Fun and games

Another no-photo blog post this time I'm afraid - I'll try and add some later but the bloody Novotel provides bloody Macs instead of proper computers so I don't think I can bother working out how to connect my camera. That's one less trip advisor star for you, Novotel ;) (Also there's a bit of a queue for the computers and if I go up to my room to get the cable, someone will nab my place)

Not that we have many photos from Nha Trang anyway - the weather was pretty wet so we contented ourselves with wandering around and getting drunk. Sometimes the other way around. We tried the hotel swimming pool in torrential rain, much to the amusement of the pool attendents. And generally spent quite a lot of time being thankful that we weren't still in Hoi An, which got the full brunt of Typhoon Ketsana a couple of days after we left.

Getting the train out of Nha Trang was quite interesting. Due to the typhoon, the train we were supposed to get at about 12.30 still hadn't left Hanoi by 9am that morning (Hanoi is about 36 hours away from Nha Trang by train). So we dashed down to the station to change our tickets to a different train, which should have arrived at 8pm the previous evening but had been delayed and was expected to arrive at about the same time as our original train. Went back to the hotel, had breakfast, checked out and went to the train station, where we found out that the second train now wasn't expected until 6pm, possibly later. The only other option was a more basic train, leaving in about 15 minutes, which we got hard-sleeper tickets for. It was either that or hard seats, and at least the sleepers have air-conditioning!

In the end I think we got on the first train through, and it was almost completely empty. We somehow ended up playing chess with one of the guards. It was great fun, loads of the other guards crowded in to our otherwise empty cabin to watch and smoke, and the journey went by in a flash. Hard sleeper was a lot more comfortable than we were expecting as well - it was nice to have some space to spread out in, even if Josh couldn't quite sit up straight on the bottom bunk.

A very brief evening in HCMC and then off to the airport. HCMC looked like fun and it was a shame we didn't have more time to explore, but maybe next time...

So far, Hong Kong has been crazy fun. We arrived with just enough time to check in and make our way down to the waterfront to see the 60 years of Chinese Communism fireworks, which were a fair sight better than the ones on Clapham Common. So us and about 50 billion Chinese people were there, and we end up bumping into Tom (Jo's colleague from work). We headed back up into Kowloon from the fireworks and end up in a bar that looked seriously seedy from the outside (and to be frank was pretty seedy on the inside). Not quite sure how the next bit happened, but we ended up playing dice drinking games and singing karaoke with a group of random Chinese people. It was fantastic fun!

Now we're back to paying 3 quid upwards for a pint and having to use the tube to get everywhere, we're starting to look forward to the full package in London. 

Stormy Weather

We had a fab time in Hoi An, despite the weather. We managed to squeeze in a cloudy morning on the beach on our first day, before the "rainy season" started living up to its name. It rained heavily for the rest of the day, the whole of the next day and most of the day after that. On the plus side, it did cool things down a bit - it was actually quite pleasant to be drenched in rainwater rather than sweat for a change! Also as a Yorkshire lass, I'm used to wet leading to cold leading to miserable, but it's just not a problem here. The rain would have been heavy enough to cause flash floods back home, but they didn't have any problems in Hoi An at all, apart from the power going down for about 15 minutes at one point.

Hoi An - very pretty!

We visited the ancient Champa ruins of My Son, which was particularly atmospheric in the rain. We didn't have much time there; on the way there our tour guide placated everyone by explaining that this was because it was very small and most of it was just rubble anyway, so there really wasn't very much to see! It was a great place to hang around though - all very Indiana Jones and well worth hanging around until the last minute to get a glimpse of the place without loads of tourists, even if we did nearly miss our ride home.

Jo getting wet at My Son

Hoi An was just a great place to hang out and I'm not quite sure where all the time went (although quite a bit of it was spent in several of the fantastic restaurants, bars and patisseries). We took full advantage of our one (semi-) sunny day by spending it all on the beach or in the sea, and even in the rain we managed to go swimming at least twice a day, either in the sea or the hotel pool. The beach at Hoi An was great - really big and long, lovely sand and very clean. We camped out on a couple of loungers at one of the sea-front restaurants, with drinks and snacks on hand from Ms Man and her family, and then fantastically fresh seafood for lunch, caught by her husband that morning. The sea had great big crashing waves, great fun for playing around in for 5 minutes until a particularly big one comes along, crashes on top of you and sends you gasping and spluttering for the shore. Josh described it as like being sick backwards, but that didn't seem to stop him!

