Well, it has now been one year since we flew to Mexico City from NYC and now we are in Russia - weird! It is also weird to think that in 2 weeks we will be in Cairo, after travelling the remaining few thousand Km of the Trans-Siberian, a brief stop in Latvia AND going to Athens!
Anyway, a lot has happened since the end of the last update, for this we have to go all the way back to Beijing..... but to the best part...
Catherine arrived!! We made our way over to the Hilton to meet her and we were greeted with big hugs and a ridiculous room!! We snuck ourselves in and went out to explore the city, now as a threesome. We went 1st to the Temple of Heaven Park, we had a lovely wander around the grounds and even got to witness a large group of locals having a nice Sunday afternoon dance! From here we went to go for a quick drink and to the Duck Restaurant that had been recommended to us.
We arrived and were greeted with something everyone can appreciate.... free wine! A good start so far. We were all hungry and ready to experience Peking Duck in Peking. Unfortunatly the free wine was the best bit! Despite being delicious, the duck was disappointing as, despite ordering a whole duck, we all only had 3 limply filled pancakes - no good. It was so shocking thas
t we even complained and the girl donned some rubber gloves and started tearing at the duck. "Extra Lean" duck my ass! Anyway, it was delicious and we did not let it taint our night. We went to find a drink and before we knew it we were witnessing a pole-off! That's right people, a guy one one pole, a girl on the other and them both going at it HARD! Genius. Suffice to say, we had a good night!
We awoke in our (thx Cat!) still wonderful room and ventured out to The Forbidden City. When we arrived we were suprised to find a Cartier exhibit (Catherine works in the antique jewellery business) and it was one of the most enjoyable exhibits that we have been privy too, particularly as we had a cute little walking jewellery encyclopedia with us!! We left this to view the rest of the beautiful City before heading across Tian'amen Square to wander around the old network of streets on the other sides. From here we went for a really fun hotpot, cook your own, restaurant before heading back to the Hilton for the evening.
After leaving the Hilton and sadly saying goodbye to Catherine, ouк new fave travel buddy, we went over to our hostel for our last night in China before starting the Trans-Mongolian Railway trip. We left from here the following morning and bee-lined for the train station where we settled into a vitually empty train, meaning we had our own cabin. Yay!! The train trip was really something else, exciting and visually beautiful, seeing the landscape change from the green, limestone mountains of China, to the rock Gobi desert and then to the undulating hills surrounding Ulaanbaatar. Particularly memorable was Jen's puchase of Jack Daniel's at the border... only to find it was Jack Daniei's, a "very convincing" fake - she was not happy!
Arriving at our hostel, and for the 1st time for a while private room, we finally conceeded to machine washing our clothes, much needed after China, and went to explore the city a little. Finally we were really cold and we relished the opportunity to don our new coats and jeans! The next day we explored UB more visiting the very interesting and extensive National History Museum and then onto the Natural History Museum - more of a taxidermists wet dream than a museum - We went for a few local brews (thanks Kev & Arya) before heading back and packing up for our 2 nights stay with a nomadic family in a tradition ger in the Terelj National Park.
After a few hours in the car we arrived at our new family's place in the beautiful National Park. We were greeted with not only amazing landscape but warm mare's milk, and homemade bread & butter! We were left to our own devices till lunch and we went for a very visually rewarding hike up the peak next to the encampment. It was an amazing sight and at this time of year the trees were all an amazing bronze colour. We returned from our hike for lunch and (I) enjoyed freshly cooked (& killed) mutton with potatoes, rice and pickles. We vegged and enjoyed the countryside for the rest of the day before settling in with Anna and Peter, our new Portuguese buddies, and a bottle of vodka in our wood-fire heated ger.
Our 2nd day was greeted with new people coming to stay and more warm mare's milk! Today was our day to go horse-riding, for 4 hours, my 1st time..... it was harrowing! Actually, after nearly falling off in the 1st 5 mins, I got the hang of it and we had a great time trotting to 'Turtle Rock' - you guessed it, it looks like a turtle! With a sore arse we returned and had another relaxing evening, it was only after reviewing the photos from the horse-riding that we realised just how reeeeeeeeediculous I looked on the tiny horse!
We returned to UB after a 2nd night in the countryside and went to get our tickets for the next leg of the train. We rewarded ourselves at the Chinngis Beer Co. and went to stock up on provisions for the ensuing journey.
The next part of the train was just as beautiful, but a little more painful as there was the border crossing at 1am that took close to 6 hours with Mongolians asking us to help them smuggle coats across by claiming that they were ours! Yay. But we did make it into Russia. We arrived in Irkutsk yesterday after several hours skirting Lake Baikal, the World's deepest lake and largest deposit of unfrozen fresh water, to our 1st Russian Couch Surfing host. We hung out with the hairless cats till Spike got home at 1030pm. We hit it off and at 4am, after a bottle of vodka, we finally retired to bed.
Today we were late getting up thanks to the vodka but still made it to Lake Baikal to dip both feet in and gain 5 years of extra life per foot. Take that smoking!
