DAY 176 - Lucknow, India

Thanks to everyone who sent a text on Christmas day. Sorry for not replying, but for some reason we could receive messages but not send them. As the tourist board jingle goes, "Incredible India". Quite.

We've had a string of worsts in the last week or so; Kathmandu airport was the worst I've ever had the misfortune to use (a disorganised shed with no staff and no information) and the worst hotel (in the Black Hole of Calcutta). This was getting us down a bit so, like the government, we thought we'd spend our way out of adversity.

We did our sight-seeing in Varanasi in the first two days. A Ghat is a set of stone steps and platforms which lead into the River Ganges. There are lots of them in Varanasi where the locals do everything from washing, swimming, preparing food, taking Hector the cow for a wash and cremating relatives. According to last week's Economist, it's one the most bacterially polluted rivers in the world, and single handedly responsible for most of the childhood diseases in the area. We went for a boat ride, half expecting the wood beneath us to dissolve away as we went. It didn't, but we decided against the swim.

Apart from the Ghats, Varanasi is a very claustrophobic town, with very narrow streets and a definite seedy side. A couple of dodgy blokes tried a scam on me and were quite aggressive when I refused to hand over some cash.

The first hotel in Varanasi was quite nice with hot water and stuff, but for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we booked ourselves into the most expensive place in the city, The Taj Ganges Hotel. It was very palatial, set in large gardens and had soft mattresses (a first for India). The downside was that it seemed like everything was an opportunity for the hotel and staff to take money off us. Everyone wanted a tip. This wasn't a surprise, but was a bit annoying, as was the constant fussing that surrounded everything we tried to do. Still, we decorated the room as best we could, played tacky Christmas records and attended the "gala" Christmas Eve dinner. This was a fantastic buffet at which I tried a bit of everything and narrowly avoided a repeat of the Beppu incident. There appeared to be general embarrassment and confusion at the party hats from some of the locals, but I don't get embarrassed so led the way in making myself look silly.

On Boxing day we had to drag ourselves away (and pay the bill, which I didn't look at) and get a train to Lucknow. I could almost hear the hotel porter say, "using Indian Railways? I'd better wish you luck now..". Train was two hours late. The hotel we found was drab, overpriced, functional and was run by a zombie who was always at the front desk, day or night, and looked like he'd been stuffed thirty years ago.

The town was more pleasant than Varanasi and had a few crumbling ruins to look at. There's a pattern emerging when it comes to Indian tourist sites. They charge westerners about twenty times what the locals pay, when you get in there the staff are invariably too lazy to open most
of the attractions, they are always poorly maintained (where did our five quid entrance fee go again?) and when they are open there are always bizarre rules to make the visit tiresome ("couples must be shoeless and accompanied by a paid guide").

Today we went to the zoo. It took a while to find the animals. When we did, they all looked miserable and bored, although one pelican that had escaped found the outside world even worse and was trying to break back in. We then got completely lost (thanks for the useless map Lonely Planet) before heading to the train station for our next train to Amritsar.

DAY 169 - Calcutta, India

Ah, India. What is it about India that initially makes me want to run screaming to the airport and get on the next flight home? We've booked our flight back to London now for 6th January, so i'll have to grit my teeth and get on with it.

 

Kathmandu wasn't that bad in the end. Yes the power cuts were a pain, and the restaurants were very expensive, but the hotel had a generator, we ate from the supermarket most of the time and there was lots to see. It was definitely more chaotic than China and the roads were terrible. We walked everywhere as usual although there was rarely a footpath to walk on. The sights were mainly temples and stupas and the like, with one pleasant riverside temple where they burned corpses into the river. Most of the city itself was made up of narrow, busy alley ways lined with shops and small roadside shrines (usually to the Hindu god Ganesh). Great just to wander around and get hopelessly lost in.

 

We flew to Calcutta (or Kolkata as the local ruling communists have renamed it) on Thursday. It was a short flight but we arrived after dark so had booked a hotel in advance. It was a horrid place and the metal grill around the door made it feel more like a prison, so we found another hotel. This one was a bit more expensive (at 25 quid one of the most expensive on this leg to the trip), but it looked ok. How wrong could we be. The noise was terrible. First there was the nightclub on the ground floor pumping loud music throughout the building until midnight. We complained so they moved us to a different room. Above this room they were doing building work from 8 in the morning until 1 the next morning. It was maddening. I'm so glad we've checked out of there, but we'll have to be move careful in future. Problem is, this is the first time on the holiday when we're travelling at the local peak season, so everything is expensive and availability is low. We're sort of hoping that the recession and recent unfortunate events in Mumbai will make things quieter.

 

Calcutta isn't a bad city, but there's not a lot to do here. It's a typical Indian city; grubby, rubbish everywhere, overcrowded, but the food is great and there are some fantastic open spaces to loose yourself in. The Indian Museum isn't up to much though. It's not been dusted since 1950, the labels in the anthropological section still refer to the 1961 census and the fossil and natural history sections are just endless cases of rocks and piles of bones respectively (a picture of the animal the bones came from wouldn't cost much but would enhance the experience no end). That said, the full-term human embryo (pickled) and baby cat with one head and two bodies (pickled) more than made up for it. There's also the Victoria Monument, a fantastic building left over from the Raj that looks like the Taj Mahal crossed with St Paul's.

 

We've booked most of our Indian train tickets now. These will get us to Delhi on New Year's Eve, stopping at Varanasi, Lucknow and Amritsar on the way. The first train journey is tonight which means Christmas in Varanasi. Should be interesting...

 

Merry Christmas to everyone out there. When you're stuffing turkey down on Christmas Day and watching Doctor Who, think of us...

 

 

DAY 163 - Kathmandu, Nepal

After four days on the road in Tibet, getting over the border into Nepal was much easier than feared although not without it's interesting moments.

On the first day out of Lhasa we drove through some spectacular landscape. To be honest, it's for this sort of thing that I travel. Most cities are either identikit blobs and/or cesspits of human squalor.


Lake Yamdrok was a shimmering turquoise pool, shaped like a scorpion (apparently) surrounded by bare light brown mountains (pics at www.energiser.net). Naturally, the Chinese are draining it for hydro-electricity and as no rivers feed it, it'll probably be gone in a few years. That night we stayed in Gyantse, a poor town we'd seen on the BBC's A Year In Tibet. It's main monastery had a fantastic stupa with seventy chapels and a fantastic view from the top. Around the town were several dead dogs who had clearly frozen solid in the sub-zero temperatures at night. We had a heated hotel room. On this occasion.

On the second day we took a short drive to Shigatse, a very poor town further along The Friendship Highway.  We climbed a hill, went "ooh!", then visited another monastery and went "ah!" then ordered some random food at a local restaurant and got stared at lot.

Day three was a long, long drive. The scenery was still fantastic as we drove higher and higher, reaching 5200m and Everest Base Camp. The views of the Himalaya and Mt Everest itself were simply gob-smacking (yes, I've run out of suitable original adjectives and I left my thesaurus at home). The road was a bit hairy getting there but the trip back was in a different league. Our guide decided to take a different route back. The guide book described it as a trekking path. Twice the guide and driver got out, babbling in Tibetan, to check we didn't have a puncture. There were no buildings or people for about 50km, the sun was going down and it was freezing cold. Any incidents and we would have been stuffed. At one point we drove along what I can only describe as a shelf, about 3m wide, sloping down towards a 50m drop-off. We finally got to Tigri, a very, very poor town in the middle of nowhere. The hotel was, well, basic. No shower, no hot water and for all intent and purpose no toilet (this is not an issue for locals who just go anywhere - number twos included - and I'm not exaggerating). There was no heating in the room, so we slept in our clothes and were still cold. Couldn't get out of there quicker in the morning.