Strawberry Mojito and wifi - what more can a man want?
Sea, sand and sun
Restaurant workers and hawkers digging for crabs while trade was slow.

The train journey from Hoi An to Nha Trang was pretty hard work. There are only three trains a day and none of the times were very good, so we ended up spending 10 hours in a soft seat during the day rather than taking a sleeper overnight. The whole 'overland' idea is starting to feel a little tired now and I'm really glad we've only got one more long train journey left. The train was quite comfortable really, but it was pretty grubby and they had TV on really loud for at least 6 hours. I spent 2-3 hours trying to ignore some really bad play, which seemed to consist of some annoying girl constantly breaking into ear-splitting cries and thought the next one couldn't be any worse. They then played a video of small children singing songs and dancing for about an hour. The only way to get through it was to thank our lucky stars that we weren't trying to do the journey with a hangover.

Train departure board, Vietnam-style.

We're living it up in Nha Trang at the moment. Spent most of yesterday hopping between pool, sea and bars. Luckily they're all pretty close to each other. We were supposed to go on an islands and snorkling boat trip today, but the weather looked too wet and stormy so we pulled out. In fact, I think it might be the end of our beach-going for this holiday as tropical storm Ketsana (soon to be Typhoon Ketsana) makes a bee-line for Vietnam. It's set to hit Hoi An, so we're glad we're not there any more. Looks like Nha Trang will see nothing more than a few storms, but probably enough to stop us hitting the beach. Fortunately there's a spa nearby :)

Finally some photos (part 3)

Jianshui - a small town in China with some historic parts left and not overrun with (Chinese) tourists. It was great!


A pretty typical road in China. Keeping out of the way of everything really keeps you on your toes!


Jianshui market


We spent 7 hours on this bus going over mountain passes between Jianshui and Hekou. Bring on the rail link!


Rice terraces - in Vietnam this time. They're a bit of a theme across this part of Asia, but they're really beautiful and very impressive.


Local minority women lend a helping hand along the not-particularly steep or slippery path to their village.


When we got there, suddenly lots and lots of embroidery appeared and was met with a chorus of "You buy from meeeee.....". I got away with a single cushion cover.


Hanoi - watch out for those bikes, because they won't watch out for you!


This monk in a cyclo was taking pictures of us, so we thought we'd return the favour!


Off the Reunification Express at Da Nang. The Vietnamese take the same attitude with rails as they do with roads - absolutely no help for pedestrians!

Finally some photos (part 2)

Umm - maybe this should be part 1. All this stuff happened before the previous post.


This is us in the dining car on the trans-mongolian between Ulaan Baatar and Beijing. We're sitting with Anna and Apia (Err - I don't know how to spell that), a couple of Swedish girls we met in Mongolia and spent quite a bit of time with.

According to the Rough Guide, this was an old shopping street in Beijing. When we got there, we found that they'd razed the old shopping street, and rebuilt it to look a bit old, but with space for H&M and Zara!


And these are all the things you're not allowed to do in said street. Awesome.


The Forbidden City, replete with Beijing smog!


Cooking school in Yangshou. It turns out that most chinese food consists of one spoon the oyster sauce, one spoon the chicken stock buillion, one spoon the soy sauce...


Stepping stones at Yangshou. Josh waited for me to get all the way across, camera poised in case I fell in. Sorry to disappoint!

Finally some photos! (part 1)

Apologies for the lack of any sort of coherent order :)


Lovely rice terraces in Ping'An


Lijiang wins the chinglish competition!


Lijiang


Tiger Leaping Gorge - quite possibly the last drive of your life


The Three Pagodas in Dali - which is a sort of Buddhist theme park.


Fried goats cheese on a stick - not as tasty as it looks, unfortunately!


Ping'an rice terraces looking 'atmospheric' (i.e., wet!)


Musicians in a park in central Kunming

We love Vietnam

Sorry - no photos again, we've left our camera lead in the hotel.

Anyway, this is just a quick note to say how much we're loving it in Vietnam. It's a very chilled out easy country to be in compared with China. I don't think we'd realised how difficult we found it in China with the constant language barrier and squat toilets!

