the hostel, it seems like we are firmly set in a typical travelling routine. Train, find hostel, relax, have fun for a day or two, do it all again. When you reach this point in time in travelling it means something has to change otherwise it just becomes a bit boring. We decided that Xian would be the final destination of the travel team. From here we would go our separate ways and make our own adventures. This also made sense as we all had different ideas for what we would like to see in China, seeing there is no set in stone route like the Trans-Mongolian rail.

The hostel is right opposite the city wall...

Gratefully Xian has a really awesome hostel that we stayed in. The Shuyuan International Hostel was set in a traditional Chinese courtyard, had a bar, some western styled toilets, really friendly staff and that good old free wifi. But you don't really come to Xian for the hostel, you basically only come here for the big attraction in town, the terracotta warriors.

Mr Terracotta up close and personal

Discovered 30 odd years ago by a farmer digging a well, there are thousands of life sized warriors just lying in some tombs which have collapsed and kinda broken them all. Painstakingly these are slowly being put back together in perfect formation.

The reconstructed warriors

The super cheap bus ride out to the warriors was much appreciated after the Great Wall debacle, and the student discount we got on the entrance fare made the sight worth going to (40 yuan, NZ$10, instead of 80 yuan). But after going and seeing it all, I would have been quite disappointed had I paid the full adult fare. The warriors are some what cool, but they are rather over hyped. There is only really about a hundred or two that are in good condition, and the rest are all lying in collapsed tombs. Even though there are still hundreds to be put back together you only really need to see one or two to get the idea, so wandering around the three different sites got a little tiring. The second site was probably the most disappointing, being in this massive aircraft hanger sized building with only about three or four warriors in it that were partially together. The building itself was much more impressive than the archaeological dig.

Site number 2, huge building, not much to see though, all the tombs basically had nothing in them apart from broken pieces of terracotta

Some warriors wait for life to be given to them like pinocchio

When we got back into town we went to a train ticketing office and sealed the deal on departing from one another. Tom was going to Shanghai, Arnika to Chengdu, and I was sticking around in Xian for a day longer then going to Chengdu (where I would meet up with Arnika again for two days but then leave her for good). A final meal together was enjoyed in the Muslim district, with a tourist priced bowl of lamb and bread soup which was pretty good. Then we had a few brews back at the hostel bar and toasted to a once in a life time trip that was thoroughly enjoyed.

Muslim districts main drag

A typical food on sticks street vendor

The next morning everyone left except for me, and so I spent the day walking around town without seeing really anything of interest. At night I went out to dinner by myself for the first time since I was in Germany over two months ago, an experience not really that entertaining, again I headed to the Muslim district. This time I went deep into a back alleyway to find a cheap and not touristy place to get the lamb and bread soup. This time it was half the price and probably twice as good. A decision I didn't regret at the time.

This is the alley way I bought the dodgy meal from, just because it is a back alley way doesn't mean it can't be packed with people

Waking up the next morning I was rather regretful. A day planned to go see the goose pagodas and to explore the old town wall was cancelled due to the disability I was suffering from the lamb that caused a visit to the toilet once an hour. Getting rather worried about having to take a train all alone that night with an exploding belly I downed a couple butt-plugging pills. This gave me enough relief to quickly go see the small goose pagoda on one excursion, then after a quick visit to see a man about a dog, went to the supermarket to stock up on the most bland western food I could find.

Small Goose Pagoda, took this photo at the risk of crapping my pants in the street. This situation would have been alright because in China streets are pretty much one up from sewers.

The night time train getting ever more present I took the afternoon very calmly by basically just surfing the net. Confident the pills were working after not needing the bathroom for a few hours I managed to make the train to Chengdu and to get off without any complications.

Being the second time on my adventure that I've had biological issues I am now well experienced. Therefore I can give the following advice: don't let the issues stop you from trying different things. Sure you might end up having a terrible day once in a while, but eating food in dodgy alleys is really not that bad, generally safe if you choose well and a real cultural experience. If that kind of excuse is stopping you from travelling to some exotic location then look deep at yourself in a mirror one day and punch yourself in the face, because you are missing out on a lot.

Inside the Xian railway station. Honestly mental.

Well Chengdu here I come. Watch out.

Costs:
Shuyuan Hostel: 20 Yuan a night ~ NZ$5 (super good deal that)
Tourist priced meal in Muslim district: 20 Yuan
Same meal in back alley way: 10 Yuan
Train to Chengdu: Can't remember, but would have been about 60-80 Yuan.

Beijing, the old meets the new

2008-12-28T02:33:00.000-08:00

The forbidden city

I woke up. Day two of five in this massive city. So much to see, not enough time.

It is a Saturday and that means that Beijing is swamped with tourists from the countryside of China. This equals mental. Unaware of what was to lie ahead we hired some bikes off a man who'd probably been hiring bikes out his whole life from the hutong we were staying on. For only 10 Yuan (NZ$3) it was well worth it, especially seeing we didn't return the bike till about 9pm. So off we went to ride the bike lanes of Beijing. We only got about 300 metres to the first attraction being Tiananmen Square.

My name is Mao, I'm the face of China

Tiananmen Square is the worlds largest city square, home of Mao Zedong, and place of bloody student riots in 1989. It was pretty fascinating being here, much like Red Square in Moscow. Having similar meaning to the communists of China as to the communists of Russia, being here gave you a real feeling of what the underlying nerves of China are made of. It also gave a great perspective of the population of China. Being the worlds largest urban square it was also the most populated square at the time of visit. So we missed the chance to see Mao and had to come back another day. When we came back it was very bizarre experience, much like seeing Lenin's tomb. This time we were marched through with thousands of people at a very rushed pace, being strictly instructed on what to do and even had the chance to buy a flower to lay on a memorial which we passed on.

Tiananmen Square, looking over to the Forbidden City entrance, with the big famous Mao photo

In the forbidden city overlooking one of the many temples

The rest of the square is basically just a huge open slab of concert so not that great, but at the end is the entrance to the forbidden city. So we headed on in. Again the massive population of China was experienced here. It seemed that Chinese people can only see things in tour groups, so there was hundreds of groups in similar coloured tour hats everywhere. Seeing us westerners are so independent we quite easily made it around the place without being part of a tour. But it was kinda spoiled as the overcrowded place wasn't really fun to experience due to the constant pushing and shoving of tour groups.

This is a crowd, they are annoying

The new opera house is super cool

Getting out of there was pretty relieving and we quickly went back to our bikes to go on a pretty fun self guided cycling tour of central Beijing. A few crazy food streets were visited where we ate lots of not so appetising animals on sticks, then cycled around some nice hutongs, waterways and the new opera building. Riding around town was really fun as Beijing is really well set up for cyclists. There are cycling lanes on nearly all roads which are fenced off from cars, this should be the model for all cities as would encourage a lot more cycling for safety reasons. Go green!

Random food on sticks... YUM...!!!

The next day we chopped tourist things because it was a Sunday and therefore the curse of the weekend busy-bodies had to be avoided. So we went shopping... Markets, knock off malls, and food stalls kept us very busy all day. There isn't much better than a delicious hot pot at the end of socialist shopping spree.

All your expensive clothes are here for mega cheap

Finally the weekend finished and we took this opportunity to visit the great wall. This was a very long day... I can't really explain easily how frustrating the great wall is to get to without being on a tour. So my advice for everyone is just join a tour at your hostel and don't even bother following the lonely planet guide on how to get out to the wall for cheap, as it basically won't be. Some smart Chinese people must have got hold of the instructions in the lonely planet and realised they could make a scam out of them. So we bused to this small town on the outskirts of Beijing, hoped off the bus into the scammer's traps. The wall is another 30 km from the bus stop so you have to take a shared taxi to get out there. Unfortunately tourists like us stand out like anything, so we were followed all over this town by the taxi group ring leader trying to get us to pay about NZ$100 for the three of us to get out this final bit. After doing things like grabbing and throwing the persons sign with excuses for the high price into a rubbish bin we finally got the price down to a reasonable $5 each.

Great Wall is great

Tom strides up the Great Wall's impractical 70 degree stair cases

The actual wall once we got to it was really good. Me and Tom walked from the Jinshanling to Simatai sections, while Arnika just explored the Simatai section. Many a classic great wall shot was captured and being a really nice blue calm day made it all the better. That was until we had to go home again. Another scam was gone through to get back to the bus to Beijing this time costing about NZ$15 each which was really annoying especially because the scammers knew it was our only way back so could basically charge whatever. The whole scamming tainted the day a bit as after all the arguing the amazing sights of the wall were a bit diluted. If someone from the tourism board of Beijing ever reads this, then get a public bus that goes all the way to the wall, seriously.

The Great Wall curves around the hill tops

Our final day was spent at the summer palace. The day was again a brilliant calm day, a little polluted but this made the palace seem quite beautiful as made the sun a saturated hazy yellow. We wondered the grounds for about four hours, and every moment was thoroughly enjoyed. The palace was so serene and so well presented. I managed to only walk about five metres at a time before coming across another amazing view to photograph. I think my photos will probably explain it a lot better than my writing, so enjoy.

All the bridges at the Summer palace were amazing pieces

The random old school street at the palace

The lookout to the lake at the Summer Palace

Travel team assembles at the Summer Palace

Polluted sunsets are beautiful sometimes...

A quick stop was made on the way back to the hostel past the new CCTV tower, which in my opinion is the coolest building in the world right now. Then a final diner was had down our amazing hutong then we took off to our over night train to Xian via the ridiculously over size Beijing West Railway Station.

Over sized? Yes.

CCTV building, if only I could live in it

Beijing, Trans Mongolian done, China begun.

2008-12-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

The Olympic Stadium Area

I am crossing desert, the population density is minimal, the land is featureless. This is leaving Mongolia by train out through the Gobi Desert. I fall asleep. I wake up. Still in the country side, but it is sparsely different. Welcome to China, the land of people. There seems to be no space that hasn't been cultivated, there are paved roads everywhere, and on those paved roads there are people, lots of people. We roll along with signs of a land long lived in, the Great Wall summons us into Beijing. Slowly the buildings get more compressed together and there height pushes the sky. For a city the size of Belgium it takes a good hour to travel into the train station. But as always the train arrives and we get off.

A not very fun three hour stop to change the bogeys on the train in the middle of the night

The great wall seen for the first time by my eyes

Right there, getting off, that was it. That was the completion of the Trans-Mongolian Rail. A journey that took us a quarter of the distance around the world. Along 7536 km of Europe and Asia through five time zones. We got off, and that was it. No 'welcome here' fireworks celebration, no handshake from the Chinese president. We just got off.

Welcome to Beijing...

Walking up out onto to the street we were suddenly lost in a sea of people. It seemed that everyone in town had gathered around the train station. Well this is what it felt like, the fact was there is just lots of people in town, everywhere. This was definitely a significant change from being a nomad wondering the empty steppe of Mongolia. A nice short ride on the flash new Beijing metro took us to our hostel. The Far East Hostel was located in brilliant little Hutong (a little Chinese alley way). But we reserved looking around for later in the day. First mission had to be the Olympics.

Hutong!

The team achieved Olympic glory

So another ride along even flasher sections of the Beijing Metro to the Olympic stadium was undertaken and Beijing then showed off all its grandeur right there. The stadium area is rather impressive to say the least. The new China seemed quite ahead of the world. Even after seeing the birds nest stadium and water cube on TV lots beforehand, it was still rather spectacular being there in person. It was obvious from the random night a few months after the big event on which we were there that the Olympics must have been amazing. We strolled for a while along the Olympic boulevard taking lots of photos until we reached another metro station and then went back for an old school taste of Beijing.

The water cube is beyond today

Looking fly by the birds nest...

This thing is cool, but probably didn't have any events run in it

The nest up close and personal

We had nearly reached our hostel stop, which took about 45 mins, when we had a bit of a disaster. Arnika, who had barely eaten all day was suddenly rather pale and complaining about not being able to stand up. So jumping out of a metro train onto the platform she had to sit down looking like she was about to pass out. Suffering from a case of low blood sugar we tried to make it out of the metro to find some coke or something for her to recover on. So helping her stand up, we made it about 5 metres before she turned to jelly in our arms and fainted. Being rather scared that this could turn out quite catastrophic, Tom ran off to get a coke while I took care of Arnika who had come back around, but had no idea of what was going on. Tom took a few minutes in which Arnika, who wouldn't remember it, was getting rather scared that she was going to get arrested. Thankfully some coke machine was near by and a few sips did some kind of magic and returned back our good old pal from the depths of her other dimension.

Even though Arnika fainting in a metro was quite intense, I still managed to document it

So relieved and contemplating what could have happened we returned to our Hutong to get a traditional dish of Peking duck to celebrate completing the rail. This started the next months eating marathon. Food being very cheap and very good in China was a joy. The joy was also found in the names of the food, 'road duck' being a quite accurate description of the dish which was just a whole duck that had been cut up and so looked like it had been just run over. A cheap $1 beer washed the dish down and feeling fantastic we made our way back to our sterile but very comfortable beds and dreamed of the new adventure that lay ahead, China.

Eating in a Hutong in Beijing is the best way to eat ever.