On the fourth day we were to drive to the border town of Zhangmu and in the process come down off the Tibetan plateau. We got to within 30km only to find the road closed. They were tarmacking it until 8pm. Dan and I got out and walked. It took five and a half hours and we dropped about a kilometer in the process, but the canyon we walked down was very pretty, changing from scrub-clad rock at the top to lush green Alpine-like forest at the bottom. By the time we got there it was dark and we were knackered. The hotel was rubbish again with no shower or hot water, but it did have a squat loo. It was warmer but we still had to sleep in our clothes.

On Sunday we crossed the border into Nepal and said goodbye to our guide and driver. It was good to be masters of our own destiny again and we immediately went about proving how useless we were at it. After a bit of haggling we got in a taxi to take us to Kathmandu. The tyres looked a bit bald but it was cheap. The road was almost all down hill, there were no seat belts and the driver seemed to have to push the brake petal a few times before the car slowed down. After about half an hour the driver stopped to have his spare tyre fixed which was an annoying delay. Another hour later we got a puncture. We finally made it here and had a shower. Was bliss.

The hotel is quite nice but Kathmandu is expensive, particularly the food. The power goes off for 6 hours a day but the hotel has a generator, so we're only without electricity for a few hours. We've done nothing today except plan the next and last country on this leg - India.

 

DAY 157 - Lhasa, Tibet

For our last day in Chengdu we had a wander around some sights (including a very peaceful if slightly run down monastery) then finished off at a local restaurant with a Sichuan delicacy - the hot pot. This isn't like Betty's hot pot from Coronation Street, it's more like a meat and veg fondue in a very spicy oil. It was very nice but I'd soon had enough. Bit greasy.

We caught the train that evening to Lhasa. It took two days to get there following a horse shoe-shaped route around the mountains, and climbing 3.5km up onto the Tibetan plateau. There was even an oxygen supply in case we felt light-headed. The only symptoms i had though was having to take unusually deep breaths every few minutes or so and an exploding deodourant bottle.

It's only taken a few days here to realise what a complex place Lhasa is. By day the sky is clear, it's warm and the sun's light makes colours more vivid and contrasts more striking. By night it's dark, very cold and a bit oppressive. This is not China, and yet it is. There are troops stationed on every street corner; 16 year old conscripts, balancing a baton round launcher on one arm while attempting to fiddle with their mobile phones in the other. All the streets have been renamed with Chinese names, the writing is mainly Mandarin, and there are the obligatory monuments to The Workers' Struggle sat amidst horrible concrete plazas.

But there is also the real Tibet. The Patala Palace, the one recognisable Tibetan landmark, is set on top of a large rock and looks box-shaped from the outside. Inside however, it's a labyrinth of rooms and corridors with wonky floors, wooden connecting ladders and Buddhist chapels. The colours are magnificent and the smell of incense and burning yak's butter is just the right side of nauseating. Most of the previous Dali Lamas are buried on the top floor, which has to be a first.

We've visited a few monasteries with our guide, most of which have been packed with pilgrims. They take their religion very seriously here. No photos allowed, alas, but one enterprising chapel would allow you to film for 85 quid. I declined.

The timezones around here are all a bit stupid and caught up in politics. Lhasa is on Beijing time (the 'people's time' as the communist mantra goes) so it gets dark (and light) 3 hours later than it should. India is 2.5 hours behind (why the half?). Nepal is 2.25 hours behind, just to make sure you don't confuse it as being part of India (apparently).

DAY 152 - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

By the time we left Dali I was coming down with some sort of flu, but it didn't really hit me until we got to Lijiang. For the next few days I could barely do anything - even standing up sent waves of dizziness through my head. By Sunday though it had worked it's way through my system (from top to bottom) and I was starting to feel better, but Lijiang will be remembered as the town I had to drag myself around.

Lijiang was probably the closest you could come to how old China looked before the modernising started. And how pretty it was. A network of narrow cobbled alleys, each with its own stream and little stone bridges to link them together. Dotted through the town are old wooden water wheels.

Naturally, it hasn't escaped the impact of tourism. Each street is lined mainly with trinket shops, each selling identical over-priced junk, or restaurants, half full at the best of times and with bored-faced locals dressed in local costumes doing a half hearted traditional Naxi jig.

For most of the first day I only noticed the cobbles, as when we did venture out, I barely had the energy to raise my head. Fortunately, by Sunday I was on the mend so we took a tour up to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Apparently at one point it's 4km deep, although from where we were it couldn't have been more than 1 to 1.5. Those nice Chinese people had dug out a cliff-side walkway allowing us (paying) tourists to walk down to the rapids about 3km in. And very impressive it was too, although we didn't see any (real) tigers. On the opposite side of the gorge to where we walked a road had been blasted through, dumping hundreds, nay, thousands of tonnes of rock into the river below. A bit messy really.

On Monday we took a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan. The flight was short but not fun due to a small minority of our fellow travellers misbehaving on the flight (being irritating rather than dangerous), and others using the sick bag as a depository for their flem.

Chengdu is an ugly, grey, concrete, smog-ridden blob. But it does have Pandas. Big cuddly adult Pandas who do nothing but eat and sleep (related to Koalas maybe?), small furry baby Pandas who squeak and roll around like the staff at a PwC Christmas party, and slug-like newly born Pandas who are to ugly to bother with. At the Giant Panda Research Centre we saw all these except the slugs, and learned far too much about the Giant Panda reproductive cycle to be safe just after a large breakfast. The smog was so bad that morning that even though we were outside, we couldn't take a picture without the flash going off, so the results were pretty poor (see the China pictures link at www.energiser.net).

Today we went to see the Grand Buddha of Leshan. It's the biggest Buddha in the world (or summit). It's carved into the cliff by a river about 130km south of here. No-one did a tour down there surprisingly, so we had to make our own way by public bus. I'm proud to say we make it there and back without incident and the Buddha was very... big.

 

The main reason for going to Chengdu was to arrange our trip to Tibet. It's always been expensive and difficult to do, but since the riots there earlier this year it's got a whole lot harder. We've had to arrange and fix our itinerary in advance, we have to have a guide to chaperon us around for the entire visit and we have to pay through the nose for it. That said, it promises to be one of the highlights of the year so hey ho... I'll let you know...

DAY 145 - Dali, Yunnan, China

One day was all we had in Guilin but that was enough. Most of it is pretty much like any other Chinese city. Horrible white-tiled cubic buildings, soiled with the dirt from industrial development and rusting pipework. It's saving grace is its location right in the middle of the Karst landscape which meant there were pockets of natural beauty buried within the city's grid. With so much rock around, the local tourist board had gone into overdrive to find some animal or vegetable that each stony outcrop resembles in an attempt to pull in the punters. "Elephant Trunk Hill" did sort of resemble its tag, but only from one narrow angle of approach. We didn't see many westerners around which was surprising for such a major tourist destination.

Monday evening we set off for Dali. This involved a train (17 hours), a coach (5 hours), a local bus (the wrong one, 20 minutes) and another local bus (the right one, 30 minutes). The town itself must be one of the few places left in China that hasn't been bulldozed and rebuilt in the name of progress. It's laid out in the original square pattern, bordered on four sides by the original town gates. It's set on a gentle slope: to the east, one of China's largest lakes, to the west the first of the mountains which lead up to the Tibetan plateau.

Driving through the Yunnan countryside, it's was clear that China is developing fast, particularly its infrastructure. It's a shame they can't spend more on their people, most of whom appear dirt poor.

We had a look around town to start with. We were trying to find a supermarket, but most large shops seem to be tourist gift shops dressed up as "local food supermarkets". Dan's been "concerned" that we're running out of deodourant, but they don't seem to sell it here which raises some interesting questions. To be fair, it probably says more about our obsession in the West with excessive personal hygiene than anything else.

On Wednesday we took a cable car up into the mountains behind the town. At the top there was an 11km walk (or "cloudy tourist road" as it was called) around the twists and turns of the valleys. The clever thing was that despite being 2km up, the path was flat for it's entire journey, not rising or falling by more than 100m across it's length. Only in China. We were lucky with the weather too and the views were fantastic. At the other end was another cable car to take us down. Unfortunately at this point a local student latched onto us so he could practice his English. Trapped in a hanging basket, there was no escape. After telling us all about himself and asking about us in return, we luckily reached the bottom of the mountain. We were thus saved from him trying to order a meal (lesson 2) or asking directions to the train station (lesson 3).