We leave in the morning for Tomsk and more Russian fun!
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Chinese trains, terra cotta, and tea scams
Soooooooo we are super duper belated in our blogging, as China has banned many websites including blogspot! AND facebook! We had so much more free time while there :)
To start, here are some much belated pix from Hanoi:
We left off en route to Shanghai from Hong Kong...
The train was long and painless. Sleeper trains are far superior to sleeper buses. We slept well, and arrived in China to chaos in immigration/customs. Man, the locals are not fond of queuing! Additionally, we witnessed an old woman relieved of her fruit at customs, and she consequently spazzed out and started shrieking and lunging at the officials. No one really cared, and it was an interesting contrast to our fruit smuggling experience in Chile, as well as how the ol' US officials would have handled things had this incident gone down on our turf. Anywho...
We figured out the metro, and eventually landed at our hostel. We checked in and went for a wander- unfortunately Shanghai is plagued with tons of construction as well, so the views of the infamous Bund and walks through the old streets were tainted by bamboo scaffolding and banging. We spent just a few days in Shanghai as it was not really what we expected, but we did do some quality museum hopping. The Shanghai museum is top notch!! Unfortunately we were SCAMMED outside the museum by a nice little couple who we had a great chat with and they invited us to come and drink some tea with them. It felt a bit scammy from the start but I guess we were trying to believe that people actually want to talk to us! A big tip off for the scam was when Oli told he guy about his hobbies and mentioned Jujitsu.. the guy FREAKED out and looked terrified. Anyway, we ended up at this tea house and were informed that we should try a lucky 6 types of tea, at 8 bucks per person per type... yea, over $100 for tea. We politely excused ourselves. Another Shanghai highlight was our Crab ovary and digestive tract filled dumplings. They tasted like meatballs, but I could not get it out of my head how many little crabbies it took to feel that heaving queue of people. Though they were tastyish, I was a bit disturbed. Also please note we have lost our HK and Shanghai pix due to a "card error". Yay for cameras!!
Next stop- Suzhou. The "Venice of the East" is sprinkled with tiny traditional gardens, and we had such a lovely time exploring. We loved it there!!! Great little alleys, and a fab museum designed by IM Pei. Maybe the nicest and most atmospheric museum of the trip!?!?
Flash forward to Nanjing. We took another overnight train there, once again found our way on the subway, and got comfy in our hostel. We were pretty lazy while there, lots of hanging out and reading. We did make it to the Nanjing Holocaust Museum which was extensive and very well presented. On the way home we were tourist-napped by a cab that decided to take us on a wild ride in the opposite direction we wanted to go just to jack up the meter, and then pretend he didn't know where the metro station was. Thanks, dude.
We choochooed our way to Xi'an from Nanjing, and settled in one of the 10 most amazing hostels in the world according to Hostelworld. Set in a small neighborhood but within walking distance to everything, the seven sages hostel was awesome!! Great food, great drinks, poor music videos but hey, Vittis isn't for everyone. While in Xi'an we saw a few museums, ate kebabs in the Muslim Quarter, and saw the Terracotta Warriors!!!!!!!!! Self proclaimed 8th wonder of the world, it really was a fantastic visit. We viewed the 3 pits backwards, saving the main pit for last. It housed hundreds of soldiers in formation Life size, and no 2 alike, it was just amazing. We had a blast!! Oli left the guidebook on the bus there so we had to kind of make up our own stories. Thankfully Beijing is covered in our Trans Siberian books!!
Long train to Beijing, on which we tried but failed to make spaghetti in my thermos, and slept lots. Arrived in Beijing in the early morning, threw our stuff in the hostel, and hopped off to the Mongolian embassy to get Oli's visa. Afterwhich we skipped around the city attempting to book tickets to Mongolia, finally having success at CITS for double what we expected to pay. Too many beers (thanks pops!!!!) and off to bed far too late.
Woke up stinky and thirsty just in time for our tour to the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!!!!! We had booked ourselves on the Secret Wall tour to the unrestored part of the wall; no tourists, no touts, and definitely no toboggans to ride back down the hill. Three hours of napping in the van were topped off by getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a little Chinese man who spoke no English, and the fog encroaching on us with every gust of wind. Oooooh this should be good! We had to hike up the hills for about an hour. It should have been no big thang, but after last nights shenanigans we were huffing and puffing and sweating like madmen. Our little guide wiped the sweat from my brow, chuckled, grabbed my hand, and dragged me up at twice the speed. Ouch.
Our first view of the wall was sudden, as we were climbing switchbacks and the fog was so thick we were seemingly in a bubble. Suddenly there it was. Our 6th Wonder!!!! Wow, very exciting times. We climbed along the spine of the wall, snaking its way up and over the ridge, with little watchtowers at the peak of each hill. We had an absolute blast scrambling over the crumbling rock, dodging trees and weeds that were growing right out of the middle. And eventually, the fog cleared, and we were blessed with the most outrageous views. Good times!!!