The diner was dominated

Central Mongolia, the finale of Mongolia

2008-12-15T18:54:00.000-08:00

The ultra hard Mongolia team

Arvaikheer is a town in Mongolia, a town that I can't remember really anything about. We arrived here at about 11pm and we only saw a drunk lying in a comma on the street before going to bed. In the morning we woke up and left. I have no photos of this place and not really any memories so it might as well not exist. But it does somewhere and I'm sure it has a purpose in being there. From Arvaikheer we started the central Mongolian part of our tour. We'd spend six nights in this part of the country before returning back to Ulaanbaatar. From Arvaikheer we'd journey to Khuisiin Naiman Nuur Nature Reserve, continuing via Tovkhon Khiid a mountain temple, to Kharkhorin (Karakorum) the old capital city of Mongolia. Then head west to Tsetserleg on our way to the Great White Lake in the Khorgo-Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur National Park to spend two nights. Then start the two day journey back to Ulaanbaatar past the fake Gobi named Mongol Els.

The vast steepe is interrupted by mountainous landscapes

Being completely over sitting in a van all day driving it was another day of it. Luckily the snow on the ground was slowly disappearing. I don't think it was melting from heat as the temperature was well below zero. But there was plenty of radiation from the sun seeing it was another brilliantly cloudless sunny day, so maybe this did a little work. So although driving around wasn't that fun any more, the scenery was just as amazing as ever. It seems that the whole of Mongolia has no shortage of visually stunning landscapes, it must be something to do with the fact that people haven't built rubbish all over the place so everything is just how it naturally should be. I think it says a lot about the rest of the world, I don't think it matters how impressive a building or planted garden is, natural beauty is always much more breathtaking.

Another day, another fantastic view

After driving along an icy blue river that contrasted so nicely against the mountains and hills covered in yellow grasses with a dusting of pure white snow for a few hours we arrived at an amazing ger camp. This was set at the end of a valley in a farm like setting which obviously is quite popular with tourist in the summer as was well equipped with a communal outhouse and a few empty gers that the drivers got to use as there private residence, instead of doing the usual sleep in the van or with the family. There was also a few other guests on another tour here so we got to have a social night although I didn't partake in drinking the bottle of vodka in the new Mongolian style of drinking (pour the person on your left a shot, give them the amount you feel they need) as I still feeling average from previous days situations.

This is us going crazy on some yak's cream, putting it on the biscuits of which we'd eat about a packet a day each

Me and my horse friend

This family was lucky enough to own a herd of yaks

The morning was rather confusing as we'd planned to leave early so that we could go see two monasteries that day and in turn chop riding horses. So after walking to the nearby frozen waterfall we expected to be leaving. But the hosts had produced a herd of horses and we were not allowed to leave without riding them. I suspect it was because about 50,000 togrogs were not going to be spent on the riding if we left. So seeing that we had no choice, hopped on the miniature versions of western horses for a fun ride around in the freezing cold. We managed to get up to a quick canter on the lil' things.

The river prior to the frozen waterfall

The frozen water fall, temperature here is -15 degrees celcius

On the top of the cliffs of where Zanabazar lived

After handing over the cash for the horse rides we took off to the mountain top monastery of Tovkhon Khiid. The monastery is reached by walking an hour long route up a hill. This was a nice walk through some of the only forest in Mongolia and a nice layer of snow made it quite magical. Approaching the top there was more and more blue prayer flags wrapped around trees until reaching the summit where there were just hundreds of them. The monastery cost 2,500 togrogs (about $3) but totally worth it. Supposedly Zanabazar, the greatest artist in all Mongolian history lived up here for a while in a cave. There were a number of recently restored temples at the base of the cliffs that contain the cave where Zanabazar worked. On top of the cliff is the very top of the hill, we climbed up the cliff which was very 'climb at your own risk of dieing' to the top. Here the magic came alive, views over the countryside and buddhist temples was something that I will treasure for the rest of my life. Even though I'm rather ignorant of the buddhist faith, I could have converted based on how impressive this place was.

The zillions of prayer flags that litter the mountain

The mountain top monastery, if there was a supermarket near by I'd totally live here

Arnika chillaxin outside a temple on top of a mountain

The view from the monastery is spectacular, note the forest is only on this mountain...

A buddha sits and waits for reincarnation

It was another late night before we arrived in Karakorum for the night. I wish we could have got here a bit earlier as we were staying in the equivalent of the Hilton of ger camps. Complete with a squat that had a western styled toilet built over it. So a nice dinner with even vegetables in it was had before crashing on the delightfully comfortable beds. The next morning was a sad one, as we had to say goodbye to the other van that had been with us so far. From now it was just our travel team, the American couple and Gana, a pretty good van if I ever did see one.

The wall surrounding the monastery in Karakorum

You can tell if a tree is sacred by all the blue silk flags on it.

Next up was the second monastery, Erdene Zuu Khiid, we didn't get to see the day before. Here in Karakorum is the first monastery built in Mongolia and was probably the most important until the Stalinist purges in 1937 destroyed most of it. This meant it wasn't as impressive as what it probably once was, as inside the large walls there was only a couple of temples and a lot of old foundations where temples had been. There was some pretty ridiculous looking buddhas in there so was worth the nothing we paid to get in as there wasn't anyone around caring to take our money off us.

A dog.

Pavement coming into Tsetserleg, this was a sweet moment for everyone's behinds

A couple of hours driving along some of the only paved roads in the country got us to Tsetserleg nice and early. Here we were surprised to find out that this was actually Gana's home town and we were staying with his own family. So we got treated very well, with offerings of buuz and strawberry tea given to us for a afternoon snack. With all the spare time on us we got to take a walk around town which was really nice. The town is described as the Aspen of Mongolia, this was a great description for this time of year, as snow covered all the surrounding rocky mountains.

The Great White Lake viewed from a volcano

The Great White Lake is freakin sweet.

The real reason for coming this way was to get to the Great White Lake. But in the morning it was hard to convince Gana to leave his family for another few days. So after he had organised his household properly we took off. On the way to the White Lake we got to go past another amazing river gorge, and got to camp early again thanks to some paved roads that were scattered along our route. The lake happened to be partially frozen over, so looked absolutely stunning. We were camping on the edge of the lake where we got to watch the sun go down over the ice. But while having lots of fun skating around on the frozen lake Tina (one of the Americans) happened to fall over and hit her elbow pretty badly. Turns out she broke her arm and would have to go back to San Francisco for a few weeks in her long world trip to get it taken care of. But she toughed out the rest of the time on our tour so it didn't hamper on our adventures.

The icy lake close up

Even after months of roughing it, I can still dominate mountain walks

We had decided to spend two nights here to give driving a break. This was fantastic as ten days of driving a few hundred kilometers each day was pretty easy to get over. Unfortunately the day we weren't driving was spent mostly sitting inside the ger as it was freezing outside. But I tried to make the most of it and went for a little walk around the lake, but the cold forced me back inside soon enough. We had also planned to go riding on horses for a while, but supposedly the herd had disappeared??? This wasn't too big a deal with the cold and all. In the afternoon the wind died down a bit and temperatures rose above freezing. So Arnika and I decided to walk up a nearby volcano, after getting half way there Gana turned up in the van with the Americans and dropped us off at the bottom on it. The volcano was pretty cool, and you can see what the results were after it exploded last, as there is plenty of metamorphic rock formations around including some cool caves we explored.

Sitting on a volcano, am I crazy?! Heck yes!!!

A wild herd of horses gather by the frozen lake

Day twelve, and only one more night. By now we kind of had had enough of the country and were starting to miss modern inventions such as a toilet bowl. So we drove as far as we could today, therefore making the next day a shorter journey back to Ulaanbaatar. We spent the night in a place called the fake or small gobi. This was a good description as had a small set of dunes, and looked much like where we'd been, except it took us only an hour, not six days, to drive in and out of. Another sad night was had, with the eventual disbandment of the group inevitably close. After a few quick photos of everyone in the morning we excitingly took off to Ulaanbaatar.

Spelunking down some stupidly small cave

The anticipation of modern luxuries made the drive into the city seem like forever. But eventually we got there only to be left feeling slightly bemused by how horrible the city actually is. Understandably after spending two weeks out in some of the best untouched natural beauty in the world you view a city for what it really is. Ulaanbaatar is really just like any other city that we'd visited in Russia, with 'grey' being the best description one can come up with. The busy roads and smoky chimneys were a bitter welcome, but it was still good to be back into the comforts of a permanent building. The second best part of being back was finding out all our Chinese visas had been processed fine and were waiting for us back in the hostel (Number one best thing was of course a toilet seat and flush button!). We ordered some good old classic western dinner of pizza to be delivered to us, and then just blobbed out in front of a tv before hitting the sack. Recovery has never been so sweet.

This is what a Mongol look like

This is what a Mongol child looks like

The mighty russian van starts up one last time

This brings a conclusion to Mongolia, the next day at 8am we were on the train to Beijing. It may be the last time I'll ever be in Mongolia as it is one of those once in a life time things. But in saying that I'd love to come back. When people ask me what was my favourite country I visited while away I usually say Mongolia. It was so different to not only everywhere else on the trans-mongolian train line, but also to everywhere else in the world. The vast openness and freedom of the countryside is amazing, I've experienced similar places like in Montana and Canada, but it can't compare with the nomadic way of life people have. With my western eyes I might assume that the people are just poor and live a hard struggle all the time, I feel like this is a huge misunderstanding. All the nomads seemed so happy with their situation that it can't be like this. The people are tough so can handle cold temperatures or lack of vegetables in their diets. All the problems of the country seem to be concentrated in Ulaanbaatar where alcoholism is rife and poverty prevalent. I am not entirely sure that tourism is good for the country as this will slowly dilute the culture, you can see already that the smart nomad families who sell out their homes for tourist accommodation have satellite dishes and a good car or motorbike. So the outcome will probably be just an eventual culture that is lost to western and capitalist's unfulfilling promises. But all the same, this is probably going to happen no matter how many backpackers arrive here. So while you can, visit Mongolia, it is radical, just make sure you bring a good warm coat.

Costs for whole of Mongolia:
3 nights at UB Guesthouse: US$5 a night
Tour base cost (ie renting van, driver, petrol): US$30 a day
Family payment on tour: US$5 for every night at a ger
Chinese Visa: US$30
Train ticket to Beijing: US$110 (FREAKIN expensive, this was the cheapest we could find which was at the international ticketing office near the train station)
Total spent in Mongolia: NZ$1057 = NZ$70 a day (this would have been much less if there wasn't a dam financial crises which saw the NZ dollar lose about 15% of its value against the US dollar just as we arrived in Mongolia).
Running trip total: NZ$7930

The Gobi Desert. One of the harshest environments in the world...

2008-12-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

Arnika gives the fermented camels milk a try

Day three of thirteen is spent travelling to the first real town of our tour. A seven or eight hour drive further south into the Gobi we drove to Dalanzadgad. The journey was nothing too exciting apart from the oppourtunity we got to try fermented camels milk. While driving along some rather empty piece of country there happened to be a man sitting on the side of the road. Our awesome driver Gana not being able to tell us what he was doing pulls over and starts talking to the man. The next thing we have an old soft drink bottle full of some milk like substance in the van. “Camel”, Gana says. Looking into our food guide of Mongolia where we see that a local delicacy is fermented camels milk. Skeptical about it we each took turns having a sip. After one sip, there was no need to re-try just in case we didn't catch the flavour the first time. It was absolutely horrible. Think of a nice beer, maybe stienlager pure, then mix it with milk, then leave it out in the sun for a few days, finally put a little camel urine into the mix.

Some locals on their motorbike, check the awesome head scarf

A marmot sits up for a photo

I wait for a hitch, it doesn't come, I'm still waiting till this day

Later in the day we arrived in Dalanzadgad. The first thing we noticed upon coming into the lovely paved town was the ridiculous signs pointing out that trees are the way of the future for Mongolia. This was rather ironic seeing after driving through Mongolia for three days we hadn't seen a single tree. But supposedly South Korea is planting lots of trees near Dalanzadgad LINK. Other than the sweet signs Dalanzadgad doesn't have much else going for it. Once you get out of the very small town centre there are no other paved roads and just sad square blocks of peoples houses. But interesting enough everyone actually lives in gers even though they are in a town and therefore not really packing up and moving down the valley every few months. This is like the old meets new, with traditional homes that have modern utilities like electricity but still not sewerage or water systems.

The sun sets over Dalanzadgad

Mongolian horses roam the steppe

The gang walks down into the ice gorge

After plugging in all our electronic devices we headed off to the town centre where there was a local market and a monastery. The market was basically just a place where country people come in to sell their animal carcasses and in return get some supplies for the countryside, so nothing really interesting for us apart from an ice cream. The sun set nicely over the monastery, night time came in, some vodka was drunk before heading to bed.

A goats skull marks a sacred site in the ice gorge

The ice gorge without a much ice

Deep in the ice gorge where the sun melts the ice

The next day we headed off for two days of exploring around the Gurvan Saikhan National Park. First destination was the ice gorge at Yolyn Am. After walking right past the actual gorge we walked around for two hours trying to find it and instead explored some scenic hills, we turned around and realised that the gorge was right near the entrance and so quickly walked down through it. The gorge was really impressive being a rather deep cut through a tightly winding valley. Along the gorge there are lots of sacred stone piles which give the place a magical feeling. But it was getting well into the afternoon so we headed off to the Bayanzag Flaming Cliffs.

The flaming cliffs I never really saw, thanks Tom for the photo

From the gorge it was about a three hour drive. Within an hour of driving I started to feel rather ill. We stopped along the way at some random yak statues, but I couldn't pull myself out of the van. Another hour down the road we were at the Flaming Cliffs, feeling terrible I hoped out the van because I really wanted to see a dinosaur fossil as which the Flaming Cliffs are famous for. I opened the van door and get out, basically I collapse onto the ground. Being a hard man, I still think I can enjoy the cliffs and so the drivers after checking whether I was still alive drive off to the other side of the valley where they'd pick us up after we'd found some fossils for ourselves.