On Thursday we were going to have a look at three pagodas (not that we haven't seen enough of them already). They wanted £12! Fortunately, you could see them from the road. They looked like they'd been put up in a couple of hours and were made of plywood. Not a patch on some of the older structures we'd seen earlier on our trip. Bit of a tourist rip-off we think.

 

Tonight's meal was pretty typical of the way restaurants and cafes works here. You order your starters and main courses and they arrive in a random order, one dish at a time, over the next hour. Frequently the starters arrive after the mains and if you have more than one main, you can easily have finished the first before the rest arrives. Tonight I ordered Lasagna. I got a pizza. When I pointed out Lasagna has pasta in it, not bread, I was told that was the way the Naxi (local people) do it. And there was me thinking it was Italian. That said, almost always the food is excellent, if not quite what you thought it would be.

DAY 140 - Yangshuo, Guangxi, China

Did you know that China only spends 1% of it's GDP on healthcare compared to 7% or 8% in Western nations? I only mention it because it was the first thing to go through my mind after the events described in the last paragraph below. Better that through my mind than a tree, I suppose.

 

The bus journey to Hanoi was considerably easier than our previous bus trips. In fact, it went rather well. After checking in at a reasonable hotel we decided to have a day off pagodas and stuff, so went to see Quantum Of Solace instead.

By a stroke of luck, the hotel we'd picked just happened to be very close to the area with the highest concentration of Bai Hoi (fresh beer) shops in the city. We spent each night sat on plastic children's garden furniture, wiling the hours away watching life pass us by (or, this being Vietnam, narrowly missing death by moped / taxi, every 20 seconds).

On Sunday we headed out to Halong Bay for a boat ride around it's deservedly famous water scape. Small mountainous islands rise sharply out of the water to look like giant dragon's teeth, covered with green bushes on all but the steepest slopes (the dragon clearly doesn't brush his teeth).

We stopped on floating platforms for a while where fishermen who live in small huts flog their produce at ridiculous prices to gullible tourists. The seafood is then cooked back on board by equally expensive chefs. Our reputation as cheapskates was not compromised. We had the free rubber squid and rice. Despite this, it was an excellent, if long, day out (three hours on a coach each way).

On Monday we splashed out again for a tour to the Perfume Pagoda. It was a long way. First, a couple of hours on a coach. Then an hour in a boat that was no more than a flattened out baked bean tin that floated precariously a couple of centimeters above the waterline. When a motorboat passed by, the resultant wake almost flooded us (ok, I exaggerate). Finally we took a cable car to the cave where the pagoda was located. On this occasion, the getting there was as much part of the trip as the destination itself. The tour guide was useless. His English was rubbish, he had no control over the group and he had little idea on where we were going. Apparently his full time job was as a member of a boy band. He should have stuck to the singing instead of trying (unconvincingly) to over charge us for cable car tickets.

For our last day in Vietnam we hovered around Hanoi itself. Finding shops to buy the basics is easy as the streets are named after the products they sell. So "clothes street" sells clothes, "shoe street" sells footwear and "counterfeit street" sells photocopied money (Oh yes! Apparently needed for religious purposes).

In the evening we got the train for China.

First stop has been Yangshuo. Whereas nearby Guilin is more famous, Yangshuo is smaller, friendlier and infinitely more prepared for western backpackers. The location is simply fantastic. The Karst scenery looks a lot like Halong Bay in Vietnam, but on land and magnified several times over. The weather is decidedly chilly - but not cold - which is perfect for cycling, so on Thursday we hired bikes and pedalled around the surrounding countryside for some gob-smacking views. There aren't masses of tourists here either which makes it even more pleasurable. The land is a hundred shades of green, only broken by the blue sky, the brown rock and the multicoloured fly-tipped rubbish the Chinese drop anywhere and everywhere.

In the evening we saw some Cormorant fishing. The fisherman ties an elastic band around the birds' throats (so they can't swallow) then takes them out onto the river on a bamboo boat. In the water the birds dive to catch fish and when their necks are bulging, the fisherman hauls the birds back on board and removes the fish with a good whack on the neck. Sounds cruel, but the birds behave like well trained dogs and don't try to escape, and they get a share of the catch at the end.

Generally I like China more than Vietnam. People don't try quite as hard here to rip you off. However, the locals do suffer badly from the Three S's: Shoving, Shouting and Spitting.

 

Friday we took a boat ride to view more of the scenery during the day and went for a lightshow in the evening. The lightshow was great and something only the Chinese could put on. With several hundred  performers, it was set on water with the Karst mountains illuminated behind it. Fantastic. It was a shame the locals had to shout all the way through it.

 

We liked Yangshuo so much, we decided to stay another day... Bad mistake.

 

Mum, you'd better stop reading now.

Our last full day in this part of China was a visit to the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces. The coach took us up into the hills and onto some windy roads, high above the fields. At this point the driver lost control of the coach as we rounded a bend and we crashed to a stop. The front window dropped out and the door (in a strangely comic way) fell off. We climbed out through the hole at the front, hinting to the driver that it may be a good idea to turn the electrics off. From outside we could see where we had landed. As the coach had left the road its front right wing had clipped a half meter high concrete wall. This was the only thing that had stopped us going over the edge and dropping at least 100 metres to the ground. Most of the bend had no protection at all so we were lucky to have hit it. One girl was taken away in an "ambulance" (a shuttle bus with no equipment and a cross painted on the side). Dan and I got away with bruised knees and frayed nerves. It's a bit scary when you realise your life was almost certainly saved by a small lump of concrete. I'll never slag off 60s architecture again. After all that we eventually got to the rice terraces only to find the place smothered in fog, so we couldn't see anything.

Oh well. That's travelling for ya.

DAY 132 - Hue, Vietnam

The bus trip to Hoi An was a right balls-up. We bought an "open tour" ticket designed for tourists (although with a few back handers to the driver, the bus soon filled up with locals). The trip was supposed to consist of two legs, both on a "sleeper" coach. Unfortunately for us the company we booked with hadn't bothered to phone through our booking for the connection, so after 10 hours on the first bus we arrived at the half way point and the connecting bus was full and unable to take us. We finally got a seat on a non-sleeper bus - the last two seats - right at the back. The suspension was suspect, and we bounced along like five year olds on a trampoline.

After about an hour we passed the sleeper bus on the side of the road. It had broken down. Oh, how we laughed. I couldn't help indulging in some schadenfreude at that one. We never saw it again. Our coach finally pulled into the back of a hotel in Hoi An where the gates slammed shut behind us. We were supposed to be good obedient tourists and book into that hotel (so the bus company could get it's commission). I don't think so, mate.

Hoi An was a breath of fresh air after Saigon/HCMC. It was a lovely little river side town with old yellow-washed buildings, much less traffic and much less hassle. The only slightly worrying thing was that every night the streets closest to the river flooded as the tide backed up the channel. The locals, never to miss a trick, had marked the high points of each rainy season's flood on the inside walls of their houses and showed them off to tourists.

It was also here that we discovered "fresh beer". Locally brewed, no preservatives, delivered daily and only 4000 Dong (16p) a glass. The quality was far from consistent though and each night was tantamount to spinning the roulette wheel. A good day would be a fantastic tasting drink and a fun evening. A bad day could mean a head in the pan and a stinking hangover. Loved it.

We had a tour on Tuesday to an old ruin called My Son which was nice. None of the ruins in Vietnam seem particularly well looked after, but that doesn't stop them charging you to see them.

The short trip to Hue ran more smoothly than the trip to Hoi An, although still took four hours. The hotel is reasonable and dirt cheap, and there's the usual mix of tombs 'n religious buildings to see. Generally a pleasant place, although the Lasagna I had last night was more like a beef noodle soup than anything of Italian origin.