Sa Pa was lovely. We went for a couple of walks around the villages there, all very easy and accessible. The first walk in particular was great, we had a big group of local women in traditional dress following us all the way to the village (about 6km), holding our hands on the steep bits and chatting away the whole way - well worth the inevitable hard-sell of embroideries at the end of the trip! (Needless to say the one who'd picked on Josh did particularly badly from the deal)

Hanoi is very hot, and we've resorted to choosing between restaurants, shops and tourist attractions by the quality of their air-conditioning. We've had some really great food, and the shopping is great. We've jettisoned another book which leaves space for at least two more souveniers! Hanoi is the quintessential south-east Asian city. Motorbikes zipping around everywhere constantly peeping their horns, a lovely combination of traditional and colonial architecture and incessant badgering from hawkers (Hanoi has to be the only place I've been to where the taxi drivers hail you, rather than the other way around).

Getting the night train to Da Nang tonight, for a few days in Hoi An. We're in a cheaper hotel in Hoi An which means they give away free internet rather than charging a small fortune for it (20 cents a minute? Shame on you Hilton!). So I absolutely promise to uplaod some piccies soon, as soon as we've had our fill of lazing by the pool :)

Yunnan and buses

Ok, so we've been really remiss with blog postings - sorry about that, we've just been far too busy/relaxed/drunk/on buses. Actually, mostly on buses. Trains just seem better and better when you compare them with buses.

Anyway, we finished off our trip in Yangshuo with a morning kayaking, which Josh reckons is less comfortable than cycling - I disagree. Then bus to Guilin and overnight train to Kunming in Yunnan province. Kunming is a really cool city - way more laid back than Beijing, although not so many sights to do. There's a park in the city centre where loads of retired people hang around playing traditional music, singing and dancing. We found a big group of middle-aged women (and a few men!) doing traditional (?) dances to some modern music, being led by an extremely camp guy - it was quite a surreal sight. Found some really great little bars around the university area (universal truth: students like to drink), and generally had fun.

The overnight train to Dali would have been a lot more relaxing if they hadn't left really loud - and really bad - music on until 11pm, and started again at 6am. Still, we had a really comfy hotel in Dali so plenty of opportunity to relax. Despite previous experiences, Josh talked me into giving mountain-biking another go. It was still really uncomfortable, and the roads still disappeared into tiny footpaths as soon as you got 5 minutes down them, and I still needed beer to recover afterwards! But it's still one of the best ways to get away from the hoardes of tourists.

After a couple of nights in Dali, we got the bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge. The "about 4 hours" on a bus was actually 7, and it was bloody uncomfortable as well. Add a particularly hair-raising drive up the gorge, and it was a pretty exhausting day in all. Still, the views were truly amazing, and we did a really good walk the next day. I wouldn't have believed that such scenery were possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

After two nights at Tiger Leaping Gorge we went off to Lijiang, did the toursit thing there for a night and then headed back to Dali, and then back to Kunming (told you we'd been busy!) From there we spent a night in Jianshui, which was fantastic. Really off the main tourist trail, it was a completely different side of Yunnan. It was good to not be hawked at for a change! A lot of the people were staring at us like we had three heads, although there did seem to be a handful of western tourists around.

From Jianshui, our last bus (I hope!) - seven hours to the Vietnamese border. We were really worried about how easy it would be because we couldn't find much information before we left Kunming, but in the end it was really easy. We got the bus tickets from the bus station when we arrived at Jianshui, and then got up early the next day for another 7-hour bus journey over winding mountain roads. Tried to get worried about the precipitous drops and found that we've become somewhat accustomed to them... Felt slightly silly getting off the bus and asking "what way to Vietnam?", but the answer was "one minute walk that way", so that was good. Crossing the border on foot was a touch strange - like two airports without a plane between them, just a bridge over the river instead.

So here we are in Vietnam. It's trains from here on in. And we're going to start taking things a bit more slowly, so maybe we'll even have time to upload some pictures at some point.

Congratulations if you've read this far - you must be one of our parents. Hi mum(s) and dad(s)!

Yangshuo and around

We're having a great time with Yangshuo as a base. Everything's pretty cheap and a lot of people speak a fair bit of English, so I don't even mind that feeling that we're still being constantly ripped off. Just not ruthless/stressed enough to make a decent attempt at bargaining I guess.
 
We did an overnight stay at Ping'an the day before yesterday. We got a bus transfer there, thankfully had an ipod to drown out the 'tour guide' (I couldn't work out what language she was speaking - Josh worked out after about 20 minutes that it was English!) and made a dash for freedom as soon as she got the little tour-guide flag and a loud-speaker out at Ping'an. Had a lovely time drinking beer with spectacular views.
 