Meet Gana our driver, my best Mongolian friend

I stood up with confidence, but the feeling was short lived. Everyone else was now getting into licking dirt to see if something would stick to their tongues which would confirm it being some kind of fossil. (please don't read the next wee bit if you don't want to read something disgusting.) After finding someone with some toilet paper in their pocket I had to find a small trench and lay my own dinosaur eggs. Soon the lower half of my body had evacuating its interior, but that was not enough. After catching a whiff of all the processed mutton I'd been eating the top half of my body evacuated itself through the dental exit. A delightful mixture of last nights mutton and lunch times self made pasta was now covering some undiscovered dinosaur bones. Feeling more relieved I kicked some dust over it to give someone in the future a nice surprise for when they are licking the dirt in search of a fossil.

This is me about to die

I'm stumble across the valley of dinosaur bones

I next had to doing a somewhat short walk across the valley. Normal people wouldn't find this too much of an extreme journey, but I was feeling like passing out. So being encouraged by Arnika and Tom, I crossed the ancient dinosaur valley to collapse into the waiting van. I spent the evening and night not enjoying life in a ger while throwing up and desecrating the squat which happened to be the most exposed squat in Mongolia, with only a small two foot high three sided wall stopping the bone chilling wind.

The girls walk get lost in the snow covered sand dunes

Thankfully the next morning I awoke feeling a lot better. So the journey continued, I didn't really take much notice of what was going on outside of the van on this day, instead just concentrated on the back of my eye lids and turned my body into recovery mode. Waking up, I found we'd arrived at another amazing location. The Khongoryn Els are Mongolia's largest set of sand dunes. Stretching over 100km, it felt as though we were in the middle of a classic sand dessert insert of the more scrub filled Gobi. Here the nomad family we were staying with owned a herd of camel that we got to ride up to the dunes. Seeing that their was only five camels and nine of us tourists we rode the camels in two parts. That is the first group rode to the dunes, were dropped off to play in them while the camels came back to the gers to pick the second group up then lead them to the dunes and pick up the first group and take them back to the ger and then return to pick up the second group. I was part of the second group and we got to the dunes after a pretty fun camel ride. Unfortunately the weather was changing and a little bit of snow was starting to fall. But we stayed in the dunes expecting the camels to return soon enough. After two hours of standing on the dunes which were now white with snow we finally saw instead of camels, our van coming back to pick us up. We ended up with only half a camel ride because the camel herder had just decided to let the camels rest instead of picking up the stranded tourists.

Camels are awesome, I wish i could bring one home

Me on a camel, woah!!! Misty the camel is the best camel ever.

I stand on the sand dunes while the snow begins

The camels tough it out in the snow

The gers after the snow starts to fall, pretty romantic

Back in the warmth of the ger, we kept a close check on the level of snow on the ground throughout the evening. The snow continued to fall, which didn't provide us with much confidence in the next day. This was lowered a little more when Gana indicated that the following day was going to be a lot of hills, so we'd best get moving at 7am. So after a short nights sleep we wake up to find it continued to snow throughout the night, and also to find that it was rather foggy and so visibility was down to about 100 meters. But this is Mongolia and waiting for the storm to pass isn't an option. So we packed the vans and took off.

Great visibility makes it hard to even see our own tracks we came across multiple times

More digging, in the background examples of the mountains we were driving over

The ger camp we stayed in was situated along a valley bottom and we had to cross the hills opposite the sand dunes to get to our next destination. Unfortunately the hills were actually mountains, and so we had to find the right 4wd track to make it over them. This took a good two hours of driving back and forth in the white out until some cloud lifted a little and the track was found. Finally running already well behind schedule we set off into the mountains which were under about a foot of snow, surrounded by cloud and with only a small 4wd track running up them that was very easy to lose. The following few hours were the most life threatening of our entire trans-mongolian adventure. Starting out with a breakdown of one of the vans, the drivers did a bit of tinkering, then we followed each other up. Making it about five mins at a time before a van would get stuck in a snow drift, we spent hours digging snow out from under the tires. Then each time we'd get stuck it would mean driving backwards and reattempting to bust through the snow drift. And if getting stuck in snow drifts wasn't scary enough, then driving along the mountains ridges where the track cambered to the point where it was seriously close to having a van tip over made the nature of the adventure very real and seriously putting thoughts of religion and after lives into our minds. Nothing was more welcoming than the buddhist goat monument marking the end of the mountain pass.

Driving along the mountain ridge

Dig Gana dig, a few feet of snow can't stop Russia's finest vans

A mountain goat sculpture welcomes us out the mountain pass

A look back at mountain pass we drove over, utterly glad to be out

All the hours lost before and during the mountains meant that we still had a seven hour drive left to Arvaikheer. There was no messing about once we got to our ger for the night, it was straight to bed where surely a few thank god we are still alive prayers went down while.

Mongolia, The tour days 1 and 2. Take it to the limit!

2008-12-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

The ger camp out in an isolated basin which was surrounded by less than nothing

I dream I can converse with a nomad of Mongolia.

“Is your herd fattening up well?” I enquire.

“It is cold and the winter approaches, the autumn has been dry but my herd is fat enough to survive” he replies in his rugged and well worn voice, he stands wearing a long coat with sleeves that go past his hands which are clutched behind his back.

Limestone hills roll up out of the Gobi

The bitterly cold wind blows. “Yes it will not be long till snow is falling, what will you do if the winter is harsh?”. I do not have much hope in survival, I can barely handle the current weather and it is only late October.

“We will make it through. Mongols know how to survive, this is how we live”. He then invites me into his ger and shares a meal of rice and mutton with me. I give back a bottle of vodka in return for the hospitality.

Standing at the edge of a huge cliff at Tsagaan Suvraga

Rolling steppe, building up layers of browns like a chocolate cake

Warmed by the vodka, we speak into the night. “What do you think about moving to the city and forgetting about this hard way of life?”.

“Many families are moving to the city for money and modern amenities, it is a shame to see them go. They give up so much for so little, I have everything I need in my ger which only takes two hours to pack up. This may not be a lot of tangible goods, but I have a purpose in my life out on the steppe. Survival is not easy and so it gives your life a lot of meaning. My spirit is always awake, there is the openness and freedom which the sun shines on every day and what the millions of stars light up every night. I do not need to keep buying new things; I’m contempt with my current state. Every day I wake up with a job to do which lets me survive the day, why would I want to horde stuff I do not need for today.”

You could get lost out here, but you'd have to run for a day to get out of view over the horizon

The endless steppe of Mongolia meets the big sky of Mongolia

He pauses, then in reflection says, “You are similar to me, you travel with just a backpack and no more. You find purpose in survival and achieving your goals of getting where you need to go.”

I agree with everything he says, but I will return to the west soon, to the comforts of the city. It won’t be long before I am sitting once again behind a desk every day feeding the pockets of the greedy. I can’t escape this though, there are some things I cannot give up, things I was brought up with my entire life that I have been made to believe I need. It is sad but true, the emptiness that I feel from having too much stuff without any point but to numb the senses has created a hole that can’t be filled.

A lone traveller walks the hills in the Gobi Desert

The tour begins:

After a hectic morning we jump into the van, another group has had to change their plans because of a storm so we have another van tagging along with us for the first eight nights. Our two vans packed up full of life's necessities roll on out of Ulaanbaatar. It is only an hour before we are out of the city of one million people and onto a completely empty valley with only a 4wd track, some old rubbish on the side of the track and large barren mountains within view. It was fantastic to see how easy it is to get away from everything in Mongolia.

After driving for less than an hour out of Ulaanbaatar we were in the middle of nothing

The gang plays around in the granite rocks of Baga Gazryn Chuluu

Wild herd of Bactrian Camels, double humps are the best.

On the first day we drove south to the north of the Gobi Desert. It was a great way to start, we were greeted by a herd of wondering camels, drove through huge valleys surrounded by incredibly sharp mountain ridges and saw the sun set over a peaceful lake. The only concern was that it was well dark and we hadn’t found our ger camp to stay in for the night. This was our first lesson in trusting the driver, without any road signs or actual roads it was incredible how all of a sudden we turned up at a camp site surrounded only by complete darkness. A cooked meal of mutton and rice made by the family was a great treat before we went to sleep, with the fire roaring away fueled by some good old cow dung.

Me vs Camel. Result: Camel 1, Me nil.

Over looking the first nights ger, there is no shopping malls around

The sleep was not the most comfortable ever. Just sleeping on an old hospital styled bed with a few pieces of wood and a rug to support you on the old beds rusting springs. This was the least of our worries, as later into the night when the cow dung had run out and so the fire basically out the cold set in. This wasn't the coldest night we were to have, but it was a bit of a shock compared to being inside over heated accommodations in the city. So after a long night we gratefully welcomed in the family hosts who got the fire going again and brought in some hot water and breakfast. Getting out of the ger we were surprised to see that surrounding us was a fortress of rock formations named Baga Gazryn Chuluu. So we spent an hour playing around before we were again off in the awesome Russian van for another day of adventure.

The sun sets over Ulaan Suvraga

Russian Van and Ger at night!

Day two was spent driving deeper south into the Gobi, after driving past the Sum Khokh Burd ruins, an ancient temple surrounded by a small lake and built from rocks found no closer than 300 km away, we were next to just drive for hours past absolutely nothing. This nothing was incredible. In the afternoon after only having seen the odd herd of animals and random nomads out on there yamaha motorbikes we pulled into a town which had a petrol station. We somehow managed to acquire some petrol even though there was a shortage of gas and we were in a town that seemed to have no decent roads coming into it that a petrol tanker could drive down. Feeling a bit safer after not having been given any fuel at the last two petrol stations the day before we headed off to Ulaan Suvraga which is a place with a set of cliffs that are a burning rusty red colour and look like they were stolen off the planet mars (the lonely planet describes it as a 'badlands', i'd say it was bad ass!). This was only a short drive to our ger for the night. This was a beautifully located camp, in the middle of a small isolated basin where the sun set and lit up the desert into a orange glowing landscape which was a magical way to end a great day before returning to the ger for another mutton and rice dinner and cold nights sleep.

A gully running down a cliff is a mega tourist attraction in the Gobi

A random temple out in the middle of the Gobi

Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, The Mystery Of The Missing Stalin Statue

2008-11-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

It is going to be difficult to write about Mongolia. We spent two weeks here which were mostly spent in a Russian van driving around the country side. But the experience was so amazing and so different to anything that I’ll not be able to accurately describe it, and even my incredible photos I got won’t do justice to the beauty of the land.

Ulaanbaatar

The marching band army of Mongolia

The first two days were spent in the capital city of UB, staying at the appropriately named UB Guesthouse (US$5 a night, great deal). Here we used most of our time sorting out a tour to go on around Mongolia, and a little bit of time partying with friends made on the train into town.
The city is quite similar to Russian cities, big industrial plants are interwoven with ugly apartment blocks. But the Asian influence and general Mongolian feel of the place gave it a refreshing feel. There are numerous building projects going on showing that the place is experiencing economical growth, although this might just be all the American dollars flowing in as aid, which is most likely secretly going to the exploitation of untouched mineral deposits around.

Chinggis is a big dude, watch yourself around him, he is crazy

The first day we explored a few local sights, after seeing the Ulaanbaatar square with Chinggis Khan sitting appropriately at one end over looking his empire we headed to the Museum of Natural History. The museum is stocked with poorly taxidermied animals and some fossils included a full t-rex skeleton. Presentation had obviously not been included in last years budget, as every animal had fully visible stitch marks and facial furs which had been stretched poorly over their skeletons.

The natural history museum's priceless artefacts are protected by this dude

That night we went out for a local dining experience. The place chosen had a cheap menu to persuade us in. After accepting the invitation we were invited down into the basement of the restaurant, this was one of those horribly uncomfortable situations where you have no idea what is going on due to language barriers. We assumed we were actually being seated at the very last available seats which happened to be large couches which looked like the place where local mafia would sit around and have vodka and cigars while being entertained by some 'women of the night'. Then after watching some dodgy man trying to convince a young lady to go with him into the bathroom we were finally seated in our actual seats out of the basement. Mutton was the only real option on the menu, so variations of this was ordered. The best being buuz (pronounced booze) a dumpling filled with tasty mutton. YUM!

Prayer wheels, turn them clockwise to send off a prayer

After getting in a feed Tom, our two European friends from the train and I headed off to a nightclub that according to the good old lonely planet had a 15m Stalin statue inside. Disappointingly the statue was now a myth, but the club was still pumping Mongolian styles so we stuck around. Even though Mongolia is kind of a backwards country, you’d assume they could still get talented DJ’s in the clubs. The DJ was well off point, playing terrible techno from the year 1999 while struggling to mix together two tracks without completely screwing up, but nothing yelling into the microphone couldn’t fix to get the 10 people large crowd pumped again. Loads of classic cheesy dance moves went down until the clubs midnight closing time was reached.

Gandan Khiid's main temple, inside the giant buddha (example here)

The following day we got up early enough to get to the main monastery in UB, Gandan Khiid , in time to see the practicing monks do their morning prayers. The monastery was really good, slightly over run by pigeons, but the guano and feathers gave the place a real Buddhist atmosphere. The highlight was the 25 metre Buddha statue contained in the main building. Obviously very different from western views on idolatry but was quite fascinating. After turning a few prayer wheels we headed off to the black market of Ulaanbaatar.