Today it's been raining all day. We went to have a look at the Citadel where the kings of Vietnam used to live and got wet. My mother would call this sort of rain "wet rain". It rains lightly so you don't where a coat, yet still get soaked because it's actually raining quite hard.

Don't ask.

Tonight we brave the sleeper bus to Hanoi.

Rich.

DAY 126 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hi

The bus from Pangandaran to Jakarta took forever. It didn't even go into the city centre but dropped us off about 18km outside. We had to "negotiate" a taxi to the hotel. As usual, the gaggle of taxi drivers wanted us to do what they wanted rather than what we wanted, i.e. get into the cab they choose, to the hotel they want you to go to (so they can pocket the commission), with the meter off (so they can charge you what they like). It took a good half hour before we got our way.

That wasn't the only fun we had with transport in Jakarta. The next day we wanted to go to the nearby town of Bogor to see their "world famous" botanical gardens. We went by train and it took 8 hours in total with only 2 hours there. We could have walked there in less time than the train took. There was absolutely no departure information provided at all, in any language. The gardens themselves were pretty good, particularly considering the dirty city around them. The Orchid house was especially attractive.

On the Tuesday we sweated our way around Jakarta itself, starting off in the old colonial quarter. It wasn't really worth a visit as all the old Dutch buildings were literally crumbling away before our eyes and the canals had become nothing more than an extension of the sewer and dumping ground for anything people wanted to dispose of (although not, strangely, shopping trolleys).

We also visited the National Monument. A massive phallus in the centre of a park - a sort of Nelson's column with a gold flame on top. You could go up to the top, provided you were prepared to put up with the hundreds of school kids and the national anthem being played on loop at full blast for your entire visit. The views were good.

More rule of budget travel:
(4) Always ask for a discount. Can't do any harm, can it?
(5) Always check if tax / service are included. Those cunning blighters at hotel reception frequently 'forget' to mention it.

We flew to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam on Wednesday. It's a compact sort of place and the hotel is somewhat claustrophobic.

The heat in the middle of the day is pretty bad, particularly when the sun is out. Then it tends to bucket it down in the afternoon and become very humid. The best place to hide from the elements are in the little ATM rooms. They have the best aircon in the city.

The pestering has reached new heights in Vietnam. It's not just the sheer number of hawkers and beggars, but the the lengths they go to to get your attention. I particularly hate the way they grab your arm as you walk by. They even walk into restaurants when your eating and poke you in the side to get your attention. This must be what it's like to be a parent. Maybe I won't get those cats after all.

On Thursday we wandered around the city to various museums and stuff, including the old presidential palace, the museum of American and Chinese War Crimes (which says all you need to know about the exhibits) and a KFC. On Friday we took a tour (for £4!). First on the itinerary (after the obligatory shop, naturally) was the Cao Dai Temple. It's the headquarter of a local religious sect who, literally, believe everything. They've fused Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Spiritualism, Christianity and Islam. They were a very welcoming bunch of people who were quite clearly hedging their bets on the afterlife. The temple was an extremely ornate and very colourful building worth the trip alone.


Next up were the Cu Chi tunnels which turned out to be a tour of the history of the Vietnam war. They let us crawl though one of the tunnels dug to hide the Viet Cong from US bombing. It was horribly claustrophobic (even more so than the hotel room), even though they had doubled the height of it to allow "larger" westerners to fit in. There was a demonstration of all the nasty traps the locals devised to take out the Americans and blokes with an inferiority complex could shoot an AK47 assault riffle (for a dollar a bullet) and restore their self esteem.

We're having a easy day today before getting the bus to Hoi An.

Rich

DAY 119 - Pangandaran, Java, Indonesia

First, thanks to those of you who replied to my pleas for good news. However, learning that "Aston Villa won on Saturday" wasn't really what I had in mind. Anyway, they say no news is good news, so by that reckoning I've had all the good news i need by ignoring the BBC.

Shopping notes:
(1) It costs me up to 80,000 times as much as a local to send a text message!!!!
(2) They ship Evian in and charge 10 times as much for it than the local water (which is owned by Danone). Who buys the stuff at that price??!?!

The hotel in Yogyakarta was a bit like an old tart. Over made up on the outside but scruffy and peeling on the inside. The owner also seemed to have a thing for caged birds which I don't really approve of anyway, but particularly don't like when they shriek their little lungs out at five in the morning. Even over breakfast they were ear-splitting. We also had to change rooms because we could hear rats scurrying around in the ceiling.

We spent the first day in Joyja (as the locals call it) trying to sort out the rest of our time in Java. Just getting out of the city was proving problematic. Since the Bali bombs and Boxing Day tsunami tourist numbers have collapsed. The upside for us is that things are a bit cheaper, but the downside is that availability and choice has reduced as places and transport routes have closed down.

Day two was a tick-list of sights. Borobudur and Pranbanan were both impressive temple complexes which were interesting to wander around, although the sun and heat were stifling. On the last day we took a look around the city itself and the "highlight" of the Kraton (palace). Honestly, it was deeply unimpressive. Most of the rooms were whitewashed and tiled giving the impression you were viewing Indonesia's national treasures in some old school changing room. And they made you pay twice for the privilege.

Up until now, Dan has been the one suffering from mozie bites, but since arriving in Indonesia they've taken a shine to me too. I'm still suffering a lot less that my travel companion, but i've still had some bites that have inflamed up to the size of nipples and itched like hell.

I've decided to resurrect Williams's Rules Of Budget Travel from my last trip. I will add to these as i get sufficiently bored to think them up:

(1) If they want your money, they'll speak your language. (This is a general rule that applies everywhere except Russia where they just snarl and expect you to pay up.)

(2) When visiting a tourist attraction, never assume you have to pay. If you wander around looking like you need to give some cash away, there will always be someone to take it off your hands. Keep walking until either something (e.g. a barrier you can't climb) or someone (e.g. person with a gun or ticket machine) stops you. (You'd be amazed how much money this rule can save.)

(3) If locals speak to you, they want money. There is an argument in some quarters that some of them may just be being friendly, but in my experience any conversation that starts "hello, where do you come from?" inevitably ends "for you, only 10 US dollar".


On Thursday we took a mini bus from Jogja to Pangandaran. The road seemed to only have one lane - for traffic going both ways. They're supposed to drive on the left here but vehicles just go wherever there's a gap, however quick that gap is going to be filled by the very large lorry approaching very fast from the opposite direction.

Pangandaran is a beach resort and is emptier than an investment banker's employment prospects. They were hit by a tsunami in July 2006 which caused major damage and scared off the few remaining tourists who weren't put off by the Bali bombings or Boxing Day Tsunami. It's a shame really because you can immediately see the potential the place has. It's just a narrow strip of land pointing into the sea with a small jungle at the end. The beach is wide and sandy, but alas covered in rubbish, so it isn't ever going to win a blue flag.

We had a tour of the wider area today including demonstrations of how to make brown sugar from coconut oil and how to carve puppets. Naturally they tried to flog us the produce afterwards. We also visited the Green Canyon. It was green.

Tomorrow we head for Jakarta. Apparently they have traffic problems there...

Rich.

DAY 114 - Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia

Ubud is a small town inland on Bali that rather fancies itself as an artist colony. That would be stretching it. But the place is a million times nicer that Kuta, which was a bit of an arm pit. Oh, and the restaurant waitresses kept putting flowers behind our ears which back home would count as assault (except you could hardly claim the weapon was lethal - except maybe to your pride).

We've taken to not booking hotels in advance. This has the advantage of being able to negotiate price, but the disadvantage of risking your place of choice being full. In Ubud we came off well. We got in our first choice hotel with 17% knocked off the price. Here in Yogyakarta we had to try three places before finding a room, at an above budget price.

Bali is terrible for being harassed by taxi drivers and shop owners pedalling their wares. You have to learn to shut them out. If you try to be polite and say "no thank you", they take this as your opening gambit in negotiating a price, so we've taken to staying stum.

