Endless Chinatowns

In balmy Beijing now, and wearing a couple less layers now, so feeling less like Michellin Men. We spent the train ride memorising the phrases for 'what's that called' and 'we'll have two of these', so were all ready for the street stalls selling such things as baked sweet potatoes, pork buns and fruit in these streets which look like all the Chinatowns of the world have joined together.

We spent much of yesterday staring at the vast, flat, gravelly expanses of the Gobi Desert from the train, and spotting antelopes and two humped camels. Waking up this morning the view was unmistakably of China, with distinctive buildings, clay huts, the Great Wall and air pollution.

Nicholas particularly wants to mention how interesting the bogey changing process was at the Mongolia/ China border, where the train is elevated and the wheels changed to fit the narrower guage tracks used in China.

Arriving this afternoon, we took a walk to Tiananmen Square where the Olympic clock can be seen counting down the next 952 days, and Mao still stares out over the shoulders of the young innocent faces of the soldiers on guard.

Cows in Coats

In Russia and Mongolia Christmas is not celebrated on 25 December - the Christmas decorations and Santa suits are all about New Year. (In Russia the Christmas decorations were being put up by serious guys in military uniforms which was not so festive).

So on Christmas day we set out with a couple of other guys, Ram and Joe from our guesthouse, a driver called Ekman, and his assistant who changed the tapes, and who we called DJ Fur Hat. We'd been to the bus station to find a driver, and after much excitement, confusion and scribbling numbers on bits of paper we decided the deal offered by our guesthouse wasn't too bad after all.

Our destination for the first day was the old capital from Ghengis Khan's day, Harhorin. The next day we wanted to travel down a river valley to see some hot springs and a frozen waterfall, but mostly just to check out what life in the Mongolian countryside was all about.

Out of the city we could see the bare countyside and its round hills stretched out as far as we could see. We passed herds of goats, sheep, hairy horses, cows wearing winter coats and our favorite, the two-humped camels (always staring at the horizon looking for the bastard deer that stole their antlers, according to the folk tale). Mongolian herders could be seen rounding up their herds out there in the subzero temperatures, smoke coming from the chimneys of their nice, warm ger huts. DJ Fur Hat quickly discovered we shared his taste for a particular Mongolian song which was very cute, and also kept us entertained with an eclectic mix of Britney Spears and 50 Cent.

Harhorin itself was a dusty spread-out town with a few crumbling industries and a huge monastery. The ger where we stayed was toasty hot with a wood stove in the middle. For Christmas night we were entertained by a local musican who played traditional instruments and did traditional throat singing for us which is an amazing sound. A very nice bloke, he explained that his day job was as an air traffic controller.

Highlights the next day included seeing a 5 foot tall vulture sitting beside the road, and having lunch with a nomad family who had cooked up some meat and home-made sausages. It tasted very very good. (We supplemented it with our own noodles to ensure we weren't stealing the food from their mouths). Instead of leggo, their little boy had a miniature ger he was putting together.

Along the way our driver took a break from the bumpy track and drove for some way along the frozen river - the smoothest highway you can imagine. Another highlight was seeing the stars - the moon is almost new, leaving the sky so black that we could see the milky way. It's been a long time since we saw that.

For our second night in the ger we took turns to wake up freezing cold to get the fire going again. The system worked very effectively.

The trip home was uneventful - although what really surprised us was that despite the apparent barrenness of the landscape, there was wildlife everywhere, particularly birds. On the posts close to the road we saw 5 or 6 eagles just sitting there watching the world go by.

So that's Mongolia for now. Tomorrow we take the train to Beijing, and find out if we've been practicing our tones properly.

R&R in Ulaan Baator

A good place to recover, and share stories with other travellers and legions of Peace Corp volunteers, in town for their Christmas break. Yes, after feeling for the last couple of weeks that we were the only foreigners in Siberia, we've suddenly stumbled upon millions of others, and its actually been really nice to share stories, beer and food.

Mongolia is recovering its buddist roots these days, and the monasteries are full of little lamas spinnng prayer wheels and learning Tibetan. It is so nice to be back among buddist temples which seem to have a very peaceful feel about them. Sometimes beside the road you'll see a pile of rocks with bright blue cloth strips tied to them - we spent a couple of days in the countryside and our driver would circle them in a clockwise direction where possible, and toot his horn as he drove past.

Outside the main centre of Ulan Bator is a huge market which promises to have everything you could want to buy. We took a trip out there with Ziv, an Israli guy who's heading out west for an adventure, to see what we could find.

The streets are icy here, and the market was no different. Between the rows of stalls full of boots, jackets, hats, goat skins, ger furniture etc the ice was well smoothed by hundreds of people skating on their shoes from one stall to the next. Some people skate, other people wrestle.

We hunted around looking at what was available, resisted the urge to buy rip offs of big brand western shoes (the upside-down Goretex lable on a pair of hiking boots gave the game away). We found some thick thermals to supplement our supply in case the weather became less clemant than it has been. Sophie found some cheap Chinese-made cold weather boots which are more grippy on ice and warmer around the ankles.