The kids play with the pigeons

The market is one of the biggest in Asia and contains nearly everything you could ever need and none of it the real deal making it all fantastically cheap. We got everything we needed for going out into the wilderness for two weeks at a super low price and didn’t even manage to get pick pocketed while doing so. Although some other travelers told us they’d purposely placed a few lose bills slightly hanging out of their pockets after reading about the notorious theft that occurs and managed to have it all flogged.

Next we ran back to the hostel to make our tour meeting. We managed to, while heavily sweating, arrange a 12 night adventure with an American couple around the Gobi Desert for 6 nights and then up around Central Mongolia for the rest of the time. This begun a mad rush of things that needed to be completed before going into the middle of nowhere such as applying for a Chinese visa and getting train tickets out of Mongolia. The following 20 hours were the most stressful of the entire trip after doing endless odd jobs and having to deal with an incompetent train ticketing office multiple times. Needless to say that tears were shed and getting into the van to leave on our stress free adventure was the perfect remedy for nearly wanting to kill everyone around.

Irkutsk and Olkon Island, the last of Russia

2008-11-20T06:05:00.000-08:00

Hell Yeazz! Mystery pastries bought off a Babushka on a train platform somewhere in Siberia

Arriving in on the train to our final Russian destinations was quite exciting. In one respect it was sad that we were going to be leaving Russia soon, but knowing what was beyond outweighed this. As with travelling, it is all about the now and the excitement of what is to come. It is basically the ultimate form of consumerism, are you satisfied now, and will you be satisfied in the future, all without any social responsibility.

Welcome to Irkutsk, we love the industry

A shrine over looks the beautiful Lake Baikal

The ferry across the straight onto the island

The island is only over that little bit of water, which takes only about 20 minutes by ferry

We used Irkutsk as a gateway to Lake Baikal, as it is still 70 odd kilometres from the largest lake by volume in the world. So a day was spent wondering around before going up to Olkon Island which is on the edge of the lake. Our first task was to get a Mongolian visa, after having trouble trying to get one in Moscow we were slightly worried that it would be the same here. Moscow is a little bit crazy though, and the consulate in Irkutsk was very straight forward, an application form and some money was all we needed for a visa, and it took all of half an hour to complete everything.

Would have liked to go bear hunting, but you can't do everything

Another long train into Irkutsk is broken up with a snooze

After the visa business it actually got cold so sight seeing was postponed till later in the afternoon. Unfortunately that afternoon we failed to see what we set out to see due to not having a map on us. But on the other hand, seeing Irkutsk is one of the major tourist destinations of Russia for people on the Trans-Mongolian line it means it is full of travellers. So being in a real hostel, with real travellers was really exciting. It was the first time since Moscow where we’d actually stayed with foreigners in Russia, so the lack of sightseeing was made up for by socialising with all the cool people.

Wondering the forests of Olkon Island, a magical moment

Another beautiful shot, we scored it awesomely with the weather here

If you ever want to feel awesome, have a moment like this, me standing over Lake Baikal

Leaving the next day to Olkon Island was great, being able to actually truly get away from the post soviet cities that had dominated our trip was a pleasure. The ride to Olkon Island took a solid 7 hours, which was not that great being in a minivan, but we got there in the end and got to have a sweet ferry ride across the straight to the island which gave us a great view of the width of the lake.

The town on Olkon Island was pretty futuristic

Olkon Island is about 70 odd km long and probably makes up about 1/10 of the length of the lake. When you are on here you are really isolated away from everything. It was surprising that the town we were staying in actually had any thing going on, but because of the natural beauty of the place and a couple of really well run guest houses set up for tourists and plenty of things to do that it was pretty good. But the best thing and one of the major factors of actually coming here was the food. The guest house we stayed in (Nakitas guest house), and I think all of them do it, served three meals a day, each with probably more in a meal than we’d been eating in a day prior. So apart from spending a lot of time eating, we did get out and go for some walks around the forest and shore, took a life lengthening dip in the freezing cold lake (see below video), and met lots of other travellers who had been doing the Trans-Siberian, but just not stopping off as we’d done through Siberia. The two nights here were fantastic and were capped off by going to the local night club, which was just someone's house who served beer and had a laser light.

Twenty five years added to my life right here

Getting loco in the club on Olkon Island

After another really packed minivan ride back to Irkutsk we got bought our final train ticket out of Russia and spent another night at the same hostel here went to some of the local markets for a bit of fun. In the morning it was a short dash off to the train station and then we caught the train on out of the mother land.

Rocking it on the main street, nicely paved with compacted dirt

Travel team stands by the greatest volume of fresh water in the world

Although I'll do another post about the train in the future, this is sort of the end of the Russian section of this blog. So in post analysis I'd say that Russia was totally awesome, period! Some things weren't all that great such as all paid service people being horribly rude, there being little set up for the backpacker crowd out of the Europe side of Russia, and it being quite expensive to stay anywhere. Discounting these things as being part of the adventure, it was a great place to visit. There is so much recent history everywhere which makes just about any destination fascinating. If you aren't into historical events, then riding the train might satisfy you instead. Meeting real Russians in there natural environment was really fun, especially being plied with unnatural amounts of vodka. The adventure of going across Siberia was really fulfilling in terms of feeling like you've achieved one of those things that people put on a list of things to do before they die, and kind of makes you feel as though you're a pioneering explorer.

Goodbye Lenin, will love you forever

If you were ever thinking of doing the Trans-Siberian, then totally do it. Don't be put off by the difficult visa regulations, or the language barrier, or the price of it. These things can all be worked out somehow. I'd also really recommend doing something like we did and going to smaller cities through Siberia. They give you another view on Russia you wouldn't get by just visiting St Petersburg and Moscow. And finally you should definitely ride third class (platzkart). It doesn't get any more real than the class of the people, we met others who'd travelled second class and got stuck in a carriage with two old Russian dead beats for five days (boring!).

Costs:
This is the final costing section of a month in Russia,
Average nights accommodation: 700 rbls
Average days spending on food: 250 rbls
Train tickets about 6000 rbls
Total spent in Russia: ~32000 rbls = NZ$2200
Running Total: $6873

Krasnoyarsk, Nature City Of Siberia

2008-11-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

The original Trans-Siberian engine is much cooler than the modern ones

After a number of weeks of large industrial cities without much more than a central park to remind you of the natural world, it was decided that a stop in Krasnoyarsk should be done due to it being beside a nature reserve which would give us the opportunity to experience the great outdoors that actually make up probably 99% of Siberia.

The Yenisei River flows along beside Krasnoyarsk

There is a small problem with Krasnoyarsk, which is that the city is another industrial monster, and the great outdoors are somewhat spoiled by the rising chimneys billowing out dark thick smoke. It must have been the thick polluted air, or maybe we just left out intellect back in the educated city of Tomsk, but we decided to march around town with all our heavy gear certain the first hotel we walked up to would have a cheap room available. The haze in our minds kept us from being wise and doing what we’d found good at Tomsk which was to leave one person at the train station with all the gear while the others found accommodation. So after walking the entire city up and down, going to about six different places, we finally found one that was cheap and available. The theme of Krasnoyarsk was started which was for us to be tired and some what miserable.

The train station of Krasnoyarsk, photos of things like this are illegal in Russia

There are bears in the forest that we walked in, good thing I had my gun

Hotel Sever was the cheapest place we’d actually found in the whole of Russia which was great, even though it came without a shower and with central heating turned onto ‘roast-‘em-alive’. After sitting around for a while, we went out to a café called Ciao. Surprising as it is, this place was actually really good. Served the most delicious Vienna coffee I’ve ever tried I was well impressed. It came as no surprise though that this place was actually owned by some Germans, there is no way a Russian café could have such good service, with actual smiles and polite conversation from the waitress. Arriving back to the hotel it wasn’t long before the heat sent us off to a nightmare inducing sweaty night's sleep.

The rock formations in Stolby Nature Reserve

The next morning we were hoping for a fantastic sunny day, we got cold miserable grey turning to cold miserable rain with grey. But this didn’t stop us from our goal (which was basically all my desire) to go to the nature reserve and get in some of the good old great outdoors. If you are ever going to Stolby Nature Park, and have a lonely planet or any other guide book, do not trust its directions on how to get there. 7, 50a are meant to be the bus numbers which take you there, neither of these actually exist. Instead we found by walking half way there then jumping on a bus which can’t possibly go in the wrong direction that it was the number 30 that goes right past it. Only about 10 km from town is this lovely preserved piece of nature. It contains a number of large rock formations that make for good goals for hikes through the forested hills. Without any map (bad idea number 23432) we took off up a hill. Fortunately it was a small hill and after reaching the top we realized we’d just missed the main track, a big road, that goes into the center of the park. Not to worry, we scrambled down the hill side onto the road and took off to the rock formation we’d spotted from the top of the hill. The next few hours were spent walking along this road with a rock formation in sight that didn’t seem to get larger the closer we got to it. And as mentioned before the weather was turning to rain. So by about 4pm we’d reached somewhat near the bottom of the rocks (which were way more impressive from the first hill we’d climbed) completely soaked and freezing cold. Spotting the rocks through some trees we turned around and heading back to the bus which was fortunately all downhill so didn’t take too long. Arriving back in the grey city we went straight to the greatest café in Russia once again to warm up and dry off our clothes.

I get lost in the nature reserve

That was about it for Krasnoyarsk. There place had potential, but weather and poor success at finding a hotel marred its rating. This was somewhat unfortunate as it was my pick to go there, but there is some other things about the place worth a mention. The city is probably a great place to visit in summer, the nature park is right there just out of town, and the place is build around the Yenisei River which is very commanding and nice to look at. Also there is music pumped out of every lamp post along the main streets, Karla Marxa, Lenina etc, trying to lift the atmosphere of the city. This is actually rather annoying but good on them for trying. Along with the music are fairy lights in lots of the trees along the main streets so if you are festive you might quite like the place. Lastly a few sights feature on the 10 rbl note, so if you are cool you could try and take a photo with the note and sight in the same photo, I’m not that cool though…

The thousands of people who made the Trans-Siberian rail lie under it these days

Tomsk, Smartest Town in Town

2008-11-12T02:06:00.000-08:00

Relaxing in Tomsk, ahh perfect

In the days of old strong soviet Russia, when social engineering was in full flight, the leaders decided that there should be towns devoted to universities. These would spit out intellectuals and having them all gathered in the same place would let their minds combine to create new and wonderful technologies that would destroy the capitalists. One such creation was Tomsk, a small city a few hours drive from Novosirbirsk, its big ugly industrial sister.

Another great moment with the man Lenin

The streets were lined with autumn trees; leaves slowly falling to the ground, the hazy orange/brown glow contrasting the green fields of parks. The architecture is stylised wooden two storey cosy homes unfortunately not maintained and left to the moving muddy ground to slowly topple. Along the main street large classical roman styled university buildings are sided with cobble stone path ways, containing modern contemporary sculptures which seem to be meandering along the adjacent Tom River. Arriving into our cheap hotel (TGU Hotel) that we managed to intellectually find by only sending two of the team out while I looked after the bags in the train station, we were welcomed by a newly renovated room well superior to a lot of other places we’d stayed at, at a margin of the price. It felt like we were one with the university crowd, well looked after, deserving of prestige, and with a hope given to us to achieve great things.

The cabbage patch kids came from Tomsk

The two days we spent here were too short, and the time was well enjoyed. The weather for one day was a balmy 15 degrees which meant t-shirts, and sunglasses were a necessary accessory. After having a rather wild time on the train prior to Tomsk, a day of relaxing in the park and visiting local cafes and restaurants was a perfect way to wind down and re-energise. The favourite pick of all joints was the pop art café on the corner of the main park along Lenina Prospect. With its array of tooth decaying sugary cakes and cheap small portioned meals it made an excellent excursion from the comfort of our hotel.

The River Tom floats on by

Aside from the fantastic relaxing feel of the town, there were a few things that were found to be unexpected here. The night we tried to go out to have a drink at a bar was rather difficult. We found somewhere to go, but it was more a restaurant than a bar, and was somewhat spoiled by the terrible lounge singer who we were forced to pay 50 rubles each to hear. But upon leaving we realised where the actual partying of the youthful town took place. The main avenue was littered with people out in the dark drinking and hollering on the sidewalks many benches. This was quite interesting as you’d have thought that such a young vibrant population would be filling the typical trendy drinking holes found in any other city. But instead the intellectuals have realised that brews can be bought at all the street vendors along Lenina all night and at a fraction of the price compared to the same tipple in a bar. Unfortunately our flash hotel had a terribly policy of a midnight curfew (although it was probably just a rule the receptionist of the night made up so she didn’t have to man the door).

Autumn is a beautiful time to travel in Tomsk

Tomsk seems to be a city with a good future, as long as the youth stick around. It is managing quite well without being on the main trans-siberian line. So if they just bring in a strict building code so that all the buildings stop falling over, (it seemed our hotel was renovated by high school students, with door handles on backwards, and bathrooms that were as sealed as a punctured tyre) then there is no doubt that Tomsk will be one of the great Siberian cities.