There's some very nice countryside around the town with very picturesque paddy fields, tiny villages and rolling hillsides. Everyone seems to own a dog: more acurately, a pregnant dog. I don't know where all the boy dogs are as all the canines you can see look like udders on legs.

Saturday we hired a car and driver for the day and took a tour further afield. There were lot of temples, volcanos and pretty villages (to which you could make a donation). Of particular interest was a cave full of bats which the locals worshiped. Despite my respect for their beliefs, I can't really claim to understand the religious significance of it all, but I was surprised that they didn't clean the very large amount of guano off the furniture occasionally.

One of the ways the locals try to squeeze more money out of you is with the Great Sarong Con. The temples, quite reasonably, expect people to dress respectfully when entering. Anyone with shorts on is asked to cover up. The locals however tell people that they must wear a sarong and that they, fortunately, have one available for a "very cheap price". We fell for this once or twice, which was particularly embarrassing as I for one don't look particularly good in a dress. In
one place they were telling tourists they needed a Sarong even though they weren't allowed in the temple! The cads.

On Sunday we flew to Yogyakarta in Java. We were confidently informed (curse you, Lonely Planet!) that we could just turn up at the airport and we would be fighting people off trying to sell us tickets. Wrong! We had to wait 7 hours for a flight at an inflated last-two-tickets price. Bah!

On a darker note, it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore what's going on back home with the economy going down the pan. I can't ignore the fact that I'm spending money while the rest of the world is saving it. Robert Peston and his blog have become the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Mostly it's the being isolated from real events, so I can't judge how bad things are or are going to get. For the first time i'm giving up reading the BBC website and The Economist,
otherwise I have no hope in hell of enjoying the rest of this holiday. Any good news would be welcomed. We may have to economise and stay in hotels without flush loos (I'm not giving up air con!)

Rich

DAY 109 - Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

Hi there

Well, back on the 'orse then, as they say.

We arrived in Bali on Monday after a 24 hours of planes and airports.
It both is and isn't what I expected. It's every bit a tacky as you
would expect from an over-developed holiday resort but in many ways
that's quite reassuring. There will never be a world shortage of
tshirts with profanities written on them. On the other hand, I had the
same feelings on arrival I wrote about 5 years ago when I landed in
India for the first time: isolated, tired and like I'd landed on
another planet. The difference this time of course is that I'm not on
my own and those feeling dispersed quite quickly.

The jet lag is pretty bad. The plan for the first night was to get
wrecked due to it being my birthday. Unfortunately after a couple of
beers I could barely avoid slumping my head on the table. I hit my bed
only to wake up at 2 in the morning. Got a few more hours sleep later
but was still zonked in the morning.

Bali is cheap. I mean if you really want to pay £100 plus for a room
there are some international chains who will gladly take your money
off you're hands. Hotel and living costs are probably £15-20 a day per
person. And that's for a good room. You could do it much cheaper if
you wanted too. This is apparently the off season. It's hot, sunny,
dry and full of people. I shudder to think what high season is like.

Definitely in backpacker territory here. Everyone wants to speak to
you; the street hawkers shout at you relentlessly as you walk past
(no, I don't want a flight to Aceh - it's a war zone); lone tourists
try to start up a conversation with you (yes, you have been to more
countries than me and no, I don't care) and then there are the ladies
of the night who stare at you continuously and without blinking
(because it would just be rude for them to start the conversation and
besides, it's your job to buy the drinks). One waitress even had the
cheek to ask for a tip (the food was overpriced and we're on a budget).

Met a writer called Brian Thacker Tuesday night. Amazon describe his
book as a smutty but amusing travelogue. He gatecrashed our table
apparently looking for material for his new book, so I told him my
story of the poo throwers of Delhi. He seemed reasonably impressed.

Rich

DAY 104 - Orpington, UK

Hello there.

 

It's been quite a few weeks. I suspect you've been wondering where i've been, haven't you? After Japan we few to Sydney and had a few days of sight-seeing, eating, drinking and general normality. Then on the Monday morning we got a call from home that a close relative had passed away. By the middle of the afternoon we were on a plane back to London. We couldn't have been further away if we'd tried.

 

Being stuck at home for the last few weeks hasn't been particularly fun, what with blanket coverage of near-miss financial Armageddon all over the TV and radio, and the histrionics of impending recession in the papers. Even Terry Wogan's been at it. To cap it all off, last week I developed a nasty reaction to the Lariam anti-malarials i've been taking. I'd been joking about all the stories of it sending you mad for months, but i'm not laughing any more. Suffice to say, i'm off it now and the worst seems to be over. (For the record, it didn't make me loopy. No more so than usual, anyway.)

 

On the bright side, Harlequins have had a fantastic start to the season and the new Keane album is quite good...

 

Anyway, looks like we'll be off travelling again on Sunday, so i should be able to spend at least some of my birthday on Monday on the beach in Bali. The rest of Australia has had to be scrapped, but i'm sure I'll do it again some time in the future.

 

Rich

 

PS: Don't forget to write (particularly from work!)

PPS: www.energiser.net

DAY 87 - Orpington, UK

Travel suspended.

Normal service will resume in a few weeks.

DAY 82 - Nara, Japan

Hello there. Last posting from Japan today. I've had a fantastic time here, but I can't wait to get to Sydney. I've had enough of rice, polite smiles, temples and bottom-washing loos to last me a few years. Australia will be familiar, English speaking and rice-free (well, at least there'll be an alternative). I've just discovered though that my two favourite pubs have both closed down, which has put a slight damper on it.

 

On Sunday we arrived in Beppu. It reminded me of Eastbourne in winter (coastal, wet, with a faded seaside glamour - but hot). The draw there were the thermal baths (Onsen) and volcanic springs. Each spring cost Y400 to have a look at, but the quality varied considerably. The places that only really had a small pool of coloured water or spring to look at tried to jazz up their attraction with displays of fish, animals or gardens, which were invariably rubbish. The most disappointing was the geyser, where we waited 20 minutes to see a small column of water strain to raise itself a couple of meters above the ground. Was a bit like watching a sink backing up. The best had fantastic Japanese gardens and lots of hot bubbling pools of varying coloured liquids and mud.

 

We had two main meals in Beppu. On the first night we had sushi on a conveyor belt - only i hate fish. Luckily they'd branched out of just seafood and had little burgers on rice and chicken nuggets on rice too. Very civilised. The second night we had all you can eat and drink for £14 which was a big mistake. Not saying anything else.

 

We also decided that this would be the place where we gave up the hotels and stayed in a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn. The room had paper walls and dividers, and you had to leave your shoes at the main entrance and wear slippers everywhere (provided, but for people with feet considerably smaller than mine). Also, there were no showers in the rooms - we had to use the communal onsen on the ground floor and wander around in a dressing gown the whole time. All very interesting but two nights was enough. One peculiarity was the camera outside the room so they could see when you went out. Twice a day they'd pop in to change the table to a bed and back again, moving all your stuff around in the process. Grrrr....

 

Final destination in Japan is Nara. It took a while to get here and it's a nice enough place, but it's main draws are... you guessed it.... temples. We saw one set today and gave up. The flight goes at 21:50 later tonight and we've another day of temples to get through until then. Groan...

 

Rich.

 

DAY 77 - Kumamoto, Japan

There's a story "doing the rounds" that a Japanese / Korean / Chinese (delete as appropriate) bloke was opening a new shop and he wanted to print its name in English as well as Japanese / Korean / Chinese on the sign above the door. He thought he could save a bit of money by putting his shop name into a translation website. He did this, then had the full size sign made and mounted. On the opening day, someone pointed out that "Translator Server Error" probably wasn't the correct translation. The English in Japan are better than in China - but not by much, and you can't help but wonder where they get their translations...