We have booked our flights back to the states... Our little adventure will be coming to a close on Dec 30. However we still have to drive across the US to finish our second lap of the world, so we have that to look forward to too!!
To start, here are some much belated pix from Hanoi:
We left off en route to Shanghai from Hong Kong...
The train was long and painless. Sleeper trains are far superior to sleeper buses. We slept well, and arrived in China to chaos in immigration/customs. Man, the locals are not fond of queuing! Additionally, we witnessed an old woman relieved of her fruit at customs, and she consequently spazzed out and started shrieking and lunging at the officials. No one really cared, and it was an interesting contrast to our fruit smuggling experience in Chile, as well as how the ol' US officials would have handled things had this incident gone down on our turf. Anywho...
We figured out the metro, and eventually landed at our hostel. We checked in and went for a wander- unfortunately Shanghai is plagued with tons of construction as well, so the views of the infamous Bund and walks through the old streets were tainted by bamboo scaffolding and banging. We spent just a few days in Shanghai as it was not really what we expected, but we did do some quality museum hopping. The Shanghai museum is top notch!! Unfortunately we were SCAMMED outside the museum by a nice little couple who we had a great chat with and they invited us to come and drink some tea with them. It felt a bit scammy from the start but I guess we were trying to believe that people actually want to talk to us! A big tip off for the scam was when Oli told he guy about his hobbies and mentioned Jujitsu.. the guy FREAKED out and looked terrified. Anyway, we ended up at this tea house and were informed that we should try a lucky 6 types of tea, at 8 bucks per person per type... yea, over $100 for tea. We politely excused ourselves. Another Shanghai highlight was our Crab ovary and digestive tract filled dumplings. They tasted like meatballs, but I could not get it out of my head how many little crabbies it took to feel that heaving queue of people. Though they were tastyish, I was a bit disturbed. Also please note we have lost our HK and Shanghai pix due to a "card error". Yay for cameras!!
Next stop- Suzhou. The "Venice of the East" is sprinkled with tiny traditional gardens, and we had such a lovely time exploring. We loved it there!!! Great little alleys, and a fab museum designed by IM Pei. Maybe the nicest and most atmospheric museum of the trip!?!?
Flash forward to Nanjing. We took another overnight train there, once again found our way on the subway, and got comfy in our hostel. We were pretty lazy while there, lots of hanging out and reading. We did make it to the Nanjing Holocaust Museum which was extensive and very well presented. On the way home we were tourist-napped by a cab that decided to take us on a wild ride in the opposite direction we wanted to go just to jack up the meter, and then pretend he didn't know where the metro station was. Thanks, dude.
We choochooed our way to Xi'an from Nanjing, and settled in one of the 10 most amazing hostels in the world according to Hostelworld. Set in a small neighborhood but within walking distance to everything, the seven sages hostel was awesome!! Great food, great drinks, poor music videos but hey, Vittis isn't for everyone. While in Xi'an we saw a few museums, ate kebabs in the Muslim Quarter, and saw the Terracotta Warriors!!!!!!!!! Self proclaimed 8th wonder of the world, it really was a fantastic visit. We viewed the 3 pits backwards, saving the main pit for last. It housed hundreds of soldiers in formation Life size, and no 2 alike, it was just amazing. We had a blast!! Oli left the guidebook on the bus there so we had to kind of make up our own stories. Thankfully Beijing is covered in our Trans Siberian books!!
Long train to Beijing, on which we tried but failed to make spaghetti in my thermos, and slept lots. Arrived in Beijing in the early morning, threw our stuff in the hostel, and hopped off to the Mongolian embassy to get Oli's visa. Afterwhich we skipped around the city attempting to book tickets to Mongolia, finally having success at CITS for double what we expected to pay. Too many beers (thanks pops!!!!) and off to bed far too late.
Woke up stinky and thirsty just in time for our tour to the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!!!!! We had booked ourselves on the Secret Wall tour to the unrestored part of the wall; no tourists, no touts, and definitely no toboggans to ride back down the hill. Three hours of napping in the van were topped off by getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a little Chinese man who spoke no English, and the fog encroaching on us with every gust of wind. Oooooh this should be good! We had to hike up the hills for about an hour. It should have been no big thang, but after last nights shenanigans we were huffing and puffing and sweating like madmen. Our little guide wiped the sweat from my brow, chuckled, grabbed my hand, and dragged me up at twice the speed. Ouch.
Our first view of the wall was sudden, as we were climbing switchbacks and the fog was so thick we were seemingly in a bubble. Suddenly there it was. Our 6th Wonder!!!! Wow, very exciting times. We climbed along the spine of the wall, snaking its way up and over the ridge, with little watchtowers at the peak of each hill. We had an absolute blast scrambling over the crumbling rock, dodging trees and weeds that were growing right out of the middle. And eventually, the fog cleared, and we were blessed with the most outrageous views. Good times!!!
We have booked our flights back to the states... Our little adventure will be coming to a close on Dec 30. However we still have to drive across the US to finish our second lap of the world, so we have that to look forward to too!!
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