The classic wooden architecture, example is not falling over

Yekaterinburg, A Real Industrial Town

2008-11-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

Hostels are rarities in Russia, and if you come across a city with one it is a good idea to make the most of it. I’ve no idea why you’d actually want to stay in a cheap hotel over a hostel. For the same price as the cheapest of hotel rooms you get a place with a pretty comfy bed, a kitchen, bathroom with a shower, usually a laundry, and the chance to meet other travellers. This is the entire reason we chose to visit Yekaterinburg. The sites to visit here are limited and the city isn’t a hip and happening place. But seeing it had the hostel we went for it.

Look out woman, no sleeping outside the train station

The hostel was named Europe Asia hostel and was about 700 roubles a night, was located at somewhere quite out of town and was pretty small, but was totally worth it. Throwing in the bonus of free wifi and a free breakfast made it a well enjoyed break from all those unfriendly hotels.

Romanovs unite to your death

The rest of Yekaterinburg actually is sort of interesting, as has some history that is little known to most people. It is the city where the Romanov family was executed in 1918 due to the Bolshevik government fearing the power of the Tsar. Also the city is the birth place of former president Yeltsin, not that there is anything here to commemorate that.

The Afghan monument was quite an emotional, cool, but nothing on the keyboard

We spent our full day here looking at some pretty good sites, including a memorial to the failed Afghan invasion by Russia, the cathedral with it memorial to the Romanovs, and a giant keyboard monument. That’s right a monument to the qwerty keyboard. This was probably one of the highlights of my entire trip. A monument to the thing I’ve probably spent half my life at, is there anything better? Well the monument wasn’t that impressive, but it was the thought that counts. Also in the city was a great restaurant called McPeaks, which is totally ripping of McDonalds, so I was happy to spend my hard earned dollar here in a hope that by eating here will support them enough to become large enough to have McDonalds sue them and therefore cause a huge legal battle that bankrupts all chain fast food joints that prey on little children to make them fat, and results in an open market that allows for diversity in our eating choices and hopefully giving people the power to eat healthily...

Best monument ever, period

The next day we’d had to wake up at 5am to catch our early train, this was a chance for some sweet justice. Hostels are awesome, but there is a price to pay. The fact you are sharing a room with random people can mean that you might be in for a terrible nights sleep caused by the random's sleeping habits. It seems the hostel in Yekaterinburg only other visitors were a bunch of large men who would arrive back at the hostel at 4am and snore as loudly as possible until who knows when. Our 5am wake up call was not done in a polite fashion and we rummaged as loudly as possible to pack our bags and head out.

Another day, another train, platzkart is awesome

Costs:
Euro/asia hostel: 700 rbls a night for 2 nights
Food: typical supermarket shopping all the way through russia...
Hold on for running total at the end of russia posts...

Kazan, the Muslim Meets The Communist

2008-11-05T02:59:00.000-08:00

Sticking it to the man, giving the middle finger to Maccas, and to Vegetarians

Typically you’d travel through Perm on the way over the Urals to Yekaterinburg if you’re doing the Trans-Siberian. We opted for the southern version of this rail because it goes through the city of Kazan. Kazan is a interesting city that has recently been redeveloped due to the 1000 year anniversary of its founding. That mixed in with a new wealth created through recent exploitation of near by resources makes it a great place to stop.

Another train station, Kazan Station, on the way to many more

We spent two nights here which were rather pleasant. The first day we had that fun battle of finding a place to stay. It happened to be a Saturday which meant that every hotel in Kazan was booked up except for expensive rooms that hotels keep for suckers, such as us, who don’t pre book anything. After walking around town for about 4 hours, getting in a good view of the city with the addition of a 20 kg pack on our backs we’d found a tourist information centre which got in touch with one of the hotels we’d previously tried and managed to find they had a room for 2500 rubles, 700 less than we’d be told at the hotel. So we headed back there, but unfortunately weren’t allowed to check-in till 7 pm. Waiting around we finally were allowed in, paid for one of the most expensive nights in Russia and blobbed out for the rest of the night. Waking up early, we continued the search of hotels for a reasonably priced one, and managed to find somewhere straight up, so by midday having spent about 24 hours already in Kazan were finally settled.

The Kremlin, at night!

The mix, cathedrals and mosques

Seeing we’d seen a lot of the sights already by scouring around for a hotel, we decided to go in for a deeper look at the best ones. The Kremlin in Kazan is amazing. The place is built up on a small hill overlooking the great rivers of the city and also giving views to other well developed parts of town. The kremlin hosts a mixture of Islamic temples and Russian Orthodox cathedrals. This makes for an interesting mix, but shows that religious harmony is possible. The mix represents the whole city which is getting close to the country of Kazakhstan which doesn’t share Russias orthodox views.

I ponder life as nature puts on an awe inspiring display

After seeing the cathedral we went for a long walk out to the port on the Volga River. Hopeful that we could get a ferry to go for a short cruise over the immensely big river we walked for ages to find out that there was nothing available. But all was not in total vien as the river was a really impressive view, it stretches about a kilometer wide and the overcast skies were breaking allowing a divine touch to be intervening with the rivers majestic flow.

A youthful Lenin strides into university

A walk back past a statue of Lenin when he was a university student studying at the local university was capped off with some drinks at a café with supposed free wifi and an expensive german styled bar. After staying the night in the cheaper hotel, Hotel Fatima, which had way better facilities than the previous nights Hotel Volga (eg a shower), we spent the day waiting around for our train out of town which was pretty non eventful. But we did visit the best supermarket found in the whole of Russia, which was near the Kremlin, with actual aisles of food instead of the typical aisles of vodka and no food.

Costs:
1 Night at Hotel Volga: 850 rbls, 1 at Fatima 550 rbls
Train ticket to Yekaterinburg: ~700 rbls
Food: eat at supermarket = cheapish...
Running total ~ $5400

The Golden Ring

2008-11-01T04:10:00.000-07:00

The Women's Cathedral

Around Moscow there are a number of small towns together forming the Golden Ring. These places are basically little collections of how Russia might have been prior to the industrial and communist periods, with central cathedrals and monasteries surrounded by a small number of homes and little shops then quickly becoming farmland with the endless plains and forests beyond.

We went to Sergiev Posad, Suzdal and Vladimir. I’ve described Sergiev in the previous post and Suzdal was where we spent a night while Vladimir was the town that was the doorway to Suzdal so we spent an afternoon here.

The train from Moscow to Vladimir was technically the first section of Trans-Monglian rail that we were on. Although we did take a 4 hour suburban train, so not really a big long over land adventure like other sections of the rail. Upon reaching Vladimir we found a bus to take us on the hour journey out to Suzdal, supposedly the gem of the Golden Ring.

Another Cathedral

We arrived soon after and found the hotel we were to stay in. We’d been told by another traveller in Moscow that the hotels price had gone up significantly from what was described in the Lonely Planet which we have based on a year prior. So instead of being some really cheap stay was 2500 roubles for the night which is way over the top considering our room had no hot water, a shower that didn’t work and a terrible interior that hadn’t been updated from those terrible decades of the 60s or 70s. But on the plus side the hotel was based in a monastery so the extra price was kind of like paying for the novelty of staying with monks.

The Peasants Homes Outside The Nice Monastery

We had one day to spend in Suzdal, which was more than enough time as there is basically one thing to do here, which is look at cathedrals. The town has about one cathedral per thirteen people. So basically on every block of the town which is about 3 km by 3 km in size there is a small chapel. If you are the type of traveller who gets off on seeing old churches and stuff then go to Suzdal, it will honestly be enough church building visual stimulus to last you a life time. After going here I’ve pretty much had enough of domes/spires/archways etc etc to see me right through Russia, and am looking forward to getting out of the Russian Orthodox setting and into something else.

Riding In Style On The Suburban Train

After 4 hours and about 50 churches later we got the bus back to Vladimir. Here we bought a train ticket to Nizhny Novogrod. The train didn’t leave for a few hours so we got to walk around Vladimir with the aim of buying snacks for the train. The town again being a Golden Ring town was based around loads of cathedrals, which was not that impressive now. Although at 5pm there was a huge ensemble of bell ringing as all the cathedrals started competing with each other for the ringing of the 5 pm bell.

Another thing about cathedrals is that they make a good place for wedding photography, and Russians love getting married. So far we basically haven’t had a day where we haven’t seen a wedding party being photographed at some famous sight. I try not to take photos of all the brides in front of all the statues and churches that we see, but honestly they are everywhere, and especially in the golden ring towns. The day in Suzdal and Vladimir we must have seen approximately 20 wedding parties. Mostly we see the wedding party being photographed, which is basically the bride posing and looking ridiculous while the groomsman stands around looking bored. Russia is totally the place to go if you are a chick who has used her whole life to plan her big day.

Another Beautiful Wedding

Eventually the train came and we hoped on to possibly the best train I’ve ever been on. It was just a day train that runs the main line from Moscow to Nizhny Novogrod, the first and third biggest cities in Russia which takes about 10 hours (our section about 4). It was seriously awesome, the seats were similar to those out of an airplane, and the cabins had two tvs in them and we got served food and sparkling water on top of all that. It was far better than the third class overnighters we’ve been taking and beats the suburban trains hands down.

Unfortunately Nizhny Novogrod was not our final destination, but we were to go onto Kazan. We were hopeful that arriving at Nizhny around 10 pm would be early enough to get the night train to Kazan. But we were not so lucky and the next train wasn’t until 5.40 am the next morning. So we got to spend a surreal night in the train station. The train station seemed to attract all the typical rift raff of society that just need some government care. So basically we didn’t get any sleep due to constant pick pocketers, drunks, dogs, security guards and bright fluorescent lights keeping you well awake. Finally once we got on the train after a very long, long, long wait we managed to sleep well in the over heated carriage which had somewhat comfortable seats. Popping in about 6 hours of sleep before arriving in Kazan.

Price List:
Trains: ~$50 from Moscow to Kazan
Accommodation: 1 night ~800 rbls each
Food: I cant remember, but it wasn't that bad as we shopped at supermarkets
Total: $5150. This is becoming rather inaccurate at the moment...

Buying a Train Ticket, Russian Styles

2008-10-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

Train Station in Kazan

As we are on the Trans-Mongolian train heading all the way across Russia, Mongolia and into China, and stopping frequently it is necessary for us to buy lots of train tickets. Seeing Russia is an awesome place, they’ve made it not possible to buy an open ended ticket that allows you to say have unlimited rides for a month or whatever. Instead you have to buy a ticket each time you want to take the train and buying up a stack of tickets isn’t possible as we don’t know our sleeping arrangements either. So basically we have to buy a train ticket each time we wish to ride a train. This would be no problem in any normal country. I did it in Germany last month without any problems; I’ve done it before in the USA without too many issues either. But the big difference is that these places are used to foreigners, Russia is not. It often feels as though we are the first foreign people to ever come on this type of adventure.

Example ticket request

We start out by writing down in Cyrillic the destination, date, time, class and number of tickets we’d like on a piece of paper. Luckily we’ve learnt enough Cyrillic to do this comfortably. Next we head to the Kacci (ticket office) with the information, phrasebook, money and passport in hand. After waiting in the poorly formed Russian queue for a while, we politely say ‘dobriy dyehn’ (good afternoon) to the ticket lady, then hold up the piece of paper with details on it to the window and say our destination. Next either one of the following two outcomes happens. The most likely thing to happen on the first attempt is for the old grumpy lady to say het (sounds like ‘nyeht’) which means no. Without having a load of other options we try again but usually get another ‘het’. If this happens we just have to give up and either wait in another line for a nicer lady or wait until she has gone off her break and been replaced with someone else. The other possible outcome is that the ticket lady is actually helpful, which seems rather unlikely and helps us. Usually they’ll speak loads of Russia which we’ve no idea what they are saying, then we’ll signal for the lady to write down the details of the train she seems to be booking in. Usually this process goes alright and we get a train that is within the time and price of what we’d like. Lately we’ve also been trying to ask for certain seat numbers, as we’re riding third class which means half the seats available are terrible. Unfortunately we rarely succeed at getting good seats. After this we wait for the word passport to be said by the lady. Then we hand them over for her to get our details which are helpfully written down in Cyrillic on our Russian visas. Finally she’ll write down the price and we hand over some ridiculous amount of roubles which usually works out very good in New Zealand dollars. (A typical 10 hour overnight train is about 500-800 roubles each which is about $25-$40, awesome value for the distance.) A quick double check at the printed out ticket results in a job complete and a new destination with grasp.

Moscow, The Heart Of Mother Russia

2008-10-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

Wall of Freedom

The train departed St Petersburg at 2 am. It was our first Russian train experience, not authentic Trans-Siberian, but very similar. The journey was just 10 hours, and we were quickly lying on our 3rd class beds feeling like a true member of soviet society. The gentle tooing and froing of the train rocked us off to sleep. The next morning we woke up to the rising apartment blocks of Moscow, and spend the next hour chugging along through ever taller and taller ugly concrete blocks. The train arrives and we hop off and make our way across the second busiest metro system in the world to our hostel.

Cathedral number #200987439 in the Kremlin

The Sweet Moscow Hostel directions were to get off the metro, walk along a street 50 metres, take a left and walk another 100 metres. Then find a building opposite the hard rock café, and in a door next to a telephone booth enter a nine digit pin. Somehow we managed to complete that task only to be inside of a 20 storey building stairwell with no idea of the apartment which the hostel was in, and no indication of where it was on any walls. After walking up 10 storeys of the dead rat smelling stairwell Tom dropped his pack and ran ahead to see if he could find anything. The fourteenth storey had a door with a small sticker on it ‘Sweet Moscow Hostel’. We take the decrepit lift up and enter.