Matsumoto is a small town in the Japanese Alps. It's a much nicer place than Morioka: more cosmopolitan, with more going on and fantastic mountain views from almost all street corners - a sort of Windermere to Morioka's Croydon. We got a very expensive bus up into the mountains, but any idea that we might be one of a few souls striding around the isolated hills Heidi-style was soon dispelled. There were literally hundreds of people there, all being herded, military-style onto and off the buses. The routes were all marked out and took advantage of the only flat bit of land for miles. Despite the easy access and remarkably unchallenging terrain, the Japanese were taking their days out very seriously. Most had all the gear on, heavy boots, waterproofs, walking sticks, etc. The walking sticks were mostly of the ski pole design and were handled almost like offensive weapons - on numerous occasions i came that close to having my feet skewered by some granny looking at her own feet (instead of where she was going) and charging along like someone who felt the countryside was something to endure rather than enjoy. And just to destroy any hope of getting back to nature, there were the ubiquitous convenience stores and vending machines every mile along the route. That said, the mountains themselves still managed to retain some majesty and there were even stretches (at the furthest distance from the bus station) where you could walk a few minutes without running into a tour group.

Next day we had a look around the town and the very impressive castle. It was a reconstruction as most of the big old buildings in Japan were knocked down the the late 1800s as Japan industrialised. There were a lot of steep steps. Many buildings here have wooden floors and they make you take your shoes off before entering. This is fine, but some places, as here, make you carry them around with you. It's very difficult to navigate the stepladders through the building with a pair of shoes dangling from your arm, and twice as hard for the army of pensioners that descend on these tourist attractions every day. Bottlenecks form and tempers fray. Mine mainly.

Nagasaki was next. As well as the obvious draw of the atomic bomb related sights, the place has an interesting history as Japan's "Gateway to the West". For several hundred years it was a foreign trading post for the European powers, so it has some interesting colonial-style architecture (which didn't get destroyed in the war) and gardens.

The food is still a on-going source of experimentation and amusement. Dan seems to be living on a constant stream of curry donuts and Iain eats anything and everything non-stop throughout the day - and is still losing weight. We've diagnosed a tapeworm.

Had a bit of horse last night. Tasted like beef jerky.

Now in a place called Kumomoto which has (another) castle - this time not as impressive as Matsumoto. I almost caused a diplomatic incident by taking my shoes off the wrong side of the line which (rather arbitrarily) divides the inside from the outside of the building. The Japanese can be rather anal when it comes to these things. It was an honest mistake but judging by the fuss, you'd think i'd burnt the place down or something.

The weather here is really oppressive - very hot and very humid.

Today we took a train, then bus, then cable-car up a volcano and oww'ed and ahh'ed at the steam and gas coming out of the top. That was as far as many of the other tourists got - they promptly took the cable car back down again after 10 minutes gawping. We decided to have a hike around the rim and climbed up one of the neighbouring peaks, naka-dake, for a better view. We had a picnic at the top which was all very civilised. Dan appears to be worn out by the beauty of the countryside cos it's only five in the after noon and he's asleep already...

To sum up Japan - fantastic countryside, really ugly cities.


Rich.


*** For maps, pics and stuff, see www.energiser.net ***

DAY 70 - Morioka, Japan

We had arranged to meet Dan's friend Iain Runcie at Tokyo airport where he would be joining us for the next three weeks while we're in Japan. He used to live here and speaks and reads some of the language which should be quite useful. He also has a number of friends in Tokyo and, after one of them picked us up from the airport and drove us to the hotel, we went out for some food with a group of locals. The restaurant was very traditional with no English spoken (or on the menus) and was the sort of place we would never get to try on our own. The flip side of this was that we had to take our shoes off on entering. This definitely affected our appreciation of the smell of the food given the extended washing cycle our clothing is operating under. Everyone was very polite though.

Japanese people are sooo polite. It makes you want to be polite back. It can be quite embarrassing at times.

Over the next couple of days we did some of the usual tourist sites in Tokyo. I've been there before but didn't mind seeing a few places again like Asakusa (temples and stalls) and Shinjuku (light pollution and mobile phone shops). I also got to go to the National Museum this time (which was shut on my previous visit). One new "experience" though was to go to a Karaoke Kan. My singing is renowned throughout England for its deep resonant quality and the expert tonal control i have, so it was an opportunity for Dan and Iain to have a private performance. You basically hire a small room (think broom cupboard) with a TV, large remote (to select your songs), a couple of microphones and lots of flashy lights. You then get one hour to scream to high-heaven and lose your voice, which we did. Great fun. I just hope the rooms were sound proof.

On Monday one of Iain's friends drove us to Nikko, about 100 miles north of Tokyo. It's another shrine complex, but a particularly big one. This was the first time I'd really got out of the cities while in Japan, and the countryside was worth the long drive.

Wednesday we took the train up to Morioka. (We've got rail passes which are only available to foreign tourists and allow you to go anywhere in Japan by train for two weeks for £230. Bargain.) It's a nice place but totally impenetrable. They clearly don't get many western tourists up here. No-one speaks English and although the restaurant names and the headings on the menus are written in English, it's impossible to work out what you're ordering as the rest is only in Japanese. I could hardly expect more: the menus in London aren't in Japanese, are they? It's funny that wherever you look, you see western influences but they usually turn out to be only skin deep. There are a couple of McDonald's, but they're the only American chain here. Almost all the other places sell exclusively Japanese style food. Fortunately most places (even posh establishments) either have pictures of the food or plastic mock-ups of their meals (!) to distinguish random-meat-product-'A' from random-meat-product-'B'.

One curious observation we've made is the random use of English on T-Shirts. People walk around - and we've seen this all over Asia - with completely meaningless statements on their chests. Clearly they don't know the meaning of what they're wearing. We saw a girl who couldn't have been a day over six years old with "I am bitch" written on her front. Weird.

Since we got here we've made good use of the rail passes and have been on local excursions to various temples and the like. Definitely suffering shrine-fatigue now though. It's difficult to maintain your interest on your one hundredth temple. There's not a lot of variation in design between one and the next.

On Friday we were going to climb the local volcano but it rained so we went to the cinema instead. Well, it would have been muddy and all that sulphur is a bitch to get out of your clothes...

Convenience stores are a laugh. There are at least two on every street, and they all sell pretty much the same stuff: rice pots, cans of coffee, grape Kit Kats, beer (in at least 7 sizes); you get the idea. The Japanese are renowned for having healthy, long lives. You wouldn't think it possible with all the crap that's sold in their shops.

Today we had another excursion to Kakunodate. It's a small town, laid out on a feudal plan with lots of old Shogun houses. It was very pretty if slightly underwhelming. Had a bit of a hangover from last night. Went to a restaurant where you could have as many drinks as you could down in 90 minutes for 1,200 Yen (£6). The beer is quite expensive here otherwise so this was a real bargain. The locals don't drink much, so we probably drank the restaurant's entire profit for the day away. Oops.

Rich.

DAY 62 - Seoul, South Korea

Hi

Well, i've been to my first war zone now. I'm pretty sure i'm not dead. Not sure what i can do to top that. By the way, there are loads more pics and now even some video on the blog (http://www.energiser.net/).

We flew into Seoul on Tuesday. The airport is so far out of the city it could well be in a different timezone, so it took forever to get to the hotel. There're not a lot of western tourists here which was a surprise and we got some funny looks sat on the Metro with our rucksacks, i can tell you. Clearly the locals aren't used to backpackers. That said, there are loads of American military types. They've got a huge base slap-bang in the middle of the city in Incheon, and it's patrolled by large numbers of security men wielding batons and pepper sprays, looking disconcertingly bored. Another consequence of their presence is that around the base there are lots of western shops and bars selling alcohol (and other 'stuff') at inflated prices - the whole area's quite seedy, actually.

The room in the hotel is small but was cheap. The towels are the size of serviettes and the toilet's in the shower, so every time you use the shower the loo roll disintegrates into paper mache, but at least the aircon works.

On Wednesday we did the obligatory tour of temples, although they're not as impressive as the ones in China. The weather is very hot and humid making long walks quite hard work. Had sausage and chips on a stick for tea. The stick runs through the sausage. God knows what they use to weld the chips to the sausage.