After a couple of hours of this we were glad to find the food hall which had small cafes which were well heated. We were given some tea which is amazing stuff and feels like it instantly warms through to your bones. It doesn't taste at all of tea, but is a hot watery milk drink, flavoured with salt. This description does not do it justice, but trust me, it's the business.

Not having experienced any local dishes, we were advised by various locals at nearby tables about what was good. Meat stew was very good. As with the people, the cuisine has been gradually changing as we've travelled through eastern Europe, Russia and now here. The dumplings which in Poland are called piroghi, are called pelmeni in Russia, and something like 'boat' here, and we will also see in China as something else. Isn't that weird?

Lunch over, we wandered through the food stalls, guided by Ziv who has visited Mongolia before, and has stayed with many nomad families. He showed us the hard cheese which tastes like dried yoghurt, and a thick fermented yoghurt drink which (like the tea) tastes better than it sounds. The milk may come from cows, horses, camels or goats.

Curious to find out more about Mongolian life, we decided to spend a few days in the countryside...

Siberia

Our last day in Siberia (transport services willing), and there's obviously some catching up to do...

Prior to taking the train from Moscow to Irkutsk in eastern Siberia, our main fear was that we would be sharing our carriage with a number of large, vodka swilling men, and forced to drink with them for the entire 4 day journey. Instead, our carriage was filled to the brim with 10 year old ballet dancers, returning from a trip to Moscow, and the train was filled with nail polish fumes rather than alcohol fumes.

We soon got used to the routine of the train - twice a day the carriage attendant would vacuum the carriage, which was spotless. Someone would wheel a trolly full of snacks and cigarettes up and down the length of the train. People would read books, eat and sleep, and every day would get an hour shorter as we headed east.

Twice, we made the trek to the restaurant car for a meal. To get there involved walking through about 10 carriageds, and in this car could usually be found a couple of solitary diners, and a waiteress who could barely bring herself to speak to us, let alone bring us any food. On the third night we decided that 2 minute noodles were preferable, and ate in our carriage.

The ballet girls left after the 2nd night and we got new neighbours, a woman and her granddaughter from a town near Irkutsk, who were amazingly friendly and spoke quite good English. We shared snackage with them and had an all round vodka free time.

Outside was covered in white - the trees looked like they were made of ice crystals. We got off the train at some of the longer stops and walked up and down the platform.

We were met in Irkutsk by our host where it was -26 degrees and the footpaths were thickly coated in ice and the vast Irkut river billowed vapour into the cold air. It was quite beautiful in an apocalyptic kind of way.

The New Black

Some new season's fashion tips from the streets of Siberia - and the look this winter is furry. Don't play too safe with just subtle fur trim here and there - wear it from head to toe. If you're new to -20 degree temperatures, you may decide to go for that hypothermia-chic we're hearing so much about and try some blue tones on the lips, and a rosy glow on the cheeks... and possibly the nose.

Metro mosaics

When people have spoken of soviet style architecture, this always conjured up images of grey concrete appartment blocks stretching to the horizon with no colour or relief. And there is such stuff, but there is also some pretty funky design happening to keep the masses happy. The Moscow metro is well known for its chandeliers and ballroom-like halls, as well as its very long escalators. We also found mosaics depicting proud revolutionaries - red flags flowing, others showing idyllic settings and relaxed lute-playing types, as well as what looked like scenes of glorious 19th century armies (but I'm no expert). Even the ventilation grates are decorated with brass plates, finished with garlanded hammers and syckles (sorry about my spelling, incidentally).

Some of the buildings, also, have a real art deco feel to them, like something out of films like 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' or 'Brazil'. We've decided to skip the onion domed churches and do a tour of Stalin's towers tomorrow instead.

Today we went to Red Square and saw St Basil's and Lenin's mausoleum (though not the man himself). We went inside the Kremlin where the guards have long sticks and blow their whistles if anyone steps off the footpaths.

Then we caught the metro across the mostly frozen river - beautiful - followed by an expidition to a cinema showing movies in English which was just near the Olympic stadium.

So the next step is the first leg of the Trans Siberian - we leave on Sunday night and don't arrive in Irkutsk until Thursday morning, 5 timezones later. We go from about -7 degrees here to around -20 there. We've arranged to be met there to save ourselves from being snap frozen.

Dosvedanya is harder to say than Goodbye

On our third-last day in Russia, we finally got some Russian words to stick in our memory. Learning the Russian script was essential, and we're very glad we did that, if only for the streetsigns etc. But once you get past words like 'internet', 'restaurant', 'supermarket', its use is limited without knowing any actual Russian words. We would read the phrasebook, repeat the phrase over and over and over... then forget it immediately. In cafes we'd pore over menues: 'soup' and 'salad' were easy, but we couldn't seem to remember much more than that. We did better in Thailand!