The worlds biggest bell

Before booking the hostel we read the reviews of other visitors, ‘the hostel was overbooked and we had to sleep on the couch in the hallway’ one read. As the giant babushka welcomed us in with a fire in her eyes, she pointed to the couch ‘2 beds, 1 couch’ was the limit of her English. Unfortunately we’d assumed that booking 3 beds meant that we’d all be sleeping in beds and not a couch. So after pointlessly trying to argue with the big babushka, she rings her manager or mafia partner to tell us in English that we can come to another hostel on the other side of town where there are some beds. But this was way too late, we were over being involved in some scam they were running where they over book the small ‘sweet’ little hostel and then send guests to the terrible one out in the middle of no where. So with a failed attempt to reclaim our deposit we manage to ask for the use of a phone to call some other hostels and just so happen to find a gem, Comrade Hostel.

Red square, it is sweet seriously

We spent 4 nights in Moscow, with the first day mostly gone to hostel dramas we managed to squeeze in a market visit, the second was spent at the Kremlin, the third at Red Square and a sculpture garden, the next at a little monastery town called Sergiev Posad, and the morning before leaving at the Cosmonauts Memorial and surrounding gardens.

Inside the Kremlin, it is well fortified

The highlights of our visit were definitely red square and the cosmonaut memorials. Red square was on the back of the kremlin which was mildly impressive, even after Arnika and I getting in for a bargain using our ISIC cards. The few cathedrals here all seemed to blend into one gold dome and the insides were beyond my knowledge of the Russian Orthodox church. But Red Square on the other hand was everything I’d hyped it up to be in my mind. For about a year I’ve had a cut out from The Press containing a picture of St Basils detached from a travel article for Russia. With the words ‘Russia is awesome’ inscribed by Arnika on it, trying to convince me to give up a career job, spend a fortune on travel, and changed the course of my life. Somehow she did convince me to do all this, and so standing at the bottom of the inspiration for this entire adventure felt quite overwhelming.

St Basils, it is so sweet

Also at Red Square are a number of other incredible sights along with St Basils. Firstly the square itself is perfectly set up for all the countless military parades that have been held here. Walking along the poorly paved square felt like I was matching in front of great and not so great leaders of the past. And that was exactly what it was. Alongside the square lies the tomb of Lenin. He is embalmed here, preserved in a glass case for all the public to see forever more. We felt incredibly lucky to be able to enter the tomb and proceed quickly past him for a glimpse of one of the most famous leaders of the previous century, with guards posted every five metres along the tombs walkway it was peculiarly real. The constant watchful eye of the military and the presence of a communist leader who is held in the peoples minds with demigod proportions made this the closest to soviet realism I’ll ever get to experience.

Wasn't allowed to take photos inside Lenins Tomb, so this will have to do

Behind the tomb sits statues of over communist leaders gone by, with a small representation of Stalin lined up with others behind the tomb of Lenin you feel as though Russia has done its best to forget its darkest days. A stark contrast to Germany where oppression was right there reminding every visitor of hard times to ensure it never happens again. I wonder if there will come a time when Russia has fully forgotten its horrific unspoken of years and does not stop it from seeing a similar situation coming around again.

My name is Lenin, my head is everywhere

Later that day we went scavenger hunting around the Sculpture Garden where old statues of the soviet days have been collected together and either revamped to be slightly ironic or just left for the grass to overwhelmed what was an indestructible representation of power. Many a good photo was had, and we exited the park to be presented by a real treat, being a way over the top statue to what I assumed was Peter the Great in a sweet pirate ship.

This is rediculous

Sergiev Posad is a little town an hour or so out of Moscow reached by a suburban train. The suburban train is a very different system to the long overland marvel that is the Trans-Siberia. The seats are hard and three people must share a small bench with little room to budge. This made the short journey rather interesting or at least made it seem like a very long trip. The small town was rather quaint and pretty, especially the monastery with its funny blue onion domes. This was the first of the golden ring towns we’d visit in Russia of three, and was well worth the $1.50 train ride.

Golden Ring means lots of Gold Domes

Cosmonauts Assemble!

The final really good sight in Moscow we went to was the memorial to the cosmonaut. This is basically a mentally big obelisk made of shiny steel with a rocket on the top of it. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Being a bit interested in space travel and all that, I probably enjoyed this way more than most people would, but seriously it was sweet. Over the road we decided to walk around the gardens that happened to be there to kill our last hour available before the afternoon train out of Moscow. Somehow without anyone actually knowing it was there, we’d stumbled into the place where Soviet wealth was shown off, in all its falsehood. Numerous ancient greek styled buildings with impressive gold finishes and large Lenin memorials where placed around this 2 km long spectacle. It was a sight unexpected but was totally tops.

Gold, Gold, Gold means soviets are rich

Without getting carried away, we managed to make it back to the hostel on time to get our bags and head off on another suburban train which thankfully wasn’t completely packed to Vladimir, the next Golden Ring destination.

Costs:
Hostel: 700 rbls a night for four nights (total = $70)
Visa Registration: 300 rbls ($15)
Eating: ~300 rbls a day
Trains: ~100 rbls out to vladimir
Metro: 150 rbls for 10 rides
Total: about NZ$170
Running Total: $5050

A More Efficient Belt

2008-09-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately there is a horrible thing that happens to your body when you are cutting back on the cost of food while doing incredible amounts of exercise by walking nearly everywhere. What happens is that because your energy intake is less than your output you burn excess energy by converting muscle or fat mass into kinetic energy. This is really bad for myself as I don’t have any fat on my body to begin with, so instead I’ve started to become ultra skinny. The first step was to add another notch in my belt so that I can keep my pants up.

One more notch for the road

From now on I’ll try eat more food I promise, but it is hard. I can’t have the same breakfast I normally have at home because a) there is no such thing as weetbix in Russia b) there isn’t always a fridge where we are staying so can’t store milk. Then seeing we are eating out lots it is quite expensive, so I usually go for the cheapest thing on the menu which generally is the least filling item.

Look at my sweet fashion, blue/purple top, yellow t-shirt, faded brown now grey pants, oh and the whole pants don't fit thing.

It is a double edged sword the old trying to live on a shoestring without dying. But fortunately it does do a good job of getting you to some pretty awesome locations. Although the situation is complex, as it seems that chicks travelling are all putting on weight???? Bizarre but true.

Trimmed muscle, couldn't get any finer than this.

Finally in Russia!!! The big post of St Petersburg.

2008-09-29T04:16:00.000-07:00

The Glory of St Petersburg, The Hermitage Museum

Getting off the train from Helsinki into St Petersburg was one of the biggest culture shocks I’ve ever experienced. Police, security gaurds, old women speaking thick Russian, streets teaming with people all whom look like they are from a Russian mafia movie. Only upon seeing a statue of Lenin outside the train station did I feel slightly more comfortable about where I was. With the guide book informing us that this was the spot where Lenin returned from being exiled out of Russia it was with some relief that we were actually where we’d planned to go and not been sent to some gulag by ‘mistake’.

This shock was then taken up a notch by getting on the metro. Within moments of walking, or more like swimming the river of people through the door Tom managed to get pulled out by the collar from a security guard who caught him snapping a picture within the metro building. Luckily I’d converted over some euros to rubbles and flicked the guard 100 rubles (about NZ$5) after he pointed at some piece of paper he had with a list of fines, specifically to the one which said 100 rubles on it. The culture shock continued until we arrived at our hostel, with our first experience of the St Petersburg metro being really interesting as after the fine we got to experience one of the longest escalators in the world (only topped by one in Moscow), and then battled the crowds of one of the busiest metros in the world while listening out for our stop names in Russian. Somehow we managed to count the stops right and slightly recognize our transfer stop and final stop being annouced to get off at the correct place without problem and easily find our hostel within a few minutes walk.

Lenin in front of the Railway Station

After the culture shock wore off, we came to realize that St Petersburg is actually a really great city and experienced a number of amazing cultural pieces, social interaction and historical sites. So I thought I’d put together a small helpful 5 day guide to some of the things we did and possibly help other people who are visiting St Petersburg in the future.

Day 1:

The Hermitage:
First of all, wake up early and don’t bother to plan to do anything else today apart from The Hermitage except for maybe resting and massaging sore worn out feet at the end of the day. Next ensure you have a student id on you before arriving, it doesn’t matter how fake it is just have one. We managed to stick a passport photo of Tom onto my old expired id and use that for Tom who is not a student by any means. Lastly, possibly get yourself a written guide to the museum or a friend who knows a lot about art.

Big Paintings in The Hermitage

Arrive at the hermitage from the gateway located at the end of Bol'shaya Morskaya Ul. This welcomes you with an amazing view of the hermitage framed by the gates elliptical shape. Then proceed through the front entrance way and find the queues to the ticket office. A good trick is to walk around to the second queue that is to the north of the queue starting to trickle out the door as no one realises there is more options than the first queue present. Flick your student id to the angry lady behind the desk and get your free pass. Also don’t bother with buying a photo pass as no one checks this at all.

Man gets one in the groin in The Hermitage

The hermitage holds thousands of paintings and ancient artifacts, from greek vases, Egyptian tombs, pieces from Di Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh, and Picasso to even some terrible stuff showing off old Russian culture. I’m not an art master so will not try to tell you what to see, instead if I were you I’d pull out a guide to help you find whatever it is your interested in. We spent about 4 or more hours wondering around the museum at a moderate pace, this gave us enough time to see nearly everything, and also to stop and look in more detail at the master pieces. The only problem is that there is only one café at the museum which is really over priced and pretty poor, so we were starving by the end, and with hardly any seats around its three floors it was a real work out on the legs.

Gateway to the Hermitage

Day 2:

After a lot of walking around the Hermitage it is probably a good day to sit around in some funky cafes and bars, spliced in with a bit of sitting around in some nice parks. The best café we found for eating was Zoom Café, the menu was about 100-200 roubles for mains, and food ranged from pasta, to more traditional Russian meals like meat with potatoes, onions and mushrooms, and had some nice desserts to finish off like ice cream on apple pie. Just round the corner was also a little treat of a bar. We found it due to it also being a Laundromat and we needed some clothes washed. The Laundromat is actually just three washing machines and two dryers they have out the back of the bar. The bar served brews for you while you either waiting for your washing to dry or while you enjoyed some of the local dj talent that would play there. The good thing about St Petersburg is that quite a few young people can speak a little bit of English unlike elsewhere in Russia, so it is possible to get by at restaurants without accidentally ordering the tongue delicacy.

To the north of Nevsky Prospect (the main avenue) there lies the summer gardens park and the eternal flame memorial. These make for a nice place to sit around on a warm sunny day. Unfortunately for us, the weather was terrible, supposedly the cold was quite unseasonable and temperatures never rose above 10 degrees. We ended up only walking through the eternal flame memorial as sitting down would probably result in freezing to death.

Come night time the city comes alive with little bars spotted around the main part of town. It probably takes a little local knowledge to find bars that are worth going to, luckily we’d met people who knew of some pretty good locations and we had a really good time every night we went out. The best places for drinks were Fidels, Actung Baby,and the bar next door to Actung Baby. We experienced these with some Russian friends we’d made who showed us the custom way to drink, or maybe the custom way to make foreigners drink. The best night started first in our hostel with a round of vodka drinking games based around learning the Russian numerals, then heading out for a beer with the Russians. Everything was going well, until the Russians put their spin on things, that is to have a vodka shot in between every beer. Of course being in Russia you have no option but to accept the customs. So while I didn’t drink too many beers, the fact that in between each one was a shot of vodka made it a night that was felt well through the next day. It seems fine while in the bar, you have a beer, finish it off, then have a shot. The only problem with having a shot is that it is over quite quickly, and your thirst does not retire for long and so to sip on something you buy another beer. The next day I complained a lot about life, but at least held it in unlike Tom a few days prior.

Day 3:

Hopefully not nursing a large hangover, you'd best check out some of the other amazing sites around St Petersburg. The north side of the Neva River, is the Peter and Paul Fortress. This is an amazingly solid looking wall around some pretty cathedrals. There is probably a lot more info to it, but we didn’t bother really getting to into it. Past this there is a few sites worth walking around to on this side of the river including a big mosque, and a navy ship that contains propaganda from soviet days gone by.

Inside the Peter and Paul Fortress

After checking this out you could head down back to the south side of the river past the Vasilyevsky island and check out the monuments on the side of here, then end up at the palace on the other side.

The wannabe St Basils along a canal

If it is on your way home, stop past the Cathedral of Spilt Blood. This is a similar looking building to St Basils in Moscow. This cathedral is nicely set along one of the canals running through the city and would look amazing on a snowy winters day or in the middle of a blue summers day. Unfortunately we were there on a miserable grey day and so was not so photogenic.
After checking this out for the day, why not hit up a ballet or opera performance. We tried to go to the mack-daddy of theatres The Mariinsky, but it had nothing on that day. But did find a performance of Swan Lake the Ballet. This was thoroughly enjoyable, I’m not really one for normally going to dance recitals but did end up really enjoying this. The performance started a little shaky with a few dancers missing the beat or not getting in a full twist. But once the ensemble warmed up there instruments, and the classic Swan Lake pieces came on, the dancers started to show their full potential and proved that St Petersburg is the home to ballet. Being cultural people, we nearly walked out half way through the performance as it was intermission, but for some reason we’d clapped the performers. Fortunately some Swiss girls behind us had a Russian program which they could read and told us to stick around for the amazing end.