Starting to suffer from The Curse Of Asia. No cheese. We'll, they have processed cheese which tastes like rubber and sticks to your teeth so firmly that you need a chisel to remove it. Will be having cheese on toast every day, twice a day when i get to Australia.

Of course, Korea is probably most (in)famous for the fact it's split in two. There's a 4km demilitarised zone (DMZ) running down the middle separating the communist north from the 'free' south. It says something about the place that despite the ongoing tensions, both sides turn have turned the area into a tourist attraction. We visited on Thursday. There are a lot of rules and regulations when they drive you past all the barbed wire and mine fields (oh yes, they're still there) and in most places you're not allowed to take pictures (which is very annoying), but technically they're still at war, so it's definitely a unique tour.


The UN runs the south side of the zone and they make you sign a disclaimer saying you understand the UN can't guarantee your life while you're on their turf, but hey, its too late to turn back. A South Korean tourist was shot dead on the border by a North Korean soldier a few months ago for wandering off the official path. I carefully placed the other tourists in the group between me and the North Koreans while we were wandering about. It pays to be careful.

The highlight of the tour is to go into the one building where both North and South Koreans can enter and meet. They use it for negotiations and it straggles the border at Panmunjom. You only get a few minutes there though as the North start to bring their tourists in at the same time, just to be annoying. While you're there the North Koreans soldiers try to intimidate you by unstrapping their guns and staring menacingly at you. However, its the one place where the ceasefire treaty says tourists can photograph them, which is a good, if petty, way of getting your own back (before making a quick exit).

This visit also means i've legally been to North Korean (tick). To take a tour of the North costs a non-North Korean thousands of quid a day for the privilege, and they get cancelled at no notice with no refund if Mr Kim is having a bad hair day.

The rest of the tour (apart from walking down a tunnel the North dug to try and invade the South but which was discovered before they could use it), was an anti climax. They even tried to pass off a deserted railway station as an attraction. Yawn.



Climbed a hill in the centre of the city today and had a packed lunch while taking in the views. It then started to rain, so after a quick visit to an old prison built by the Japanese during their occupation to incarcerate the Korean "patriotic ancestors" (sic), we went back to the hotel.

DAY 58 - Beijing, China

The train from Ulaan Baator to Beijing promised so much but delivered so little. On boarding we found a modern, clean car with three toilets, a shower and even little TVs above each berth. In practice, none of this mattered because we had the most unhelpful, bad tempered, awkward, evil cabin attendant in all train-dom. She kept two of the toilets permanently locked and only opened the other for a half hour at a time at random points on the trip causing massive queues. She kept turning the TVs off mid film and refused to put the air con on for much of the trip. The cow. We were sharing our cabin with two Norwegian girls. She particularly didn't like them because they were better looking than her and could manage a smile occasionally.

I was last in Beijing in 2001 and found the place quite intimidating. There was no English anywhere and i had to count to dots on the subway map to try and work out where to get off. How things have changed. Apparently there's some sort of sporting event going on here. You wouldn't know if it wasn't for every billboard and every lamppost being draped in banners stating "Beijing 2008"; if it wasn't for speakers blurting out the official Olympic theme at top volume in every public park, square and space; if it wasn't for all the little ladies rushing up to help you every time you stop moving for more than 5 seconds. Actually, after Russia, everyone here has been fantastically helpful. Half the population appears to have been on an English course (although most of the official written translations, e.g. in museums, are still rubbish). And best of all on only 14 occasions has someone rolled up some phlegm in the back of their throats and spat in front on me. Compared to last time, that's nothing.


The food here has been very interesting with a huge choice, although we haven't strayed too far into the erm, really different stuff. The Peking duck was ok if a little fatty, but we skipped on the sheep's testicles and donkey dumplings. The night market had the most exotic dishes but the best meal was at a Manchurian restaurant today with massive portions and beer for all under a fiver. The food was very similar to the stuff you'd get in a takeaway back home (except everything didn't taste of fish).

On the first day we had a long walk through the main sights. It was raining most of the day with a particularly heavy downpour in the morning. It was good to see the Forbidden City again outside of a tour, which in 2001 went straight through the middle of the complex with barely a minutes rest to take a breath. We spent the evening in a rather garish bar area by the side of a lake supping the local brew and watching drunks paddle in duck boats. No fatalities witnessed.

I've a particular aversion to Chinese tours as they tend to spend most of the time taking you to shops for a hard sell, but it was the only way for us to get to the Great Wall given our Mandarin is a bit limited. So yesterday we decided to go to the Mutainyu section of the wall rather than the usual Balading section as it was supposed to be quieter. The weather had improved no end, but as expected we had an hour and a half of the "day" tour at the wall and then two shops for the rest of the day. The silk factory was particularly mind-numbing.

For our final day here we went to the Temple of Heaven. The sun was really strong and by 14:00 we'd had enough. We had an early lunch, some beer and and early night. Got a morning flight tomorrow to Seoul...

Rich.

DAY 53 - Ulaan Baator, Mongolia

Crossing the border into Mongolia took eight hours, two "Magnet" ice creams and one particularly threatening scowl (from the Russia border guard – I smiled, only weakly, at her when giving over my passport. Clearly I wasn't taking the situation seriously enough). Like the previous train, it was full of vodka drunks with dubious personal hygiene, all wanting to be your friend (provided you had some more vodka).

The countryside in Mongolia is incredibly beautiful – even in the pouring rain. Miles and miles of undulating hillsides covered in green grass, broken only by the odd river and mobile phone mast (well, you're got to build mobile phone masts). It's like the Yorkshire Dales only on a much, much bigger scale. There are no fences or walls dividing the land into fields and there are few trees. Ulaan Baator on the other hand is a Soviet inspired, soulless dump of an eyesore. Think Westminster council deciding to open a landfill site in Regent's Park, and you're not far off. There's supposed to be a large programme of knocking down the old stock of high rise housing and rebuilding it from scratch, but they've clearly got a long way to go. The situation wasn't helped on Monday when we drove through that Mongolia had won a second gold medal at the Olympics. There had clearly been quite a party. Although it was difficult to work out where the long term urban decay ended and the newly added debris from the previous night started, I'm pretty sure the crashed bus was fairly recent.

We were to spend the first two nights here in a Ger Tent in Terelj National Park, but on the way we stopped off at some local's tent to see how it's done properly. The couple who lived there were very welcoming and, in between milking the Yaks and rounding up the sheep, offered us some of the local delicacies. Of particular interest to foodies out there would be the fermented (horse) mare's milk (airag). It was very sour and conjured up images of pouring vodka into milk that's been left in the sun for a few weeks. There were various other cheese and cream products but I decided not to ask where they came from and politely tried a bit of each.

The Ger camp we stayed at was quite basic (cold showers again, despite there being a little box with red glowing lights on it promising the opportunity of warm water; it was alas not to be). The Ger's themselves are round, about 6 meters in diameter and have a wood stove in the middle. The furniture is just about ok – the beds are a bit hard with the mattress only being about 3cm thick – and we couldn't keep the damn stove alight for love nor money, so it was really cold in the mornings. All of this slumming was worth it though for the jaw-dropping scenery. No photos could do it justice. The area around the park is similar to the rest of the country only there are hundreds of granite rock formations worn out of the landscape like at Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire. But best of all, there's nobody else here. You can see for literally hundreds of miles and see absolutely no-one. Clearly there are some people out there, but – to further the Yorkshire Dales analogy – you don't risk twisting your ankle on poor man-made footpaths cutting through the natural scenery (there aren't any footpaths) whilst trying to avoid the hordes of middle-aged day trippers in their brand new fluorescent pink waterproofs who are equally trying to control their screaming kids who would rather be sat in front of their PS3 than enjoying the natural world. It's utterly silent apart from the wind through the (few) trees and buzz of giant grass-hopper wings. Good eh? J

Rich.

Over Lake Baikal.