The next day we walked through the rice-terraces, which was amazing. Would love to post up some pictures, but if you want an idea of what it was like, google 'longji rice terraces'. It's still pretty darn hot here, so we wisely did what the locals do, and got up at 5.30am. It was cool and misty, very atmospheric right up until the point where the heavens opened and drenched us in a storm! So the rest of the walk was done in squelchy shoes. If we'd have waited until a reasonable time then we probably would have been ok! But the walk was still great.
 
The buses back to Yangshuo get classified as 'an experience'. Bus 1: Never realised you could get 25 people in a 14-seater minibus... Fortunately we got there early so we had a seat, and didn't even have to share it with anyone. Bus 2: Love their idea of a connecting bus service - bus 1 was heading into town, bus 2 heading out on the same route, they just stop when they see each other. Was relieved to find a proper coach with air conditioning and everything, until they put on a particularly bad 5-minute long chinese-techno-pop song. On loop. For two hours. OMG I nearly went mad. Bus 3: No techno. No noise at all. Very, very relieved.
 
This morning we got a couple of bikes from Bike Asia (that's where Jamie used to work) and cycled up and down the Yulong river to Dragon's bridge, which apparently is very, very old. Well, actually we missed the last turn and spent 15 minutes being totally unimpressed by a pretty normal-looking bridge before realising our mistake. Actually, we missed quite a lot of turns, and maybe made a few that we weren't meant to, but generally had a great time - we just went along with karsts on one side and a river on the other, safe in the knowledge that there wasn't too much that could go wrong, and enjoyed the spectacular scenery. Most of the locals said hello to us as we cycled through lovely villages and past paddy fields, and every now and again one of them would try to sell us a trip back down the river on a bamboo raft by running after us shouting 'hello! hello! bamboo! bamboo!'.
 
Josh will disagree with me here I think, but I am promoting mountain biking to 'least comfortable way of travelling', even above camels. I think lots of beer is in order tonight to take my mind off my aching legs, knees and buttocks. Jamie, I honestly don't know how you do it.

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South into China

So another long silence from us I'm afraid. Things got a bit busy there for a while, and our Biejing hotel didn't have internet access. Also, China has blocked the Blogger website, so I can't see what we last wrote, and am having to submit this post by email. That means no more pictures till Vietnam in a few weeks (booo...)
 
Our last few days in Mongolia were great. We spent 3 nights at another camp, this time in some much more alpine scenery. All very relaxing - days spent rafting lazily down the river, and strolling in the hills. Nights were spent huddling under ridiculous numbers of blankets as it was quite absurdly cold at night. Seriously, at 7 in the morning when we woke up I could see my breath in our Ger. Fortunately the Mongolians are quite good at isolating themselves from the cold (they're used to -30 much of the winter). We had loads of blankets, a wood-burning stove in our Ger, and Vodka to keep us warm. We felt just like the locals... 
 
Then we were off on the last 36 hours of the Trans-Mongolian into Beijing. We left Beijing not quite sure what to make of it. It had been pretty exhausting as it takes ages to get anywhere, and if you make any mistakes (get off at the wrong stop / try to visit something that is closed) then getting back on track can take forever. Also, it was UNBELIEVABLY BUSY. We've never seen a city so busy. The Forbidden City at times resembled a football crowd - there were hundreds of people all pressing themselves up against little glass windows to try and get photos of the stuff inside some of the main buildings. We spent as much time amazed by the crowds as we did by the (admittedly impressive) Ming and Quing Dynasty architecture.
 
We saw some fab sites, and had lots of fun, but to be honest were pretty glad to be going somewhere of a more manageable size afterwards! And now we're nestled between limestone carsts in the backpacker mecca of Yangshuo. It's about 35 degrees, the sun is shining, the scenery is beautiful and we're getting ready to head over to our evening cooking school. It feels a long way from Beijing (which it is). We're in this area for a few days to relax, check out the scenery and some of the local villages.