Day 4:

Spend the day at the markets and shopping malls around the south side of Nevsky Prospect. The markets here are typical Russian markets selling millions of jeans, fur coats, and wool socks. Unfortunately there isn’t much else apart from cheap fake sport shoes, so unless you are after one of these items don’t bother. Pretty much I walked through these just complaining to Arnika about how lame they were, and so went to a mall which was slightly better, but in the end I didn’t really want to buy anything so am not sure why I actually went shopping.

To finish off the day you could do what we did on our second to last day, which was to see off some friends we made at the hostel by going out to have some beers before their train at 2am. I’m pretty sure they made it to their train as we heard out of them another day, but feel sorry they had to do the 1/2 hour walk to the train station with a big pack and a few brews in the belly.

Day 5:

There is probably still tons of stuff you can do in St Petersburg, but what I’d really recommend seeing is the monument to the siege of Leningrad which is in the south of the city on the way to the airport. You need to take the awesome St Petersburg metro there so thats a double bonus. The monument is this huge obelisk sticking up in the middle of a huge round-about at the bottom of the main avenue going south. The obelisk is surrounded by a huge circular memorial piece, and also contains a few sculptures and a museum with it. Check the video below for more details!

The Siege Monument, it was Awesome!

Lenin points the way, kinda near the Siege Monument

After checking this out, if you woke up early enough unlike we did, so had to do it the next day, go to the museum for the siege of Leningrad. The museum is pretty small and not really informative seeing everything is in Russian. But you do get a little A4 sheet written in English with the run down on the siege which is really interesting, and it is cool to see all the stuff about how people were living while being cut off from the rest of everything and how they managed without any supply of food or energy resources for 900 days. If you are really prepared, then head round the corner to the erotica museum which has good old Rasputins penis preserved there in a jar. The rest of the museum isn’t really a museum but just a hallway to a women’s clinic for some celebrity doctor so not really worth the entrance fee which is just a forced purchase at the souvenir shop. But the penis makes a great self take photo…

Penis! Self Take!

We finished our time at St Petersburg watching crappy Russian tv at the hostel until our 1am train to Moscow. The train was really sweet, as was an overnight train so we basically just got a free nights accommodation by taking a train. Speaking of free accommodation, the staff at the hostel we were staying at where not really on to it, or at least didn’t really care to much. So we managed to spend two extra nights at the hostel than what we paid for. This was a sweet play as it ended up being a nice and cheap week at one of the sweetest cities we’ve been to. I won’t give the name of the hostel, just in case they someday come across this, but if you are them and work out that it was us, then don’t worry as we gave our recommendation to other travellers so totally made up for it.

View over the Neva River

Costs:
5 nights accommodation whilst paying for 3 at 550 roubles a night = $82.50
Sights: ballet = $35, hermitage photo pass = $5, other museums = $10
Food: approx 6 days at 200 – 300 roubles a day (cooking own dinners saved lots) = $75
Drinks: 2 big nights out at about 100 roubles a drink = $40
Train ticket to Moscow was 615 roubles = $30
Total = $4573+ $300 = $4873

Helsinki Is Shut On Sundays, Surprise!

2008-09-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

It dawned on us pretty suddenly in Estonia that staying two nights in Helsinki was more than just passing through. Prior to arriving in Finland it had seemed as though it was just this dot on a map that we must go through to get to Russia. And with the ultimate, Russia, being well in focus it was our mistake to overlook Helsinki. Everything took us by surprise.

Finnish Sculptures

The day before taking the ferry across the Baltic Sea we found out that all the hostels in Helsinki were either closed for winter or fully booked out for the weekend. This left us in a bit of a frantic hussle to find something that could accommodate us. The options being, a free sleep at the airport (rated 4^th best airport in the world to sleep in, LINK), email everyone we know and every person from the website 'hospitality club' to find a couch to sleep on, find some alternative to a hostel like a camping ground, or splash out on an expensive hotel or apartment. In the end we did not receive any replies to our couch requests before leaving Estonia, but thankfully found a camping ground that had a cabin going for the same price as a hostel which was only a small metro ride out of town.

Arnika in the magical world of butterflys

The ferry ride was rather bumpy and not very pleasant, but to our surprise we arrived in Helsinki to be welcomed by one of the best markets that I’ve visited so far. We enjoyed a delicious smoked salmon sandwich which was so freshly caught it could have still been released back to sea. Soon enough we found some things to do in Helsinki, we chose shopping. A new beanie and sunglasses from H&M (greatest store ever) were topped off with a visit to a vintage clothing shop and second hand book store. It was here at the book store where our second surprise came. The back room was actually a private gallery filled with an absolutely incredible array of butterflies made from rose petals. We were close to being locked in after the shop had closed as we’d got lost in our own little world of fantasy nature.

Enjoying an awesome salmon sandwich at the side of the port

The camping ground turned out to be a fun in a 'different to a hostel' night’s sleep. The cabin was nicely warmed with a heater which was much needed as Helsinki is cold. Temperatures have dropped by going north so far that 10 degrees in the day is all we are allowed. According to some maps I looked at, we’re about as equally north as the tip of the big peninsula of Antarctica is south.

Beaded horse in the cool gallery

With a quick nap snuck in, we headed out to find the Helsinki night life. Great success at first, warming up with a beer at the Kola café/bar, but then after not really researching into the foreign cities nightlife thoroughly we ended up walking for about an hour and a half for nothing, and had to return to camp without a real Finnish party experience.

Chillin out before leaving the camping cabin

Sunday we woke up to something that we hadn’t expected which was that everything is shut. We found a hostel for the next night in town called Erottojanpuisto. The place was a hostelling international hostel which we’ve tried to avoid due to the fact that are generally sterile and boring, but seeing all hostels in Helsinki are HI we had no choice, but this was OK as no one else has the choice not to go HI, so there was plenty of friendly people to socialize with especially after a long hiatus of social activity since Riga.

It was here where we were finally back in range of some wifi that we found out that we’d unfortunately missed the chance to get lots of free accommodation from all the people we'd emailed. But such is life, and the afternoon was sipped away in a cup of coffee at the only open café in town. “We take Sundays easy”, the blackboard in the café said.

The night seemed to be over and we were all preparing for the 7am train the next day into Russia. That was until Arnika received an email from one of the hospitality club members saying we could go over to their place to experience some typical Finnish life. Hesitant about going to a random person’s house who we had just met off the net I reluctantly hopped in this random person’s car with Tom and Arnika and was driven to a flash apartment 15 mins out of town to join the four locals and one kiwi living in Finland.

The train into Russia, hell yeah!!!!

Things started out pretty normally with drinks offered and polite conversation. But right from being introduced it was subtly obvious that these people were not normal. The guy who picked us up was suffering from short person syndrome, and the people at the apartment all had certain characteristics that I’d assume would make them outcasts at school. I generally try to not judge people, so participated in the general conversation for a while until it was going absolutely no where, with calls like “I’m a Buddhist” from the kiwi drinking a beer and “Here is a towel, let’s have a sauna”. Unable to easily get out of the situation we were led down to the basement where the typical Finnish sauna is located. Giving Tom and Arnika the ‘let’s get out of here’ eye we talked our way out of joining the socially defunct young people into removing all our clothes and getting all sweaty with each other. This unfortunately did not stop the male hosts from flopping out their long john silver’s. As it is possible that this is just normal Finnish behaviour we were as polite as possible in saying that we must get back to our hostel quite frankly due to the early train in the morning. After much protest from the hosts, we managed to escape the ‘very friendly’ Finnish kids and catch a tram back to the hostel, with many a laugh had at every single awkward moment. In a way I was glad that we got to meet some locals and experience life as a Finn, but also wished that we’d not found them off the internet without firstly knowing them at all and instead met up with Finns that were friends of friends or whatever.

The 7am train to Russia was not near early enough.

Costs:
Helsinki Accommodation 2 Nights = $80
Food = $30
Metro (about 5 rides @ 2 euro each) = $20
Train to St Petersburg = $121
Running total = $4573

The Baltics And Now I Have Serious Question

2008-09-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Women...

Flying in from Berlin on a short one and a bit hour flight got me into Riga, the capital of Latvia. This is the first of two of the Baltic states I visited, the other being Estonia. Here is also where I met up with my comrades Arnika and Tom (Arnika who has been travelling all over Eastern Europe -read her blog-, and Tom who arrived from NZ).

Stalin's Wedding Cake, Riga

When people get married they put a lock on a bridge, Riga

Getting off the plane and into Riga the first thing a typical kiwi male would notice is that there is a plethora of beautiful women. There seemed to be a good looking shela every where you looked. It didn't take long for Tom and I to devise a system of working out the percentage of girls that were very attractive and made sight seeing oh so much more enjoyable.

The new architecture of Riga

The two nights we had in Riga were spent at the hostel named Friendly Franks. This was a hostel that we'd normally have not chosen as it was run by Aussies and described as a party hostel, but Arnika booked it after a few Moldavian wines. It turned out to be a good place to stay despite the fact that there were 70 German students there on a field trip who were aloud to drink and smoke with their teachers. The first thing we received upon checking in was a free beer, and the price for a night (7 euro) was a welcoming relief from Germany. That mixed with the social atmosphere made it an enjoyable stay.

The soviet monument, Riga

The red army, Riga

We spent the next day seeing some local sights, the old town with its art nouveau streets, the free occupation museum, the huge soviet monument and the Russian markets. These were all rather entertaining and quite educational into the last 50 years of Latvian life. To then get a feel of local culture, we tried the local delicacy of dumplings (yum yum in my tum tum) and went to a soccer game. Unfortunately Latvia lost to Greece 2-0.

A cathedral in Riga

After two nights we caught the bus up to Tallinn the capital of Estonia. Again the women in my opinion were even more beautiful than Latvia. The city has a similar feel to Riga, with an old town that is good for exploring and a few sights that had Baltic influences. There is also a number of good eating and drinking joints around. Our first Estonian meal was savoury pancakes (I had grilled cheese and bacon which was a bad mistake). Later on we tried to experience the local night life. This was slightly unsuccessful, after wondering around for a while we saw a local beat-box competition that was crazy as the MC's spoke english but all had terrible accents. Arnika then gave up and went to bed without us even finding anywhere to have a drink. So we then went exploring without her, found a nightclub that was $25 to get into so chopped that, then found a big club with crazy medieval guards which also had some weird system we couldn't work out to get in. So ended up at some lounge that was rather classy but free and had a nice drink, followed by finding that all the real night life was only metres away from our hostel and had a final beer in a packed pub before calling it a night without having too much joy.

Getting my tourist on in Tallinn

Two nights in Estonia were plenty especially seeing that we were in the most boring hostel ever, Vanna Toms. Do not stay there... Then we caught the ferry across to Helsinki.

Bizzarre wall mounting, Tallinn

My impressions of the Baltic's were mixed, there is beautiful people everywhere, but the land is poor and there is little to do apart from party and learn lots about the history. But after doing this all through Germany it would be nice to be able to do something active like snowboarding or going tramping. But unfortunately the land is flat and small and we are pretty useless so sightseeing is all we did. Also the place is a lot colder than Germany. The latitude is similar to that of Scotland so temperatures were maxin out at about 10 degrees.

The main square in Tallinn

The most interesting thing was the history though, even after all of Germanys. The baltics were a inconvient mass of land between Russia and Germany so have been occupied by both countries and had years of oppression under the USSR. The land is poor and only now upon pinning itself to the EU has been able to rise into economically stable countries. It would be very interesting to stay here for a few months and get out of the main cities to see the country side where all the industry isn't located. Also would really help to learn a bit of the language so that talking to the beautiful women is possible.

A palace Csar Peter 1 built for Catherine, Tallinn

Costs:
Riga-
Hostel 2 nights: $30
Food: $25
Transport to Tallinn: $20
Soccer Game: $15
Beer: from supermarket $5 for 4, $4 for one from a bar
Tallinn-
Hostel 2 nights: $40
Food: $25
Ferry to Helsinki: $45
Hot Chocolate from a cafe in the square: $4 (best one ever)
Running Total: $4322

East Meets West: Berlin

2008-09-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

Berlin loves The Smiths, so do I

Want culture? Want history? Want art in all its forms? Want to party in the best clubs in a world? Then head to Berlin. It is so rich in all of these. I only had two nights in this amazing city, which was definetly not enough. With over 200 museums, and more historical sites than you can ever imagine, it was difficult to even get a glimpse of everything.

Victoria stands at the start of that Avenue where live 8 was...

Sweet graffiti on a big wall

Berlin is a huge city, supposedly covering more than nine times the land area of Paris. I was only able to see around one section of Berlin called Mitte. Luckily this is where all the really important sites are located so I was able to very quickly cover a large number of places within my limited time.

Getting a bit reflective at the holocaust memorial

The holocaust memorial could represent German solders standing in formation while you the viewer might be a Jew being overwhelmed by them

Because of the short period I had here and the amazing story that goes in behind everything I had to do a guided tour. I chose the free bike tour done by newline tours which only asks for a tip to your guide at the end. Although technically a free tour, was actually really well run and the guide was very educated and thoroughly enjoyed her job which made it well worth the small tip I gave.

Self take on the corner...

Bullet holes straight from the Nazis in WW2

The sites visited were all very important, and maybe unknown to some readers so here is a bit of media that shows important events happening and some photos of me there just to give you a good idea of why they are worth seeing.