DAY 50 - Irkutsk, Russia

Just to balance all that derogatory stuff I wrote about the Moscovites, I can happily report that most of the other Russian people I've met have been really nice, decent people (although they still don't smile). Lilianna, the lady who was sharing our compartment, was really sweet and spent the whole trip doing Sudoku puzzles. In Irkutsk the people were generally pleasant enough.

 

We arrived early in the morning, were picked up from the station and taken straight away to Listvyanka on the shores of Lake Baikal. Just to bore you with a few facts, it's the deepest lake in the world and contains over 20% of all the non-polar fresh water in the world. It's also very pretty which is just as well, because there's bugger all to do in the village itself except stare at the water. On the first day we had a look in the local museum with its pickled fish and couple of Nerpa Seals (cruelly kept in a tank no bigger than a shed – but at least they weren't pickled), then took a chair lift to the top of a hill to stare at the lake again (but from a slightly different angle).

 

The second day was better. A local guide took us for a hike along the side of the lake through Port Baikal along the old Trans-Siberian Railway tracks. Originally the railway followed the edge of the lake but the route weaved and turned so much they couldn't go very fast as they had to keep an eye out for rock slides on the track and gormless British tourists taking pictures of the lake, oblivious to anything going on around them. We had a nice camp fire before heading back.

 

On both nights we had a banya. This is just a sauna, only the Russians flail themselves with birch twigs repeatedly to encourage the impurities to ooze out. They were quite relaxing actually and I could see the attraction of them particularly in winter when it could get to -30C outside. (The lake completely freezes over in winter and the locals drive over to the other side.)

 

Saturday we were taken back to Irkutsk for a look around the city. It's really quite a typical European-style city and in general Siberia has turned out to be nothing like I imagined. I'm sure that would all be different in winter though when there's half a meter of snow on the ground.

 

Part of the deal on this trip was to use "homestays" rather than hotels. We thought these would involve us occupying someone's spare room and eating with the family so we thought this would be fun. The homestay in Listvyanka wasn't like this at all though, it was a bit of a hole. The bedclothes stank of old sweat and the toilet was of the poo-and-view variety. The owner didn't actually live there: he sent round the cleaner each meal time to shove some pre-packaged food onto a plate for us. The homestay in Irkustk was much better, complete with little old lady in huge lensed glasses (think the super-suit maker from The Incredibles). The room was pretty and she cooked the wonderful food herself.

 

Had a bit of an electrical disaster on the train before Irkutsk. Camcorder charger blew-up. The plug socket on the train was a bit loose and I think I'd stacked too many converters, splitters and chargers on top of each other, jenga-style, for it to cope with. Iain's bringing out the replacement when we get to Japan.

 

On the train now to Ulaan-Baator. We had to get up at 03:30 to catch it and then it was an hour and a half late. So I'm grumpy today. Get over it.

 

Rich.

DAY 45 - Barabinsk (i think), Russia

Last day in Moscow we went to the Kremlin to have a look around. Most of it seems quite modern except for the churches, of which there are at least five, right next to each other. One clearly wasn’t enough for the Tsars - that’s almost a different church for each day of the week. I got whistled at again by a soldier for sitting on the step of some faceless soviet era carbuncle.

 

After that we headed for Sculpture Park where all the old soviet statues of Lenin, Stalin, etc were dumped when the USSR fell apart. Since then they’ve added some more recent works including a barbed wire cage containing hundreds of stone heads to represent the hundreds of thousands of victims of Stalin’s purges. It been appropriately placed right behind a statue of the man himself.

 

After tea in a rather weird canteen-style restaurant called “moo-moo” we headed back to the hotel for the pick up to the train station. The taxi was late, of course. Finding the train was relatively straight forward though and we were greeted at the entrance to our car by a surly looking provodnitsa. She’s the lady who keeps the passengers in line while they’re on the train, makes sure the toilets are kept clean and (if your lucky) keeps the samovar (large hot water dispenser at the end of each car) topped up. The guide book advises to “butter up she-who-must-be-obeyed at every opportunity”. Quite. I finally got her to smile when I tried out my Russian (straight out of the guide book) to buy a bottle of water. I’m sure she was laughing at me…

 

There’s four to a cabin in second class but Dan and I only have one companion, an oldish lady whose name escapes me. She doesn’t speak any English but that hasn’t stopped all communication. So far I’ve managed to work out she’s descended from Genghis Khan and has been to Bulgaria. I’ll keep at it…

 

The trip we’re on involves three trips on the train. We’re currently on the first leg to Irkutsk on day 2 of 3. It’s really hot on board but fortunately there’s air conditioning which does a wonderful job of keeping the temperature at a barmy 30-odd degrees Celsius. And don’t forget there are no showers on board. It’s a bit cooler today though.

 

As for the scenery, well, that’s mainly trees with the odd burnt out shell of an old factory. We’ve passed into Asia now, going through the Urals last night. None of the stations we’ve been through have had any signs up saying where they are, so I’ve been using the GPS on my phone to work it out. Unfortunately Nokia seems to have forgotten about Asian Russia when drawing their maps so I’ve now abandoned that method and an relying on the timetable to work out which station to get off at. Wish us luck…

 

DAY 42 - Moscow, Russia

Back on the road again. Flew to Moscow yesterday. The hotel we're staying in is one of five large tower blocks which formed the athletes village for the 1980 Olympics. They're outside the centre of the city and I'd expected them to be cheap and rubbish, but they're surprisingly decent, only lacking air con. It's over 30 degrees here during the day and not much less during the night, but last winter it got down to -30 apparently, so i suppose it's not worth installing air con in most places.

 

The first thing you notice here is that some people have a lot of money. The second thing you notice is that they clearly flaunt it everywhere they go, so much so that (to me at least) it comes across as really crass. (There is no jealousy involved, honest.) It's as if all the bin men from Basildon suddenly won the pools - it doesn't seem to matter if you need it: if it's in, you've got to have it. Witness the huge cars blocking the streets, endless Apple iPhones littering the tables like disregarded crisp packets and the in-yer-face designer labels (I swear some of the D&G sunglasses are bigger than the heads wearing them). I've also decided to promote Muscovites above Tanzanians in the really bad taste shoes league (although some of the pairs i saw outside Bank tube station when i was on secondment were much worse, this was generally a localised effect caused by too many bankers). I shall say no more.

 

I know all this this doesn't sound much different to some parts of London, but most people here don't have anywhere near as much, including those we would term as "the middle classes". Apparently, the gap between the rich 1% and the rest is so great, other Russians are not allowed to come to Moscow without written permission as the authorities are worried it'll flood the place with beggars, make the place look untidy and getting in the way of their 4x4s.

 

On arrival we immediately got the metro into the city centre. Approaching Red Square is one of those moments where you suddenly realise you're going to see something in the flesh which you've seen countless times before on telly. As I approached the arch at the edge of the square and took my first sight of St Basil's Cathedral it was quite a moment. Of course it's never as big as you expected.

 

This morning we had a walking tour and picked up some interesting tit-bits from the guide. We paid a visit to Lenin who, owing to being pumped full of formaldehyde and dipped in wax, didn't have much to say. I got moved on by an overly (in my opinion) officious soldier for walking too slow. It's completely true that people don't smile here - particularly the waiters in the restaurants who seem to think they're doing you a favour by turning up for work. Anyway, Lenin was pretty creepy. You can't help but imagine the cleaner wiping him down one day and accidentally catching his face with the duster causing his nose to fall off. He can't possibly stay like that forever.

 

We saw a small bunch of old folk parading to Red Square with old USSR flags. Apparently there are plenty of people here who still hanker after the "good old days" of rationing, lack of ability to travel and general living-on-the-edge-of-war stuff. They're mostly old though. The young just seem to want a new iPod.

 

St Basil's is the most interesting church i've ever seen. It's made up of nine chapels, each separate but joined together so none is very large and most of the inside of the structure is wall. Each has it's own alter but the maximum number of people you could get into most of them would be about 15. Nice turnip shaped domes though.

 

Anyway, i need to go and evaporate a bit more. Getting on the trans-siberian for four days tomorrow. Will officially stink by Irkutsk.

 

Rich.