The main problem was when we needed to buy train tickets. We could write out what we wanted, but then they would ask us questions, and we would have absolutely no idea what they were saying.

Then on Tuesday, it somehow happened. We were having one of those days where you go around and around in (icy) circles trying to organise tickets, get cash, find food etc, and having no luck whatsoever. But then we walked into a ticket agency, and remembered all the Russian words (rather than just one or two of them, which always comes across as rather imbicillic I feel). 'I would like two tickets to Ulan Bator please... How much will that be?... No problems!!

It is when the going gets tough that your communication resources are really shown up. By a strange and inexplicable lack of judgement we decided to take a bus from Siberia to Mongolia rather than the train. It allegedly took half the time for half the price. We turned up at 8am to a happily idling bus and a group of people waiting to get on. And waiting. And waiting. Then it seemed the bus wasn't going for some reason, and everyone started walking away. Unable to find out what the guy is telling everyone else, and casting our usual cultural sensitivities aside, Soph takes deep breath and calls out 'Does anyone speak English?!!' and bit by bit the infomation came out - 11 o'clock from the other side of the square.

Great. But at 11 o'clock there is no sign of bus or crowds and we're standing around with our tourist-beacon backpacks on. A kind woman came up, only speaking Russian, and found out we wanted to go to Mongolia. She looked very confident, and described where to go, then even showed us... to the Mongolian consulate.

Then one of the other passengers turned up also looking for the bus, and found out it was delayed until tomorrow. Without that early morning bellow for information we would have been none the wiser.

Happily we did make it out of Russia the next day - they didn't want us to leave, and kept our passports for almost an hour before letting us go through (5 hours of the 12 hour journey were spent at the border, one hour was spent putting gaffer tape on parts of the engine). So for us it will be Christmas in Ulan Bator.

Robbie Williams

Yes, it's deceptive when you hear all the same songs on the radio as in the rest of Europe, and breakfast radio DJs sound exactly the same as everywhere ('zany'), BUT things are a little bit different here.

I mean obviously the signs are a bit harder to read, and you can't drink the water, but more than that. A small example, Peter kindly ordered tea and coffee for us in a Starbucks equivalent, as we hadn't quite mastered how to say hello yet, but was told you can't order tea with milk, only with lemon. Coffee with milk, yes, but not tea.

Then there was Peter's pseudo rental inspection where the landlady and boyfriend Sasha turned up late at night, apparrently to wash the dishes, water the plants and have a general chat. Sasha generously offered Nicho a shot of vodka (which is an offer one is advised to take up) with a water chaser. He didn't offer any to Peter, and it was Peter's voldka. He then found that Australia and Russia have boxer Kostya Zhu in common, and we had some kind of bilingual conversation about that.

And then today, when we arrived at the museum where we were meeting Peter, and found it had become a different museum, a kind woman who worked there rushed up to us, and told us in Russian how to find the place we were after. We had the map, and heard the instructions a few times - over the bridge, down to this square, and up the second street to number 53. No Problem. But once there, all we could find were building works. Being cold, late and without a coin operated phone nearby, we opted for a cup of tea to collect our thoughts. We were so late we figured Peter would have given up on us, so we headed for the metro station (lovely metro stations here by the way). And saw some phones. So we called Peter who was still at the museum (enjoying it much better without us I'm sure)which was immediately behind the original building we'd been to. Go figure.

But its great fun, and there's so much to see (too much - the Hermitage needs to introduce rollerblade tours), and if we could just remember some of the common dishes found on menus then all would be perfect and we wouldn't have to live on pancakes (called bliney) and pizza.

Also, we met a couple who have just come from Beijing on the Trans-Mongolian, and they said there's no snow yet. There's no snow here either. What's going on??

Vilnius: Yesterday's Soup

Vilnius - our jumping off point to Russia - and what a great place it is. The brand new train station is abuzz with people scooting around on ride-on floor polishers, the town is full of bookshops and cafes (for the university students) and strip clubs (for the UK buck's parties), and the people are proud of their membership of the EU and NATO.

And they have the world's only statue of Frank Zappa here. Well why not?!

We also continued our eastern european history lesson in the excellent, and very creepy ex-KGB Headquarters here, now a museum of genocide. We're starting to build quite a picture of the tug of war which has been going on in these parts for the last century or more at the expense of the local populations.

And we couln't resist visiting the cafe recommended in the Rough Guide as one of the highlights of Lithuania - a pleasant place with a Soup of the Day and Yesterday's Soup both on the menu. Nice, but I think the country has more to offer than that.

So, we have our train tickets for tonight's journey (at least we think that's what we bought - you can never be completely sure you won't be thrown off the train in some subzero outpost for showing a Vilnius Municipal Library card or something), and cousin Peter of St Petersbug has kindly agreed to meet us tomorrow to show us around a bit. Maybe teach us how to ask for train tickets/ warm hats/ borscht in Russian.

Sleepless in Slopsch

Oh dear, overnight bus trips are terrible.