Reichstag

View from the Reichstag

From inside the glass dome on top of the Reichstag

The Reichstag

The Reichstag is the current parliament building for Germany. This was only recently moved into as West Germany had kept their parliament in Bonn until recent reunification. Yet this building was used as parliament prior to WW2 until Hitler got some communists to burn it down and therefore claim that it was very important he be given more power.

Brandenburg Gate

Me feeling kinda average outside of Brandenburg Gate

Horses are cool at the Bradenburg Gate

Big Bradenburg Gate

This is the symbol of Berlin and Germany. This gate represents a lot to the German people as is closely associated with victory over the city. Napoleon marched through this gate in 1806, the Soviets did the same in 1945, and after years of the gate being blocked by the wall Ronald Reagan stood nearby and said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", then shortly after it was marched through with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Napoleon Enters Berlin Through Brandenburg Gate

The Berlin Wall

The bicycle tour goes past the Berlin Wall

August 13, 1961 East German troops are ordered to erect a wall that is to keep the people of East Berlin within their city after millions had moved to the west to escape the communist regime being pressed upon them. This wall then stands for the next 28 years until 1989 separating the western world from the eastern world, representing the border of freedom.

Square where a mass book burning was ordered on 20,000 books written by Jews.

Cost Updates:
Hostel 2 Nights @ Heart of Gold = $75 (kinda rude staff)
Tour with The Free Bike Tour (Newlines) = Free + $7 tip
Food = $40 (should have gone to the supermarket)
Transport on local S-Bahn = $8
Running Total = $4104

Dresden, somewhere i'd enjoy living for life.

2008-09-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

Jesus on a Horse, 1288 - 1307 AD

Dresden was a welcoming relief, after being in Frankfurt which was pretty boring it was good to be hoping off the train to be immediately presented with sights that you know have a large history and a lot of culture that go in behind them.

Frauenkirche, Dresdens Big Daddy

Golden Man on Golden Horse

The efficient metro system in Dresden and as with all of Germany made it easy to get to my hostel lollis homestay. The hostel is located in the north side of the central city, in hip quarter of Neustadt. This place was where during under GDR rule was home to a few artists and breakaway people who wanted some freedom in their lives. After the fall of the wall, the suburb became a place where all the new liberals hung out. The 90’s influenced this place with the punk/grunge scene and so dreggs of those are still around now. But what makes this place interesting is the buildings, they are all old 4 or 5 storey close quarter homes built after being bombed out in WW2. During the free period of the 90s everyone felt it necessary to express themselves, this came in the form of graffiti. The pictures and writing on the walls of every building tell as much a story about the situation over the last 2 decades as does the buildings say about the last 100 years.

Picture of Angry Communist Man

The Projects, German Stylez

After being a little ripped from the hostel (they kept adding on to the price with you having to pay for linen, breakfast, a really big key deposit) I felt the need to relax, German styles. I need not walk much more than a hundred meters to the local dairy to buy a cool drink (beer of course, 1 euro for a big 0.5L bottle) and then go chillax at the local park with everyone else in the afternoon sun, sipping away on a tasty brew.

Having a Beer in the Park

Historic Panoramic Shot

The next day after eating my rather poor breakfast, compared to the free one at the last hostel, I borrow one of the hostels old bikes and take off to see the sights. The free bike made the hostel worth staying at, as was an authentic yester-year bike complete with a single gear, pedal breaks and curved handle bars. Dresden is a paradise for the eco friendly traveler. There is no need for a car, and biking is very enjoyable as there is plenty of bike lanes, people expect you to ride on the footpath, and you don’t need a helmet so don’t look like a dork. (Many lessons could be learnt for New Zealand).

The Gardens at Dresden

The Norse Gods Came to Town

Using the pedal power I was able to make my way around the old town and see all the historic buildings, which was really impressive especially compared to Frankfurt. Luckily bombing in the war did not destroy all of these buildings, and ones that were partially destroyed have been restored to former glory. After seeing these I felt it necessary to visit some classic communist apartment blocks. I found it interesting that these buildings were now some what a decent place to live in as have been given a new coat of coloured paint and are a lot more individual than any western mass housing project. It again was interesting and partly a shame to see that around the bottoms of every building was graffiti, suggesting the huge change people experienced here in the 90s.

Workers Unite

After a quick ride through the city gardens I took off to the town of Meissen which is 30km west of Dresden. The ride took about 1.5 hours each way, but was thoroughly worth it. Meissen is home to a large castle that was begun about 500 years ago and is still currently being worked on. The town was a small peek into what life was like before cars, and was very interesting to see how towns would have been 150 years ago and you’d almost would be better to live there presently, especially with the ability to train into central Dresden within 20 mins. The day was very hot, so thankfully the ride back was broken in two by a stop at a local beer garden (I really didn’t have any option…). With a tasty half litre of pilsner down in my belly I was able to power home.

Castle Albrechtsburg

Me and the Wall in Meissen

Sunnin' at the Castle

Refreshing Beer on the way home from the Castle

The day had exhausted me, but was definitely the best of the trip so far. Once back at the hostel there was little to do except go buy another beer from the diary and go lie on the grass at the park, it seemed so right.

Horse and Cart at the Castle

Dresden was a very interesting place, it was very forward in terms of environmental problems of large cities, but this is possibly because it skipped the evolution western cities had. The fact I could bike around easily, enjoy a beer in the park, and have easy access to attractions just out of town were all great positives. Although you could start to see that consumerism was starting to take its hold, with new malls popping up in the outer suburbs, and bright shop signs polluting the old architecture. Yet it was somewhat weird, maybe cool, that the people still dressed like it was the 90’s with gothic dress still accepted, and ¾ shorts and sandals still being rocked by the dudes. At least they aren’t trying to be anyone else except themselves.

Costs:
Hostel in Dresden 2 Nights = $80 (huge rip consdering it was going to be $60 until they added on everything else)
Beer = $2 a bottle
Food = $10 (cheaped it up at the supermarket)
Train Ticket to Berlin = $50
Total Running Costs = $3974

Frankfurt-am-main the big smoke.

2008-09-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

The skyline is tall for european standards, true story

The main attraction to Frankfurt is that it is the air-transportation hub of central Europe. This provided me with a good place to start my journey towards the main objective of my trip being Russia. Seeing I landed in Frankfurt it has given me good opportunity to go further into Germany and explore around here for a while. I have 5 days to spend in Germany so to maximize what I’d get out of this visit I kept Frankfurt to a minimum as quite frankly it is lacking in interesting things.

The euro is strong in Frankfurt

Arriving at 5 am I booked myself into the Frankfurt hostel for a night. This gave me enough time to see Frankfurt and then an opportunity to catch up on some much needed sleep. Frankfurt itself is the financial centre of Europe only second to London supposedly. This shows in the skyline, it is described as the Manhattan of Europe (nicknamed mainhatten).

Unfortunately it fails to compare to Manhattan. I haven’t actually been to Manhattan, but have been to Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, all of which are way more like Manhattan than Frankfurt. Frankfurt has only one really tall tower and the small quantity of the rest of them are of average height.

This is a cathedral in Frankfurt

The next biggest attraction of the city is its old quarters and the museums. I did enjoy seeing the few remnants of long ago in the city as it was my first encounter with such old relics, although there is nothing super impressive. I decided to skip going to any museums as all seemed too specialist and small. Side note: you can supposedly by a day pass to go visit all the museums which may be worth it.

The town hall

The queen of Germany or something

By 2pm I was beyond tired, and so went back to the hostel and slept for the next 17 hours to force myself into waking up at a natural time, although this was about 3 pm NZ time, so was very unnatural. The hostel provided a delicious breakfast in the morning (being cornflakes, coffee and toast), delicious because I love cereal and hadn’t had it in a few days. But time being limited I departed on a train to Dresden to see a more interesting city.

Maxin' in Romerberg

Language barriers always being interesting, the ticket collector asked me to show my ticket in Germen. Stupidly I said ‘huh’ which obviously isn’t really explaining that I can’t speak English, and so he thought I was a bit deaf with all the music playing in my head phones so repeated very loudly in Germen again to give him my ticket. Luckily I assumed he was asking this question and so showed him the correct document.

Costs:
Trains: From airport to city 3.50 euro = $7
From Frankfurt to Dresden 82 euro = $160
Hostel 18 euro = $36
Food for one day 6 euro = $12
Running total = $3824

The mix is Singapore

2008-09-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

A long flight to Singapore was made better by the showing of the most underrated film of all time (or all last couple months) that being speed racer. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially for everything that it wasn’t. I felt like it was a trip on lsd combined with formula 1 (is there anything better). Arriving in Singapore was welcoming, made especially by the outrageous airport Changi. This occupied me for a while as I was well hungry and needed to store my bag for the night.

I had about 24 hours in Singapore, I used this time to explore the city and learn about the mix of cultures that makes up this interesting country.

Things I really enjoyed doing and would recommend to others is:
Seeing the city from the ocean along side the esplande mall.

The esplande and ferris wheel

Singapore skyline

Having a meal in a hawkers market, for $4.00 I got a dish of chinese, a really good pineapple juice and a warm piece of watermelon (The water melon wasn't very nice, but everything else was real good).

Hawkers market in Bugis

Having a bit of a barter with some sales people in Sim Lim mall. I got a wide angle lens for my camera for $120 which usually retails at about $200. (Although mine is probably something spewed out a Chinese factory for $5).

Some mall, shot taken with new wide angle lens

I found the mix of cultures quite interesting. The city is a combination of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Westerners. This makes for some great eating, but I found that some cultures were a bit suffocated by western values. Everyone was trying to be a westerner, the main written language was English, and the amount of American franchises was getting way over the top. It seemed to be looking towards America and saying we want to be you. There is a historical reason for all this happening to do with war and colonisation I guess, but it was just a shame that they feel the way forward is to become American.

What I also found bad was the lack of things to do. For someone living there I'd be bored within a week. Although I don't know exactly what goes on day to day, it seemed people just worked, then shopped and ate. The city is crammed onto this small over populated island, so there is communist styled apartment blocks everywhere which made it feel very compressed. The amount of shopping malls was ridiculous, and it seemed people on their day off from work would just go to the mall (probably the one they work at too...).

Costs:
The Singapore dollar is approximately equal to a NZ dollar, this meant prices were basically the same as in New Zealand although there were good deals to be found.
Shopping: 1 wide angle lens = $120
Eating: Meal in hawkers market = $4
Transport: Train to airport = $1.70
Cash withdrawal fee because my bank isn't in alliance with any singapore banks = $8
Departure tax from Christchurch airport = $25
Total spent in 24 hours in Singapore = $227
Running total = $3609

Things Must End First

2008-08-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

View over Fairlie
(click images for full view)

So only a week before I depart the lovely shores of New Zealand. But what a terrible time to choose to go...

Moon Sets at Sunrise, Ohau

Southern Alps Under a Heavy Snow Blanket

New Zealand is a pretty horrible place in the winter. It basically turns into a third world country in terms of living conditions as no one has insulation in their houses. So if you don't want to spend hundreds on power bills you basically choose to freeze. I have been more cold than ever before because we basically don't use a heater in the flat I'm in this year. But the benefit of all of this, and especially this year, is that there has been an incredible amount of snow fall on ski fields here and so has made for some epic snowboarding.

Lake Ohau

The Alps North of Rakaia River

Seeing I had three weeks between finishing work and leaving, I've been using most of that spare time to hit the slopes and get in some of the best riding ever in New Zealand. So while not really anything to do with going on an adventure into ex-communist countries, it is still awesome.

The Pride of New Zealand, Mt Aoraki

Lake Ohau

While down at Ohau Ski Field I made my first vlog, check this out:

In somewhat good news, costs have been down as I've paid for everything I need to before I leave, so from last post:
Travel Insurance: $250
Running Total: $3382

Riding the Triple at Mt Hutt

Start, Now Let's Begin

2008-07-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Today I paid $215 to get injected with small doses of diseases. The other day I paid some random guy, I'd been referred to, to get a stamp. Before that I handed over $2700 to a beautiful woman in return for some specially printed documents. The reason, to begin a revolution. Partially a social, mental, and spiritual revolution, but mostly just a physical revolution, that is to revolve.

Breaking it down, I'm going on an adventure. In reverse order, the printed documents were plane tickets, the stamp a visa, the disease was just some vaccinations. All things I need to get myself around the other side of the world to Frankfurt, Germany, just to turn around and head home. Getting there the easy bit, a flight from Christchurch, New Zealand with a stopover in Singapore. Getting home the hard bit, flying/train riding up to start of a journey across the longest railway in the world. The Trans Siberian Rail. (technically the trans Mongolian to be precise). Then arriving in Beijing, China about two months later, will travel around China for a month of more. Then technically I fly home from Hong Kong, although this is up to self debate, depending on finances at this point. Alternatives could be to go to Japan to go snowboarding, or into South East Asia to help the world.

With just over a month left before I leave, I have decided to start a running blog/vlog documenting my travels. I will keep constant updates flowing provided I don't die.

Here is a map describing my voyage. (click for larger view)

I will also keep running totals of costs to help inform other budget conscious travelers.
So far:
Plane Tickets: $2700 (christchurch - singapore - frankfurt, hong kong - christchurch) + $90 (Berlin - Riga)
Visa for russia: $127
Innoculations: $215
Total: $3132

Which is kinda lame seeing I haven't even left yet. And still got to purchase insurance and all that kinda travel gear crap before boarding the plane.

So stay tuned for more information, and a lot more wild and interesting stories.