TravelStream™ news feed for member leon1974 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/leon1974 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 13 Jan 2007 07:50:55 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/leon1974/asia2006/1158937200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/leon1974/asia2006/1158937200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/leon1974/asia2006/1158937200/tpod.html Sat, 13 Jan 2007 07:50:55 -0500 Leon and Rosie's trip :Trans-Siberian train to China

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Irkutsk, Russia

A rare building amongst the wilderness. I never got bored of staring out of the window, it was actually quite hypnotic.
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Beijing, China

(Written by Rosie....) We stayed in Beijing for 4 days. It seemed a lot more laid back than maybe we had expected. This was our first real taste of China and the chinese people. We got quite a lot of attention for being western looking, especially from people trying to sell us stuff. We quickly learnt the mandarin for "don`t want". In Beijing we also discovered a lot of delicious chinese food that you cant get in England such as Szechuan hotpot, which we will surely be attempting to make on our return. Beijing has some particularly interesting temples, its really peaceful walking around them. The architecture is very similar to the forbidden city, which is huge. The city of Beijing is quite polluted, but there was a lot of cleaning up going on, particularly in the parks where there are a lot of flower displays in anticipation of the Olympics. We also heard a few musicians practising in parks, its quite accepted in China, and people don`t think its mad to walk around singing at the top of their voices.
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Beijing, China

We crossed the Mongolian-China border late at night.Monday morning we travelled through china to Beijing, passing The Great Wall of China on the way. The pyjama lady put on her face and smart clothes, and we prepared ourselves to be greeted with an entirely new culture. The train, amazingly arrived on time to the minute!
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Perm, Russia

The photos of the next 6 days are from the train.
After a while it started to become obvious that the guards were not going to clean our carriage. It seemed that only first class passengers were entitled to this privelige. Eating and sleeping in the same cabin.. well you can imagine !
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Moscow, Russia

This is where we got on the train for Beijing. It was a bit tricky finding the station. We shared a cabin with 2 strangers, but luckily they spoke English.. this was a 6 day train ride!
We were in the 2nd class compartment, which means there are four beds, and the bottom ones are used as seats during the day. There is a little table, and constant hot water, but thats about it. We managed to wash using a complicated boy scout method of 1) taking a bottle and filling it with boiling water 2)putting this in the sink with some cold 3) using bottle to pour it over the body 4) add soap 5) repeat steps 1-4 for rinse.
Needless to say it wasn't particulary comfortable, a bit like camping. Some of the other passengers unfortunately didn't wash at all, and this became increasingly apparant as the days went on. One lady even earned herself the nickname of "pyjama lady" in our cabin, as she remained in her pyjamas for 6 days.
The guards on the train were chinese, and they spent most of their time cooking up huge feasts and not giving us any.. we had to settle for the restaurant car, which in russia served overpriced cabbage soup. The best deals were to be found on platforms, where people sold homemade dumplings and cakes for tuppence.
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Moscow, Russia

We arrived in Moscow early in the morning, too early to get our heads round the Eussian alphabet. Once we had worked out what the letters were, they still didn't make any sense cos the words were all in Russian, but we got by somehow.
We found some friendly people in Moscow, but we got some very cold stares as well. The metro is amazing, but I was knocked out of my chair by a scary babushka, who obviously had no sympathy for me with my huge backpack.In one shop we went to, we were given such a horrible cold stare by the shop assistant that we felt compelled to leave without buying anything. The city certainly isn't geared for tourism.The architecture made up for it in a way, but we were glad to be on our way!
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Warsaw, Poland

Saturday morning we arrived in Warsaw.Here's where the language problems started, but luckily there was a russian guy on the train who spoke polish and german, so we engaged in some 3 way translation at customs. We got out of the train and checked out Poland. The people at the station where eating whole chickens for breakfast.
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London, United Kingdom

After weeks of preperation, obtaining visas, enduring jabs and searching out the best deals on our train tickets, we were finally as ready as we would ever be for our big adventure. It was strange to think that we were literally only a tube ride and 2 trains away from Moscow, our first destination. Its actually more complicated to get to Croydon from here.
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Chongan, China

So, from Chonqing, we got a night train (10 hours)to the capital of Ghuizhou, (Guiyang), which is the poorest province in China. After a lot of confusion, (which these days seems to be the pattern when trying to find things) we managed to get on a bus to Kaili (2 hours) which is a smaller city, and then another bus (3 hours) which was an extremely bumpy ride. At this point we realised we were getting out into the sticks, as the roads were still being built and the bus was going at about 10 miles an hour. When we arrived in the village of Chongan, they were having their weekly market. Chong'an is a Miao village, which is one of the tribes in this area. They have their own language, but most people also speak chinese. The traditional dress for women is a blue jacket and a metallic copper coloured headress. Miao women also wear silver earrings, but the kind where you have to make a big hole in your earlobe, sounds painful but looks comfortable. Their speciality is embroidery, and the best quality work is reserved for baby carriers, which are worn on the back. Most babies in this region are carried in beautiful baby carriers, each one is unique, and the style of embroidery is passed down through families. The older men where blue suits and fur hats for some reason even though its pretty warm most of the time. The younger men seem not to be bothered about tribal dress and wear western clothing. Most of them sport motorbikes with the worlds loudest horns, and a cigarette hanging out of the mouth. The children all know how to say at least one word in English even though this is a really remote area.
As for the countryside around, we walked up 5 km of ancient gorge, and it really was lovely - proper countryside. The only people we saw were herdsmen and other farmers, and everyone was really friendly. Great to be out of the city !
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London, United Kingdom

Our original plan was to do this whole trip without flying, to prove that it can be done really. We wanted to cut out flying our at least cut down on it, hopefully inspiring others to do the same. However, we just didn't have enough time to get back over land, so we decided to fly from Bangkok to London. There are lots more people travelling over land now, it just requires a lot more time, but it is so much more rewarding.
Our flight was at half past midnight on the 20th of December. We thought it would be great because we would have the whole day to spend in Bangkok and catch our flight that night.
Then, we suddenly realised while in the South of Thailand, that of course 00:30 is in the morning, not at night and we only had 8 hours to get to Bangkok which was 650 km away. It would have been possible but extremely expensive and dangerous in a taxi, as Thailand is known for its crazy drivers.
Of course, I was really stressed by this point, thinking we would definitely miss our flight and be stuck in Bangkok over Christmas. We both really wanted to come home, as cold though it is, blighty is home ! Plus, we weren't sure if our insurance covered missing flights due to not reading the time on the ticket correctly. Luckily, a kind random lady came to our aid... she happened to be a travel agent... "you can fly", she said, "theres a flight in an hour!"
OH NO!!!!!!! we were supposed to be NOT flying! It was as though an outside force was having a joke with us and testing our commitment to the green cause. I am afraid we came unstuck on this occasion, and headed straight for the airport, miraculously getting on a flight to Bangkok with half an hour to spare.
So we made it back to London, rather shellshocked. It was a sudden end to our fantastic adventure.
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