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Mongolia birdspotting

OK, for those of you who are interested (umm - that's you, Marion), here's a list of the birds we saw on our first trip in Mongolia:
Black eared kites (lots)
Black vultures (lots)
Steppe Eagle (lots and lots)
Golden eagle (maybe)
Kestrel
Long-legged and rough-legged buzzards (sooo many - they're like pigeons)
Tree sparrows
Wheatear - could never work out if they were Isabelline or Northern
Skylark
Raven
Swallow
Red-billed Chough
Desert Wheatear
Sandpiper
Demoiselle Cranes (yes!)
Shelduck
Hoopoe
Isabelline Shrike

There were so many birds of prey, and they were huge! Sitting around on the grass, we got really close! Unfortunately internet is slow, will try to add pictures later. Gotta go now as someone else is waiting for the internet, could waffle on for ages about how great it was!

Photos from Mongolia

Around the Gobi Steppe


Watching vulture chicks in their nest


Our camp at the Gobi Steppe

The camp owner's family

Monastery in Ulaan Baatar

Mongolia. Lots of space.

Another week, another country! We've been in Mongolia for about 5 days now, and it's an amazing place. They're obviously trying to keep it's charms a secret by making it as irritating as possible to cross the border from Russia...

We got the train from Irkutsk to Ulan Bataar - a great old russian train with wooden windows, and comfy as always. All was going well and we were at the Mongolian border in no time. Then followed seven (7) hours of passport checking, cabin searching, and general form-filling on both the Russian and Mongolian sides of the border, during which time they decided it would be sensible to (a) switch off the air conditioning and forbid anyone to open windows (b) lock the toilets (c) sell people beer. As our Provonista (the person who looks after the carriage) smuggled people into the toilets whenever she could get away with it, everone sat sweltering in their cabins, or drinking (and sweltering) in the corridor.

After a brief, but fun, 24 hours in Ulan Bataar we set off for the countryside to see what this Mongolian Wilderness was all about. Oh my god. There is a quite ridiculous amount of space with literally nothing in it except beautiful and dramatic scenery and incredible bird-life. Jo nearly passed out with excitement within about 10 minutes of us leaving UB, before it became clear that everywhere we went we were met with dozens of Vultures, Eagles, Cranes just feet away from us (for non-birdies, they are VERY BIG BIRDS). We stayed in a wonderful small ger camp about 150 miles from UB, run by a local expert on pretty much everything. The day spent touring round the local area spotting wildlife with him was an amazing highlight.

In our three nights staying in a ger (traditional Mongolian felt tents) we saw pretty much every season. We arrived in sweltering heat, left in crisp cold sunshine, and in between had the most dramatic storm we've ever seen decend upon us.

So now we're back in UB, and heading off north tomorrow for another few days in the wild (and the comfort of a ger).

Pictures to follow (hopefully).

Hurrah! We have internet!

Sorry for being a bit remiss on the blog front - internet access has been a little hard to come by. For a start, there wasn't ANY internet cafe on the 4-day train journey, and then Listvyanka's internet cafe was basically the guys in the tourist information centre letting you use one of their two computers for a bit, but it was so painfully slow we gave up! But in Irkutsk (yes, the place on the Risk board) now, so we're taking full advantage of civilization!

Anyhoo, a bit about what we've been up to. The train journey from Moscow to Irkutsk was really great (see above for the train we were on). Nothing to do but look out the window, read books, play chess and drink beer. By the time to get off, we were a bit brain-dead but very relaxed!

We got to break the journey with brief stops at the platforms, where people would try and sell us food. We generally looked on suspiciously.... Until we found this:

Sausage and bread. The lunch of Kings - and us on the train. Made a difference to the meat and potatoes that they sold on the dining car, and the bread stuffed with luke-warm cabbage that we bought on the platform one morning.

Those views from the window? They were beautiful - mostly

So when we got to Irkutsk we headed straight off to a little village called Listvyanka, on the edge of lake Baikal. We really loved it there. The Russians so far, but in Listvyanka in particular, were really friendly and helpful - especially the students who offered vodka at 10.30 in the morning and wanted to practice their English.

This is Listvyanka. Very rustic. And wet, but that didn't spoil our fun!

Here's one of the (many) bars we drank in:

And here's an example of a traditional wooden house, along with a more modern development that has been carefully architected to fit in well with the traditional style. See if you can work out which one is which

We really loved Russia - way more than we were expecting. It's a crazy country and lives up to so many of the cliches, but somehow the whole place works. We're heading off to Mongolia tomorrow morning.

Photos from Moscow!

Soviet art and architecture


St Basils & the army

Russian soldiers. We think vodka was involved.

The Lenin Mausoleum (and sombre face)

Backpacking in a 5-star hotel


Random station in Belarus


The Train to Moscow

Warsaw old town